Going down the rabbit hole

When you start looking for evidence, when no one is asking for any, you will be surprised at what you find. Your view of the world, and your ego will be lying in pieces on the ground by the end of it. I'm not talking about confirmation bias research where you ignore all evidence, which runs contrary to your opinion. The evidence of the effectiveness of karate is that it is terrible, but most martial arts are terrible. The evidence which suggests that it is effective is that it survived being passed down in Okinawa. If it's use got you killed then you're not around to pass on your crappy tradition. It's positively selected as opposed to negatively selected. It's survivor bias in a good way. The fact is that adrenal decay, lack of stress inoculation, and lack of experience in violent situations counts for more than your training. Training is the compromise between lack of preparation and being a violent jerk. Rory Miller says it's luck and instinct, which gets you through most violent encounters, until you've hit about 20 force encounters and then it's luck, instinct and training. We've all heard of the people who survive violence by doing X, Y and Z, but we don't hear about those who did X, Y, and Z who died screaming for someone to save them. Unfortunately, there is this thing called reality and it doesn't cooperate the way we wished it would. We as people tend to attribute our successes to skill, and our failures to bad luck. Hardly ever do we attribute success to luck, and failure to lack of skill, even though this is more likely.

I remember reading an article about UFC training, where the trainer was explaining that fighters could achieve the same results by training much less than what they currently were doing. The training had nothing to do with power, speed or skill. It might have even been slightly detrimental. It had to do with mental toughness, and anxiety management. Do you want to go into a fight confident that you did everything you possibly could to prepare, or do you want to go into a fight just as prepared, but with a mental nagging doubt? When you're only fighting pain and fatigue, mental toughness counts for a whole lot.

Here's where this can get you hurt. If you train to fight your anxiety and become less effective than you're not doing yourself any favors. You will be over confident, and less skilled, which is a bad combination.

What does this have to do with research?

It means we need to know the aim of research, and what people are trying to achieve. If you train like a UFC fighter who is trying to manage their anxiety, you might be less effective in a life or death confrontation. You might be over confident, because you did super hard training and die, rather than being under confident, running away and surviving. Research might be comparing very minute battlefield differences, which made a difference tactically, but not much of a difference to the individual. The Thompson-Legerde tests on caliber, which is usually dismissed, was testing the wounding capabilities of different cartridges not how lethal they were. They already knew that a bullet through your head, spine, or heart was lethal. They wanted to know what the differences were when the bullets hit non-essential organs and tissue. Their conclusions were based on certain rounds allowing a person to bleed out faster than others, but this time is counted in minutes not seconds, because regardless of the round our flesh is elastic and closes the wound and our body starts trying to repair itself and stop the bleeding. A wounded enemy soldier will be taken out of the fight eventually, but this doesn't help those in his immediate vicinity. It only means soldiers who show up minutes later won't have to worry about him. The person who gut shot him is probably just as dead. It doesn't help you individually, but it helps your comrades in arms later on down the line. It has a tactical advantage in war, but has no tactical advantage in self defense where a person needs to be taken out immediately. You don't have the ammunition, time nor backup to lay down suppressive fire while you wait for the wounded to bleed out.

It was also thought that non-jacketed lead projectiles would not function reliably in an auto-loader, which is false, but has nonetheless changed the trajectory of firearms development regardless of this being a more than 100 year old myth. I just fired some non jacketed lead rounds out of one of my rifles just a few months ago, and it worked just fine. They have been relegated to the dust bin of history without even a retest to see if the original reasons and conclusions still hold true.

In the Napoleonic war the British sabre caused horrific wounds, but seldom killed. The French sword killed, but did not produce grizzly wounds. The difference between cut and thrust. A thrust kills, a cut maims. The British sword was feared because of the terrible wounds, which is a huge psychological advantage in war. Great for warfare, but not that great for a duel against a determined foe. The British sword was thought to be more effective. Was it? Maybe for fear factor, but not for killing though fear counts for a whole lot.

In the world of the stock market, research has shown that actively managed portfolios do no better than broad market passively managed portfolios. Throwing a dart at the Wall Street Journal is about as effective as the most advanced stock market analysis, because regardless of method you can't predict the future. Regardless of this there are still many companies that advertise the virtues of their management, and people are happy to hand over their money in fees.

What does this all mean?

It means things are seldom how they appear, and if you want to get to the bottom of things you need to dig deep and prepare for your ego to be destroyed, your anxiety to hit the roof, and for no one to ever listen to you because you're going against what amounts to tradition. They use anecdotal evidence, research out of context and ignore conflicting information, because it makes their tummy feel funny to face reality. If you're tummy feels funny, it means you're learning something great. It doesn't mean it's true, or false it just means you're testing your assumptions.

If you want to succeed, you need to ignore that funny feeling and look at the hard real-world evidence. You need to be okay with the fact that luck might play a bigger factor in success or failure than you are comfortable with and that people might be selling you snake oil, so you can manage your anxiety. You also have to be okay with people vehemently and even violently disagreeing with you, because it calls their fantasy world into question. Even with all of this there is freedom in facing reality. It means you can keep your head down, train, prepare, plan and know that focusing on the aspects of life that you can control directly is the only thing that matters even if you are falling through the rabbit hole.

Finding Strategy in Kata

As I practice it, kata is a collection of principles. These principles are largely concerned with generating force to do work in an efficient manner. In the most simple terms, it's teaching you how to move to achieve a goal. The goal generally being to keep yourself safe from harm by ending a conflict, which is not just pounding the crap out of someone but also escape. If you exit the conflict, you also end the conflict, physically at least. These principles however usually have a common theme. This theme usually pops up in different incarnations, but the result is generally the same. This is the strategy.

I'm going to give a sport example. Ronda Rousey is super awesome at arm bars, and she's super awesome at hip throws. They are her strengths. They work together to achieve the goal of winning the fight. She can slam someone with a hip throw and while they're dazed she can put them in the arm bar. An effective strategy for her would be movements that exploit these two strengths. Getting close, distraction, softening blows, etc. If she were to create a kata, it would most likely involve different ways to exploit these two strengths. It would have a theme. It would be a group of tactics that work toward her larger strategy.

The common theme that I see in my flavor of Seisan is the explosive use of linear body movement and unbalancing an opponent through what could be called opposing action to knock them down. There are other things that can be gleaned, but most if not all of the movements I practice have the potential to just drop someone on their butt. There are other types of movements or "techniques" that can be gleaned from the kata, but to me these are the major themes. All the movements either help me do this, or help me get in a position to do this. This is of course just my opinion.

In short if you find the theme, you can find the strategy. You'll find the themes by studying how the kata moves you to deliver energy and what that kinetic energy has the potential to do. It's sometimes better to figure out what the moves are not good for.

This is just how I've tried to analyze it, and what I've found useful to me.

Why Hojo Undo Equipment is Cool and Stupid

Doing supplementary training exercises in the old fashioned way is pretty cool as a cultural study. I've used these old tools and it's pretty neat to discover exactly which muscles these old karate tools are used to develop. These are usually the deltoids, trapizious, the lats and the forearms. The exercises are performed for endurance because power endurance exercises are the kind of movements you want for physical conflict, but besides cultural study these tools are not necessary.

"If you don't use kigu, you're not practicing karate."

Read this recently and it made me roll my eyes. Almost all of these tools were some form of heavy household object. They ground rice were locks for doors or were just heavy stones. They were whatever you could find that was heavy. A modern equivalent would be lifting milk jugs or bags of kitty litter. In a hundred years it would look pretty silly to come across someone lifting their ancient traditional milk jugs because that's the true way that poor old great grandpa used to do. Besides the fact that the kigu came from Hawaii in the 1920s. The author of the above quote knows this, but I think some people are confusing form for function.

These grand old karateka were looking for results. Remember that there were no organizations, no belts, no ranks (as we know them) and no syllabus. You practiced however you felt made you stronger and you learned from others. You used what came to hand. Skill was what was important and not the kind you showed off to your friends, but the type that got you home at night. I'm fairly positive that if you could drop an Olympic weight set off at Matsumora's house and showed him how to use it, he'd be all over it. It's a lot more versatile than a rock.

If something is not about what you do, but how you do it than that's called aesthetics. Function has it's own kind of beauty, but form by itself is empty. It's an illusion. What counts are results.

There are plenty of free exercises that can work these same muscles. They're called calisthenics. You can look them up online and they only need a body. Your body. But then you'd just need to work hard, instead of playing with cool toys. Granted many of these tools can be made very inexpensively, but five dollars in my pocket is better than some more crap filling up my house.

The practice of one kata is the same. If I can learn karate from one kata than why should I pay someone for 20 if one will serve? Should I buy 20 different cars just in case, or twenty different corkscrews, 20 different kinds of axes? People love collecting this junk, but skill and creativity counts for more than possessions.

The Search Continues

There's a noticeable lack of any kind of decent martial arts instruction where I live. One instructor said it would only cost $10,000 for him to make me a black belt. Wonderful stuff. Another place has it's international headquarters in Boone, N.C. To date none of it's training facilities exist outside of North Carolina and Tennessee. I'm not sure they understand what international means. Maybe they meant, intra-national. It's some type of kung fu school, which is even more hilarious.

Every few months or so I check Meetup.org to see if there are any training groups in the area. It's a website that's basically designed to bring people with common interests together. I did find martial arts groups, but all were thinly veiled advertising. "Try three free lessons and let's show you how we can turn you into a master martial arts killer." It's depressing, sickening and frustrating at the same time.

The martial arts seem to be one of the only activities where the majority of people are completely devoid of brains. People seem to be able to gather rather easily for games of flag football and book discussions. There are even historical European martial arts organizations around, which are just groups of people messing around and seeing what works. Once you put someone in white pajamas and start playing karate well than you better pay up, shut up and stand in line. You want your pretty belt right?

For an activity that seems to pride itself on character building and is supposedly not about fighting, lots of people seem to need giant boosts to both their egos and their bank accounts by teaching fighting techniques. Oh wait, that's just marketing, most of these places couldn't teach you how to tie your shoes properly. It's sad really.

Of course what do I know? I have no belts or certificates and no dojo, because these can't be faked or worthless. They're just like legal tender or universities you know. I'm just some asshole who loves karate, but I don't pay a studio's rent, so it doesn't count. Right?

Okay, so it's another rant, but people should think long and hard about what they think they're practicing and what they're really doing and why they're doing it. Paying bills doesn't make you a karateka. It makes you a sucker.

Changing Gears and Getting Started

I'd like to try and switch gears a little bit with this blog and try and focus on its true intent, which is encouraging the individual study of karate through the practice of a single kata. While this has always really been the case, it's easy to get pulled into tiny little details regarding different types of practices and traditions. This usually involves a lot of critiquing, which can be fun and enlightening, but overall it can be very negative and exhausting. It does very little to encourage people in their own independent study. I'm going to try and remedy this as best I can.

There are many obstacles that can stand between a person and their ability to practice karate in the conventional sense. Time, money and location are the biggest three hurdles that keep a person from engaging in this very fulfilling activity. Money can be tight, a good place to learn can be far away and many people work odd shifts to support themselves and their families. Luckily kata can be both the textbook and the tool.

The study of karate can be achieved independently from any other person or organization with the practice of a single kata. It is however a very daunting prospect to undertake, but no more daunting than practicing at your local commercialized school. With diligent practice and an inquisitive attitude, it's possible to learn a great deal from one kata on your own. It's important to note however that because you are only focusing on one kata, you will not be learning a style, brand or type of karate. You will be studying your karate and it will be whatever you can make it. This is exactly the same as any other karateka, but you will not have the luxury of claiming status, legitimacy or the accomplishments of others through an established organization. There will be no cookie cutter template of acceptable practice, and there will be no one to hold your hand and point out any mistakes. You will be solely responsible for yourself. This is as it should be.

I am sometimes hesitant to characterize my own practice as karate, because karate in many ways is more of a combined cultural heritage made up of many kata rather than any single kata on its own.

To start, one must first find themselves a kata. You may already have a little background in karate and know a kata or two, but if you don't there are usually plenty of books available at your local library and there are thousands of videos on the internet to use as reference material. The Seisan and Naihanchi kata are fairly simple foundational kata. There are many different variations of each kata and there is no "true" version. Each usually just emphasize different aspects of the kata.

Even with personal instruction at a commercial dojo there is no guarantee that you will receive proper instruction. It's best to be patient, go slow, pay careful attention and practice. All the movements will feel unnatural and awkward in the beginning. This is normal. Keep calm and carry on.

To be continued...

Play Fighting

It's easy to take sparring too seriously. Martial artists go through great lengths to try and come up with effective "fight simulations," for them to hone their skills and it can sometimes involve complex rule structures, target substitutions and extensive protective equipment. We want the real deal. Safety is always the biggest concern, but put a grown man and a few children together and they can play fight safely without much fear of injury without any sort of rules, restrictions or even a safety brief. "Well that's just play. I'm training for a FIGHT." True, but all animals learn through play.

Kittens learn to stalk, pounce and hunt through play. Full grown cats still play. Just get some string out and watch as their eyes go wide and see them start to pad softly towards it waiting to strike. Dogs play as well. They learn their social dominance games through play, which they later use to decide hierarchy in a pack setting. Even prey animals play through chasing and running, practicing the same tactics that they'll use to try and evade predators. To a certain degree, we do this as well when a father rough houses with his children. We all know how to play.

For some reason, humans need to be serious when we train to do serious things. But play is a good safe way to try and improve our fighting skills. Usually it isn't power or even technique that we need practice with, but adapting. Flowing with another person, learning to recognize openings and opportunities. According to Rory Miller, it's one of the four ways that help ingrain skills along with teaching, training and conditioning. Give it a try. Tell your training partner that you're just going to play around for a little bit. I bet you end up training twice as long and having twice as much fun.

It's also possible to play on your own. Just imagine you're playing with someone and try and flow from one thing to another without taking it too seriously.

Looks are Deceiving

One technique that I love is a spine manipulation movement from Seisan. You put one hand on the small of a person's back, you put one hand on the person's chin and you push and pull while stepping forward. Even if you're really strong it's incredibly hard to fight. You feel yourself being crumpled backwards, but the leverage is so great that you just fold and fall. If you want to be incredibly damaging you step on one of their feet and instead of pushing on their chin you palm heel it then push. There's a possibility that you will break their jaw, neck and ankle and depending on the surface they're falling on their skull. If you do the technique nicely, you just tip them over.
All of these parts can be separated into their own techniques, but together you can have someone lying in a broken heap in the time it takes to take a single step forward. This is karate. The really cool thing is that most people think the movement is blocking a punch and finishing with an arm grab.

The movement done in the air looks like a open handed double block.

Using a Book for Kata Practice

I don't do this so much anymore, but one thing that really helped me get my movement down was practicing with a book on my head. Specifically a hard bound Thesaurus. One thing it does really well is pointing out excessive movement and movement at cross purposes.

Excessive movement is moving past your balance point, unnecessary weight shifts, and lifting up and sinking down while trying to move. These are the easiest ways to knock the book off. It's not the movement that makes the book lose its perch it's too much movement in different directions. To get the most out of using your body weight, you need to learn how to focus it's energy in any one direction without wasted movement. A good example of this is trying to use the crescent step, which is common to many styles and kata. With this type of movement, your feet move in this quarter moon fashion, but your center of gravity should move along a center plane. Your center of gravity should not wobble from side to side as you step. People however want to try and step in a heel toe fashion and shift their weight into the step after posting their weight on one foot and then sink into their stance. All someone needs to do is tap them to knock them over. By keeping your mass moving along the center, a person needs to fight all of your body weight plus your momentum to knock you over.

The book points out all of your little wasted movements and shifts, which serve no purpose. It must be remembered that the kata is a best case scenario for movement. It's the maximum bang for your buck as far as structure, acceleration and mass are concerned, but you need to be able to apply this in the sloppy environment of a fight through feeling and this can help. If you don't know what this feels like you'll always be guessing and this is a good first step.

But most importantly, have fun.

Mastery

Qualifications are a big thing in the martial arts despite most being completely worthless and some being only slightly worthless. Usually we like to talk about years of practice or hours of practice, 20 years, 30 years, 70 years, 5,000 hours, 10,000 hours, 30,000 hours. I've read recently that 10,000 hours was the master mark though I always go with the 30,000 hour rule, which would take about 90 years if one practices one hour a day. Ten thousand hours for me is proficient. It takes about 10,000 hours of education to get a PHD. 

More importantly does this matter? Not at all.

I don't really care about time spent training. I care about skill. If someone has been practicing half the amount of time I have and is super awesome than I want to find out what they have to teach me. The same as all the quacks that have 20-30 years of practice, who aren't worth bothering with.

If someone wants to try and get in that 10,000 hours of practice, go for it. I don't really care. They either do it or they don't, and they either learn something or they don't. It's up to them to do the work.

Only the people who are willing to continually learn, work, practice and play will get good at anything. The people who practice something hollow for 10,000 hours are only dangerous to themselves and doesn't impact me at all, so do what you like. I'll keep learning.

Is

The dojo is not karate.

It's not your sensei.

It's not your organization.

It's not your style.

It's not your lineage.

It's you, a kata and what you can do with both.

The Failure of Modern Karate-Do

Modern Karate-Do was never meant to be a practical self defense art. This is because of the Do or Tao, however you want to say it, which places the emphasis on spiritual development, Zen. Though a serious student of Zen doesn't call it that because it is The Way or Do. The serious applications of karate are not an essential part of this path of study. Despite this the practice still fails as a spiritual study because the techniques were not the only things that changed. The practice changed as well. This is where it went wrong.

Zen is sitting meditation, or zazen. It is posture, breathing and awareness. This is all. It's a simple exercise that sets a person on the path. You sit, you pay attention to your posture and breathing and let your thoughts go. Kata, a single kata, fills the same function as seated meditation. This was how karate was taught classically. This was how all the "founders" learned karate. Gichin Funakoshi spent ten years on the Naihanchi kata alone. Karateka learned other kata after they had a rock solid foundation in one. The parallel between Zen and karate is repeating a mundane task over and over and over again. It's repeating a single task as a foundation that slowly seeps into other aspects of your life. This is the aspect of karate that leads to self awareness, and it's one of the major changes the founders made.

I believe the founders misidentified the root of this spiritual development to karate itself instead of the repetitive act of a single task. They believed practicing all of karate would give you the desired result even though no one had practiced it this way. There was no reason to doubt this, but I think the results speak for themselves. The reason for this is they forgot about thinking.

Thinking is the big difference between meditation and none meditation. I'm not talking about ignorance or stupidity or knowledge, academic thinking. I'm talking about being present in the moment and focusing on what you're doing. Full commitment and intent on the task. Practicing several kata keeps you thinking all of the time. You think about your form, what you're doing, whether you're doing it right and whether you need to do it more. You're thinking about grading, testing, making your sensei proud, what you're going to learn next and the other students. Your focus is on everything except the moment. There isn't much to think about with one kata. Your focus is on one thing and your movement. The movement becomes as natural as breathing. The only goal is to practice the kata, so you practice the kata fully committed and intent, because there isn't anything else to think about. This is what leads to spiritual growth, not karate. One could do the same thing washing dishes.

We've had more than 60 years of modern karate-do. It has not created a legion of self aware people, who can become fully intent and committed to the moment. It has created a legion of people arguing about where your big toe should be pointed during a kata performance and how many years it should take before you tie different colored belts around your waist. Spiritual development has been the excuse for lousy karate, but modern karate-do lacks the characteristics to develop any spirit.

Don't Be Hampered by Form

Being constrained by form does not just mean following the embusen or the order of movements. It also means being confined to an idea of there being a beginning and end to movements and a stylistic expectation of how they should look.

Kata movements are portrayed as having a definite beginning, middle and end. Punch comes in and I start the beginning of the movement, move to the middle portion and then end the person punching me. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but this ties us to the form, because there is no beginning in kata.

It should be understood that there is no beginning, middle or end to any kata movement. This implies that there is time. Time to move through these steps and the absence of resistance. The world is never this clean or clear cut. There is no time there is only now. There is no pause and reset to get into the right position, so you can begin your technique at the "beginning." There is only the position you are in and what you can do in that position.

Every little bit of kata should be seen as a snapshot in time. A snapshot in conflict. This is where the "technique" begins.

One should also not be hampered by the stylistic demonstration of movements in kata. What is important is the principles behind what make those movements work, anatomy, physiology, geometry and physics. A middle block doesn't need to follow a certain path. It can be fluid and adaptable to suit the needs of the situation.

One needs to give themselves permission not to be pretty, but to be effective.

Motobu Choki's Watashi no Karate-Jutsu by Patrick McCarthy Review

My cat is currently nuzzling me to death as I try and write this. Apparently she thinks that sitting down in front of the computer is proof that I'm bored and free to pet her. On to business.

Karate my Art or Watashi no Karate-Jutsu by Motobu Choki has been on my wish list since I discovered it at the International Ryukyu Karate Research Society website. http://www.koryu-uchinadi.com/

 It's translated by Patrick and Yuriko McCarthy and is more of a compilation of articles and essays than just a single book. It even includes a piece by Kyan Chotoku, amongst other high level karate practitioners. There are much too many to names to list.

I've wanted this book for awhile and even though the book itself doesn't cost that much the shipping from Australia is steep. It's hard to justify, for me at least, spending almost $50 on such a short book. It was however completely worth it.

If you don't know who Patrick McCarthy is and you practice karate, shame on you. You're obviously not doing your homework. There's a laundry list of awesome things about him including a tournament career, full contact fighting career, time spent in China, Okinawa and mainland Japan doing extensive research on the history, application and theory behind karate and the developer of an old-school style of karate based on his habitual acts of physical violence theory, two person drills and kata. There's more, much more, but I'll stop here.

The book is short, very short and I can't help but think of Motobu as a kindred spirit. If I were to write a book on how I practice karate it would probably be very short as well. Many things in karate need to be learned for yourself. Even if someone flat out tells you what to do, if you don't understand the concepts than you won't believe them. This happens to me when I read the Bubishi. I think "Well crap it was written right there all along. Why didn't I just do that from the beginning?"

Motobu's book has more guidelines than instructions. He's definitely allowing room for people to figure out stuff on their own. This also shows the more fluid and flexible form of karate that was practiced in Okinawa during the time he lived. It seemed inherently understood that there were no hard and fast rules for anything that your only loyalty was to yourself and not your "style" and that it was expected that you would learn, change, adapt and grow your karate to suite yourself rather than stick to a rigid curriculum designed by someone else that was supposed to have all the answers.

Also contained within the book are his two person drills, training tips and some of his theory on the Naihanchi kata with a step by step guide on how to perform the kata.

One thing I found interesting about his take on Naihanchi was that the almost infamous elbow at the beginning of the kata is explained as a punch. When I read this my mind immediately raced back to Jack Depsey's book Championship Boxing, where he explains the mechanics of the hook. Elbow bent with the first and forearm almost parallel to the body with the power coming from the rotation of your trunk. I imagined having a head or neck in the crook of my elbow where I'd have much more leverage than at my hand taking advantage of my body weight and not my arm strength and twisting a sharp hook into someone's temple. If the person backed up slightly out of my grasp, the attack would instantly turn into an elbow without reorienting or rethinking about it. Two for one. Sweet.

This also shows a profound difference between the tactics of old school Okinawan karate and modern karate. Old karate is halitosis range wrap someone up and pound the crap out of them until they drop type of fighting. Basically that your "block" should prevent the other person from reorienting for another attack. They should be off balance, out of weapons and defenseless, while you rain down hell on them. This is very different than the fencing type quick exchange chess match style engagements that we see in modern prearranged kumite where after your first three attacks are parried you find the opening and end it with one precise "killing" blow.

I will say that this book is not about self defense. This book is about dueling and brawling, or rather mutual combat. It's not a handbook on how to deal with sudden unprovoked aggression, and I wouldn't expect it to be. Having a 100 street fights under your belt makes you qualified for street fighting not self defense in a modern first world country.

Overall, the book is wonderful, insightful and illuminating. I'd recommend it to anyone with a serious passion for karate.

I will add as an aside that I was very nervous about getting this book. I always advocate that people use the scientific method and try to disprove their assumptions rather than look for confirmation. This is easy to say and harder to do, because it's unnatural. This book for me was something that could either reaffirm my views on karate or completely obliterate them. Motobu being a known fighter, who trained in the classical ways of karate, before they were classical, could completely prove me wrong, because he actually lived his karate. He learned, trained and fought during a time of kakidameshi before there were concrete styles of karate. He was also dedicated to the old ways. If there was anyone who could completely change my views on karate it was this man. I'm happy to say that my views still stand and my convictions are stronger, but it doesn't mean I'm right. It only means I haven't proven myself wrong.



 

Karate Programming: The Wiring

Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.

This is something I heard in the Marine Corps, and I think it brings up an important difference when it comes to how we build neurological pathways in our brain. This is how we learn most anything, but it applies to karate as well.

The more we practice something the more neural pathways we build in our brain for that activity. Our brain has a property called plasticity where it can adapt itself and literally change it's structure to make certain activities more efficient. The more we perform a movement the more efficient our brain becomes in interpreting and initiating the movement. Walking is a good example.

We may forget this at times, but walking is a learned skill. Children learn how to walk through trial and error until they can get the timing and weight shift correct to walk without falling. The more the children walk the stronger those neural pathways for walking become until they become almost unconscious movement. If we are in good health, we usually don't have to think about putting one foot in front of the other and we use our body's ability to sense position to guide our movements instead of sight. It is the cumulative affect of those successful steps that lead to those neural pathways being strong. If the unsuccessful attempts outweigh or are even with the successful attempts than the neural pathways remain weak.

Karate practice must be the same way. Deliberate, consistent and with intent over and over again until the principles of those movements build strong neural pathways. The more movements the longer this takes, the more inconsistent the techniques the more those pathways become diluted.


In karate, we use structure to defeat strength. Proper bone alignment and posture leads to good structure, which must be perfect every time. We want to obliterate our enemy with a strike, not break our hand or wrist. Each movement must conform to proper mechanics and structure. Practice must be conducted carefully to only build pathways for the most efficient and most useful movements and techniques and weed out all those that are sub optimal or redundant.

The next step is conditioning those movements through operant conditioning to hard wire the correct circumstances where each movement can be used. We've perfected the movement now we need to give it a job to do.

Karate Programming: the hardware

I've spent a little bit of time writing about this in other posts, but I figured I dedicate a couple completely to this idea. The idea is that you can program yourself. Your body and your brain are adaptable. It's how we learn, it's how we get stronger and it's pretty easy to do if you know how to do it.

Training your body is very easy especially when it comes to physical attributes. We may not all have the genetics to look like Arnold in his hay day, but we can definitely make ourselves better. The answer is steady increase in intensity at planned intervals. It doesn't need to be much of an increase. We're not Olympic athletes for the most part. We can throw out much of what professional athletes do, because we're not training for a big game. We're training for an unforeseeable event that we hope will never happen.

All you need to know is how your body adapts to exercise. When you workout your body adapts by overcompensating the recovery of your muscles for future stress. This over compensation period occurs one to three days after you workout. It's important that you increase the intensity of your workout within this time frame, so that the pattern repeats itself. If you workout after this super recovery period your muscles will have reverted back to their previous state because you didn't stress them again during the appropriate time.

This is all you need to know about exercise. Pick some exercises you enjoy doing and go for it, and you can forget everything you ever read in the muscle rags.

It's important to recognize that professional athletes have huge amounts of resources behind them including constantly evolving manufactured performance enhancing drugs, which change the way you train. Steroids for example almost completely change the way you lift. When you take steroids, which I don't and never have, all you need to do is get your reps in. You've taken out your body's natural cycle of recovery, adaptation and hormone secretion. Basically the more you lift, the bigger you get.

The mental aspects of karate training is where careful planning and knowledge of how we build neural pathways for skills come into play. I'll elaborate on this more in the next post.

Things you learn practicing one kata

The first thing you learn is that you have discipline. It's kind of one of those Catch-22 things that you really need discipline to learn discipline, because if you don't have discipline you'll never practice enough to have it. You learn that you have discipline because it's really, really, really, really boring. At the beginning.

The first year of practicing only one kata you're just going through the motions. You might as well be dancing. But I found that it's very important to practice mushotoku. This is practice without the desire for gain or profit. It's a Zen concept and people jump down my throat sometimes about this, because they believe that Buddhism has no part in karate. I agree, but these same people usually have the suffix Do attached to karate. Read Gichin Funakoshi, he makes a distinction between karate and karate-do.

The concept kept me going because with one kata it's all you have. There's no belt testing, no classes, no new kata to learn, no new movements to master. It's just that one kata that you've chosen to master and it happens when it happens, you just have to keep going.

You obviously learn patience. There's really no need to rush because you're not going to understand things in an afternoon, or a month, or a year. I personally didn't start getting a handle on what I was actually doing until after year two. You get an idea, but it's nothing you can put your hands on. It's just a feeling.

You can tell when others understand their kata. They're not just moving their arms and legs. They're not miming movements. They are actually doing something in their mind. They completely understand everything they are doing. Their body moves in concert. Not everything is fast, because not every technique needs speed sometimes it just needs leverage.

You learn that the kata is part of yourself. It's hard to explain, but you come to learn it very intimately. You own it, you don't rent it. It doesn't stop because you stopped practicing at the dojo. The dojo is not going to make you a karateka. You are going to make you a karateka. I think this is appropriate, because if you practice for self defense you're the one that's going to save yourself. Not your sensei, or the style, or even your technique because when you get right to the bare bones of it, it's just you and only you. The kata is just a reference point.

You learn that you can get good fairly fast. At least compared to how most karate dojo train. It's just arithmetic. A thousand hours of one kata is a thousand hours of one kata. A thousand hours of 10 kata is 100 hours per one kata. A thousand hours of practice is a little less than three years of study if you study for one hour a day. So if you practice 10 kata for three years you'll have one hundred hours of practice for each kata spread out over that time. You hit the one hundred hour mark at three months and ten days if you only practice one kata. Like I said, arithmetic.

You learn a lot when you only practice one kata, and the best part is you don't need to pay anyone to do it. You can do it in your backyard.

A simple karate exercise routine

I threw out my back a few days ago, and It's just now feeling well enough to do a little training. Kata only no exercising for me, which I hate. Exercise fills a different need for me than the karate. Some people feel that physical fitness and the martial arts go hand in hand that being a better weight lifter will make them a better karateka. I'm not picking on lifting it's just that "workouter" sounds weird. Exerciser? While physical conditioning is a must if you're an athlete, policeman, a member of our armed services or anything else that's highly active and intense, it just isn't all that necessary for self defense. If being big and strong was all you needed to overcome others than martial arts books would look more like exercise books. I personally workout to look good naked. Oh and the health benefits. I forgot about the health benefits.

There are benefits to being at least moderately in good shape for karate. You can train longer, you'll be less prone to injury, and you'll just be healthier. One of the true benefits of exercise on karate is weight. If you're a skinny guy, like I used to be, bulking up will give you more power. This has nothing to do with muscle power and everything to do with mass. If you have more mass, and you learn to put it in motion than you'll have more power. So if you want you can just sit on the couch and each junk food and it will do the same thing. But it's unhealthy, and you won't look good naked.

Here's a very simple workout routine that you can do to help both your karate and your body. You perform five sets of burpees with one kata repetition between each set. So it will look like this.

This is a burpee.

Kata (warm up)
1st set of burpees
kata
2nd set of burpees
kata
3rd set of burpees
kata
4th set of burpees
kata
5th set of burpees
kata
done.

Depending on how many burpees you pick for each set this routine will only take you about 15 to 20 minutes. When I've done this, I use the kata portion as a rest meaning I go slow. I like to practice kata slow anyway, but I don't go fast. If you want to go fast you can, but the burpees will kick your butt.

Picking the number of reps is the tricky part. I'd experiment a little, maybe start with 5 for each set. If you're really gung ho than you can do 10 per set. I'd wait at least a day between routines, but no more than two days of rest. For steady improvement, just add one repetition to a set each workout. So you'll start with 5-5-5-5-5 and the next workout will be 6-5-5-5-5 and the next workout will be 6-6-5-5-5 and so on.

This has worked really well for me in the past. It's basically just a version of interval training, but without all the timers and junk. I like it because it gives you a good workout, you don't need equipment and you can do it basically anywhere.

Those that think they practice

In karate, there's always a tendency to separate one's dojo from those other dojo that don't practice right. The mcdojo and the dojo, the modern and traditional, Japanese and Okinawan. All of them feel they are practicing the "correct" way. One big distinction I find is those that think they practice bunkai and those that don't. Take note that all of these schools usually accuse each other of basically being McDojo.

Those that don't practice bunkai are sometimes called Punch, Kick, Block, or PKB. It's pretty self explanatory in that they believe everything in kata is either a punch, a kick or it's a block to a punch or kick. It's just as ludicrous as most other explanations. These schools usually have as many kata or more as others and they practice all of them for rank testing. They usually call themselves traditional, just like every martial arts school in existence. Why they believe they'd need 20 different kata making up what they believe to be very different scenarios for what's essentially three techniques I'm not sure. This is usually the type of school that the "real" traditional schools hold their nose and point at. "They don't get it," the others say. I don't agree to this interpretation of karate either, but at least it's more consistent. Their training methods are clearly only focused on punching, kicking and blocking and while it doesn't match up to the kata, you can still be pretty effective with just punching, kicking and blocking.

The karate schools that usually poo poo the above type of school are the ones that think they practice bunkai. What's the difference between these schools? Almost nothing. They practice several different kata, usually around 20, and all their drills are focused on punching, kicking and blocking. The only real difference is their acknowledgement of different interpretations, sort of. This type of school will fawn over bunkai wizards, go to seminars and camps, and the grand master may at one time or another show the super secret meaning of one portion of the kata. Do they ever practice these interpretations? Almost never. The basic punches, kicks and blocks are the same as the above school. Even if a school recognizes a block as something better and greater, they still teach it the wrong way. The drills are still defenses against karate attacks and any different applications either don't work or are practiced so sporadically that they are of no use. Bunkai is usually just used as proof that karate works and that the kata aren't just meaningless dances. "See karate works because that other guy practices it that way. Now more air punching and high kicks," they say.

It's even worse when these schools save their garbage for the "advanced" ranks. They have to keep you coming through the door somehow. I've never understood the logic of spending four to five years teaching people the wrong thing, or in this case "the basics," just to turn around and basically say that what they've taught you isn't the real thing. You'll spend the next few years trying to train out all the bad habits you picked up. The high block you've been practicing at the wrong distance and for the wrong reason is really a limb clear and a strike, good luck retraining yourself.

The real amazing thing is that people are usually so brainwashed by this point that they don't even question it. If the same thing was done with any other subject, you'd just laugh.

Imagine if you were taught math the same way. You spend five years practicing how to write the numbers. They even teach you arithmetic, but 2+2=5 and 1x0= 10. Upon perfecting the "basics," you graduate to advanced arithmetic where you keep practicing as before except sometimes 2+2=4 and 1x0=0, but only sometimes. What would you learn? Basically nothing.

If a school is going to teach the application of kata, it should be done as the student learns, starting with fundamental concepts and building on them in a way that the student can use them creatively. All drills and exercises should tie back into those fundamentals and one should not have to learn one way and then unlearn it to learn the correct way.

Silent Evidence and the effectiveness of martial arts

I've been listening to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, and in it he brings up some very interesting points about how we perceive evidence and our world. The book itself is about events that have far reaching implications and effects and how we can't predict them, but since I'm a martial arts and more specifically a karate nut, I see karate in everything.

One idea is that of silent evidence. I'll try and paraphrase the example given in the book. In the book a philosopher is shown tablets bearing the portraits of those that prayed to be saved from a shipwreck and lived. This is given as evidence that praying will save you from death by shipwreck. The philosopher asks "Where are the portraits of those that prayed and drowned?" So the idea is that the refuting evidence isn't around anymore to speak for itself.

Before I get into how this relates to the martial arts, I'm going to define what I mean as effective. When I say effective, I do not mean a martial art's effectiveness for fighting duels or the sporting arena. It can obviously be used for fighting with the effectiveness at about 50 percent. In a UFC bout, both participants are basically martial artists and there is one winner and one loser, so 50 percent, or a 100 percent success rate depending on how you look at it. I'm talking about effectiveness for self defense. This means keeping yourself safe from harm, or not dying.

Now you can almost always find evidence that (insert martial art) is good for self defense because Joe Martial Artist survived a violent mugging by using his super kung fu technique. I recently heard one of these stories except it was a street fight not a mugging, but it could have turned out really bad. You can find articles fitting this theme taped to most dojo walls. But, the idea of silent evidence tells us that the instances where Joe Martial Artist pulls out his super kung fu technique and gets stabbed to death will merely show up in the crime roll of our local newspaper as Joe Smith stabbed to death in robbery.

This means that we might never know whether any specific martial art, or martial arts in general, are effective or useful in a self defense situation.

This seems rather doom and gloom as if I'm bashing all martial arts. Well I am and I'm not at the same time. I feel that we should base the effectiveness of martial arts in the same way that we base the effectiveness of firearms. Mainly physics, and anatomy and physiology.

We know that a bullet has the capacity to kill someone especially if they are shot in the right place. The brain or heart. The kinetic energy of the bullet give it the power to damage. Martial arts should be viewed in the same way and just as seriously. With the correct movement a technique will generate the most physical force, or the force required, to damage anatomical weak points of the body or inhibit physiology. We can say with certainty that this has a very good probability of happening. What needs to be thought of as a gamble is the application of these techniques. We must therefore ruthlessly pursue those techniques that give us the best opportunity for minimal effort.

Martial arts for self defense should be viewed as a hedge against a bet that someone forces upon us.

Personally I think karate has an advantage in this regard because of the ambiguity of kata. It means we can do away with interpretations we find to be less optimal and adopt interpretations that are more optimal as we practice without changing the patterns of movement. Then all we have to do is retrain our frame of reference instead of retraining the movement patterns themselves. This allows for evolution, growth and creativity.