Showing My Own Bias

I definitely showed my bias in an earlier post on guards in karate. I've taken down the post, and I'm going to provide a little bit of clarification on the subject. I unintentionally skipped an idea that might have made things a little clearer.

Karate as I see it is an infighting system. It has a very particular range where many of the movements work best. This is chest to chest. It's much, much closer than many people practice their karate. In infighting there is no real guard. This is because offense and defense are not separated. They can't be because the distance is so close that a conventional guard no longer works. To stop an attack you have to break the person's balance and structure with your own attack. It's not about intercepting attacks, it's more about preventing them in the first place. It's not fool proof by any means, but neither is a conventional guard.

Infighting I believe is a better option for self defense. It's the range for which many predatory attacks take place, and a person is able to put all of their tools and techniques to use. Striking, grappling, gouging, throwing and locking are all options. This is opposed to longer range ballistic attacks, which limit the techniques you can use effectively. If you're beyond arms length from an unarmed opponent than you're relatively safe and should work toward escape or diffusing the situation.

To sum up karate for me is an infighting system, so there is no guard. Self defense and infighting aren't really separated in my head, so it was unfair of me to make such a blanket statement. These are of course just my opinions. I'll try to do better in the future.

No Nonsense Self Defense

I'd like to turn people's attention toward this website, No Nonsense Self Defense, which I've added to my links. I've mentioned it before in another post, but I just wanted to repeat myself. It's full of great information on many subjects related to violence and self defense, and I encourage everyone to read it. I use this site as my bullshit meter. It helps me determine whether someone is trying to sell me snake oil. It's big, long and somewhat complicated so prepare to spend a few days glued to your computer reading all of Marc MacYoung's stuff.

Sorry if you recently tried to click on the link. It's now fixed.

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.

Staying Positive, and Play and Movement

Staying Positive

It's hard to stay positive as a karateka. There are so few definitive answers in conflict already, but karate seems incredibly ambiguous as well. There aren't many definitive answers in karate either. Usually the days where I'm positive that I finally understand the essence of my kata are the same days where I feel I know the least and should stop kidding myself. There are plenty of other things that can make me feel negative toward karate. Tribalism, cults, fantasies, politics, egos and money to name just a few. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I remember eventually that ambiguity is one of the things I like most about karate. If there is no right answer, there is no wrong answer, so I keep on practicing and stop worrying about it.

Play and Movement

In a very real way the kata tells you what you're doing. The kata teaches you about karate by making you move and speaking to you through that movement. You just have to learn how to listen. Learning how to listen involves playing with the movement and figuring out where your kinetic energy is going. Usually it's a combination of forward movement and dropping down into a stance using gravity. It's a feeling similar to falling, but you fall into a stable structural stance, like front stance if exploding forward. There's also rotational energy and using leg strength to push up into a technique.

Figuring out in what direction your energy is moving is key to understanding what you can accomplish with the arm and leg movements attached to each portion of a kata. Body weight, gravity and structure are what power techniques. It's what makes them work. How you move dictates what type of techniques you can use. So forget about what your arms are doing, while you practice and focus on your stance, your footing and where you feel your center of gravity moving or your hara.

The fun part.

This is really where play comes in. Practicing the kata as a kata is great, but it's a best case scenario situation to showcase use of body weight, gravity and structure. One needs to know how to apply them in a more free form fashion. Take a section from your favorite kata and play with it. Don't just repeat the movements like a drill. Change tempo, stance length, speed and direction. Make it a dance and just feel how your body is moving. Stretch a stance to it's limits. How wide can you get before you become unbalanced, how narrow can you get before the stance loses meaning, are you dropping or pushing, how quickly can you move between each position at random. Practice the stances, but keep them fluid, loose and mobile. We want good principles not aesthetically pleasing sculptures.

Don't be afraid to do things wrong. Doing something wrong can tell you more than doing something right. Structure and balance is particularly squishy meaning that it's more of a "within accepted parameters" concept rather than right or wrong. You want to find the limits of the movements, so you know how far you can stress your balance and structure. If you're off balance than you know how not to do it. Everything becomes a lesson.

Most importantly it comes down to thinking, feeling and playing.

Simultaneous Attack and Defense

Maybe 99 percent of martial artists that I come into contact with have no idea what it means to combine attack and defense. It's sad because pretty much 100 percent of karate techniques are attack and defense combined.

Usually when I read someone's work on this subject, they talk about a simultaneous block/ strike combination. A person punches and you block the attack and launch your own at the same time. This is not exactly the same thing. Attack and defense combined means that when you attack you hamper the other person's ability to attack. This is hard for people to understand with karate because they believe it is a strict striking art like boxing. It is not. The simplest example I can give of attack and defense together is a simple shoulder throw. The throw itself protects you from harm because it's really hard to launch an effective counter attack while you're sailing through the air. The attack and defense cannot be separated. Another example would be just getting a person off balance. If I put my foot behind someone's heel and then push, it will trip them. They may not fall, but they'll have to spend a half second reorienting before they can counter. While they're trying to reorient, I attack again. I'm preventing an attack in the first place. It's much easier to avoid attacks that are thwarted before they even start. Defense becomes more about prevention than reaction. Prevention is the best medicine.

Preventing an attack can be lots of things however and it's pretty easy to practice and it's the most annoying thing in the world if you get caught on the wrong end of it. Moving off line can prevent an attack because your opponent has to reorient himself to attack again. Grabbing someone by clothing and jerking them around while you pummel them in the head works really well also. An overwhelming flurry can be attack and defense as well. The opponent will have trouble attacking if he's too busy trying to defend against your flailing. It's not complicated.

Your opponent should only get one attack and that's the one you don't see coming. After that, well fuck'em, he had his chance and he blew it. It's your turn now and they don't get another because you don't let them have another.

Striking Post and Limb Control

I'm somewhat surprised by how much I'm enjoying the striking post, and it's added an interesting element to my training. It's basically an immovable object. It seems strange, but I actually prefer this. Some of the postures in Seisan require making contact with the forearms, shins and feet at the same time and you need something sturdy to practice these types of techniques with any force.

It's also made me pay less attention to limb control than I used to and I think this is a good thing. Limb control is shown mostly as moving someone's arm to open up a target. This is a wasted action. More than likely there is a target open for attack without moving a person's limb. If I attack that, I don't have to move anything except my own body. If I do move someone's limbs, I don't want to just move it out of the way. I want to put it in a position so it can't be used to attack me, or I want to use their limbs to lever them off balance. Preferably I'll do both at the same time.

The striking post helps me remember to fight the whole body and not just focus on navigating limbs. It's another example of direct action I guess.

Simplicity Over Complexity

I see much more complexity in karate than efficiency. I think this is a backlash to the kind of punch, kick and block interpretations that people are so used to seeing. Karate can't be too simple anymore. I fear that it's only been replaced by overly complex maneuvers and frankly just as preposterous situations. Just because something is complex doesn't mean that it's better.

There are straight forward, effective and robust movements in every karate kata. It's okay for karate to be simple as long as it's effective.

Grapplers vs. Strikers

There seems to be this long running debate since the UFC became popular about which is better, striking or grappling. It's basically a style war. Like style wars, it's completely idiotic. The style doesn't win the fight, the fighter wins the fight. Despite this it doesn't seem to stop internet warriors from arguing over the primacy of each, so I'll weigh in and give my opinion.

First of all, I don't identify with either. What? You're a karateka, so aren't you a striker? No I'm not a striker, I'm a karateka. If anything I'd call myself a stand-up grappler. Wrestling is deeply rooted in Okinawan culture and it had a profound impact on the development of karate. It doesn't just have striking and grappling. It is striking and grappling combined. Locking, throwing, breaking, hitting, all at the same time.

Striking and grappling are artificial divisions and from a practical self defense standpoint absurd. One shouldn't limit themselves to just one weapon. To quote Miyamoto Musashi "A warrior shouldn't have a favorite weapon." There are times when you need striking, there are times when you need grappling and there are times when you need both.

Grapplers do tend to do better in competition against strikers. There's a very good and simple reason for this. Grapplers can play harder than strikers. This isn't to say that strategies based in striking don't train hard. They train very hard, but in a different way.

A striker for the most part can't go all out during training with a partner. The concussive impact of a good striker can penetrate armor and protective equipment and still cause damage. Just look at the NFL and their problems with concussions. The point of striking is to cause damage and that's exactly what you don't want to do to your training partner. Strikers can only go all out on inanimate objects.

Grapplers don't have this problem. Grapplers can play at full force and intensity. Every training session can be completely dedicated to an all out rolling session and the chances of injury are relatively low. They get more hands on training, because when it comes right down to it grappling is less dangerous. A grappler basically has to ignore the tap to hurt someone. A striker just has to screw up his timing and targeting, which is easy to do with two fast moving independent bodies. This is because grappling, especially the sport kind, is about submission not damage. Their opponents give up, they aren't put down.

This isn't an argument for or against grappling or striking. Like I said, I don't identify with either. I'm a karateka. Each has it's uses and it's place and neither is an answer to all conflict. You might not be able to grapple if you get attacked in a bathroom stall and you probably don't want to shatter your drunk friend's knee so you can take his keys away from him. If you want to be able to perform better in more situations you should train to strike, grapple and do both at the same time.