Make Training a Part of Your Everyday Life

Ever since my daughter was born its been harder and harder to set aside a few hours of the day to practice. I now have minutes of practice scattered randomly throughout the day. It's one of the best things about single kata practice that I can take a minute and run through my form. One or two reps here and there, or practicing a section while cooking. This has led me to do all sorts of things to try and keep my physical fitness and karate level up.

Keep weights around the house.

I'll keep a pair of weights or kettle bells at different stations in the house and every time I walk by I make myself do a set. You could do the same thing with calisthenics.

Elastic bands

If you get bored of the weights I sometimes keep a bicycle inner tube slung across me and use it periodically as a resistance band. They take up very little space in a pocket as well.

Make everything harder!

If you do chores around your house or some other banal activity, make it more difficult. Practice stances while you clean. Practice the footwork of kata while moving around the house. Lately I've been sliding a five pound plate onto my brooms, mops and scrub brushes to make cleaning the floor a resistance exercises.

The basic idea is to Mr. Miyagi-hack your day to day. Turn everything into an exercise. It also makes doing the boring housework that comes with life a little more interesting.

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.

Inoculation to Pain

I'm not a big fan of body hardening, but I do think it has a place in karate training, but not the way that many people pursue the activity. Most karateka that I know of that engage in conditioning exercises do so to make their bodies more resilient to damage. They harden their knuckles and arms, their throats, their shins and sometimes their testicles through striking them with various objects or having someone strike them. I've seen very impressive feats done due to this type of training. But, I'm dubious of how much it actually protects you. Even if all your nerves are dead you can still break. I think body hardening can be a replacement for full contact sparring. Let me explain.

The only real value that full contact sparring has in my opinion is intensity and pain. If you're a self defense minded individual, it serves little purpose being so beat up all the time you can't defend yourself. The safety equipment required makes most karate techniques impossible and all the safety equipment in the world can't protect you from a concussion. If you're sport oriented and know the date and time of your next fight then you can do some really hard training and give yourself time to recover. The drawbacks out weigh any of the benefits in my opinion. This is where body hardening comes in.

The fact of the matter is that fighting hurts. Especially in karate when your forearms can become a cyclone of death meant to destroy anything it touches. We need to inoculate ourselves to pain, so we're not stopped in our tracks the first time we get hit hard, or strike hard. This is where body hardening comes into play. Body hardening allows you to slowly build up intensity and control the conditions to minimize the risk of injury. It doesn't take much to bang your forearms and shins on a piece of wood a few times a day, and you don't have to worry about your partner rattling your skull by accident. It's a much simpler way to see if you can take the pain than finding someone you trust to rumble with.

Marketing, half truthes and being young and dumb

Karate fills a special little niche of hate in the heart of many martial artists. I think it's a combination of easy target, confusion, ignorance and the none functioning. It's not that all karate fits these requirements, but there sure is a heck of a lot of it that does. To paraphrase Marc MacYoung, "Do you practice the 97% of karate that is useless or the 3% that can break you in half like a twig?" According to him, the only thing that karate people have in common is that they'll answer yes to this question. I guess we can take comfort in the solidarity of our mass delusion.

I really think the problem is marketing. Old and new marketing and personally I put most of the blame squarely on Gichin Funakoshi. I'll talk about him later, but I'm still wading through all the bullshit in Karate-do Kyohan.

Karate has been marketed for a very long time as a one-size fits all kind of deal. It's supposed to turn you into the pinnacle of courtesy, patience, virtue, blah, blah, blah, etc. All of this while turning you into an unstoppable killing machine. Basically people think you can get the technique by focusing on the spiritual or rather the jutsu from the Do. Do to me is The Way, capitalized because it's a proper noun not a suffix. This means Zen. While one can be a side effect of the other, this is an accident and not the intent. Let's look at art as an example. If one chooses to paint for the sole purpose of personal enjoyment than they may become a great artist. It's usually beneficial to enjoy the activity that you're trying to get better at, but if your paintings keep turning out like your 3rd grade nephew's fridge art it doesn't matter. It's just for fun. There is no need to pursue, technique, theory, science, trial and error, history or experimentation to get better. Now on the other hand if you want to become a great artist let's say through painting landscapes, it may develop spiritual and therapeutic aspects, but the main goal is to get better. You will practice, study, experiment, consume history, learn new techniques and practice some more.

The problem comes when one thinks they are practicing the techniques, when they are really practicing The Way. Practicing technique means preparation. The training is for things to come. Practicing The Way means being in the moment, fulfilling the practice and the goal at the same time. Turning the wrench to turn the wrench, not to secure the bolt. Painting to paint, rather than painting to become great. The Way does not require understanding, but technique does. Many zen exercises are just repeating a mundane task over and over and over and over again until you are able to detach and see the world for what it is because your filter is currently busy performing that mundane task.

So what's this have to do with marketing. Well if we look at the time period of the popularization of karate, basically the time periods just before WWII and afterwards there are several factors that need to be addressed to understand why a person might twist the facts a bit.

One is the youth, both the soldiers of Imperial Japan and the orphans of the aftermath of the war. If you're trying to channel their aggression and their energy you want something that is highly physical, might calm them down a bit and something that won't seriously injure them. Young men get into trouble, mostly because they're stupid. Trust me I used to be one. The last thing you want is for a young soldier to get pissed and break another young soldier because they got mad, or give an orphan a dangerous instrument that he'll unleash on the unsuspecting public. So you take some martial arts, strip out all the dangerous stuff and put the emphasis on courtesy, virtue, humility, self esteem and all this good stuff that's good for society, but you don't tell them this is what you're doing. You don't get students especially the young rowdy ones you want to control by calling it a spiritual exercise you say it's the most bad ass, unstoppable, killing system ever devised by man and because they want respect, status and strength, they're not even going to question you about whether what they're doing is real or not because they don't care. They think they're going to become unstoppable killing machines. You'll even have all these wonderful stories about great martial artists who used their skills to seriously mess people up.

It's great marketing, a great business model and it keeps people coming back. It's why it's still here. It's why traditional karate doesn't line up with the stories. It's why Funakoshi himself in his autobiography says that karate is not the same as how he was taught it in his youth.

Luckily there are people now scratching their heads and thinking "Wait a minute. How could karate have survived the hundreds of years of secrecy before it's popularity if it's the same as what we do now, because what we do now doesn't work and people that have to stake their lives on their skills generally don't survive long if their moves don't work."

Now the caveat is that if you're practicing it for the Do, for personal enjoyment or spiritual reasons than you can do it any damn way you please, because it doesn't matter and you shouldn't stop. 

Deeper than I thought

It's very hard to explain to normal martial artists what it's like to practice a single kata for years. I believe that they think they can imagine it, but I know that I never imagined that a kata could go so deep and yet be so simple at the same time. The closest I can come to explaining it is relating it to language.

A kata for the most part is almost like an alphabet. Kind of. Except some of the grammar is written into the alphabet itself. Almost like "i" before "e" except after "c." If it were written "A" "B" "Cei" "D" "iE" "F".

The steps for example in the Seisan kata I practice tell you how to power the hand movements, but also whether you are the one giving pressure or if you're receiving pressure. If you try and flip them around they don't work.

I'm digressing a little here.

Practicing a single kata is like being fluent in a language. You know it front and back, inside out and backwards. You can play with the words and structure to make jokes or whatever you want. It's also designed to work together.

The hard part is that for many martial artists, they feel that practicing the alphabet is speaking the language, and they assume that if something looks the same in two kata than it must be the same movement. Since there are no real hard and fast rules regarding kata analysis, I can't say this is wrong, but it would be foolish to make the same assumption about language. The English and Russian alphabets both have letters that look like a "b." If we assumed that they made the same sound we would be wrong. The "b" letter in Russian is pronounced like a "v" in English. Yet, they look exactly the same. It's only by comparing the letters around it and the words that they make that we see that they are different.

It's also hard to explain that the kata movements can be proactive and not necessarily reactive, and in Seisan at least the directions and movements have more to do with where you are in relation to the opponent and where you want them to be rather than a defense against any specific attack. This breaks the kata down into pretty easy to swallow chunks. It's really the only thing that we can know for sure about the opponent. They can either be in front, behind, on either side as well as inside and outside of the arms. It's rather simple, but the ramifications are rather large.

We can also assume that movements that are not done in a mirror fashion do not require the opponent to be in any specific orientation where as movements that are done with a focus on the right side and then practiced with a focus on the left side are for specific orientations because the left side needs to be trained equally as the right side. Like a left hand punch and a right hand punch, but grabbing someone's head and yanking it around doesn't require you to balance left with right. You'll get pretty much the same result no matter what.

This is just a little bit of the picture. When I first started practicing in this fashion, I couldn't imagine Seisan being more than just a simple collection of punch combinations and reactive drills to prescribed attacks, but the more I practice the deeper it goes.

Sport fighting versus Survival fighting: Part 2

After giving it some thought, I decided that this post needed a part two.

Another of the significant differences between sport and survival is the goal. Sport fighting is very much about domination. When you put someone in a choke or a lock you submit them. The ego is very much at play in the sporting arena. It's where people develop their ego. It gives them a sense of worth or meaning. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can grow wild. I think most martial arts boost ego rather than diminish it, but that's another post. This is the point of the sporting arena. It's about having fun of course, but it's also about proving that you're the best.

The goal of survival fighting is to end the conflict without injury, preferably to all parties involved. This does away with any legal entanglements or acts of retribution from those involved. Yes, if you have to injure a criminal you should expect violent retribution from them, their friends or even their family. It's something that is usually glossed over when talking about self defense. The easiest way to accomplish this is by running away. This is the real ego killer. Better to run and kill your ego than stay and kill yourself.

In the ring, fighters are matched by experience and weight. Unfortunately out in the real world your attacker will most likely be bigger, stronger and more comfortable with violence than you are. Just by being big and strong yourself can be a viable means of self defense on its own. A criminal doesn't want to fight, they want something. They're going to pick soft targets. If you were a criminal, would you rather mug the bodybuilder walking into the gym or the shaking elderly woman shuffling her way into the grocery store next door. It's just like in the wild, the old and sick are hunted down by the lions because they're easier prey.

In the last post I wrote a little about the difference in techniques and I'd like to expand on it a bit.

Submission fighting is very big in the sporting arena and it's very effective in this context, but for your average person who does not have a duty to act, like a policeman or security officer, they're pretty worthless. One exception possible being chokes, but only chokes performed from the front. (Because if they're performed from the rear you can just escape instead of choking them, so it's not self defense.)

Let me lay down a scenario. A person attacks you without provocation, so it's legitimate self defense at this point. You get dragged to the ground where you put him in a skillful arm bar. Now what? In legal terms force is only legal if the threat is still present. This does not mean the person is still present, but the threat. The arm bar neutralizes the threat, but now you are kidnapping, which is a felony. You can't break the arm legally speaking because you stopped the threat. To escape you'll have to let go and hope the guy doesn't become a threat again. See the problem. Locks not only immobilize the threat, but yourself as well and escape is the goal.

The fact is that you'll be most likely outmatched in size and strength, taken unawares and will most likely be injured. To survive this you might have to do some really brutal shit. The equivalent of shooting someone with a gun. There's a reason you don't see this in the sporting arena.

Sport fighting versus Survival fighting

Due to the growing popularity of combat sports like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, there is a tendency to mistake these athletic competitions with survival fighting. It's a mistake that I encounter frequently. People mistake the artificial environment of the arena with violent encounters out in the real world.

The explanation for the difference between sport and survival usually has something to do with the rules. Sports have rules and survival is thought not to have rules, but this isn't entirely true. Self defense is a legal concept. It has to do with laws, statutes and evidence. One cannot use more force than is required to extract themselves from a dangerous situation. Therefore, if one is to survive after the violent encounter one must follow the rules of society.

The rules that specifically draw the line between sport and survival is that of targeting and striking surfaces. Almost all of the first response targeting areas in self defense are illegal under most sporting rules. The neck for example is off limits in the UFC. A solid blow to the side of the neck can knock a person out. A blow to the front can crush a person's windpipe. A blow to where the base of the skull meets the neck can kill. The eyes, groin, ears, kidneys, back, knees, joints and fingers are also illegal targets.

What can be used to strike is also limited. Open hand techniques are banned, as well as headbutts and dropping elbows. It is also illegal to kick a downed opponent.

These rules are good for the sporting arena. They encourage fighters to fight square on and pound on the strongest parts of the human body with some of the weakest. It prolongs the fights and ensures that participants won't end up permanently injured. It would be dangerous to assume that the same techniques used in the sporting arena would work in a violent confrontation.

In sport bringing someone to the ground and submitting them is a solid tactic. A single-leg takedown requires you to change levels and scoop up one of your opponent's legs. This requires you to present one of your most vulnerable targets to your opponent, the back of your neck. A dropping elbow could easily kill you.

Keep in mind that the rules of sport are not in place because they are not effective. They are in place to keep the participants safe. If you're fighting for your life, the last thing you want is for the other guy to be safe.

Magic in the martial arts

It doesn't come up very often, thankfully, but you do run into a fair amount of mysticism in the martial arts. Karate is not immune to this unfortunately.

I recently came across a person claiming that practicing kata would allow you to regulate your internal energy flow and double your strength. Something to do with a person's biofield and electromagnetic field.

This is nonsense.

Not only is is pseudo-scientific hokum, it's also incredibly dishonest. It's also very disturbing the number of people that buy into this type of quackery. Obviously, some people are taking 70's kung fu movies a bit too seriously.

The believers will claim that gaining superpowers. (It's almost too ludicrous to write.) Is the result of subtle energy fields that are not yet known to modern science. This might have been the case fifty years ago, but physicists today now have the capacity to detect some of the most minute sub-atomic particles in the universe, such as the higg's boson, which is what gives all things mass and is the cause of this wonderful thing that makes life possible, gravity. I'm sure that we'd be able to detect a phenomenon  that would cause a person to double their strength without regular exercise.

The United States government in the past has also funded research into such hokum as remote viewing and astral projection. This is supposedly when a person's consciousness leaves their body and travels to far and exotic places, not to be confused with spring break in Mexico. I'm sure that if the government feels fine with wasting its money on this than they wouldn't mind wasting it on biofields to double a soldier's strength.

Unfortunately the martial arts is filled with such scams and many other types of dishonesty. It's tempting to just let people practice as they wish and let the sheep get fleeced, but this is dishonest as well, but there is a simple solution. The next time someone tells you it's possible to gain  magical powers by manipulating imaginary forces you laugh at them and walk away.

The Never Ending School

My biggest beef with karate schools is that there is no ending. Don't get me wrong I love learning. I've made it an essential and enjoyable activity in my life, but if you're teaching a skill at some point the teaching needs to stop and people need to start thinking for themselves.

At any school, academy, college or university, there are classes and one takes them to learn a skill. Once the skill is learned, the classes stop. It's possible to carry this very far until one receives their PHD or equivalent degree, but then the formal instruction ends and self learning begins. This is reasonable.

A karate school on the other hand does not operate on this premise. A karate school is designed to make the students attend classes for as long as they are able. It's not uncommon for people that have been studying karate for 20-30 years to still attend classes on a weekly basis. All the kata have been learned and hopefully the applications have been learned but they keep showing up. In the context of a social activity this is awesome. In the context of learning a skill this is terrible.In any other skill if you've been taking classes for 20-30 years and still need to attend classes regularly than you suck. Have you ever heard of anyone taking piano lessons for 30 years? Probably not. They might study for 30 years, but they aren't paying their music teacher for that entire time.

It's possible for a karate student who has trained for a couple of decades to be more competent and more knowledgeable in karate than his instructors and still be paying those instructors for classes. I call this a scam. Like having your chakras realigned by a crystalagist every week to keep your chi flowing.

A person shouldn't have to practice karate for four years just to start learning. It takes five years to master a single kata and two years at the most to become competent in that kata.Why spend four years learning what amounts to dance routines and then spend the rest of your life trying to train out all the bad habits you picked up in those four years.

Karate is a concrete skill. It is physics, anatomy and movement combined to cause harm or prevent it. It is nothing more than that.

Designed for sport

When I first started training in karate, I studied at a very traditional dojo run by Doug Perry. We had two classes of kata per week, one weapons class and a kumite class. Basic 3K karate meaning kata, kihon and kumite. It's the basic template for most traditional dojo. Traditional dojo usually try and set themselves apart from "modern" karate, the type of freestyle martial arts, which is more about stunt choreography and showmanship than practical technique, by advertising as not being a sport. The focus is on personal development, or spiritual growth.

I accepted this to be the case, because my sensei said so. I didn't really have any reason to not trust this because I hadn't done the research. The more research I do however leads me to believe that classical karate was intentionally changed and made more superficial to fit into a sporting format for recreation. This I believe is what gave rise to what we usually refer to as traditional karate or post WWII karate.

For a martial skill to be useful or practical it needs to be simple, easily deploy-able and effective. This can be supplied fairly easily. Think of police or military training. It doesn't take twenty years to train a soldier or a policeman. It can take a few months at the very least.

Traditional karate fills none of these criteria. It's techniques can be simple, but because of the sheer number of named techniques knowing the correct circumstance to use any specific technique is almost impossible. It's why you see karateka windmilling and losing their technique when pressed. It's not that they don't know any techniques, it's because they know too many. It's not easily deploy-able because it takes years and years of training to even become competent. How long does it take to master traditional karate. Probably 50 years. If you start at 30 years old you'll be able to successfully defend yourself by age 80. The failure of these two criteria make it not very effective.

When looked at from a sporting perspective, traditional karate makes a lot of sense.

Kata is used as performance art. Only a very superficial understanding of the kata is necessary. It's possible to win kata tournaments and have no idea what any of the movements mean. The number of kata available to a person is firmly in the double digits. This allows for extended years of practice just learning the patterns of these kata. It also offers a handy way to separate people into subsequent rankings. Kata 1-5 are beginner kata, kata 6-10 are intermediate kata and kata 11-15 are advanced kata. This basically ensures that a person can't compete if they only know one kata, no matter how good or competent they may be at it.

Kihon then becomes the artificial links that supposedly bind all the kata together, but they more importantly serve as the watered down list of techniques allowed in competition. Notice all the dangerous techniques that are designed to end a violent confrontation immediately are not among the basics, even though putting down an opponent is the entire point of karate.

Kumite is obviously the most sport like of all the aspects, but it can be ignored in some traditional dojo as if not participating in one event makes them more practical even though they participate in the performance art.

We're left with a sport that can be enjoyed by young and old. This makes it rather wonderful for recreation. When you're young you play tag, when you get older you perform kata and when you get even older you enjoy karate in a more internal way, and there's a handy rank structure to keep everything tidy and organized (for the most part). There's nothing wrong with this.

This is perfect for sport, but terrible for practical application.

Bunkai Wizards

Two gi clad men face each other. One punches and the other unleashes a torrent of locks and strikes ending with a throw performed with a flourish.

I see it all the time on YouTube channels. Someone else coming out with their own interpretation of kata. There's nothing wrong with this. I love that people are thinking more about kata, but the applications still have to be good.

I call these people bunkai wizards. I call them this because they seem to pull techniques from thin air without regards to structure, physics or an uncooperative opponent. All while disregarding each kata's individual combat strategies. It always looks good in the video because the other person must stand still after the first jab and wait for the person demonstrating to rain down holy hell on them.

If the technique works than the person being demonstrated on shouldn't have to hold still. They should be actively trying to make the technique fail. If the technique still works than it's a good technique. Think of a simple punch. Does an opponent need to be ignorant of what a punch is for you to crack his head open? No, they just need to be open. It's even okay if they know you're going to punch as long as they can't stop you from connecting.

The applications I see usually have too many steps, have points of failure and rely on specific responses from the opponent. As a general rule one should strive to put a person down in three movements. Not three techniques, three movements. The best case scenario is not having to take action at all, but a close runner up is just one movement.

Every movement/ technique should end a conflict immediately if done correctly. This includes escape.

Offensive foot work

Seisan, like many kata, includes offensive footwork. Every step forward should send your shin, knee and foot into the leg of the opponent. This same movement also generates the power for the hand movements of the kata. These movements are used in conjunction to attack the opponent from above and below simultaneously.

Besides injuring your opponent, it also increases the chances of off balancing him and creating an opening for a strike, throw or trip that could end the confrontation.

Fighting distance

Seisan kata is an in-fighting system. It's techniques really start to shine when you're close enough to hug someone. I sometimes say it's the distance of your shoulder to your elbow or your hip to your kneecap when in sumo stance. Others might say that it's fighting within clinching range.

Outside of this range most of the techniques become worthless. It's because of this that one must intimately know their own fighting range and stick to a strategy that highlight's it's strengths. Seisan is not a passive kata. It charges in and grinds people up, so staying this close is in keeping with it's strategy and strengths.

By the numbers

The way most people are taught techniques is through memorizing applications to counter specific attacks. Someone punches and you block, someone grabs your lapel and you perform lapel break number 4, someone grabs your lapel with his little finger out and you perform lapel break number three, someone has their wrist bent at a 30 degree angle and you hold your mouth just right and then you can perform wrist lock number 47. This is basically a list and a list is not art. Art has to do with creativity.

Having a response plan for every little circumstance is like having a stack of paint-by-numbers kits. You can paint a lion or a landscape, but it doesn't make you an artist, because it doesn't teach you to be creative. It teaches you to fill in the boxes with the right colors.

An artist takes his brushes and his brush techniques and applies them to an empty canvas to create something new. Will it be wonderful the first time, probably not, but he's still flexing those creative muscles in his brain. This is how karate techniques should be used. They are not used to combat specific situations. They are used to combat general situations by the application of principles, but they need to be used creatively. This is achieved through creative practice.

Creative practice is allowing a person to experiment with the techniques. They are no longer answers to specific questions, they are tools used to accomplish a task just like the painter's brush. Instead of drawing a picture you're learning to take someone out.

A laundry list is not art, creative expression of ideas is art. Karate is an art, not a list.

Every action has a weakness

Every technique, movement, action has a weakness, an opening that is created because of its very nature and physics.

A choke for example usually requires a person to use both of their limbs leaving most of their body unprotected including the highly sensitive testicles. A crushing grip and a tug like you're starting a lawnmower will give many people incentive to let go.

Punches leave you unprotected on one side, kicks leave you standing on one leg, locks can be easily countered if they are unsupported by the ground, a car or a wall. Everything has a weakness. Guard the head and you leave the kidneys, liver, solar plexus and floating ribs vulnerable on the torso. Even the way you stand has weaknesses. Squat down low and you can stop a line backer from the side, but a baby to your front could tip you over without much effort.

It's important to be aware of the weaknesses of each type of technique and to use those weaknesses as the basis for your counter attack. The opponent will basically be telling you where to attack. He attacks high and you attack low, he moves left and you move right. This is sometimes called fighting the void or fighting emptiness. You go to where your opponent isn't.

One of the advantages of training in a set amount of techniques is that you can become very aware of your own openings and take advantage of them by having prepared responses to close those gaps. You'll know what the opponent is going to do because you give him no other option.


Know where the weaknesses are and you'll always have an opening.

A small lesson in body mechanics

The elbow is a hinge joint and one of the best points to gain leverage against another person. It's also one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when i watch limb control videos.

For reference when I refer to below or above the elbow, I'm using the anatomical position as a point of reference. This is a person standing erect with head forward and palms facing forward.

There are two ways to control the elbow and the way you do it depends on whether you are inside or outside of an opponent's attack. Being inside of attack is like being hugged. You are between the attackers arms. Being outside is the opposite. You are outside of the attackers arms.

If you are outside of the attack you want to push above the elbow moving the arm across the opponent's body. This will twist the spine very easily and compromise their structure. It will also block off an attack from the opponent's other arm. Being below the elbow on the outside is very dangerous. The arm can bend leading to a nasty elbow into your face. With control above the elbow this isn't possible. This also has the added benefit of accomplishing defense and unbalancing at one time in what can just be one move.

If you are inside of an attacker, one must control the arm below the elbow on the forearm. It isn't a very good leverage point when used in this way, but it keeps the arm from bending around your defenses and attacking you with any number of strikes.

A quick review.

Above the elbow on the outside.

Below the elbow on the inside.

What you need to learn karate

The answer is simple.

A kata, patience and hard work.

The masters of old would study a single kata for years to study every small detail so that they could use it to brutally breakdown an opponent should they be called upon to do so. Understand that many old karate men were brawlers, bodyguards and police. They practiced in their yards or behind closed doors in the middle of the night wearing normal clothes and learning through patience and diligence.

In Gichin Funakoshi's autobiography, he explains how they never even received instruction on what the movements meant. They only practiced, practiced and practiced some more.

This is all that is necessary.

The reason you don't hear this being offered as a viable option from karate instructors is because they have a conflict of interest. Mastering a single kata takes years, mastering multiple kata takes decades. Karate instructors make the bulk of their money off tuition fees and belt testing. Without several kata they would soon run out of things to test and once a student mastered the kata there would be little reason to keep paying the instructor. With ranks, multiple kata and the idea that it takes a life time to master karate, they can keep students paying for decades.

Kata the Scales of Destruction

In music one practices scales for several reasons. Muscle memory, dexterity, technique, theory, ear and tune, but most importantly because they are the building blocks of music. Kata is much the same way.

A single kata is a scale. It contains the notes and the order of the notes to be most effective and it can be used to practice many of the same skills as in music, muscle memory, timing, dexterity and so forth. One practices the kata to get better, but kata is not conflict just as scales are not music no matter how sweet they sound. It is an exercise. Like scales the notes or movements of the kata once understood are used in creative and sometimes spontaneous ways to defeat an opponent. This doesn't apply only to the order of perceived "techniques" but the motions of the techniques as well. It's the principles that are important.

Also like scales, each individual kata stands on it's own. While there is overlap in technique between each kata, because each kata is a complete and integrated fighting system each has it's own strategies, which may or may not work together just as one cannot take a C scale and A scale and shove sections together and expect it to be melodic, while one can readily mix up the sections of a single scale and begin to play with making music.

This is where one starts making the departure from exercise into art. Technique is not art, the creative use of technique is art.

Principles and Strategy

I've been thinking a lot about the principles and strategy of Seisan. Use your body weight to power attacks, use both hands, attack on multiple levels, control the head, strike to disrupt and fight the void are some of the general principles of the kata.

It's a little easier to name principles than strategy because the principles of Seisan align with the principles of many karate kata. The strategy of the kata is a little trickier. From what I can tell the strategy is to unbalance the opponent with direct hand and foot patterns and then throw violently to the ground. Basically, disrupt, unbalance, throw violently could be called the overall strategy of the kata as I practice it.

First you must disrupt the opponent's actions, whether that be an attack or just movement to make sure that the opponent cannot cause damage. The next part is to unbalance the attacker in some way to ensure that they cannot continue the attack and to set up the throw. Once the opponent is unbalanced they are thrown violently to the ground.

It's important to understand the strategy of Seisan because we want to practice goal oriented karate. It's not enough or prudent to know a handful of disjointed techniques if we don't know what they are meant to achieve or how they work together than they are just a list, not a tool and definitely not art.

Kata a book written in motion

Kata at it's heart is an instruction manual. A book that tells us through movement how to potentially protect ourselves.

Listen to what your kata is telling you.