Kakutogi Men

Sooo… I went for a test drive yesterday to try out my new camera gear at the dojo. While I was there, I asked Manuel (don’t know his last name) if I could take a quick shot of him. He was sweaty and tired after a two hour workout but was still nice enough to pose for me. This guy’s phenomenal! He’s in his mid 50’s and competes in quite a few marathons a year (including the LA Marathon)!

For all the non-martial artists out there, this headgear is called a Toshu Kakutogi Men. I grabbed this description of the Men from www.e-bogu.com:

TOSHU Kakutogi is translated as a Martial Arts that do not use weapons in their combat. Judo, Karate, Boxing, Sumo are some of the examples o TOSHU Kakutogi. In Japan the Jeitai (Self Defence Force) trains this techniques. This TOSHU Kakutogi Bogu is widely used in various Martial Arts that fights without weapons such as Kenpo.

For all the camera geeks out there, I used the new Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a 24-105 f4L attached. Exposure details were: 1/60 @ f4, 105mm, ISO 6400