What Does "Osu" Mean?

The commonly cited meaning

Osu is usually written with two Japanese characters. The first, 押, means to push. The second, 忍, means to endure or bear. Put together, the explanation you’ll hear most often traces the word to the phrase “oshi shinobu,” which is generally translated as pushing forward while enduring.

In plain English: perseverance under pressure. Keep going when it’s hard, without complaining about it.

That meaning fits Kyokushin well. This is a style built on full-contact kumite, bare knuckle and bare shin. You will be tired. You will get hit. You’ll be asked to do one more round when you’d rather sit down. Osu, in this reading, is the word for what you do next.

The origin is debated

Here’s the part many dojo explanations leave out. Nobody has settled exactly where the word came from.

The oshi shinobu explanation is the most widely repeated one in the martial arts world. Others trace Osu to a shortened form of an everyday Japanese greeting, ohayo gozaimasu. There are other theories too. Serious martial artists hold different views, and none of them can prove theirs with certainty.

I’d rather tell you that straight than pretend the history is neat. What matters in the dojo is what the word means when you say it, and that part isn’t in dispute.

How Osu is used in the dojo

In Kyokushin, Osu does a lot of work. It is commonly used:

• As a greeting when you enter or leave the training area, or greet an instructor or training partner.

• As acknowledgment. When an instructor gives you a correction, “Osu” means “I understand, and I’ll do it.”

• As respect. Before and after kumite, it’s how two fighters acknowledge each other.

• As encouragement. Said to someone pushing through a hard drill, it means keep going.

One caution. Osu is dojo language. Outside martial arts circles in Japan, it is not a polite all-purpose greeting, so keep it where it belongs.

It also shouldn’t become filler. If you say it to everything without listening, it’s noise. When an instructor corrects you and you say Osu, the next rep should show it.

What Osu means at The Phoenix Way

Two of the core principles we drive at The Phoenix Way are perseverance and a never-quit spirit. That’s Osu in action. It’s the student in a kumite round who keeps eating punches and keeps coming, which is why I asked from the side of the mat, “How do you beat somebody that doesn’t quit?” I wrote about that round in How Do You Beat Somebody Who Doesn’t Quit?

It’s also respect, another of our principles. We leave the ego at the door here. Osu, said to a training partner who just caught you clean, is an honest way of saying “good shot.”

You’ll see the word in our students’ own reviews, too. One student, about two months in, signed off a review with it. So did a young student who was nervous before their first class and wrote about the friends they made. If you’re a parent curious about that side, read Inside a Kids Karate Class at The Phoenix Way.

A caption on one of our videos puts it the way Kancho always does: “Train hard and often.” If you want to find out what it feels like to earn the word, our Adult Class is the place to start.

Osu.