KATA FOLLOWS FUNCTION: first know your tools.

“The third way is the Way of the samurai, who must understand, among other things, that he must make his own weapons. He must become familiar  with the usage of each weapon as well. Without the knowledge of weapons and their proper usage, one cannot call oneself a true samurai”   Go Rin No Sho by Miyamoto Musashi, as translated by Hidy Ochiai 2001

As discussed in the last segment, the ultimate goal in kumite is the dominance of the opponent.  To truly dominate, the karateka must be able to flow from technique to technique with little conscious thought beyond the overall strategy.  Proficiency in kihon techniques must be acquired through dedicated training before the student can actually hope to apply any strategy in his kumite. Of course karateka of any level may score points and win matches, but often this amounts to little more than good luck or good athletics rather than good karate. ( addressed in the section”The intentional strike and the accidental contact”in Go Rin No Sho)  Our goal in karate should be to attain a level of proficiency such that every movement we make is contributing to our overall strategy for victory. 

Kumite skills can be broken down into two very broad classes: performance and strategy. Performance deals with the actual use of the kihon techniques and  involves training the techniques until the karateka has an instinctive knowledge of the capabilities of each technique or combination.  The assumption made with all the performance training is that the karateka is sufficiently trained in basic kihon drills that he can now start using those skills against a moving target.  Kihon training “builds” our tools, but we then have to know the uses and limitations of those tools. (thus the quote above) I will deal with strategy in subsequent sections.

You really cannot discuss kumite without discussing the concept of “maai”.  Some authors define this term simply as “distance”, but, as I understand it (with my very limited Japanese) the term encompasses the concept of both distance and time.  I compare this term to one of those brutal mathematics problems we all had to contend with in high school (or on our police academy entrance examination) where two trains leave opposing cities miles apart at the same time but travelling at different rates on the same track. The crux of the problem is “when or where  will they meet?”.  To solve this problem, the student has to know (or should be able to surmise) how far apart the cities are and how fast the trains are travelling to calculate the interception point.  Take this to karate now: two opponents separated by feet, each moving at their own rate and each attempting to collide with the other (hit each other).  Obviously the interception point between opponents is going to be a function of both the time it takes to complete an attack and the distance that attack has to travel. Maai is about time and distance.

In karate, the funny thing about maai is that it is different for each one of us: maai will vary dramatically because it is going to be a function of our own abilities combined with our own anatomical proportions. It is also going to vary according to our opponent’s movement, skill, and size.  In fact, the maai that we have to consider in kumite is actually three separate issues: your maai  in relation to the opponent, the opponent’s maai in relation to you, and the actual distance between the two of you.  Here is where I need to make a few definitions that may be specific just to myself. The first definition is “distance”. Distance is the measure of the interpersonal space between opponents at the beginning of an attacking technique. The attack distance will vary according to the technique used (ie: stepping-in kicks versus shifting-in punches) and the height of the opponent (long-legged tall critters cover one heck of a lot more ground than  stumpy-legged shrimps. Love it or hate it, the reach of your opponent really does make a difference). The second definition is “range”. Range is the interpersonal distance between two opponents at the finish of a technique.  The range will vary, again, with the technique used, but now will often be much more influenced by the extended length of the limbs of the attacker and the target on the opponent.  Basically the initial “distance” between players will define what attacks can or should be used and how long they will take to complete, while the range of each attack is an individual variable that it is crucial for each player to know if they expect to actually land a technique.   Consider how often you see students perform a stepping-in attack against a stationary target (heavy bag) only to either miss altogether or crash unceremoniously against the bag simply because they have no idea how far they need to be away from the target either at initiation  or completion of the attack . They just do not know how far they travel in a step nor how long their own limbs are.

Training distance and range is the first part of “performance” training and probably is the major justification of  the old five step and three step sparring drills.  I cannot imagine anyone that has not suffered through these drills, but, for those few gifted souls that missed these drills, here they are.  You pair off with an opponent. One of the pair does five or three sequential  specified stepping-in attacks to a specified target. The opponent steps back with each new attack and applies an appropriate block. On the last technique there may or may not be a counter-attack. These are very simple and likely tedious drills that should be introduced at the beginner level.  Most karateka hate these drills and consider them so hopelessly simple that they border on useless.  I was certainly one of those karateka  just a few years ago, until I actually did a little thinking about these drills and what they are training.

In the multi-step drills the attacker is learning both his distance and his range. He is getting to practice this repeatedly against a moving target. The value should be clear.  The defender, on the other hand, is getting both a feel of the distance of his attacker and the timing needed to intercept the incoming attack. The astute defender is going to notice the different distances between people of different statures, and hopefully start to recognize the futility of a linear retreat in the face of a full frontal attack. I find the multi-step drills excellent for exploring different facets of strategy as well: altering the rhythm and rate of the count often alters dramatically the feel of the drill. Often, for portions of the drill, I will use a counted rate of attacks. In the beginning I will use a metronomic, predictable count and allow the students get a feel for their opponent. As the students get into the drill, I will then pick up the rate of the count, forcing both the attackers to remain “on guard” and the defenders to move much faster to dodge the bullets.  Once I have people moving as if their life depended on getting in or getting away, then I might start breaking the count up, specifically trying to avoid any noticeable rhythm. Often the defenders start getting hit around this point as the strategy of “broken rhythm” starts coming to the front. 

Of course step-drill sparring is very rudimentary, but I no longer believe it should be relegated to “beginner level” drilling.  I remember reading an article by Sensei David Hooper out of Japan that described in detail the warm-up drills of his university karate team; the simple stepping-in sparring drills represented a major part of the team warm-up and often resulted in bloodied noses and fat lips if the students did not remain focused and within the moment. Certainly the drills can be used to explore distance and range, but they also provide ample opportunity to train speed and rudimentary strategy for the advanced belts.  The key to keeping these drills relevant is, once the students understand them clearly, to drill them as merely a small part of a training session and to drill them at close to full speed and intent.  The students should actually dread these drills for fear of getting hit rather than despise them due to tedium.  Instructors also need to briefly explain the point of these drills so the students can train with intent at every opportunity.  The five and three step drills also represent an example of the teaching concept previously mentioned in which we teach big and demonstrate big, but drill to apply smaller as the student learns.

A similar process has to be carried out for all our attacks, including the more common shifting-in attacks seen in kumite.  Pairs should take turns throwing various techniques at each other, one acting as merely a target while the other attacks. Drills should move from stationary exchanges of technique without any blocking, through stationary exchanges of technique with blocking, to moving exchanges of technique with or without blocking. The students need to learn to “dance”, playing with the interpersonal distance to find the optimal attack or defense point while both stationary or moving.  Of course, throughout these drills, other concepts of kumite will be drilled (timing, strategy etc. etc.), but it is of crucial importance that the students always attack on target and land each technique as close to target as possible without actually harming their partner.  Furthermore, for the simple reason of safety, make sure the students are always clear on who is attacking and who is receiving; full contact impact on simple distancing drills are hardly good for the health of either the students or the dojo.  One major issue I have with these “unopposed” drills where the “defender”  acts merely as a reciever is that the students often (almost always) start to creep in on their partner and attack from an unrealistic distance. This habit represents typical human laziness as the students realize that it is much easier to land a technique as they  close on their opponent. This shows a failure to understand the nature of actual sparring where you are just as likely to receive a blow as to give a strike.  The instructor has to constantly remind the students to respect the potential of their opponent and pretend that they may indeed choose to hit you first if you choose to creep into their range. The other option is to just tell people to reach out and give their attacker a little love-tap if they realize that the attacker has forgotten that potential (not a great idea for beginners)

Throughout my discussions of basic kihon, I repeatedly discussed the concept of linkage on techniques, using breathing, hikite and kime. I also touched base on the idea of alignment of technique and briefly on the concept of movement off the line of attack in tai sabaki.  These skills, at a rudimentary level, are best drilled with one step sparring.  I believe that one-step sparring can be introduced at beginner level, but is worthwhile even at black belt level, dependant on how intense and varied you choose to make the training. One step sparring gives us a chance, in a controlled environment, to explore alternative blocking, counter-attacks, timing and movement. Many people loudly criticize the artificial nature of pre-arranged sparring, but as an intellectual exercise to demonstrate fighting drills I cannot fault pre-arranged sparring.

The primary value of one step sparring, where the defender blocks and counterattacks a single, announced attack from either shizentai or from a “fighting” stance, is to practice linkage and, of course, counter-attack distance. Typically, the lower kyu ranked karateka will tend to concentrate on blocking the incoming attack as they step back. There is often a long pause after the block and, because of the emphasis on not getting hit, they are usually way too far from their opponent to successfully counter-attack.  They are missing the point altogether.  In my dojo I repeatedly emphasize that the only reason to block an incoming attack is to set up the counter-attack.  Truthfully, if you really do not want to get hit, the logical response to an attack is to run away; standing your ground and blocking is all about fighting. (“where there is fighting there is hitting” to paraphrase a dead Confederate General). The corollary to my “block only to hit” theory is that the block and the counter-attack must be linked and practically simultaneous.  Now we come full circle back to kihon basics: complete each technique with full hikite and kime but never pause at completion rather use your “one breath-two exclamation marks” abdominal pulse to link the block and counter. The emphasis on the block must be to intercept early, redirect the attack (rather than “block” it; the difference may be subtle, but it is crucial) and remain in range for an immediate counter-attack (usually a reverse punch, but anything goes as skills develop).  The entire process is all about timing and as such, we need not get fancy here: there is really no need for creative counters or fancy blocks because you are training the basic principles that, once perfected, allow any defense to work.  Of course, once a karateka has reached some proficiency at basics, he need to step out and try to get creative, as long as the final counter-attack would be a finishing blow.

Tai sabaki, while truly being a form of strategy, is worthwhile to discuss here in the performance section since it is as much about learning how to move to the optimal angle as it is about learning when to move to that angle.  The concept of “tai sabaki” is that you sidestep the incoming attack with your entire body and immediately counter. Theoretically, if done correctly, the movement off the attack line make any block superfluous and therefor the defender may concentrate on the counter attack only.  I want to revisit an idea that I mentioned before: weak axis and strong axis.  Assuming our attacker is well trained, he will always attack with his technique correctly aligned with the strong axis of whatever stance he may be using.  As a defender, we would prefer to avoid directly contesting this powerful attack vector and choose instead to step off the attack line.  Let’s also assume that we too know enough about karate to attack aligned along our strong stance axis, the question becomes where do we want to counter-attack?  In a perfect world we want to counter-attack along our strong axis and colliding against our attackers weak axis (90 degrees to the long axis of his stance).  This principle is hardly a new idea, Sun Tsu addressed it in “The Art of War”  twenty-five hundred years ago: avoid the enemy’s strength, attack with your strength against his weakness. In tai sabaki, the counter-attack is all about angles, weapons, and weak points.

Consider the opponent in  fighting stance, typically with one leg leading, lead hand at high guard, reverse  hand at abdomen guard or attack ready.  In attack the opponent is going to have an “inside” or frontal plane and an “outside” or rear plane. If we shift to the “inside” we will be facing his crotch, belly, and face, all excellent targets. We will also be facing his reverse punch, his front snap kick and we will be directly in his eye-line, allowing for a faster response to our defense. If we shift to the “outside” we will be facing the side of his head, his kidneys and ribs and he is open for a powerful leg attack.  In the “outside” position we are off his immediate eye-line and we will not be facing any potential aligned counter-counter attack without our opponent shifting his own position.  Typically, shifting to the outside, while not affording as many “juicy” targets, gives us a little more time to counter-attack because our opponent cannot bring any weapons on line easily.  We need to practice tai-sabaki, shifting in both potential directions in every possible way, playing with distances and weapons to expand our armament.

Sensei Ron Fagen, out of Halifax Nova Scotia has a nice drill for tai sabaki he calls the “ten steps”. We learn this drill using standard one step sparring where the defender starts in shizen-tai dachi, then we drill the student to shift in any one of ten directions in response to standard stepping-in attacks.  I prefer to keep the attacks consistent through the learning phase of this drill: stepping-in right handed face punch is as good as any attack. So what are the ten steps? Stepping straight back to the right and the left, using pure timing and blocking are the first two (tai sabaki only applies if you consider stepping away from a punch to be a form of tai sabaki. I do not).  Shifting to on a angle to the left or right (one will be shifting inside, the other outside. Make sure the students notice the difference) will be the next two. The third pair of movements will be rotating to the left or the right: on foot remains in place as a pivot while the other rotates across and behind to the chosen direction.  The students should notice the different feel between the linear blocks, the shifting tai sabaki and the rotation tai sabaki: the rotational movements will tend to give a feel of guiding the attack by us versus directly challenging the attack with our block.  Elmar Schmeisser does an excellent job of addressing this difference in his book “Advanced Karate-Do”. The fourth pair of movements are large shifts directly sideways, ninety degrees to the attack vector of the opponent. This movement renders any block practically redundant, but is quite difficult to perform successfully due to the large nature of the movement (larger shifts are harder to accomplish and easier to spot by our opponent.) Finally, the last pair of “inside-outside” steps consist of a rapid step into the incoming attack vector with a full rotation around that foot to “pass” the attack and end up behind the opponent.  I compare this avoidance of attack with the classical bull-fighters move “the veronica”. In a veronica the matador presents his body behind the cape as a target and then rotates in spot around the points of the bull’s horns at the last moment, leading the bull past him with a floursish of the cape and ending up behind the bull, safe from the lethal attacking horns.  This particular form of tai sabaki is obviously very difficult and requires tremendous amounts of training and lots of luck to perform successfully. Once the students have the basic concepts, obviously this entire drill has to be upgraded by introducing  alternative attacks, doing it from stationary fighting stance and while moving, or, finally, training with free sparring but requiring the heavy use of tai-sabaki.

One drill for tai sabaki that I find to be fun and quite worthwhile is what I call “flow training’.  For this drill to be successful, you need to make sure the entire class understands that the point of the drill is not “winning” or “scoring” but is really all about maintaining a continual flow between the pair where no contact is ever really possible.  I start off the pair facing each other in standard fighting stance (whatever that means to your club or style). The initiator calls a single attack by announcing both technique and target. The defender acknowledges the call (perhaps the only good use for Ossu), and the initiator immediately attacks.  The defender then shifts and blocks WITHOUT any counter-attack. Both players now freeze in position, they do not shift, shiver or step. The defender now calls an appropriate attack from his new position, and attacks as soon as his partner acknowledges the new attack. The partner shifts, blocks and they both freeze.  The sequence is attack-shift/block-new attack. There are no counter attacks in this drill; it is not about counter-attacking but it is about shifting off the line of an incoming attack.  As the players get the concept mastered, the pace must pick up dramatically: attacks must be called and acknowledged fast and they must be made at full speed and intent. Now, where are we going here? The first level of learning here will be “where can I go to avoid this attack successfully and leave my opponent at a disadvantage?”. The second level of learning will be “where can I go to avoid this attack, leave my opponent at a disadvantage, and allow me to make my own devastating attack”. The third level of learning, which may come either before or after the second level, will be “what technique is best used from this particular position and distance in relation to my opponent?”. Finally, the student will hopefully get to the point of “where can I move to avoid attack and place myself in position to use any attack I choose?” The students should be encouraged to use unique shifts to avoid attack and to utilize alternative techniques appropriate to the position and distance they find themselves after the shift. Done properly this “dance” should flow quickly and smoothly and resemble something like a Hollywood martial arts fight.  It really is fun, though the urge to “win” which always tends to rear it’s ugly head will ruin the drill.

One training drill that can be used to combine kata with kumite is yakusuku kumite. This form of training is highly formalized pre-arranged kumite using specific sequences from various kata to defend against a series of various attacks.  Fagan Sensei combines this with his ten step training, altering the various kata combinations to fit the various directional shifts.  An example might be the first combination in Heian (Pinan) godan: inside block, reverse punch.  The first two combinations would be shift directly back left side and right side.  The second combination would be shift to the inside or the outside. The third combination, using rotation to avoid,  the block would have to be altered somewhat to actually work: perhaps something along the line of doing a “flowing” inside block with the gyaku hand, followed immediately with a jab off the front hand. This has the same basic intent as the kata, but we have altered the techniques to fit the tai-sabaki shift.  The 90 degree shifts are exactly like the kata, but perhaps the counter-attack technique would have to be altered to deal with the altered distance.  The final pair of shifts, the step into  and rotate behind the opponent, perhaps the timing of the block would be altered to occur as you stepped through the attack, using the block to actually ricochet your body off the opponent’s attack. The point of this training is to not only explore kata application, but to get the student to play with alternative weapons and techniques in kumite rather than just depend on the standard few we routinely see in competition.  Of course there is a reason we see a limited number of techniques in competition: survival of the fittest.  Competition kumite, controlled by rules and referees, limits the both the number of potential attacks that are actually worthwhile. On the other hand, in self defense situations the potential attacks and situations are only limited by ones imagination and the laws of physics. Self-defense training demands that we perfect a few very effective techniques for use in any and every situation. Yakusuku kumite is what this is all about.

Perhaps the most difficult skill to learn, at least for me, is the ability to remain focused and “in the moment” during sparring, always poised to react to the slightest action of my opponent. The Japanese term for this skill is zanshin, and this is perhaps the most valuable skill one can accrue from karate; the ability to act and react clearly and appropriately under stress.  The first levels of this training can be done with a series of basic drills done at white belt level that basically amount to little more than the childhood game of “Simon Says”.  The first part of zanshin training is done while simply doing the standard marching line drills we all do while practicing kihon. It needs to be emphasized that the students must react to the count immediately but they should not anticipate the count and “jump the gun”.  The count represents and attack and we need to train ourselves to cue off the count with the same snap response we would have to a real attack.  Use this same training rule for kata training when you do kata “to the count”.  Break the count up periodically, avoiding the typical metronomic count we all tend to fall into.  Take the drill a step farther and start barking out orders in broken rhythm, sometimes calling for a step forward, other times asking for a step back, sometimes asking for a technique in place. Keep on pushing the limit of the students, asking for ever increasing and variable skill levels, always faster and with greater intensity.  Here I want to step back to the kata drill I discussed in the section on “eye-line”,  using good old Heian Shodan as a template.  Pair the students off in sparring pairs and have one stand in shizentai dachi while the other performs an unannounced stepping-in attack from the left side. The key here is to remain absolutely focused on picking up the hidden telegraphs of our attacker with our peripheral vision (remember that our peripheral vision is better for picking up movement as compared to our central vision) and reacting as soon as we “feel” the imminent attack.  Of course this drill explores all sorts of other elements of karate, but the most important element demonstrated has to be zanshin.

Toru Shimoji of Atlanta, Georgia has a series of drills that are very worthwhile for training zanshin.  I find these drills to be very demanding and, frankly, fraught with danger for solid contact.  I am not sure that students much below the level of brown belt will get much out of them besides fat lips and bloodied noses, but properly done they really do give the karateka an sharply honed edge in kumite. These drills are deceptively simple, but they really must be done at full speed and power to get much out of them. There must be a real sense of danger to help the student “turn on  the juice”.  Again, it must be emphasized that the players are not to try to win or score, but to remain strictly within the constraints of the drill. All these drills are done from fighting stance, shifting in using the internal lift principle for shifting rather than bouncing or stepping.

Pair off and select one karateka to be initiator while the other is responder (this is the easiest way to think for this drill). Initiator shifts in jab to the face while the responder merely acts as a target, neither moving nor blocking.  Once the punch is completed, the initiator slowly, without changing his position, draws his hands back to a loaded guard position.  At the very instant that the initiator reaches “guard” the responder explosively shifts back away from the initiator. At this stimulus the initiator must immediately, without hesitation, shift-in with a reverse punch to the abdomen. The responder must remain zanshin to be able to shift back the instant that his partner reaches guard, while the initiator must remain zanshin to attack the instant his partner shifts back.  Follow this drill immediately with this next step.  The initiator again shifts in jab, but in this case the responder shifts back immediately on the attack. The initiator must then again attack immediately with a reverse punch. Drill both of these repeatedly to set the tone and establish a pattern. Now throw a wrench in the works by mixing the two drills up.  The responder may now either shift back immediately on the jab or stand his ground. The initiator must respond appropriately with the corresponding drill pattern. The key here is that the initiator forms a sort of binary code decision tree that is something like GO or NOT GO. This drill is very simple, but really is very difficult if you are honest with yourself (and lets face it, karate is all about self development; you might as well quit now if you cannot be true to yourself).  Now step up the drill again: the responder may now simply shift away (initiator follows in with an immediate attack) or the responder may choose to block the jab and counter-attack. The initiator should block the counter-attack. Now the decision tree becomes ATTACK of DEFEND for the initiator.  Once that level is mastered, add in the first option so the initiator has one of three possible scenarios that he may encounter.  Finally, add in option four: the responder shift away from the jab immediately, to which the initiator is supposed to immediately reverse punch. The alteration in this case is that the responder now may block the reverse punch of the initiator and counter-attack. Obviously the initiator now must immediately block the final counter-attack once he realizes his reverse punch has been deflected by his partner.  Drill these separately and drill them together, but always drill them at full speed and intent. 

Now, for a real boost to both kumite and kata, do any of the kumite drills for a set number of repetitions, then have the students perform one kata at full speed and power as a side by side pair.  The point here is to have the intensity and zanshin of the kumite drills to “bleed” over into the kata. I truly believe that kata training, done correctly, can benefit kumite and vice-versa. The key here is to practice kihon, kata and kumite with equal intensity and focus so that each may “bleed” over into the others. This all brings us back to the original concepts of intent and Zen in karate that I addressed much earlier.

The final section of the kumite segment of my creation will be “strategy”.  I do not pretend to be a master strategist, I am merely a master of the drills.  I know I have said it before, but I will say it again: go read “Go Rin No Sho” by Musashi. Heck, you can even find a free copy out on the Internet (not to mention any number of sites dedicated to it’s interpretation) While you are at it read a copy of “The Art of War” (Ping Fa) by Sun Tsu. Combined, both will give you everything you need to understand real fighting strategy as long as you keep your mind open and see all the potential meanings behind the text.  What follows is merely a set of drills designed to develop a feel for strategic timing. Timing is everything in fighting (as in life).

KATA FOLLOWS FUNCTION: kumite; the when and the why

“karate ni sente nashi”  (there is no first hand in karate)  Funakoshi Gichen, “The Twenty Precepts of Karate-do

” In facing an enemy with a sword in your hands, it is crucial that you intend to cut the enemy, no matter what.You may block your opponent’s sword, you may strike it, touch it, push it or simply parry it, but these actions are simply a setup for the main purpose of cutting your opponent down”  “the attitude-no attitude teaching” in the Water Book of Go Rin No Sho by Miyamoto Musashi.

The two quotes above, while discussing different topics and actually addressing different concepts,  still seem to contradict each other.  Funakoshi Sensei appears to be suggesting some sort of Christian “turn the other cheek” approach to life, while Musashi is appears to be promoting some sort of Machiavellian “the end justifies the means” approach to conflict.  My take on this is “no” the first and “yes” to the second.  I believe “karate ni sente nashi” is actually imploring the karateka to avoid conflict whenever possible and to never look for fights simply for the sake of fighting.  I do not for a second believe that Funakoshi Sensei is telling us to always allow the other guy to swing first; that  strategy of reactive rather than pro-active and by definition it is weak.  Musashi, on the other hand, is not suggesting mindless aggression but he is suggesting a pro-active strategy in which every movement in a fight is serving the greater strategy of eventual victory. Musashi spent most of his life fighting for survival in hundreds of live blade contests while Funakoshi was a school teacher.   In my opinion Musashi has better credentials with regards to fighting, so I will tend to quote him heavily throughout the sections I will dedicate to kumite.

Let’s start with some full disclosure: I really am poor at sport kumite.  Just about anyone can and has scored on me .  Perhaps my very failure at kumite has led me to study it closely and learn just about every drill you can imagine to improve my performance.  Unfortunately, it is probably my intellectual study of kumite that has destroyed my kumite: I am thinking about strategy while my opponent is punching my lights out.  Thinking while fighting is not conducive to winning.  On the other hand, I am also a very solidly built fellow and my rabid pit-bull approach to kumite has severely limited my pool of potential opponents: lots of people may have scored on me, but,having survived one encounter,  none of them have ever asked for a rematch. 

Coming back to the concept of “basic principles” of karate.  I defined a principle as “a concept that always holds true, regardless of the situation”.  I personally believe that there is one, and only one, principle in kumite: your goal in every match must be to lead your opponent.  Note how I said that: “lead your opponent”.  I am not suggesting that you must be the aggressor or that you must hit first; I am suggesting that absolutely everything you do in a kumite match must serve your strategy while eroding that of your opponent. The concept of “taking the lead” must be the guiding principle of kumite; allowing the opponent to always initiate and lead is a deficient and weak strategy in which you will always be playing catch-up and will likely eventually get caught. Of course, the term “taking the lead” can be interpreted in many apparently contradictory ways.

The key issue we all need to understand is the term “kyo”, which is a very nice Japanese term for vulnerable to attack.  The opposite of “kyo” would be “jitsu”, or on guard.  Any successful attack needs the opponent to be in a state of “kyo” to succeed; if they are truly are prepared for our attack, they will capably defend it and likely counter-attack successfully. Obviously, the perfect goal of kumite must be to for ourselves to remain constantly in a state of jitsu, while capitalizing on every moment of kyo in our opponent.  We also need to recognize that there are three types of “kyo”: avoidable natural kyo, unavoidable natural kyo, and created kyo.  By understanding this important point, the capable karateka can develop an entire strategy and training program around it.

Avoidable natural kyo is almost always due to a momentary loss of intent and focus on the part of the karateka.  The most common form of avoidable natural kyo has to be pure loss of focus.  Examples of this would be the opponent who daydreams while sparring. I would be a perfect example of this; while sparring I tend to plan and strategize, losing myself in my plans for brief moments. Unfortunately, those brief moments often leave me open to attack; my opponent recognizes a slight pause in my focus, a lift in my stance and a failure to react appropriately as they adjust their distance into a lethal range. Often, by the time I have come back to the mats, my opponent has crept inside my defenses and can launch just about any attack successfully.  All of us can remember matches that we lost by that mystical, “came out of nowhere” punch; we were daydreaming and our opponent “crossed at the ford” when he spotted our lapse.  Perhaps a more subtle form of this lapse is when ourselves or our opponent fails to maintain an appropriate distance as the fighting heats up; often we see fighters closing the gap as tensions build, but neither recognizing the potential for attack.  I have all sorts of pictures of kumite where either fighter was in a clear position for a successful take-down or sweep, but neither attempted to do so because both were concentrating on simply exchanging punches. Clearly to miss a devastating technique such as a sweep is a mental loss of kyo.  Another example of “avoidable kyo” would be the fighter who loses his cool and becomes too reactive to the opponent.  Consider the “hyper-reactive” fighter who jumps at every feint, blocks at every move or attacks at the slightest provocation.  This type of fighter is easily led and easily flustered.  When I face someone like this, I have found it to be quite worthwhile to just loudly “kiai” out of the blue and attack when my opponent startles and reacts. I am merely taking advantage of their natural weakness and that is all part of taking the lead.  On the other hand, another form of natural kyo would be a temporary loss of balance; a slip on the floors or mats.  We see this often, especially during a long match when the floor is getting a bit slippery with sweat.  Often, when one fighter slips and is left open, his opponent fails to recognize a clear opportunity and capitalize.  Both these actions are moments of kyo: the man who slips is physically kyo while the man who stands still and fails to attack is mentally kyo.  Finally, I would say that physical or mental exhaustion are forms of avoidable natural kyo; both can be successfully overcome by fitness and proper training ( breath control maybe??).

 

Unavoidable natural kyo is a term that many karateka absolutely fail to recognize; many believe that they can maintain absolute readiness no matter what the circumstances.  Unfortunately, this inability to recognize this gap in our defenses both leaves us open to attack and deprives us of a potential for attack.  The truth of the matter is that there is a gap between absolutely every technique and movement we make: we are essentially kyo when we are in transition.  In my mind I see two different illustrations of this concept: a common zipper on clothing and an ocean wave.  The zipper analogy would look like this: each tooth on the zipper would represent a technique at full kime, where the fighter is fully loaded and prepared (and about to) fire into another technique. The space between each tooth becomes that point of transition where the fighter is committed and moving into a follow up technique.  The key for each fighter is to spot those gaps in techniques and either minimize their own gaps or capitalize on their opponent’s gaps. The ocean wave analogy  is very similar in visuals: the peaks of the waves would represent moments of complete readiness while the troughs would represent open moments of transition between the peaks.  Now take this back to application in kumite.  The first point of transition in the enemy might be that moment when the opponent mentally shifts from defense mode to attack mode. If one recognizes that moment (perhaps our opponent has a telegraph such as he changes his breathing pattern or he fails to use “tension-release” training and he has to wind up each technique) you can often attack at that moment successfully. This is an example of that much sought after “sen sen no sen” timing: attacking just as our enemy forms the intent to attack.  The second point of transition might be during the flow of the first attack: the opponent commits to an attack and we, anticipating that attack, respond with our defense with interception timing. The key point here is that I am not discussing either a block or a strike, I am merely discussing intercepting the incoming attack with a technique of your own as the enemy is on their way in.  This timing might be an example of sen timing (simultaneous attack or ai-uchi) or early go-no-sen timing.   Another point of natural kyo might be merely when the karateka is shifting or stepping: while you are moving it is very difficult or impossible to alter direction which leaves you open to an attack timed to hit you in flight.  The best example of this might be the fool who tries to launch a jumping kick in competition: once he is in flight he can hardly shift his vector to avoid a well timed counter-attack. The  final transition point comes between techniques: jab-punch, block-punch, kick-punch, punch-block or simply attack and shift to guard.  No matter what, no matter how good you think you are, those transition points are there, ready to be exploited.

Once the fighter recognizes the presence of unavoidable natural kyo, he can train himself to minimize his own kyo points.  Now here is where I really feel vindicated in writing this text: by correct basic training you can minimize kyo while maximizing effective techniques.  For example, the second transition point I discussed above, the initiation of the first attack technique, is an illustration of where proper, dedicated basic training becomes essential. In basic training not only does the fighter learn how to move very quickly with little telegraphing (thus shortening the transition) we also learn the most effective range and distance for our techniques.  If we know our distancing instinctively then we not only know the most effective distance to attack from to keep our transition period to a minimum, we also learn the most effective defense distance to hopefully maximize the enemy’s transition period. Consider the proper use of breathing, hikite and kime.  I discussed the concept of kime being merely a infinitely small moment of time at which the technique is finished and the body is poised, ready to perform the next technique. We literally bounce out of one technique and into the next. releasing our potential energy from the loaded hikite. Everything we do in the technical end of training feeds into the applications end of training by narrowing that gap between techniques. It all starts with the concept that the finish of one technique is merely the beginning of the next.  The speed of the techniques not only increases the power and effectiveness of their impact, it shortens the distance between the wave peaks.  We need to train our kihon with this intent in mind.  We also need to consider those “gaps” carefully as they represent the openings in the opponents defenses and our opportunity for attack.

The gaps or transition points represent opportunity and the strategist not only should how to consider taking advantage of those gaps, he should consider how to extend those gaps to increase his window of opportunity.  The majority of the strategies and training drills I will likely cover over the next several segments will have to deal with either creating or extending the natural gaps in our opponent’s defenses.  We need to create kyo; to do this we need to take advantage of both normal human nature and the individual nature of our opponent. Hopefully I will touch base on any number of topics and match a drill with each of those topics. On the other hand why would you read the comics when you can appreciate a masterpiece? I wholly recommend that every serious fighter read and digest “Go Rin No Sho” by Miyamoto Musashi .  I personally have FIVE translations. The best versions I have found to be either the direct translation by Victor Harris (Overlook Press, 1974) or the annotated version by Hidy Ochiai(Overlook Press 2001). There are hopelessly trashy versions out there too, so look out. There are many people that try to read more into “Go Rin No Sho” than is really there; it is best to remember that this was a book dictated by an ailing old hermit in a wet, dark, cold cave to a fawning student.  Musashi was not a complicated philosopher, he was a war hardened killer of men, so he most likely meant literally what he said rather than some deeper concepts. I also recommend a read of “The Art of War” by Sun Tsu.  This does not apply very well to karate, but it is absolutely worthwhile to compare and contrast the two manuals of strategy and realize that the strategy of the individual can and does apply to the many if you can think outside the envelope.

Before we leave this introduction to kumite altogether, I would like to address one last time the concept that “karate ni sente nashi” does NOT mean that we should let every opponent throw the first punch before we defend ourselves.  I believe the nature of the first five kata the Shotokan style learns pretty much contradicts that concept. The astute karateka will notice that each of these kata start with a block. Not just any block though; this is a stepping-in or intercepting block. Each of these introductory kata (Heian kata one through five) is actually introducing, in no uncertain terms, the concept of early interception of an attack with a “stopping” block. In fact, the first movement in these beginner’s kata could actually be considered to be a “sen” timing attack rather than a block: the opponent dares to initiate an attack and the karateka defends himself with a pre-emptive interception of the attack early in the transition period.  This strategy cannot be reactive defense where the fighter awaits the overt attack, this strategy is a pro-active defense where the fighter anticipates the attack and intercepts it early on the incoming vector, reacting off the unconscious telegraphs of the enemy rather than the overt movement.  The nature of the Heian kata make my point for me: the primary strategy of karate is that of taking the lead from the start of the conflict.  We start training the strategy from our first class; it’s unfortunate we often do not recognize this fact until very late in our training.

KATA FOLLOWS FUNCTION: hold your breath; just try!!

“Whenever I feel blue…. I start breathing again”  L Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz

Throughout my years of training I have had many discussions with regards to breathing. How to do it, how it helps your performance, how it focuses your internal energy or ki (chi, prana) and how it helps body connection.  For the most part all of these statements were correct and worthwhile (assuming you believe in ki. Personally, for myself, I believe in blood flow, lymphatic drainage, organ perfusion, pulse oxygenation, blood glucose levels, and hydration; beyond that I see little proof for any mystical “chi” power). On the other hand, the idea that breathing and proper control of your breathing is beneficial to athletic performance is not that much of a stretch for me.  I was a competitive swimmer for years and I can tell you that if you fail to breath while swimming, you will drown and die. It’s just this easy: you need to breath to continue living.  Let’s not complicate matters much beyond that.

On the other hand, there is some benefit to learning how to control your breathing so it becomes more than just oxygenation and becomes an intrinsic and coordinated part of your movement. Perhaps it was my swimming experience that made this part of the karate training come natural: while swimming the breathing has to be woven into the rhythm of the stroke or it will slow you down (or you choke on chlorinated water, turn blue and need to be pulled out of the pool by the life-guard).  I found this interesting quote from Peyton Quinn, the owner-operator of Rocky Mountain Combat  Applications Training Schools “I must point out that we see this a lot in our RMCAT Training …… In their first few fight scenarios we see young, strong martial artists with excellent cardio-vascular conditioning become totally exhausted in less than 30 seconds under the adrenal stress of the fight simulations. Why? Because , …….., they were holding their breath during almost that entire fight!”.   I would bet that the most common mistake that inexperienced fighters make is that they forget to breath and end up gasping and groping for air when they should be defending or attacking. In my program the concept of weaving the breathing into the techniques and movements starts from the very first day and actually never ends.

For the average person, breathing is an unconscious activity under conscious control: we will breath naturally but, within the demands of physiological necessity, we have control over the nature of that breathing.  Most of us can hold our breath for at least a minute, and most of us can alter our breathing pattern either in rate or depth to some extent. The corollary to this statement is that we also have some control over our heart rate since our heart rate speeds up when we inhale and slows somewhat when we exhale. Furthermore, our emotional status tends to alter with our heart and respiratory  rate; increasing respiratory and heart rate tends to increase our anxiety level (and vice-versa of course).  This would suggest that controlling your breathing in high stress moments may help you control your anxiety levels and allow you to keep better control of your emotional state.  All this makes learning to control our respiration sound more worthwhile.

The common man usually breaths by expansion and compression of the thoracic cavity: the lungs basically  are bags hanging inside a vacuum (the thoracic cavity) and expand (pulling air in) with the expansion of the chest.  We tend to emphasize the expansion or inhalation part of the cycle and allow the compression or exhalation to be a passive action. As we breath in, our entire body tends to lift, while we tend to drop as we exhale. This action becomes much more pronounced as our respiratory effort increases, often ending in full body swaying at exhaustion.  There is a good reason that exhausted athletes are said to be “really sucking wind”.  Usually only people and animals with severe airway disease such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) actively exhale, blowing the air out. This because the obstructive disease of the lower airways interferes severely with exhalation while having little effect on inhalation.  These poor victims tend to develop the muscles that  help compress the thoracic cavity preferentially and, in fact, in horses one of the diagnostic criteria for COPD is the presence of a “heave line” where the Seratus Ventralis and the Abdominal oblique muscles have hypertrophied as the disease  progressed.  While apparently way off topic, this “heave line” development actually leads into the basis of our entire topic today: the use of the abdomen in breathing.

Abdominal breathing is a common term seen in most of the martial arts (and yoga for that matter).  Basically, what the instructors are suggesting is that the fighter should draw air into his lungs by expansion of the abdomen and push the air out again by contraction of the abdomen.  I believe that this action is basically causing inhalation by relaxing the abdominal muscles, drawing down the bell of the diaphragm (the muscular wall that separates the thorax from the abdomen), while the exhalation is the result of active compression of the abdominal muscles and the thoracic muscles, pushing the air out.  Obviously, since the muscle relaxation is passive and relatively weak while muscle contraction is active and strong, the exhalation phase of breathing is emphasized in this breathing pattern.  Simplified, without mystical or scientific content, you exhale actively by abdominal contraction and passively allow inhalation by relaxing. It’s just not that complicated; you are reversing the natural emphasis.

How does all this play into our hands with regards to movement and technique?  Re-read the sections on movement and technique, especially the section on “internal lift”.  I was discussing the contraction of the abdominal muscles as an intrinsic part of the movements. The contraction of the abdomen helps lift the pelvic platter while shifting, stepping or kicking, while that same contraction helps tie the upper torso to the hip movement in such actions as reverse punch and roundhouse kick.  Each action entails abdominal contraction to create movement or connection and therefor also entails active exhalation. Furthermore, the completion of the exhalation should coincide with the completion of the action and create that magical connection that we have chosen to call ”kime”. Continue down this path just a little farther: that moment of kime which occurs as we finish our technique, our abdominal contraction and our breathing should only last an instant; to hold that “kime” any longer would be holding our breath (at the exhalation point, the absolutely worst time to hold your breath)  That would bring us back to Peyton Quinn’s observation about exhausted fighters.  Kime is clearly nothing more than a  short moment in time, after which you must relax, allow air to flow into the vacuum, and “bounce” into yet another technique.  Now, let’s make one more quantum leap here: this is not about breathing at all!!

My bold statement is that abdominal breathing is nothing more than actively exhaling through the contraction of abdominal (and some thoracic) muscles during the course of normal movements in karate. We keep the mouth open and just allow the air to flow as we move; we do not actively breath but we do allow breathing to occur naturally as we contract and relax our abdominal musculature.  Tie it all together: the abdominal action creates movement and connection, facilitates breathing, and is intrinsic to kime therefor it is central to coordination of action and flow. We have merely come full circle back to the idea that everything centers around the core and is co-ordinated by the core. There really are just not that many fundamentals in karate.

On the other hand, training this unnatural breathing pattern has to be started with every beginner and be woven into every drill at some point. We need the students to think about breathing in every action until they no longer need to think about it at any action. Use it in simple punching drills, stepping drills, kata drills and sparring drills. I start from the very beginning.

Similar to just about every karate instructor everywhere, I start my beginners with standard punching drills in shizentai dachi. I tend to really emphasize what I have covered as the basics throughout every drill, but with regards to breathing there are a few things that I concentrate on.

 I often start with a drill that I stole from Toru Shimoji ( a MUCH better instructor than I will ever be). Stand in shizentai-dachi, with both arms extended up above your head, fully extending your body (without breaking your posture; never break posture under any circumstance) and allow the lungs to expand. Now quickly pull the arms down to a tight hikite position, contract the knees to center (pulling with the inner thigh so the knees drop forward and together) , contract the abdomen tightly, activating all the muscles of exhalation and blowing the air out.  Finally relax and return to the original position, allowing the air to passively flow into the lungs without any effort.  Play with this action: contract slowly, contract and hold the position (feel how quickly you start to turn blue and get short on air), contract as fast as possible, concentrating on exhaling as fast as possible.  You will find that the faster you contract the abdomen, the faster you move and the faster you exhale: moving fast makes you breath fast or vice-versa. (there is that Yin-Yang thing again).  Also refer back to my little comment on abdominal muscle development (and you thought it was a just a useless side bar discussion): abdominal muscles have excellent circulation and can recover from strenuous activity rapidly; by using your abdomen to facilitate breathing you are becoming far more efficient.

Move on from this drill into punching and blocking drills from shizentai: have the students initiate the punch with a gentle push from the leg to project the hip on the punching side and tell them to breath out as they do. The term I have heard for this is to “breath with your feet” and it works for me. I literally visualize the concept of pushing the air out as the technique is projected off my core by my leg pulsing into the floor.  Take this back to the basics of “internal lift”: my leg pulse includes a gluteal contraction, helping to flatten the pelvic platter, and this is combined with an abdominal contraction  projects my anterior pelvis forward, initiates the release of my technique from a “tension-release position,  and helps me actively exhale simultaneously. Furthermore, the contraction of the muscles of exhalation (which include the serratus ventralis and the intercostal muscles) tends to connect my body and pull it into the core, aligning the technique along the core of my body and along my eye-line.   All this, and we are still just dealing with single techniques.

After we have managed to tie all this together, of course we need to move on to full body movement and combinations.  The full body movement should be trained in both stepping drills and kata. Kata is where this thought process really shines; once the breathing becomes tied into the movement the flow and rhythm of the kata becomes automatic.  Here I refer back to the idea that we breath throughout the movement (our feet are propelling us, so we are breathing with our feet) and complete our breathing at the very completion of the technique, which becomes kime.  Once we have completed kime (an instant in time, flashing by us as we watch but we should only sense it, not see it), we relax our abdomen and allow air to passively flow in. The completion of this rapid, passive action becomes the immediate beginning of the next movement.  The feeling here should be one of internal bounce: we find kime, release kime and inhale, and bounce into the next movement. Note I said “internal”: the bounce should be a subtle change in abdominal tension and pelvic angle, never a full body “bob”. The point here is that we are using the breathing action as the coordinator of the action: kind of a physiological timing belt for your body.  If for no other reason, use the breathing trick to keep your focus throughout your kata while performing at gradings and competitions. In the face of a stern examiner or an attentive crowd, your emotions may get the best of your: keep a lid on everything by focusing on the breathing cycle as you move through your kata.

Now take the entire concept to combinations: block-punch, jab-punch, kick-jab-punch or simply punch-guard position (snapping back but not to hikite: snapping back after a fully completed and committed punch to a safe, covered guard position is the only common sense thing to do in a real fight or a simple sparring match).  The  breathing is important in just so many ways here: it dictates both the rhythm and the speed of the techniques involved.  If everything is truly linked together, then the faster you contract your abdomen, the faster you will exhale and the faster your technique must be (you initiated with abdominal contraction, you finished with abdominal contraction and you exhaled throughout). On the other hand, the key to any combination is that of “linkage”: you need to make two techniques act as one without losing commitment to either. The trick here is to exhale once for each technique, but inhale only once for the combination. The feeling becomes “one exhalation with multiple exclamations”. Basically you are pulsing your abdominal contraction as fast as you can without pausing to inhale.  There is an important point to be made here: obviously there is a limitation to the number of techniques you can perform on one breath.  I would suspect that the number of techniques you can link on one breath would be maximum three or four, after which you would have to relax and allow inhalation.  Review this thought process: kime represents the end of a technique and coincides with the completion of an abdominal contraction ; in combinations we pulse the abdominal contractions, allowing momentary relaxation between pulses but no inhalation. Kime must be kept as short as possible to maximize both speed and breathing efficiency. We have completion of each technique within the combination, but we do not actually stop moving, merely pulsing or bouncing from technique to technique.

There are a few points that I find helpful with this concept. They are not really new ideas, even here: use the breathing to project your techniques.  We are breathing with our abdomen as our feet project us down our eye-line and the contraction is tying our movement together to align our body.  The thought process may become one of hitting our target or projecting our technique with out breath.  Furthermore, if you consider the muscles we are using to pull the hikite down and into our body are to a great degree the same muscles that help us actively exhale, the hikite becomes all part of the coordinated action. On the same point; if the completion of the breathing represents the completion of the technique and the completion of the hikite action, also know as kime, then the release of the kime represents the beginning of the next technique. Hikite becomes the next technique, to be released from the tension-release position.  The whole thing is quickly becoming a circular discussion. That is the point.

Principles should represent concepts that remain a constant across all techniques, all kata, all kumite combinations, and indeed across all styles  If a principle applies to one situation and fails to be applicable in a second, then it is not a principle but a general guideline.  I am talking about principles here and I believe I have covered everything I can think of with regards to simple technique. Our goal and intent is to produce “ikken hissatsu” or a finishing blow with each technique. To produce ikken hissatsu we need to maximize kinetic energy.  To maximize kinetic energy we need to maximize both mass involved and the impact velocity of that mass. To maximize these two things we need to understand a very few principles: we need to align technique, stance and our eye-line. We need to align as much of our mass behind that technique as possible: to do this we must understand and correctly apply stances and posture. We need to understand movement and all it’s elements because movement is velocity. We need to move the entire body as a stable, connected mass centered on the tanden in the most direct path down our eye-line and line of attack. We need to coordinate that movement by proper dynamics around the core and using our breathing.  In this long list of principles I see nothing that is specific to style, technique, or kata. These the only principles I can imagine with regards to simple technique.

Of course it is all very well to know how to do karate, but it is when and why that really matter, is it not?

KATA FOLLOW FUNCTION: The Internal Lift

” I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares with it.  See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean”  “Bushido: The Soul of Japan”  by Inazo Nitobe

I had a bitch of a time finding an appropriate quote to lead this section. I started out looking at all the standard instructional texts, drifted through a couple of anatomy texts, considered sincerely borrowing something from Leonardo Da Vinci, and finally settled on this quote from Inazo Nitobe discussing the traditional practice of seppuku, or ritual suicide by disembowelment.  While we in the west cringe at the very thought, we need to realize two basic things here: the tradition is hardly restricted to Japan (the Roman Cato did it not just once but twice. After he botched his first effort his servants stitched him up; he just turned around, pulled the stitches out and then yanked his own viscera out to finish the job the hard way) and the Japanese believed that the bowels were the seat of the soul. By ripping the abdomen open, they were immediately releasing the soul from it’s earthly prison.  Seppuku is only vaguely related to the topic of discussion today, but the quote is cool and after all these years I thought I should make some use of that little text.

Internal lift is what I want to discuss today. I know the term seems a bit awkward to use and certainly appears hopelessly non-descriptive to most people, but once you see my point I bet you use it too. This concept is does not stand alone as a movement principle, and in fact, if you have been working on the basics of movement all along, this part of the equation is likely already part of your body movement.  The concept of internal lift helps maintain tanden stability, preventing both “bob” and “weave” of our body while decreasing the likelihood of avoidable telegraphs.

If we consider the legs to be the power source of the body and the torso of the body to be the axle, then the hips could be the transmission where the power of the engine is transformed into actual work by driving the axle.  Of course the action is a whole lot more complex than this and my limited knowledge of motor vehicles precludes me from coming up with a better analogy, but suffice to say that the hips are important and therefor worthy of individual consideration.

The pelvis itself is a box like bone construct surrounded by muscles.  The pelvic box consists of a left and right pair of Ilium and Ischium joined top to bottom at the acetetablum joint (hip joint) and paired side to side by the pubic symphysis. The wings of the ilium are fused to the lower spine at the Sacro-iliac joint (the sacrum being the last large bone of the spinal column, except for those bizarre few people born with tails), and the legs are articulated by a ball and cup joint where the femur inserts into the acetabular cup. The entire construct basically creates a  platter like basin supporting the entire torso which rides at an oblique angle atop the legs. Anchored on the pelvic basin is a series of muscles which may either alter the torso and limb positions with regard to the pelvis, or, conversely, alter the angle of the pelvis as compared to the torso and limbs. This fine distinction is the entire point of our discussion today: the pelvis is mobile and can be used as a lever-arm to apply force upon the body without large external movements of that body.

Basically, the muscles anchored to the pelvis either operate the legs or interface the pelvic platter with the torso.  The gluteals, superficial, middle and deep basically attach to the outside surface and top ridge of the wing of the ilium and are the major extensors and stabilizers of the femur. On contraction, the gluteal muscles will thrust the femur bone backward, or extend the hip joint. On the other hand, if the femur is kept in place and the gluteals are contracted, the force of the pull will tend to rotate the top of the pelvis down, tilting and flattening the pelvic platter (among other more complex action, that, while important and maybe crucial, do not necessarily apply to this conversation). Also adherent across the back and bottom of the pelvis are the biceps femoris( semimembranosus and semitendinosus) which attach to the edge of the ischial bone and course down to the distal leg bones, the tibia and fibula, which usually act to contract the knee joint and bend the leg. Again, if the distal leg is held in place rather than contracted, the action at the pelvic bone will tend to be one of pulling the ischium down and under the body.  Across the anterior surface of the pelvis, our lower abdomen and groin, is a wide sheet of muscle and tendon called an aponeurosis. This sheet includes the rectus abdominus and the abdominal oblique muscles, all attached to the pubic bone by the pre-pubic tendon. The action of this muscle mass is basically pelvic flexion: it will either pull the upper torso forward (otherwise known as a “crunchie” or “sit-up”) or, if the upper torso is held still, it will pull the pelvis forward (otherwise known as a “leg-lift” if you are laying on your back). Of course there are lots of other muscles that I can talk about here, but the gluteals pulling down in the back and the abdominals pulling up in the front, both working to alter the angle of the pelvic platter is the topic of today.

 Just as an aside here: the abdominal muscles all work as a single unit, therefor when you do crunchie, leg lifts, sit-ups or anything in between, you are essentially working the same muscles the same way. There is absolutely no advantage to working the “lower abs” versus working the “upper abs”: they are all one muscle.  The key to working “abs” is three fold: repetition, range of motion, and resistance. The abdominal muscles have tremendous blood supply which will clear lactic acid build up quickly; they are unlikely to tire easily and they recover quickly, so you can and need to work them hard and often. The abdominal muscles can have a large range of motion.  Think about it: you can bend quite far back and curl all the way forward, working the abdominal muscles the entire time.  The only way to work the muscles over the entire range of motion is with a large, rubber “Swiss” ball. Buy one, they really are cheap at Wallmart. With regards to resistance: they are muscles and of course they get bigger if you increase the stress on them. I personally just attach a bungee cord to a fixed point and then do full “Swiss” ball sit ups against the resistance. As my strength increased I moved farther away from the fixed point to increase the resistance. Then I got another bungee chord. Then I got scared and grew some common sense when I realized I was about to get catapulted across the floor into the wall by my own invention. Finally, if you want “6-pack” abs there is only one thing you need to do: lose the fat. Everyone has the “6-pack”: just some of us keep it well insulated.

Now, lets take this idea of pelvic tilt and apply it to movement.  Standing comfortably with a proper upright posture, without using our leg muscles for anything more than stabilization, we can advance one leg merely by contracting our abdominal muscles and gluteal muscles synchronously to tilt the pelvic platter; one merely must release one leg and let it travel while grabbing the floor with the other leg. The feeling is one of “lifting” the leg by lifting the front of the pelvic platter.  This is the basic concept of “internal lift”.  This is a pretty simple idea, but it deserves detailed illustration, moving (as previously discussed) from large body actions to small shifts.

The first action we should look at is the front snap kick, mae gaeri keagi. This not-so-simple action is perfect for our discussion. Stand with legs together, legs straight: lift one leg to the chamber position, a tight bend at the knee. With your support leg locked straight you will find something immediately: you have a very limited range of motion on your pelvic tilt. I needed to illustrate this clearly now. Among other reasons, the pelvic motion is limited by the pull of the biceps femoris which attaches to the ischium. Unless you bend your support leg, allowing some slack in the biceps femoris muscle, you will severely limit your pelvic tilt.  Bend the damn support leg; it is supposed to be a “spring”, not a freaking post.  Ok, so now, standing on bent leg, bring the kicking leg to chamber position and lock it into that position. Now, standing like a crane on the beach (shades of “Karate Kid”), play with the pelvic tilt. Without kicking or altering the  position of the leg in relation to the pelvis, lift the knee repeatedly in a kind of “reverse crunchie” action.  This is what we all call “pendulum” action.  The support leg is kept bent with about the same angle at the knee, but the gluteal contraction is going to extend the hip joint, slightly projecting the pubis forward. The abdominal muscles will contract, pulling the pubis up and the kicking leg will go with it.  Play with this, projecting the knee forward at gedan height, then slighty up at chudan height, then way up at jodan height.  Once you have complete control of that action, start letting the kick go from it’s coiled position  (back to that “tension-release” concept of Tsuruoka Sensei) and snapping it back to a re-coiled position. Try making the entire action centered around just the pelvic action: go from a “flat” or normal pelvic position, up through a jodan level kick, and then back to a “flat” position as you recoil the entire body.   Note here that the trajectory of the kick is dependant on the tilt of the pelvis: the greater the tilt, the higher the kick. Also realize that you need to release the range of motion by allowing more slack in the biceps femoris of the support leg: to kick higher you need to bend the support leg a little more (seems to be absolutely counter intuitive).  Now take this idea of full range of motion on the pelvic pendulum and think to yourself where it may apply: recoiling to set the body for the next technique in combinations. This is an extremely important point. I have said it before and it needs repeating: the recoil or completion of one technique must set the karateka up for the next technique. This concept is a cross-over concept: it applies for kihon combinations, kata continuity, kumite combinations and definitely life preservation in self-defense.

Now, quickly and without losing any of the basic principles trained above, practice this very action with front leg front snap kicks (kizami mae gaeri keagi) in progressively longer stances. Move from neko-ashi dachi to kokutsu-dachi and finally into zenkutsu-dachi.  The ease of kicking will become progressively more difficult and the kicks will be necessarily lower with each alteration of stance.  Each lengthening of the stance will demand greater effort to tilt the pelvis up and the karateka will find to be successful they must put more emphasis on driving with the support leg and contracting the abdominal muscles to lift the front leg.  Mistakes I have seen from beginners (and some that I do myself): straightening the support leg and balancing on it, limiting the pelvic tilt range of motion, leaning back to lift the leg rather than just lifting the pelvis, shortening the longer stances before attempting to kick ( a clear telegraph guys) and finally trying to kick far beyond their own capability (a brown belt trick really).  All of these mistakes will likely be corrected by telling the students the “whys and what-for” rather than just drilling them mindlessly. Just remember it is far easier to teach something right the first time than it is to correct a long standing habit.

Moving right along: take this idea to a full stepping in punch.  We have already covered this in detail in part one of my “movement” opus, but now go back to that chapter and add this idea: as you pull the travelling leg to the center to meet the knee of the pivot leg, apply internal lift to the pelvis to roll the pelvis forward through center and shoot the travelling knee ahead. This is identical to the concept of the kicking drill above: we contract the gluteals of the support leg and our abdominal muscles synchronously to project the travelling (kicking) knee forward. The only difference between the step and the kick becomes one of height and coil: keeping the leg near floor level is a step, while driving the knee up and out becomes a kick. The dynamics are the same, just the details are altered.  Now, let’s circle back here a bit folks: the end of each technique is the beginning of the next. Here we are looking at another view of that concept: a step and a full front snap kick are practically the same thing and should be practiced as so. Try this drill: try stepping-in punch (oy-tsuki), concentrating on using everything you can to make the punch fast and powerful (note that I said fast first). Now train stepping in front snap kick (mae gaeri keagi): again use everything you know to make the kick fast and powerful, but make sure that it is part of a stepping in attack (remember that power requires speed and mass, so the whole body must come along for the ride). Now combine the two techniques: properly done, with a full recoil in the kick, the entire combination becomes just one technique: a stepping in attack with a kick in the middle and a punch at the end. This is the nature of a proper combination: the enemy must be forced to make a decision between getting kicked in the crotch or punched in the face, because properly done he won’t be able to avoid both.

Taking our drills from the big to the small, apply this to shifting.  Typically beginners shift by performing some sort of bunny hop where they launch themselves off the driving leg into the air and land several feet away with a hand or a foot outstretched, totally unprepared to react with a second technique.  How about we modify that thought by application of basic principles.  Stand in a comfortable fighting stance, one leg leading. As a drill, lock those legs down by anchoring the front leg and driving against that anchor with the rear leg. The net effect is becomes the front leg driving back with the rear leg driving forward.  Tension up to apply the “tension-release” concept.  Now, rather than just hopping forward, how about we apply internal lift to the pelvis and allow the front leg to release the brakes on our little locomotive.  Without bobbing up with our head, we should drive forward, propelling our lead leg, knee first along a forward vector. Now, on landing, lets apply the idea of inner thigh contraction to “pull” our hind leg forward to assume our fighting stance immediately. The sequence becomes 1. tension-release 2. rear leg drive 3. front leg pull 4. recapture of the “tension-release” phase.  Note that I have not even touched what technique you are using here: it simply does not matter because it is the body mass movement that propels the technique and provides the mass in the kinetic energy equation.  Now, for the “real” fighters in the crew here, the trick becomes release and immediate recapture of the tension-release phase of the stance with every step without becoming fixed in any one position: the goal is to always remain fluid and mobile but to maintain our ability to generate a technique at any point.

The comparison of this type of movement to the “bouncing” method seen in some styles is worthwhile.  With the bouncing method the fighter is either bouncing back and will thus be coming forward, or is bouncing forward and thus will be going back. In between movements he is essentially air-born, thus cannot act or react until he lands.  Of course, there are many people that can use this method very effectively (call them “energizer bunnies”), but an astute opponent is going to pick up their rhythm and attack them while they are in flight. Using the “internal lift-tension release method, the fighter is always grounded and yet mobile.  Of course there is an inherent weakness in this method, and that is that the inexperienced fighter may become fixed in position and thus an easy target. The key here is proper training: internalize the method so you can apply tension and release the tension instantaneously without becoming fixed.  Coming full circle again, you need therefor to learn proper use of “kime” and always maintain focus or intent in your movements.

So far I have only dealt with the frontal attack vectors, with little attention applied to the lateral attack techniques such as side snap kick (yoko gaeri keagi).  Of course internal lift should be applied here, merely alter the pelvic tilt from the frontal plane to the lateral plane. All the same issues must be applied here: keep the support leg bent to free up the range of motion on the pelvic tilt, generate the kick through the entire range of the tilting action by keeping the pelvic platter flat at all times except when you  are projecting the technique, and recoil the kick at both the leg and the pelvis to return the pelvis to a neutral position. Most importantly the student must learn to use the abdominal oblique muscles to lift the pelvis rather than just hiking the leg.  You should also look at all the other kicking techniques as well: side thrust kick has lift and thrust, round-house kick has pelvic lift on both the side plane and the frontal plan, and back kick has the reversed version of the pelvic tilt where the pelvis is tilted backward to project the kick up and back. Back kick is the one exception to the rule of upright posture (at least in our dojo). here I encourage my students to bend at the waist while kicking to allow the hips enough freedom to release the back kick without unduly stressing the back.

This entire discussion has basically discussed movement of the pelvis through control of the muscles of the abdomen. In the bigger picture here, we are really talking about control of the core or the tanden.  I started off all of this by saying that the karateka needs to control all body movement starting at the tanden and truthfully, the use of internal lift concentrates the motion down in the lower abdomen and off the upper torso. While appearing to be merely a ancillary detail, the application of internal lift helps the student centralize his movement, avoiding loss of balance control and break in body connection. Furthermore, internal lift with it’s emphasis on abdominal contraction also ties into proper breathing, the next topic on the list.  Finally, this brings us back to our original quote about seppuku: the abdomen controls our breathing, our breathing is considered to be the outward manifestation of our spirit, and thus the abdomen becomes home to the spirit.

KATA FOLLOWS FORM: rotation

“the energy is rooted in the feet, develops in the legs, is directed by the waist, and moves up to the fingers. The feet, the legs, and the waist must act as one so that when advancing or retreating you will obtain a good opportunity and a superior position.”  Chang San Feng, 13th century in a T’ai Chi Ch’uan Classic

 

I know, I know. How the hell does a T’ai Chi Ch’aun quote get into a dissertation on the basics of karate? How does the martial art that practically defines an “internal” form relate in the least to the martial art that is the poster child of the “external” forms?  Well, to tell you the truth, in my world all martial arts are basically the same after you do them long enough.  On the other hand, some people hate my karate and I would bet that most people would find my Tai Chi Ch’uan offensive.  Maybe those people are right. Maybe nothing I can say will change their mind. Maybe I could care less if I change their mind; it will be enough for me to anger them into coming up with a logical defense of their own opinions.  Anyway,  what I liked about the above quote is that the master is discussing co-ordination of the entire body, starting at the feet and translating to the waist and torso. No matter what you do as a martial art, the basics remain a constant.

The astute reader is going to start noticing something right about now: the articles are going to get somewhat repetitive.  Beyond the fact that this is the basic nature of karate, it is also the very reason that I decided to write this text: there really are just a limited number of “basics” in karate and everything else is just semantics.  The central point on all these three “movement” segments of my blog is that you have to have co-ordinated body movement at speed to create maximum force. The last article touched on stepping, one element of translation, while this article will discuss rotation, especially how it relates to our favourite technique, the reverse punch.  I will try to relate it within the context of a combination, but for the most part I will be discussing the punch.  It could be a really short discussion.

Let’s start off with my basic premise: we are talking about rotation of the entire upper torso as a unit.  Assuming your feet are planted, the only mass you are going to be able to throw behind your punch is going to be that of the torso, therefor we need to make that torso move as a single unit.  This comes back to activation of the core: the muscles of the torso must be contracted lightly to keep the mass of the entire torso moving simultaneously.  The best description I have ever seen of the action of the reverse punch is that of a spring loaded screen door.  This works for me very well because the home I grew up in actually had a spring loaded screen door: that sucker could snap shut so fast that a well timed release could blacken the eye of your big brother.  The torso, from which the punch is projected, is the door which snaps shut as fast as possible. The front leg, anchored and immovable in stance, is the door jamb while the hinge would be front hip. The adductor muscles of the inner thigh would be the spring of the hinge. The rear leg thrust would be the angry hand of the little brother slamming the door shut on the big bully.  In this scenario, the power source for the rotation of the door/ torso becomes a combination of both the inner thigh muscles and the thrusting of the rear leg. Students often only activate one or the other, but rarely both together.

I need to go into all this in detail really: this is likely to cover a huge amount of the secondary basics and I hope to be able to skip discussing them later. Some of the ground I plan to cover will actually tweak the nose of the non-traditionalists out there, but maybe I will be able to convince them that I might have the right idea. Let’s go to this in point form, starting from the very traditional basic position for a full reverse punch. From Shotokanstandard front stance with the lead hand blocking and the reverse hand locked into a traditional hikite position, the hips at hamni or angled position.  Some styles do this differently and I am just fine with that, but for this discussion I will deal with what I know best.  Let’s pick this apart somewhat.

The hikite position is, for me, the default position for the “off” hand for all beginners. When I started training in karate the standard opinion of hikite was that it provided “body connection” for the karate and represented a full half of any arm technique.  If you block with the left, the other half of the technique was the right hikite. If you punch with the right, the other half of the technique was the left hikite.  I actually agree with these statement and for the beginner the full hikite will really help develop the body connection that makes a powerful technique rather than just an arm slapping in the breeze. The key here is that the hikite is not just pulled back to the hip; it is pulled into the body and connected there by firm contraction of the latisimus muscles.  One mistake many beginners make is that they interpret hikite to be a “pulling back” of the arm rather than a “pulling in and connecting” the arm: this creates a very weak hikite and essentially no “body connection” whatsoever. Another key point is to activate the entire back rather than just the hikite side: the “lats” pull the shoulders down, stabilizing them deeply into their sockets, while the spinal erectors will help maintain an upright stance as the agonist muscles across the front of the body act to throw the technique.  Now, from this ”locked-in” position, the hikite now represents the loaded next technique: the end of one technique and the beginning of the next. This is an important point and I will come back to it several times.

Consider the loaded hikite a potential punch under tension, just waiting to be released.  Tsuruoka Sensei out of Toronto Ontario uses the term “tension-release” to encompass this idea, but he expands it to include all techniques. His concept of inclusiveness is my answer to the reality-based fighters that eschew the classic hikite as an archaic, useless position.  Indeed, the experienced fighter should not need the hikite position to create a complete body connection and tension-release preparation for the each technique; he should understand that he needs to be able to snap a technique off from any position without wind up or telegraph. On the other hand, the beginner needs to understand the nature of tension-release in it’s most elemental form (traditional hikite) to get the entire kinesthetic feeling of just releasing a punch from the hip without wind up rather than using arm strength to throw a punch.  In my mind, the hand on the hip as hikite represents an arrow notched on the bowstring.  If the punch is the arrow, the body in hamni position would be the bow string; we need to snap the sting forward as quickly as possible to shoot the punch off our hip.

In Shotokan we typically start the reverse punch from the hips at hamni or angled position. Consider the body/ torso as an axle which will spin rapidly when the hips snap into shomen or front position. The motor for this action will necessarily be the legs which are anchored on the ground in stance. The front leg should be rigidly held aligned to the front; the knee should neither collapse inward, nor outward. There may possibly be a slight shift forward and backward, but properly this should be kept to a minimum. The muscles along the inner thighs of both legs should be activated with the feeling of pulling the legs together as fast as possible, like the spring in a rat trap. On the other hand, while the inner thigh muscles are contracting strongly, the hip joint of the front leg needs to be relaxed and mobile: this is the “hinge” of our “door” and if it is not kept soft and mobile the hip cannot rotate forward properly. The rear leg must also thrust forward, using the powerful muscles of the gluteals to drive the rear hip forward into the punch.  Now here is where my take on the matter may differ from some traditionalists: the rear leg must be slightly bent when in zenkutsu-dachi.  Many styles teach (or at least the books they publish show this) a rigid or locked-out rear leg in zenkutsu-dachi.  It seems to me that if a leg is locked out, then it has precious little movement left to it and would be hard pressed to contribute anything to the hip action.  If you allow a little bend in the leg (call it “natural” of “comfortable” straight) then the leg still has some extension left in it that can contribute power to our attack. So the motor to our little axle becomes a simultaneous contraction of the inner thigh muscles combined with a sharp thrust of the hind legs utilizing mostly the large gluteal muscles. The  rigid “door jamb” of the front leg draws the rear hip in and forward, essentially projecting the rear hip forward like a catapult platform.

As the hip snaps forward, it is crucial that the abdominal muscles including the rectus abdominus and the abdominal obliques, work in concert withthe muscles of the upper torso to create a single moving mass. Of course the loaded punch is attached to the hip, but it also is attached to the shoulders by way of your arm, and those shoulders have to be moving forward simultaneouswith the hips. We need to create a solid oaken door out of the torso.  Visualize the fist as a projectile off the hip: as the hip reaches maximum velocity coming forward the punch is released off the hip, aimed by the small muscles of the arm but projected by the body movement and a strong contraction of the pectoral muscles. This “release” off the hip is considered the initiation of the punch. We need to accelerate the punch from this point.

After the “release” of the punch, the other half of this technique, the counter-hikite, comes into play. I have observed that the faster the student snaps his hikite back to his hip, the faster and more complete the hip rotation becomes. On the same token, if the hip rotation is accelerated, the punch launched from this position must therefor be accelerated. Speed breeds speed. I tell my students to picture putting their fingers on a hot stove: don’t just pull that hikite back but snap it back like you have burnt your finger.  Furthermore, do not just snap that arm back, snap it back to a connected, contracted hikite, ready to go as the next punch in a combination.  I cannot emphasize this more: the hikite is the tsukite and the tsukite is the hikite. It is a Yin-Yang relationship and if you can internalize this all your techniques will naturally flow in combinations.

The concept of technique flow becomes central to our whole discussion here. I come back to the concept of “kime”, yet another controversial concept. I hope that I can convince the nay-sayers of the utility of kime, as long as we can understand what I consider to be kime.  Kime is not, as far as I am concerned, a complete contraction of all the muscles of the body to create a rigid statue at the end of a technique. I think this is a damn poor definition and leads to abysmal, slow, robotic action.  I prefer “kime” to be defined as that body snap at the end of each technique that occurs as a result of maximal contraction of agonist muscles finishing the technique and the full application of hikite in preparation for the next technique. In my mind, the application of kime is nothing more than the correct finish of a technique that leaves the fighter absolutely prepared to for the next technique.  This definition works in just so many ways. It fits my limited understanding of Japanese: “kime” may be derived from the verb for “to make a decision”.  If “kime” represents “the decision point”, then what else could it be than the end/ beginning of a technique. This definition also fits my belief in fighting: you need to maintain a flow or a readiness to act, therefor you need to maintain some tension in your body.  Come back to Tsuruoka’s concept of “tension-release” whereby every technique is merely released from a ready position.  If we finish each technique by generating “kime” then we will naturally “bounce” into the following technique, regardless of what that technique may be.  WIth this thought process, the action becomes one of a bouncing ball: the energy is stored by contraction at kime and released at each technique.  Using the bouncing ball illustration, then it would absolutely follow that kime is merely a split second in time: each technique is completed with proper kime but, like a bouncing ball, that stored energy cannot be maintained for more than an instant. The key for the “real fighter” , whatever the hell that means, is to make the leap from this rigid training form into reality based fighting: you need redefine “hikite” for yourself.  For example, if your “default” position is a boxer’s guard, then you have to train to maintain a comfortable “tension-release” position that allows you to fire punches from that position without any wind up. You need to find that feeling of your entire body working together without the crutch of the traditional hikite position. You also need to create “kime” points within your fighting style so your techniques flow into combinations rather than standing as individual and likely poor techniques.  This is a matter of adapting large concepts and dispensing with trivial semantics.

If the concept of grabbing the floor with the front leg and using the inner thigh muscles to “pull” the rear hip forward sound a lot like the concept I discussed in the section on “stepping” it is because it is exactly the same idea.  While stepping the karateka may allow his front knee to collapse both foreward and inward as he applies the inner thigh connection, which essentially draws the entire body forward to the “break-over” point at which the front leg can begin to drive into a step. The only difference in application for rotation is that the front leg is held in place, acting as a solid anchor to pull the rear hip forward to project the punch. The basics of the action are the same, merely slightly smaller. It might also be suggested that this decrease in size of the technique may translate to decreased power of the impact; certainly much less mass is involved.  On the other hand there is a distinct trade off: I believe that a reverse punch is likely much faster than a stepping in punch. Reconsidering the kinetic energy equation, speed is probably the more important of the two elements since it is squared in the computation.  Furthermore, in truth, the reverse punch is far easier to apply in action and the “keep it simple stupid” (KISS) principle is absolutely paramount in fighting.

I doubt I need to go over training this action. Just about anyone can come up with better drills than I, but I will pass on a few. I usually start off beginners just shifting smoothly between left zenkutsu-dachi to right zenkutsu-dachi withthe feet in place. Basically this amounts to shifting from a stance at 45 degrees to the left, through the center to a stance 45 degrees to the right.  I start off with the student shifting the eye-line, then the stance. Then I tell the students to make a “gun” out of their two hands and as they pivot the stance, bring the “gun” into alignment with the stance along the eye-line. At this point, the entire class looks like a bunch of “James Bond” wannabes playing with guns. I am not sure why this drill works, but the moment we do it, the students get the concept of alignment, at least for the drill. I then get the students to drive off the front leg like a piston, shifting the stance explosively from left to right. Once we have the students driving into the next stance, then I get them “grabbing” with the rear leg as the front leg drives, pulling and pushing simultaneously.  Getting the beginners going at speed without losing the stance form is a bit of a challenge here.  Working on through, I may ask them to shift the stances rapidly with absolutely relaxed arms, allowing the arms to just flail. This is to prove to the students that arms can be moved by simple body movements without any use of arm muscles at all.  This drill is a very minor drill and need not be used much.  Once we have gotten this far (maybe 5 to 10 minutes of drilling, if that), then start drilling the actual punch. I concentrate on getting them to shift the stance to align with the established eye-line and merely releasing the punch along that line from a tight hikite position.  I might go through any number of punches, mostly at three-quarters speed or full speed, working on all the elements: eye-line acquisition, alignment, leg action, hikite release, hikite snap, and finally hard-core drilling just for “spirit building” (Ok, sweat work). 

This drill leads to the standard “air punching”drills, linking a block with a punch or a punch with a punch.  Here the emphasis is trying to maintain your above drilled skills while correctly linking a combination.  Here is where the drilling of “kime” becomes the issue: completion of each technique but trying to minimize the gap between techniques of each combination. I find there are two variations of failure in these drills: too much and too little.  On one hand there are the students who prefer to “lock out” each technique as if posing for a picture, creating two powerful techniques but failing to create a true combination.  On the other hand are the students who rush through both techniques, failing to complete or have power in either technique. This approach is really no better than the first: the first technique will be ineffective and therefor the second technique will be unnecessary; the fighter will have been hit by his opponent before it lands. To get the proper linkage within a combination the emphasis has to be on proper completion of each with no pause between either.  I compare the action to the agitator in a washing machine: it snaps completely one way and then completely the other without pausing between either. 

In the past I have also experimented with rubber surgical tubing. I find this stuff to be a pain in the ass for class training, but for individual training it is absolutely great for working the alignment and leg work.  I take one rubber tube and mount it behind me to give “punching” resistance, and I mount a second tube in front of me and use it for “hikite” resistance.  If you tension up just the right amount (everyone will be quite different, hence the reason this is a pain for classes) you will find the challenge of punching and pulling against the resistance to be an excellent test of both your alignment and you body dynamics. If either is off even slightly, the exercise becomes extremely tiring for the upper body as you fight against the tubing inefficiently. If you have everything in proper alignment and endeavour to allow the core rotation to do all the work, the exercise is actually quite easy.  This is NOT a “muscle building” session: is should be all about body dynamics instead.

I like to drill rotation using kata. My favourite kata for this action has to be Bassai Dai, the first few moves with all their reverse hand actions. In particular, the best action for my drilling is the second pair of body blocks where the karateka turns 180 degrees, performs a hidari gyaku soto-uke in migi zenkutsu dachi followed immediately by migi uchi-ude uke in place.  The 180 degree turn  works eye-line well: the karateka must attain the new eye-line with a sharp head turn and then drive down the eye-line.  This drive works alignment well: the karateka learns to drive into stance without looking for foot placement, trusting his training to allow him to find the correct stance without hunting. The alignment is tested by the block as well: if the block is projected forward and across to the edge of the body the finish point will be solid and effective whereas if the block is merely slashed across the body the torque of this movement will tend to unbalance the karateka.  I also teach my students to “grab” the floor with the travelling foot on the turn from the moment the foot lands in stance, then use the inner thigh muscles to back up the thrusting pivot leg, pulling the pelvis around and into the technique. Furthermore the use of hikite on this technique is crucial: first on the turn the right hand extends back along the eye-line, “pointing”  along the embusen, then the right hand snaps back to hikite as the first block is applied, helping to snap the torso around and finishing the blocking technique.  This “pointing” along the eye-line with the “off” hand (the hand which will become hikite) is something I have found to sharpen my kata; it really helps the karateka to maintain his alignment and set up for nice, crisp techniques with lots of snap. This may be of benefit for the tournament hounds among us. 

Of course there are all sorts of other movements in various kata that may be considered training for reverse punch, or perhaps reverse punch is good training for them. Consider the signature move in Empi: migi gyaku age tsuki in zenkutsu-dachi flowing into a hidari gedan tsuki with migi nagashi uke in kosa dachi. Here the initial movement should be performed by driving in (stepping action as previously discussed in the last section) off the left leg then landing on the right leg and pulling strongly forward onto the right leg using the inner thigh muscles to maintain the forward momentum into the kosa dachi. The net effect is drive off the left, grab with the right and use the forward momentum of this combination to deliver the downward punch: practically the same body dynamics as a standard shifting in reverse punch such as used in sparring attacks. You may also look to the first move of Bassai Daias comparable to a shift- in jab (drive off the left, onto the right, grab with the right foot on landing and maintain the momentum into the striking block). In fact, this particular sequence may be, with a little imagination, found in several of the standard Shotokan syllabus kata.  The point I am making here is that the dynamics of movement are essentially the same, even when the movements appear only vaguely related.

Finally, after all is said and done, I just cannot emphasize the need to hit stuff. Smack a bag, smash a makiwara, spar with a well armoured opponent. You will never actually generate a real punch, kick or block unless you test those techniques against real resistance.  Without testing, everything you have is just so much air. Air training looks sharp and snappy. Hell, some guys even sound snappy if they have a heavy gi and they slap the hikite back “just so”, but until you test that punch against something that can hit back, you are just a paper tiger.  I personally like hitting my heavy makiwara: it always tells me the truth if my punch is has poor alignment or no body connection. For my students I often just pull out the padded shields: nothing like fifty punches a side to redden the face and the knuckles.  Hit stuff hard and often.

There are all sorts of other drills. I am sure any one of you karateka can come up with more and better one’s than I have listed above. The important point to be taken away from this is that, regardless of stances or techniques used, the essentials of power generation and delivery remain constant. Independant of style or application, it is always going to be about getting the most mass aligned behind the technique moving into the technique at maximum speed.  You just cannot get more basic than that.

KATA FOLLOWS FUNCTION:It’s all about the core.

“just get there first with the most men”  Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate Army General known for his rapid deployment and mobility.  Paraphrased poorly as “git thar firstest with the mostest”  by the press of the day.

I can relate just about anything to karate: swimming is karate, surgery is karate, weight lifting could be karate, even writing is about karate.  I guess I take Funakoshi’s Twenty Precepts just a bit too seriously. On the other hand, the above quote really can and should be applied to karate. I can back this up with references to both Miyamoto Musashi and Sun Tsu.  Both of these warriors commented that the strategy of the many can be applied to the one and vice-verse.  The art of fighting and the art of war are the same. (General Forrest also said “war means fighting and fighting means killing”. Nice guy, eh?).  Either way, in karate the key to winning is to deliver the most powerful blow possible to disable the opponent before he disables you.  Be the first with the most.

Returning to our discussion on the physics of karate; I insisted that the goal of karate is to deliver a blow with maximum kinetic energy to our opponent.  Kinetic energy was defined as one half the product of the projectile mass and the square of the impact velocity. Based on this logic, our goal thus is to hit our opponent with as much of body weight behind the technique moving as fast as we can on impact.  Obviously we need to look closely at how to move our body so it all works together.  This will likely cover a couple of sections at least.

All experience karateka should be able to quickly list the power sources available to them. Translation is the first; this includes stepping or shifting. Rotation is the second. The third power source would be vibration, though many would argue that this is either a variation of rotation or it is not real because it involves little body mass. Raising the body would be the fourth, while dropping the body would be the fifth.  The pendulum action of the hips would be the sixth and final power source, but I might half convince you that this actually represents a variation of translation. In fact I might just try to convince you that all of the power sources merely represent variations or combinations of one basic premise: control the core.

Of course, the center of mass of our body lies just below the navel at what we will call “the tanden”. If you wanted to spin a human on a stick, that is where you would insert the point. (Vlad Dracul, the Impaler, tested that one out in medieval Wallachia).  In movement the karateka should imagine moving the entire body as if it were a single point at the tanden. This is not to suggest that you thrust the tanden point forward at each step like a lustful bull moose in rutt, but that the body moves as if firmly centered on the tanden, balanced and riding the tanden as a unit. On stepping forward the body moves “on” the tanden, the head neither in advance, nor behind, but upright and even with the tanden. This balancing act is nothing more than having and maintaining good posture: an upright spine with head suspended high, neither thrust forward nor tilted back.  To accomplish this the karateka needs to activate all the muscles of the torso: the abdominal washboard, the spinal erectors, the intercostals and the adductors of the shoulders.  This activation need not be a rigid, heavy contraction, merely a conscious effort to keep everything moving in concert.

We frequently hear that karate is a linear martial art; techniques and movement are all supposed to be straight line vectors with as little deviation from the direct path as possible. For the most part, at the elemental level, I believe this is true. Certainly there are and should be exceptions, but the majority of our techniques should be kept as linear as possible.  One problem many new karateka have is trying to step or shift in a straight line. Two immediate deficiencies are common: the classic up and down bob with the head of the complete neophyte, followed closely by the side to side sine wave movement once the student discovers the classic “C” step of the martial artist. 

The head bob is caused by one major issue: the neophyte tends to use the pivot or non-travelling leg as a static pole over which he will vault himself by pushing with the travelling leg.  For example, in  a forward step the new student will often slightly lean forward, launch his body forward over the front leg with the buttocks of the rear leg, only activating the front leg once he is already falling into the next step. The net effect is a bob forward with the head while the buttocks “pop”, then a bob upward as the student vaults over the front leg, then a bob downward as he “falls”  over the top.  This is a classic sine wave step ( doesn’t one form of Tai Kwon Do actually teach this madness?) and not only is it a waste of time and energy (you are trying to punch straight forward, not up and down and all points in between), it is a spectacular telegraph; your opponent knows you are coming before you do. We often harass the new student about all of this and introduce them to the concept of the classic “C” step to try to correct the problem.

The “C” step is, in my opinion, a misinterpretation of classical martial arts instruction.  We all learned the “C” step early on in our careers ( I remember Carradine learning it on TV when he was in that classic show “Kung Fu”). We were told to draw our feet together as we stepped, keeping our knees bent and activating the front leg to “pull” ourselves  through the center point. The feet, we were told, were supposed to follow a “C” pattern on the floor.  Truthfully, properly used, this method actually works: the head bob disappears immediately. Unfortunately, for most students, it is immediately replaced by a side to side drunken weave.  These students have correctly discovered the “C” step, but have missed the whole point: they are drawing the feet together by pulling the travelling leg to the pivot leg, but the pivot leg is still not fully activated. The pivot leg here remains in place and the student is merely weaving to that side at the half way point and falling back to center at completion.  We need to correct this and the first step is to get the students thinking about moving the tanden (and therefore the entire body) in a straight line. The leg action must therefor be adjusted once more to correct this.

I like to set the overall guiding thought first, then correct the movement to fit this.  Picture a steel bar passing through the tanden from one end of the dojo to the other. The bar is rigid, allowing no up/down or side to side movement. You cannot bob or weave here, just barrel on down the train track. Now you have to try to create the most efficient engine for your train possible, using both pivot and travelling legs for propulsion.  Karate instructors tend to emphasize the action of the pivot leg; we constantly tell people not to push with the travelling leg but pull with the pivot.  I need to point out here that this does not represent reality or even a preferred movement: it is merely an effort to counteract the overwhelming tendency of the new student to use the pivot leg as a passive pole vault and push off the travelling leg.  The student really does have to emphasize the pivot leg action and trust that his travelling leg will act automatically.

Training this takes time and can be tedious for the new students. They usually just want to get out there and go like hell, but here they are standing around learning how to walk all over again.  I start from a very basic upright heiko-dachi (shizentai- dachi), working on driving into a front stance.  The first movement, without any shifting of the feet whatsoever, is a sharp pulling together of the knees, dropping the tanden down and forward. The abdomen is slightly tensed and the buttocks are rolled slightly under as the student drops forward a few inches.  One test I always do when teaching shizentai-dachi is whether the student can draw their knees together quickly and easily enough to protect their groin from a kick.  I never actually kick them, but the suggestion is certainly there. (Students that like to stand with their feet splayed outward get kidded that they are standing in the ever popular “kick-me-in-the-crotch”  stance). From the knees together, feet apart stance, it is relatively easy to just have the student drive forward into front stance. The tanden is already thrust forward, right to the edge of the balance point, past which the body will naturally fall forward due to gravity.  Here the eye-line and alignment issue comes into play: the student merely drive forward along their eye-line without worrying about foot placement. The majority of the time they will naturally fall into an excellent front stance as long as they drive straight forward from the mid point. Once you have the students working well at this, the natural flow-through movement will make the half way “knees together-feet apart” point  unnecessary.

Now I will borrow (Ok, steal) a drill from Toru Shimoji, a highly ranked instructor out of Atlanta, Georgia.  Start the drill in classic zenkutsu-dachi.  Draw the “travelling” leg slowly to the “knees together, feet apart” stance, making sure to maintain an upright, tanden controlled posture. You are going to have to contract your abdominal muscles and allow the pelvic girdle to “roll” under you slightly.  Do not concern yourself with the path of the travelling foot at all, but concentrate on drawing both knees together using the inner thigh muscles. Allow the knee of the pivot leg to collapse forward and toward the center, bending the knee until the leg is at the break-over point where gravity takes over and the body will naturally start falling forward.  By moving slowly you are going to allow the travelling leg to glide without pushing off it and most of the hard lifting is going to be done by the inner thigh muscles and the pelvic flexors, drawing the entire core through the center.  The point here is to keep the tanden central, travelling in a straight line.  Note that there is actually very little movement of the body at all here: you have moved only the back leg and you are half way through the step without any obvious telegraph to anyone watching you. Now, halfway through the step, the karateka should drive hard, explosively forward, still driving straight out into front stance from this point.  This action should feel exactly like the above drill where we merely trained stepping from shizentai-dachi to zenkutsu-dachi.  The key point here is the explosive drive in the second step: exactly like an Olympic sprinter blasting out of the blocks.  Train this until the karateka all are moving well without any bob or weave.

The second half of this drill deals with the initiation of the step.  Start again with the standard zenkutsu-dachi.  Now activate the front leg by contracting the gluteals, leg adductors (inner thigh muscles) and hamstrings: feel like you are trying to pull the front leg back, but don’t.  Now explosively pull the travelling leg to the halfway point, knees together, feet apart. To do this you will use everything at your disposal. Consider everything you might use: the pelvic flexors (abdominal muscles) will pull the pelvic girdle forward and under you, the adductors of both legs will “snap” the inner thighs and the knees together, and the calf of the travelling leg will explosively roll the foot into break over position, driving the foot forward to the halfway point.   Again, this motion should be restricted to the legs only, the torso being held mostly in place with little apparent movement. You need to see the action here: draw the drivers (legs) into and through the center with little of no shift of the body. Feel like you are snapping the legs together.

Now combine the two actions in a two step drill, working on snappy, explosive and connected action.  Quickly move into the full action drill, pushing hard to flow through the center along the same path as used in the drills but without any mechanical  stop-action.  Once you have reached this point the feel of the action becomes one of the front leg “grabbing and driving” from the start while the travelling leg “shoots” through the center.  Properly applied this stepping action eradicates both “bob” and “weave” in the stepping action and allows the mass of the body to drive through center in a straight line.  The real beauty of this action is that a good technician will cover half the stepping action with little of no actual movement of the body: the legs move, the torso does not, and there are no dramatic telegraphs to the enemy until the punch is practically on top of them. Did you ever wonder how anyone can land a classic stepping-in punch? No telegraphs is the answer.

Train this action stepping forward and back.  Stepping back is much more difficult for me, but probably at least as important: retreating to fight another way is a time tested battle tactic. Now, take this action to kata training and then take the kata training back to kihon training.

I like to look at two movements in kata to train this “pass through the center” concept; both appear in Heian Sandan (Pinan Sandan). The first move is the big turn (spin) from migi zenkutsu dachi with chudan nikite into  hidari kiba-dachi with tetsui-uchi.  Typically the new student will perform this move as some sort of spinning pivot on the front leg with little attention to how his travelling leg is moving, or, for that matter, little attention to controlling his hands.  Movement such as this easily becomes uncontrolled: the embusen is forward but the vector of the spin becomes sideways: this is a failure of alignment and is likely to result in the karateka becoming off balanced. Especially if they fail to lead with the eye-line. Drill this differently now: drill in two steps: the first being to pulling to center (knees together, feet apart), but allow the body to turn 180 degrees. Snap your head around quickly, getting the eye-line back down the embusen by looking over the left shoulder.  The second step here is to drive along the eye-line into hidari kiba-dachi.  The tetsui-uchi action has to be included in this entire movement too: draw to center then launch the elbow directly down the embusen, aligning exactly with the direction of the body movement.  Only allow the tetsui-uchi (or uraken-uchi, if that is how your club does it) to be released once the elbow has reached full extension along the drive-line. The strike should be completed simultaneous to the completion of the step into kiba-dachi.  Take this concept one step farther into kihon training: practice firing an oshiro-geri along the embusen from the half-way point in both the two step mode and the flowing action mode of this training drill.  Once you have the kick down pat in the flowing mode of this action, guess what? You have perfected your spinning back kick while simply training kata.

The second move from kata that I like to use for training “passing through the center” is the final actions of Heian Sandan: the shift from hidari oy-tsuki in zenkutsu-dachi, through the big turn into kiba dachi with a combination left elbow strike and right hooking punch.  Again, the beginner usually performs this as some grandiose spin landing finally with enough rotational torque against the weak axis of the kiba dachi that they are usually hopelessly off balance. I will try to train this as three steps to train the student to move through center with a “step and a turn” rather than a wild spin.  Go to the beginning of the action: hidari oy-tsuki in zenkutsu-dachi.  First draw the right leg forward to the standard central “knees together” point, making sure to maintain excellent posture.  The next step is to plant the right leg and draw the left leg through center, behind the right leg and across the body, rotating the head to establish the eye-line quickly. Once the left leg has touched ground along the traditional embusen you will typically be in an exaggerated lunge position with the right foot flat and the left foot planted but up on it’s ball. Drive into the kiba-dachi from this point.  Of course you need to allow the feet to pivot in place as necessary to maintain proper joint alignment: remember none of us are “Gumby” and our knee joints are just not meant to twist in place.  As you drive into the kiba dachi, release the arm techniques, driving the elbow straight back and attaching it tightly to your side and snapping the fist  across your body (thus in the direction of the stance movement: remember alignment of stance and technique) and up to the shoulder. Do not allow the torso to rotate too much; this will create rotational torque against the weak vector of the stance and throw you off balance.  Finally, in a quick aside here, the final move of Heian Sandan can be used as a drill for the concept of “kime”. Traditionally this move is a rapid shift to the left, reversing the arm actions into right elbow strike and left hook punch.  The true action here should be one of rapid reversal of movement between the two final stances: quick turn, drive right then drive left.  The beginner will usually do some modification of  spin-jump left and then hop right, like a drunken sailor doing a jig. To correctly perform this the karateka has to turn, drive right, lock down and stop action for a split second, then drive left off a loaded stance.  The action of “kime” or instantaneous lock down of the muscles allows the student to stop action and reverse his movement sharply as the action requires.  There is just so many drills that can be gleaned from kata if one chooses.

Of course there are all sorts of drills that can be used to develop this entire concept.  The standard one that I like to use periodically is the “horse and driver” drill.  Pair the student up and have one student take off his belt. Using the belt as a harness, one student will step in stance down the floor as the other student provides enough resistance to reveal where the movement is ‘breaking”. Properly done the stepping movement will flow easily through center stepping forward and backward. Typically, most students will find there is a distinct break point where their stepping action stalls out. Depending on the student’s weak point it might be either at the beginning of the step or it might be at the middle of the step.  Particular care must be taken to keep the belt low on the hips of the “horse” and perhaps keep the pull vector back and slightly down so the “driver” is not pulling the tanden of his partner up unintentionally.  The driver must also make sure that he does not provide too much resistance; this is a movement drill, not a muscle development drill.  Some key points here are the maintenance of good posture, the emphasis on pulling to center and driving from center without either “bob” or “weave”.  Another aspect of this training drill may be the breathing action (to be dealt with later in these articles); students will find this drill far easier if they breath out as they drive forward; the moment they stop exhaling and either hold their breath or inhale, they will likely stall out.

The concept of moving through center works for all stances.  Take for example the stepping action when moving in kokutsu-dachi.  Again, the beginner tends to use a wide, bow-legged stepping action, previously referred to as the “kick-me-in-the-crotch” stance, lunging comically down the floor from step to step. This is likely due to the fact that in Shotokan kokutsu-dachi the rear knee is at right angles to the strong axis of the stance and the new student usually fails to rotate that knee to align with the direction of movement until late in the stepping action.  We should be training the students to rotate the knee to align with the movement vector at the initiation of the movement: essentially doing exactly the same action as we do when stepping in zenkutsu-dachi. The action would then become, in stepwise fashion: adduct the back leg quickly to center, aligning the knee with the direction of movement, then fire the travelling leg through the center, rotating the back knee into the correct 90 degree to forward position only at the last moment when you lock into the finished stance.  This action can be broken into stepwise actions just as we did for zenkutsu-dachi training, then recombined into a rapid, flowing action.  Sensei Ron Fagan has an excellent drill for this action if you ever have a chance to train with him out in Halifax, N.S. Canada.  The fact of the matter is that all the elements of movement, regardless of what stance you are using, are exactly the same: move along the eye-line, maintain alignment and posture, move through the center.

Now, how about the concept of rotation? How does that play into our linear motion scheme?

KATA FOLLOWS FUNCTION: alignment: eyes, stance, technique

“Armarse:  when the matador furls the muleta, and sights along the sword, which should form a continuous line  with his face and arm preparatory to killing”

“But his honour demanded that he kill him high up between the shoulders, going in as a man should, over the horn, following the sword with his body. And the sixth time he went in this way and the sword went in too.”      from Death in the Afternoon, the classic text on bullfighting by Ernest Hemingway

I already covered the eye-line as the first basic element of karate, but without body alignment along that eye-line any technique will be weak and insufficient to the task.  The above quote is scavenged from a passage in “Death in the Afternoon” describing one particularly harrowing  bullfight by the famous matador Maera .  Maera was weakened by terminal tuberculosis and as such, had trouble keeping his wrist in a straight line with his arm as he made the killing pass with the sword.  As a result of this misalignment Maera was unable to create the penetrating force needed to pass the killing stroke between the bull’s vertebral processes and penetrate the great vessels of the heart. The force of the bull’s charge, instead, was transferred up the sword and into his bent wrist, actually dislocating the joint on the second attempt. The kill was eventually made after six harrowing passes, each time the bull’s sharp horns passing closer to Maera’s body.  This was one of his last fights; he died of consumption the following winter.

When teaching one of my favourite themes is alignment of eye-line, stance and technique.  In my little world, unless those three elements are  co-ordinated, then it is impossible to generate the optimal technique. Now, I know that some of my readers (OK: one out of the two of you) are immediately going to scoff at this and point out the “round-house” punches and kicks.  Those techniques will be covered and in those cases I believe my axiom still holds. There of course will be some references to unique techniques that do not follow the stance line, but those would not be “techniques of optimal power”, which is our ultimate goal in karate.

Lets talk about stances; any stances.  Every fighter assumes a “stance”; boxers have a typical stance, as do wrestlers. Even our MMA friends have combat stances they choose to use. Hell, even a businessman at a bus-stop has a stance. It may be the ever-popular “kick me in the crotch” stance, but  nevertheless that businessman has a stance.  Karate stances are studies in the creation of momentary stability: the force of the attack or block is generated at the floor, transferred up the legs, through the body and into the technique. At the instant of impact the stance is supposed to insure optimal stability through structure and control of the center of gravity. Most martial artists practice the various stances as static positions, adjusting until the stability at rest is maximized. The feeling of that stance is then memorized in hopes that in the brief moment that it may appear in combat it will be at least as stable.  Still, the fighter needs to always remember that a stance is a transitory position in combat, not a pose for the cameras.

Each stance has it’s strengths and weak points.  I will not discuss the various stances individually, but I will point out the various qualities that make them useful.  As a rule of thumb, the lower the center of gravity (call it the tanden for simplicity) the more stable the stance. Carried to the limit of this statement, lying prone on the floor would represent the most stable stance. This is an excellent example because it illustrates the limitation of these stances perfectly: lack of mobility.  To deepen any stance you typically increase the space between the legs and bend the knees deeper: both of these actions will increase the difficulty of rapid movement as they attenuate and stress the leg muscles. The other extreme of stance would be standing up straight with legs together: from here the fighter may move in any direction rapidly merely by driving off of one leg while travelling with the other. The limitation of this position is that it would be highly unstable.  So the spectrum here runs from low, stable, and relatively immobile to high, unstable and very mobile.  The traditional training stances were designed to provide maximum stability to the standing fighter while exercising his muscles to move efficiently from those low, stable stances.  The hope would be that in real combat the fighter would be able to be very mobile even from a low, stable stance. Of course, reality has a way of breaking through these conceptions: real fighting usually demands a fairly high, mobile stance.

There are, of course, other elements of stance: internal and external pressure on the legs. In practice the internal stances, where the knees are drawn forcefully together, such as Sanchin-dachi or Hangetsu-dachi ( basically a modified front stance with internal knee rotation) tend to be slightly higher and quicker in movement. The loaded internal rotation of the knees allow the fighter to move rapidly forward or backward merely by releasing one foot and allowing the “loaded tension” to move the leg. The internal rotation of the knees also allows for better groin protection, which suggests these stances might be best for close hand to hand combat. The external pressure stances, such as kiba-dachi, shiko-dachi or fudo dachi all tend to be lower and more stable, somewhat similar to a wrestler’s fighting stance. These stances are often quite difficult to move quickly from, but they do represent the most stable of the stances when applied upon their strong axis.

The concept of strong axis to a stance is important and often overlooked by karateka until they start playing with grappling and throwing. The basic concept here is that every stance has both a strong and a weak axis, both of which can be capitalized on by the astute fighter.  In any stance the strong axis of the stance will be parallel to the long axis of the stance, passing through the tanden.  Take for example kiba dachi or shiko dachi: the strong axis of these two stances will be along a line running from side to side between the two planted feet.  Therefor it would follow that any attacks from these stances are likely in a sideways vector.  The one exception to this, which should be inferred from the fact that these stances have very low centers of gravity, would be that perhaps the attack may be straight down, finishing a downed opponent. The weak axis of any stance will be through a line at ninety degrees to the strong axis and through the tanden.  This concept should be applied in two ways: any attack along that vector from the opponent will likely have devastating effects while any counter-attack or block along that axis will likely be extremely weak. In karate most of the throws, reaps, sweeps and take-downs are based on attacking the weak axis. Furthermore, the concept of “tai sabaki” is actually using this concept in three ways: by body shifting as your opponent attacks you are ducking off his strong axis attack vector. Your counter attack should be along your strong axis vector and into his weak axis vector.  The point would be to avoid his position of strength and attack his weak point with your own strength. It’s all about vectors.

Alignment has to be applied at every level of every technique, though the thrusting techniques certainly have different dynamics versus the snapping techniques.  The primary concept in all of these must be how one transfers the energy of the body movement from the floor into the attacking (or blocking) technique. Let’s look at two well known basic techniques, one thrusting and one snapping.  The common gyaku-tsuki or reverse punch, has to be one of the most practiced techniques in karate.  I will not go through the tedium of the kinematic chain here (touch base on that later), but I will look at the final, impact position. IF we look at the example of the bull fighter above and consider Newton’s third law discussed earlier, we know that when our fist hits a solid target there will be a transfer of energy both from our fist and into our fist. The more rigid of the impacting objects will win here: either the opponent will crumple or we will fold. Apply this concept to each joint along the chain to our anchor on the floor, our driving leg.  If the wrist is bent, it will fold (as the matador demonstrated), if the elbow is either bent or hyper-extended it may bow, if the shoulder is not pulled down and deep into the socket, it will tend to bounce back at impact.  This point here is very important: the shoulder is a fairly unstable joint and unless the back muscles and pectoral muscles are activated to hold the joint down and in the shallow socket, some of the force is bound to escape.  Typically, the new karateka tends to actually lift the shoulder on punching, activating the extensor muscles of the joint, which automatically separates the shoulder. This is one of the most difficult habits to break, especially in the top heavy western karateka. This chain can be followed all the way to the floor, considering each new joint separately: you need to stabilize the spine with both the spinal erectors and the abdominal muscles, you need to keep the buttocks under the spine so the force flows smoothly into the legs and the legs can neither be overly flexed nor hyper-extended.  In my mind I see the punch as been a piston thrown off a stable pile driver where the front stance is the stabilizing trestle. For at least the thrusting punches, while the legs may be a trestle, I see the upper body action as being one of projection of force forward in an almost pyramid shape, the base being the body, the peak being the finish point.  Using this visual I try to contract all the agonist muscles of the technique to propel and align the attack while keeping the antagonist groups mostly relaxed.  Of course, visuals are all very nice, but you really have to go do this stuff to understand what the hell I am talking about.

On the other hand, consider the round house techniques such as mawashi-geri. Mawashi geri derives it’s power from two actions: rotation and translation.  Most students immediately pick up the rotation factor, yet they fail to apply it completely, losing much of the potentially devastating effect of this technique.  Many student miss the translation element of the power here: they fail to drive in as they kick, often just balancing on one leg and spinning in place.  Here is where I see alignment becoming a factor.  The round house kick should be considered a knee kick first. Consider the center of mass of the opponent and consciously drive the knee through that center on both a forward and sideways vector: the functional vector would be about a 45degree angle through the opponent’s body (maybe along the weak axis?). The actual kick is released from the chamber/ coil position just before the knee  would reach that center of mass. The net effect would be of the knee “dragging” the foot through the opponent; in application the knee would actually never fully extend as the foot “bounces” off the opponent.  I train this technique in a four fold manner. First I start the students parading down the floor in kiba dachi, actually pivoting forward on one leg with the travelling leg held wide. Sure, it is a silly drill, but it does get them to rotate the entire body as they step forward.  Once I have trained the idea of “full body rotation”, then we work the same drill, except now using a fully chambered round house knee kick. I will train this both in air and against the heavy bag, each time forcing the student to reach forward with the arm on the same side as the kicking leg to force them to rotate the entire body and drive in. The heavy bag training is most revealing; many of the students are amazed at the power that a roundhouse knee strike can have.  Once we have the rotation and translation with a knee kick perfect, the round-house kick become merely a matter of letting the foot fly from the chambered position and snapping it back.  We train this in air and against heavy bags. I also really like to train this with partners. Each partner takes up a typical fighting stance with arms at full guard. They take turns kicking each other, stepping in after each kick with a secondary punching attack.  The key here is to  reach with the hand on the kicking side to take out the opponent’s guard as you kick. This drill will help keep the fighter connected and rotating the entire body into the kick and it will train them to take the guard out of the way of their kick.  It really is a drill for kumite and kihon.

The alignment for roundhouse kick still involves the projection of the force along the eye-line and stance line: the knee is projected forward along the stance line and the body is connected by abdominal contraction through the rotation to transfer the force into a sideways vector. You should consider these same basic concepts when training something like a back fist strike: the elbow attacks along the stance line, dragging the fist through the opponent as it is released from chamber.  One statement I have heard about karate is that we actually fight with our elbows and knees.

The above statement leads me to discuss yet another approach to this topic: the elbow or knee as being the controlling joint in hand strikes and kicks.  Consider a punch or thrusting kick: at completion (lock-out) the fist or foot has to be in absolute alignment with the elbow or knee: the proximal joint here is essentially driving the technique through the target.  On the other hand, with the strikes such as hammer fist or back fist, or the snapping kicks, the proximal joint can be considered as “pulling” the technique through the enemy. Either way the vector of the elbow or knee actually determines the trajectory of the technique.

With regards to blocks and alignment my axiom still hold true, as does the thought that the elbow controls the action.  Typically most blocks are projected off the lead leg side, though anyone can think up specific exceptions to this rule. Either way, the block is chambered  and projected outward to the deflection point usually by rotation of the body. Take for example the downward block: it is chambered to the opposite ear and the elbow is projected downward and outward as the hip rotates out. The actual hand movement only comes after full projection of the elbow, the fist snapping out and down as the elbow reaches it’sfinal point in front of the body.  To the beginner this movement is bastardized into a side to side downward slashing motion of the arm comparable to an elephant swinging it’s trunk. This simplification tends to be hopelessly weak, slow and potentially dangerous to the karateka.  Properly applied the downward block becomes a sort of ‘hammer fist”  attack to the inside of the incoming kick, deflecting the kick and allowing the fighter to drive to the inside of the opponents stance. The correct block projects outward and sideways in a vector of about 45 degrees and never extends beyond the edge of the body. The incorrect swinging block typically connects with the incoming attack along the forearm surface during it’s downward arc and it’s vector, for the most part is just down and sideways. The swinging block usually ends far outside the edge of the defender’s body line and you just have to know who wins in a fight if forearm meets shin. Apply the concept of vector analysis to any block: the resultant vectors should be forward and slightly sideways and only to the edge of the defender’s body. The idea is to ricochet the incoming technique away rather than just hammer the finished technique simply sideways.

Your joint health depends on you figuring out proper alignment and vector control early on in you karate career. You need to figure out now just how your joints are meant to travel and train now to only use natural movement paths in your karate.  Look at your knees: they are a simple hinge joint and are not meant to travel at any angle besides straight flexion or extension.  When taking a stance, any stance, the student should learn to keep the knee, ankle and foot in straight alignment. Any abduction or adduction of the knee joint (bending side to side) will unduly stress the co-lateral ligaments, creating pain and possibly permanent damage. On the other hand, the hip joint is a ball/ swivel type joint and certainly can move in mutliple directions without harm. The fairly recent changes made to Hangetsu-dachi, Sanchin-dachi, and Fudo-dachi represent efforts to save karateka’s joints. Specifically the internal pressure typical of Hangetsu-dachi and Sanchin-dachi is now generated by strong inner thigh contraction, pulling the upper thighs together rather than the knees. The knees themselves are now correctly aligned with the foot by allowing the foot to rotate as the thighs are drawn together.  The inward rotation comes at the hip.  The net effect is exactly the same as the older method, yet we can all walk properly the day after training Hangetsu. Look also at the trajectory of the roundhouse kick: the foot should be fired straight off the knee and returned directly along that arc on recoil. Any adjustment off that trajectory and the co-lateral ligaments of the knees are getting trashed and will pay you back for the abuse.  The same thought process should be applied to the elbows with regards to strikes: it is a hinge joint, don’t try to make it a swivel.

 

The take home here is that you need to consider the strong axis of any stance and endeavour to project the force along that axis with every technique. Furthermore you need to consider the natural function of every joint and allow the action to flow along with that function naturally: you will generate more force and preserve your joints.  OF course, as we will discuss next, the actual force is created by body movement and we need to look at the ways we can move optimally.

KATA FOLLOWS FORM: the eye of the beholder.

“The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze “Perception and Sight”. Perception is strong and sight is weak”  Miyamoto Musashi, the water book in Go Rin No Sho

Common sense dictates that anyone should watch where they are going, yet this is probably one of the most common things I have to remind students about while training.  I often find students staring at the floor, the door, the guy next to them, the clock over his head, or off into never-never land, but never focused in the direction they are going.  Sometimes it is as if we are teaching some sort of demented, pyjama clad full contact version of ” Blind Man’s Bluff”. In my opinion the first basic skill the student must ingrain into his karate is maintenance of proper eye-line. The Japanese term for this is “Messen”; a simple word for a challenging skill.

Recently I watched the advanced dan grading of a very famous instructor renowned for his power and fighting ability.  I do not question either of those in the least but I do question his judgement for publishing a  record of his own shortcomings .  His major flaw is that he does not attain his eye-line before he applies his technique: this failure creates imbalance in his turns and inaccuracy in his attacks.  His kata was sharp and exact with the exceptions of any turns: the failure to lead with his eyes created slight but perceptible moments of imbalance on the turn. His kumite echoed this problem and demonstrated a second issue: he was unable to properly control his attacks because his techniques were unleashed before his eye-line was established.  I saw three attacks fired and three uncontrolled, off target attacks because he was slow bringing his eye-line (head) around, leading the movement.  We need to instill the eye-line lead into even the most humble beginner. If a highly ranked instructor is weak on this skill, it must be very difficult to train.

My first step in establishing “eye-line” starts with training the student to have “sight”. In my dojo we have mirrors and we use them. Start with simple punching drills: we never just punch; we punch to a specific target on the body of the karate guy in the mirror.  Apply the same thought process to kicks and blocks; each time establishing a specific target for the student to see and aim for.  Used properly the mirrors create a phantom training partner who’s goal is to teach targetry to the karatka. At this stage I do not worry if the neophyte “telegraphs” his intended target by staring, just so long as he is seeing and aiming rather than just throwing indiscriminate punches. These same thoughts can be used while doing “marching” line drills: as the students march down the floor toward the mirrors they should be admonished to keep focused on the goof in the white pyjamas facing them.  This approach gets the student to visualize an opponent with real targets and allows them to self correct as they watch themselves move.  It also gets the beginners to stop staring at the floor while they assess their own stance.  Mirrors are good tools when used properly.

The next step in eye-line training should be to train the student to lead any turn with his head movement. Allow the head and eyes to pull the body around.  I use the standard “mawate” or turn as we do line drills to train this. I actually drill “turning around”, as much as this seems silly.  I start off with the student turning his head enough to see directly behind him, allowing the stance to fold or adjust as much as necessary to accomplish this. I am completely unconcerned it the student allows the stance to completely fold here, since in application they will be moving anyway. Assuming a standard front stance, once I have the eye-line established I have the student drive off his lead leg and allow his back leg to release and travel into the new front stance position in the opposite direction. I specifically do not tell the student to move the rear leg to the new position, I merely tell them to drive into front stance along their eye-line, allowing the travelling foot to land where you are driving.  To many of us old karateka this seems self evident (except for those different souls who insist on moving their front leg on the turn rather than the back leg.  Hey, if you can make that work, good on to you. You still have to establish an eye-line first), but to the beginner the whole idea of just stepping where you are looking without fiddling with the foot to get a perfect zenkutsudachi seems bizarre.  The neophyte just cannot conceptualize that, given the right visual input, the body will find the right stance position without much effort.

Ron Fagen, an instructor out of Nova Scotia, takes these drills to the ultimate by breaking each movement of each kata into four separate movements the first of which is “look”. Personally, I find this training tool to be far too mechanistic, resulting in an unrealistic, robotic movement pattern. On the other hand, if the instructor emphasizes that is is merely a training tool, then it may benefit the student if they can take the training and apply it to a more flowing kata form.  I do really like the emphasis on the “eye-line” and I do use a modified version of this for training spinning back kick.  I take the old standard Heian Sandan (Pinan Sandan) and use the migi nukite in zenkutsudach transition to hidari tetsui-uchi in kiba dachi sequence to teach spinning back kick to beginners.  Now, I call this sequence a “step with a 180 degree turn” rather than a spinning movement into hammer fist attack.  The sequence I train here is to move from the migi nukite in zenkutsudachi, through a half way point where both bent knees are pulled together with your ass aimed forward and your eyes trained tight down the embusen line over your left shoulder. From the half way point I then drive into the hidari tetsui-uchi in kiba dachi.  The class starts training slowly, emphasizing getting to the half-way point in a gathered position, knees bent and eye-line acquired, then driving from that position along that eye-line.  Once the students can move fluidly to the half-way point, I have them shoot out a left thrusting back kick from here, then step down into the hammer fist.  Take this drill, train it left and right, then speed it up until the kick is fluidly fired from the half way point as part of a movement through center. Always the emphasis has to be seeing the target before the kick is fired.  Most of the students will manage a decent spinning back kick within half an hour of training this way.  I really like using kata to teach kihon skills:  it kills two birds with one stone.

From here I like to combine kata training with kumite skills development using partner training.  Progressively train each of the turns in Heian Shodan. The first is 90 degrees, the second 180 degrees and the third is 270 degrees.  Have one partner perform an unannounced stepping-in attack along the kata embusen line. On the first turn (first move of the kata) the receiver has to tune up his “radar” and try to intercept the incoming attack with early or “sen” timing.  After several repetitions the student will realize he needs to attain an eye-line immediately and drive hard along that line with an intercepting block. The timing and intent becomes critical: if the student visualizes a “stop-block” or “attacking-block” to the opponent he will be far more likely to succeed versus just concentrating on blocking the incoming technique.  Continuing from this, we would progress to each subsequent turn (180, 270) each requiring earlier and quicker reaction timing.  Through this process the student will very quickly learn that if he does not lead the technique with his head, literally whipping his body around with his head movement, then he cannot beat the attacker.   This process will convince the student to stop “sight seeing” or searching for his target and take his eye-line straight to the attack vector without hesitation.  This process also helps the student pick up all the telegraph movements his opponent may have and react without thought the moment he “feels” the attack is imminent.  If the student does not pick up those little telegraphs and waits until the opponent is actually moving along the attack vector, he has no hope of beating his attacker. This sort of training is truly a multitasking trainer: kata, kihon and kumite skill trained simultaneously with one simple drill.  One of the key elements of picking up the “telegraphs” is the use of peripheral vision.  The karateka needs to perceive rather than just see.

There really is a difference between “seeing” and “perceiving”.  Every martial arts instructor I have ever trained with has admonished me to draw my vision back and focus on the entire opponent rather than just his fists or feet.  One instructor I had actually told me to “focus on the far green hills” (“enzan no metsuke”: fixing one’s eyes on a distant mountain) , which was kind of ironic, since I live in the bare-ass prairie. What exactly are these guys asking us to do and why does it work? The key here is what part of your eyes you are using when you “see” the opponent rather than just “perceive” him.  When a person focuses on one point, they tend to rely on the retina segment in center of the eye called the fovea. The fovea has a very high percentage of cones, retinal receptors best for colour and high contrast, or “seeing in detail”.  On the other hand, when we draw back or defocus our vision, essentially seeing the entire picture with less detail, we tend to utilize the entire retina including the periphery or edges.  The periphery of the retina has few cones, but is populated with their counterparts the rods.  Rods are very sensitive in low light situations and can sense movement far better than the cones.  By defocusing the eye, the fighter shifts the emphasis of his vision to the peripheral vision rods and thus is far more likely to pick up any movements by his opponent. “Looking to the far green hills” will allow the fighter to perceive the telegraphs of the opponent and anticipate the next attack. The experience fighter has not developed extrasensory perception; he has merely learned to perceive the common telegraphs by use of his entire retina rather than just the fovea.

When I first conceived this idea of “ultra basics of karate” I suggested to an Internet acquaintance that force follows the eye-line in karate.  He agreed with me for the most part, but countered with the situation of a self-defense technique where you may be striking blindly at an assailant behind you. In this case, obviously the force of your technique cannot follow the eye-line, but will follow the intent. Perhaps intent is the first, most important skill of the fighter.  On the other hand, I suggested in my introduction that karate is not necessarily about just fighting; it is about theoretically perfect fighting.  So, in the end, I repeat that, in a perfect situation, the force of every blow would be along the direction of the eye-line.  This leads us to the next section: technique and stance alignment.