” Hyoshi: the concept that there is rhythm and timing to every aspect in life…..In combat, you must first percieve your opponent’s rhythm-timing and then execute your techniques with a rhythm-timing that your opponent would never expect. This unexpected rhythm-timing is the result fo your constant training that becomes spontaneous.” from the Ground Book of Go Rin No Sho by Musashi.
“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and war is always a matter of expedients” the famous German strategist Helmuth von Moltke the elder.
A student of Napoleonic strategy, Helmuth von Moltke was a very interesting fellow. While his famous quote above seems to suggest that he did not value battle planning, he actually did plan every battle under his command down to the last detail. He considered multiple possibilities and designed contingency plans for each. Every plan was based on doing whatever was necessary to win: war is all about expediency. We can compare this directly to the entire text of Go Rin No Sho which repeatedly reminds us that the only goal of battle is victory and the warrior should be prepared to do whatever it takes to win. A warrior always needs to be expedient in his every action. On the other hand, considering the variables and brevity of kumite, we need not have any detailed battle plan, merely a broad strategy which we can apply consistently yet alter as needed.
As previously discussed, the nature of kumite is all about distance and timing. A karate strategist should be able to play with both variables to serve his greater strategy of dominating or controlling the opponent. We should address distance first, because this basic element controls not only the time to impact of any technique, it also influences the potential attacks of both defender and opponent. Consider the distance and range of our various techniques. First, stepping-attacks of all types cover far more distance than shifting-in techniques. Kicks, typically, have greater range than punches. Extended lead-hand techniques usually have slightly greater range than reverse-hand punches. Techniques with greater distance can be initiated from a “safer” range, but take longer to reach the target, therefor they are easier to perceive and defend against. Techniques with shorter distance, such as a shifting-in jab requires that the karateka take a risk and close the interpersonal distance between the two fighters, yet they reach their target far quicker and are much more difficult to defend against. Finally, some fighters may be able to initiate and perform short range techniques such as a shifting-in jab from a “safe” distance, but this ability is not necessarily an advantage since the greater distance again creates more time for the opponent to perceive and respond to the attack. Just because you can successfully jab from a distance does not mean you should. The karate fighter needs to balance his need for safety, his technical ability to strike from various ranges, and his opponent’s perceived ability to defend or attack. You need to learn to play with the distance to manage both what attacks you can use and what attacks you are vulnerable to.
Consider the three distances: your attack distance, the attack distance of your opponent, and how those variables should affect the distance between the two of you. That interpersonal distance should reflect the attack distances of both fighters and if it does not then one of two scenarios is occuring: there is no contest due to too great a distance or there is excessive contact due to too little interpersonal space. The actual feeling should be one of two sharks circling each other, staying right on the razor’s edge of that contested ground where one or both of the fighters may be capable of an attack. That contested ground shared by the fighters is refered to Sun Tsu in “The Art of War” as “Deadly Ground”; this is the interpersonal space at which one of the fighters could successfully attack at any time. A good fighter knows exactly where that point is for himself and a better fighter knows where that point is for both himself and his opponent (this is a reference back to Sun Tsu again: the general that knows both his own strategy and that of his enemy will always prevail).
There are several drills that are very worthwhile to train these distances; some of which we have already touched on, while others are subtle variations of the basics. I will use them here as an illustration of how playing with distance may be used strategically. In drill number one the receiver (defender) merely acts as a simple target for the initiator. The initiator attacks with a shifting-jab or reverse punch to the face or body, taking care to aim to the target but control his distance to finish about one centimeter from the receiver. Light contact may be acceptable for the body shots, but the jodan tsuki really must show strict control. The initiator now attacks from various different distances, trying to find that perfect distance which allows him to complete a technically perfect technique with no foreshortening (you started too close) or over-extension (you started too far away). You will know that you have it just right when you know that you are capable of completing a second technique immediately following the first attack; always remember that the key to successful kumite is the maintenance of zanshin (previously covered).
The second drill now trains both sides of the equation: initiator and receiver. This is a drill in “sasoi-waza” or inviting the attack. The initiator continues to fire his attacks from a more or less static position. The receiver now starts from a “safe” range and slowly shifts forward, encroaching and eventually entering “deadly ground”. The initiator must attack as soon as the receiver enters range. The attack must be launched without hesitation or thought. The term here is “Ichi byo shi” or “in one breath”; the fighter must recognize the opportunity and “cross at the fords”. (again from Musashi) The receiver may then either merely retreat, or as the drill progresses, elect to respond with a block and attack. Repeat this and switch sides until each players knows exactly how close they may approach before an attack is lashed out at them. Strategically the value of this should be obvious: if I know where exactly the “break point” of my opponent is, I can play with the distance and choose the moment when I allow my opponent to attack. I become the puppet master. Musashi discusses this exact concept under the heading of ” a commander controlling his soldier”; the strategist must learn to command his opponent. Of course, it is of great value to know when the attack is coming; it might be worthwhile to control where the target may be.
The majority of martial artists use a variation of the triangle guard. Consider the structure of the fighting stance. The torso and body would become the base of the triangle, while the moderately extended arms projecting forward and toward the center-line would form the sides of the triangle. For the most part the lead hand does the majority of the blocking while the reverse hand stands at ready to punch. Of course both hands should be able to punch or block depending on the situation (“war is always a matter of expedients”). I personally prefer a guard where the lead hand is about 50% extended, elbow down, fist up at chin level covering the upper body and ready for a straight lead attack at anytime. The reverse hand should be held slightly closer to the body , elbow down and fist aimed at the abdomen of the enemy. With this position the head and torso are well covered yet the hands are in perfect attack position. This guard fulfills our tension-release principle from kihon basics very well; we are strategically in a position that allows defense and immediate offense. Conceptually the triangle guard should be considered to form a sharp edge off which any attack will merely deflect as we cut down the center, just like the bow wave breaking off the steel plates of a Navy destroyer.
Of course an effective guard should be trained through sparring and sparring drills, but there are a few other drills that helps the student learn both the interception-block concept and the flowing, redirection block concept. Mr. Nishiyama has one drill which really helps drive the point home for the concept of interception-block rather than merely blocking. Opponents pair off and face each other in shizentai-dachi. Each player holds his hands at a loose, even guard position. The initiator should randomly snap one of his hands out and attempt to lightly touch his partner’s chest. The defender’s job is obvious: block or deflect the random attacks. This can be quite challenging, especially if the initiator starts to use a few of the strategies such as broken rhythm that we touched on earlier. After a few minutes at this play, stop the drill and have the defender reach out at firmly grasp the arms of his opponent, visualizing intercepting the arms rather than merely blocking them. Return to the original drill immediately. The defender should find the blocking much easier now because he is now extending his blocks and intercepting the attacks early rather than merely blocking them as they approach. Musashi calls this “treading down the sword” or suppressing the incoming attack. The second part of this drill should train nagashi-uke, teaching the student again to deflect an incoming attack with only the appropriate amount of force and movement. The players here face off in standard front stance (or any stance you want for that matter). The defender takes a very modified guard position with his hands held together in a “praying” position held on the center-line. The initiator then slowly starts throwing alternating punches at face level, on target. The defender blocks each punch merely by shifting his “prayer hands” slightly left or right, depending on the incoming punch. The concept here is to guide the fist gently by the face by intercepting and deflecting it just enough to miss by a hair. Once this action is clear to the student, repeat the drill with him in a normal guard position. Now the defender will either block by deflecting the attack with either his palm hand or his back hand, again dependant on the attack. You may also train this same sort of drill from shizentai, using either hand alternately: left hand blocks with palm, then backhand or right hand blocks with palm or back hand. Whatever hand is used the point is that you internalize the action of intercepting the incoming attack early and deflecting it off the point of the triangle guard. Once you have the triangle guard perfected, then you should consider the value of “selective application”. As a strategy a fighter may select to purposefully but subtlety leave an opening in his guard. This represents another form of sasoi-waza: invite an attack upon the area you select and draw the opponent into your web. Maybe drop your lead hand and leave your face open or lift your lead slightly and open up your ribs. Maybe you can part your guard slightly and clear the approach to the chest. Either way, you are choosing to leave a target open to draw the attack as part of your overall strategy.
On the same path, perhaps it might be worthwhile to be able to select not only the when and where of the attack, but also the what. There is a old saying that you should never trade kicks with a kicker, punches with a puncher or grapple with a wrestler. You should never play the opponent’s game, make him play yours. Again setting the appropriate distance is the key to attack selection. Faced with a good kicker, the key is to cut the interpersonal distance until you are inside optimal kicking range; remove the likelihood that your opponent will choose to kick (but remember that he may still try and even bad kicks can hurt). On the other hand, faced with someone with great hands, you may choose to stay outside his range and attack with long range techniques such as kicks. Finally, if a grappler decides to visit your karate dojo, just kindly remind him that the judo dojo is down the street (this is about karate). Distance and timing is what strategy is all about.
At this point a person should remind himself of the dual concepts of “jutsu” and “kyo”. The state of kyo, or vulnerable to attack is a requirement for any successful attack. While there certainly are many natural opportunities to attack in every match, just biding you time and waiting for an opportunity is a weak strategy. A more pro-active strategy would be to create kyo in your opponent. There are any one of a number of techniques for creating kyo; I will cover some of these using a series of drills to illustrate the concepts.
The first defense timing every student learns is usually “go-no-sen”, which liberally translates as “initiate later”. I really like this definition because is feeds into my domination principle well. Most new students see “go-no-sen” as just “block and then counter attack” and truly this is exactly what it appears to be. On the other hand, if we come back to the idea that the block is more of an interception, then the feeling of this strategy changes. While the punch indeed may be done with “go-no-sen” timing, the block needs to be early timing or “sen-no-sen” timing. Consider the block as an intercepting stop-attack to the incoming attack. The earlier you intercept the attack, preferably very early in it’s flight before it has gained momentum, the greater your impact on the entire momentum of the opponent. The goal here is to “steal” the attack of the enemy, breaking his momentum and leaving him open to your counter-attack, which, if properly done, lands before the opponent is even settled in his stance. We have circled back to “treading down the sword” of the enemy: smother his attack absolutely and never let him come up for air again (“hold down the pillow” is the term Musashi uses for it).
The first timing drill I would like to look at works “amashi-waza” or “eating the technique”. The basic concept here is to absorb the opponent’s technique completely, drawing him to a full, extended first technique at which point he will be open for a quick counter-attack. I see this as “give a little, gain a lot”. Pair off again and face each other in fighting stance at guard. The initiator will attack with, sequentially, a jab to the face, reverse punch to the face, or reverse punch to the body. All of these are realistic, shifting-in punches and must be done at full speed on target, no count. The defender responds by shifting slightly back, out of range of the attack and applies a gentle nagashi-uke such as trained in the drills mentioned above. Deflect the incoming attack only enough to move it off your own attack line and use only that power necessary to do so. The key here is to give the attacker the impression of success, leading him to fully extend his punch past your face, allowing you to counter-attack with a reverse punch while safely inside the primary attack. Over-blocking, besides being unnecessary and wasteful, will tend to alert your opponent to the ruse and will close your window of opportunity for attack. The same could be said for shifting too far back or pausing in your movements: failing to shift appropriately and maintain flow will merely close the opportunity for counter-attack and must be trained away. The feeling should become more of a “wave” back and out of range rather than a true shift. The counter-attack here should impact practically before the opponent’s attack is completed. Here you have created “kyo” by extending the first technique and counter-attacking before it’s completion.
The second timing drill I have works on slightly earlier “go-no-sen” timing. This drill works “uke-waza”, or intercepting techniques. This drill takes us back to the idea that our block is an early interception and actually a form of attack. Here I think “give nothing, take it all”. Pair off again, the attacker will apply the same three techniques: jab face, punch face, punch body. The receiver will now respond with a firm intercepting block followed by a reverse punch counter-attack. The block here must be early, practically at the inception of the shifting-in attack, and applied with substantial body connection so it “shocks” the initiator, breaking his momentum immediately. I repeat again: the feeling must be that the receiver is “stealing” the technique of the initiator. Properly applied the initiator should feel “deflated” even half-way into the attack, knowing that he is already defeated. Here we are creating “kyo” by shocking the opponent, breaking his balance and momentum and slipping our attack into that “break”.
Here is yet another drill that combines both the first drill and the second: it’s all about learning how to successfully apply a reap (ashi barai) to our opponent. In the first part of the drill the initiator just randomly throws face level shifting-in jabs. The receiver practices just touching the attacking fist, attempting to catch it progressively earlier in it’s attack path. The feeling should be “gently touch and ride” the fist with your lead hand. Again, try to be so early in your interception that the initiator feels robbed of his attack. Once you have that mastered, start reaching out with both your lead hand and your lead foot to touch both the attacking hand and the shifting-in front foot. Focus on being gentle and withdrawing your entire body (moving away from the attack with a “wave” movement, very similar to your actions in the amashi-waza drill) with your lead hand and lead foot riding the lead of the initiator. You really have to get that feeling of early interception such as we have in the second drill and combine it with the wave-like retreat we use in the first drill. Once you have that feeling, then your goal is to gently “hook” the front, travelling leg of the initiator and merely draw that leg (and his punching attack) past his normal comfortable final position and over-extend the shift. You do not necessarily need to reap him right off his feet (though that would be decisive and really wonderful to do in a sparring match), but you do want to break his balance completely, leaving him absolutely wide open for a finishing attack. Properly applied the “reap” should feel like nothing; you are merely being a boy-scout and reaching out with hand and foot to help a little old lady across the street. The more gentle and timely you are, the more devastating this strategy will be. Just apply early interception with gentle, strategic withdrawal.
I digress here for a moment by discussing the next timing in the progression: sen-no-sen timing. In karate circles this timing implies (not always or by everyone) the application of a block and counter-attack simultaneously. Certainly this strategy is demonstrated in many of our kata (just consider almost any technique using both arms synchronously). A common example would be the application of a jodan level nagashi-uke concurrently with a chudan level gyaku-tsuki. We often see this particular combination, especially when we are performing simple timing drills where the initiator is limited to a shifting-in jab to the face. In fact, this scenario is a perfect illustration of why I really dislike this timing: it is dependant on and assumes that we know exactly what attack is coming our way. In the above drills, the receiver is always going to know what is coming down the pipes at him, and therefor will really have a tendency to go the easy route by blocking without thought or intent and burying his counter-attack with absolute confidence of success. It works every time but only because the drill is pre-arranged. Take away this pre-arrangement even just a little bit by allowing the initiator to do any of the three training attacks randomly and the simultaneous block and counter timing fails miserably. This all feeds back to Musashi’s discussion on “intentional strike versus accidental contact”; we can have good karate or just good luck. If you have any doubt on the weakness of this strategy, just watch your new students: typically in the timing drills and in limited free kumite they will almost always discover “sen-no-sen” timing on their own. Usually, somewhere along the line a sparring pair will attempt simultaneous attacks (ai-uchi) and will clash. In these cases one of the karateka will perceive the incoming attack and instinctively put up a hesitant block with one hand while finishing his own attack with the other (or finish his kick). The action practically becomes little more than instinctive flinch and cover, hardly a true strategy. Of course, in the spirit of expediency (“war is always a matter of expedients”), this strategy is useful but it should not be depended on and it need not be trained because it comes naturally.
The final timing I would like to address in this section (of course there are other timing strategies and I will get there eventually) is “sen-sen-no-sen” timing. This timing is where the whole “karate ni sente nashi” concept becomes a little foggy. Properly applied, this is really going to look like the receiver started the fight or threw the first punch. The theory behind “sen-sen-no-sen” timing is based on the fact that the human mind is really only capable of considering one thought at a time. We can either defend or attack, but we are really not capable of committing to both at the same time. If you really think about it, the entire basis for karate training is all about this little weakness in the human psyche: we train repetitively to internalize as much of our skills as possible, trying to make them subconscious automatic reactions rather than conscious considered actions. Our true goal is to internalize as much of our technical training as much so we never have to consider the “how” of a technique and we only have to consider the “when”. Anyway, back to the kumite question. When you are faced off against an opponent, each circling, searching for an opening (kyo), we are usually in defensive mode, at a safe distance and in a full triangle guard. We are justsu and should have no obvious openings. On the other hand, at some point one of the karateka is going to see his opportunity (“the crossing at the ford”) and attack. There will always be a slight change in his body language at that moment of commitment to attack. Boxers call this a “telegraph”, karateka should call this “kyo”. Some guys change their breathing pattern (that’s me), some guys focus their eyes, while yet others change their footwork. Everyone has these telegraphs, but the better fighters have either learned to minimize them or have learned to cover them with other apparently superfluous movements. One good justification for maintaining constant movement during kumite is to cover your telegraphs with other actions. Either way, the key is to pick up these telegraphs and “feel” the incoming attack rather than see it. That “feel” is your moment of kyo and you should attack at that instant (“ichi byo shi”). Here are some drills for developing that feel. Start off with the first move of Heian Shodan (or Pinan Nidan, or Tai kyoku Shodan for that matter): receiver is standing in shizentai-dachi facing front, personal radar up and ready, body under light tension (“tension-release” principle from Tsuruoka Sensei). Initiator attacks from the left with any stepping-in body shot, full speed, full intent, no count. The “defender”, to perform successfully, must catch the feel of the attack and drive in with a intercepting stop block, catching the attack practically at it’s early inception. We have covered this drill a couple of times before, but I like to repeat the really worthwhile stuff. The next drill is slightly more directly applicable to kumite. Square off, both fighters in kumite stance at an appropriate fighting distance (right on the edge of the “deadly ground”.) The initiator holds his hand crossed in front of his face, much like a standard juji-uke position. The receiver is in full, prepared guard, fully prepared to attack. It is absolutely critical that this drill is done with full intensity and speed. There cannot be any count and the players must put themselves in the mind-set of a real match or, better yet, a life and death self defense scenario. The initiator, without actually shifting forward, will snap his hands apart randomly, simulating an attack. The initiator must visualize performing a shifting jab or reverse punch, much like the above drills, but do not shift in. If you do shift in, I can guarantee you will get hit hard because you opponent will be attacking with full intent and you will have absolutely no possible defense. The receiver has only one job: sense the impending “attack” (the snapping apart of the arms) and fire in your reverse punch, attempting to get the punch into the target before the arms are uncrossed. Typically if you do ten repetitions, an experienced karateka will have maybe one that is acceptable: acceptable is defined as your punch landed on target just as the initiator “thought” about snapping his arms apart. Of course this entire drill depends on people being honest on both sides of the drill, you need to admit when you “got caught” so your partner knows that he performed well, and you need to admit to yourself when you did not catch the feeling and just fired a punch in blindly.
All the above drills can be performed with just about any single attacking technique, one merely needs to apply your imagination and modify the drills to fit your requirements. Over the years I have found a couple of weaknesses in the drills that should be addressed. The first weakness is that people tend to cheat both themselves and their partners. The pre-arranged nature of each drill tends to lead to complacency in both players; initiators start just hitting a thoughtless rhythm with their attacks and both initiator and defenders tend to ignore the realities of combat and fail to maintain correct fighting distance. The instructor needs to be on guard against complacency and periodically stop the training and recharge the intensity levels. Use frequent rotations of pairs, make sure everyone remembers to avoid rhythmic, predictable attacks, and keep all the interactions at full intensity throughout the drills. As far as distancing goes, maybe allow receiver the freedom to either lightly attack spontaneously if the initiator is creeping too close, or just tell the receiver to reach out and touch the lead arm of his opponent if the initiator is ignoring proper distancing. Either way, these may be drills but the players need to remember that they will fight as they train, so train as they should fight.
The next section will deal with initiating attacks or “kake waza” or it’s cousin “shikake-waza”. There will be tremendous overlap in these articles simply because time and timing are a continuous river rather than specific points.
