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 Love Karate?

Hard question to answer. My journey in karate, like many people's, is almost purely circumstantial. I started because there was a dojo in my hometown, which was close by and I could afford the membership fees. A traditional dojo, whose curiculum mirrors programs designed to promote Japanese militarism and physical fitness rather than martial art study. People generally are also ferociously tribal for no real reason. Right now it's a hobby, which costs me absolutely no money.

The reason I love karate now is that it is democratic, meaning it can be practiced easily by everyone, and it can be used as an intuitive and instinctual form of physical combat. Anyone can learn a kata and start practicing at home. General principles can be followed, which make a kata a pretty brutal form of violence. We must remember that the kata survived till the modern period because they were easily transmittable, people were able to learn at night or travel abroad for a few years and become proficient. They also needed to work. All those, which practiced a bad kata, more than likely were either forgotten or lost because it got you killed. In violence, what doesn't work gets you killed. The kata we see are the survivors.

This is why I love karate, which is why I want to share it with people. You don't need a dojo, or a belt, or tradition or any of this stuff that decorates most places windows. You just need a little bit of space, some patience and a few minutes a day to play around with the kata.

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.

Pressure Point Knock Outs

To paraphrase Rory Miller, if these pressure point knock outs were real than no one would survive a good massage.

I know you've probably seen the same videos as me. Some guy taps someone on the neck or the chin and they collapse like a boned fish onto the mat, and this guru has to do some sort of back rub to get the guy conscious again. This is stupid. People believe this stuff because they want the martial arts to be like magic. They want to power up like Dragon Ball Z, and turn into some ultimate unstoppable thing with their chi. Maybe not this exactly, but it's pretty close. I used to be one of these people. I wanted the martial arts to be magical and mystical. Some dojo don't try to refute this type of stuff. In some ways they encourage it when they say "you'll be able to unlock the kata subconsciously when attacked." It's playing on people's insecurities that they need an ultimate weapon.

I put this kind of stuff in the same category as the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, alien abductions, moon landing conspiracies and astral projection that is the utter crap category.

Edit: I'd also like to say that I don't care for pressure point fighting in general. Like I've said, I broke my arm riding my bike. Because of the adrenaline dump, I was able to pick the bike up, fix the chain and ride home. An hour later, I couldn't even lift it, so I find the idea of performing some type of vulcan nerve pinch rather dubious.

Skill Not Included

This is something that's been bouncing around my head for a little bit. Skill is not included when it comes to kata movements or even analysis of those movements. I think skill is a foreign concept to many people. We can watch a professional athlete, a musician or an artist and enjoy their skill and on a certain surface level we know what a skill is, but we don't necessarily understand it. Most of us are much more familiar with just following instructions on some type of electronic gadget, or putting together some sort of boxed furniture from the store. Insert dowel A into recess G, or after booting up, click on the setup icon and choose tint from the drop-down menu. I believe we confuse the two sometimes. We confuse skill with instructions.

Kata has more of a parallel with hand tools than it does with electronic gadgets. There is some degree of skill required with electronics, but hand tools don't even come with instructions and require a larger degree of skill, nuance and experience to be used effectively. They're harder. It's why people don't use them. Anyone who's ever used a chisel knows there's a big difference between knowing how to use one and actually using one. They're two different things. Angle, pressure, grain and tactile feeling play a huge role in the finished product. This is information that can't be passed through instruction personal or otherwise. Kata is the same way. It's the text book and the tool, but this doesn't imply skill. There is nuance to it gained through experience. Not just partner practice, but solo practice as well.

Skill is derived from understanding how the tool works at it's most fundamental levels. If we understand the tool, than we can use it to its full potential. In regards to karate, understanding the tool really means understanding ourselves. This requires more diligent study turned inwards than looking for answers without.

Push Hands and Constant Pressure

I like push hands as a training tool. It allows me to practice my structure against a person in a non-competitive fashion and practice many of the patterns in kata that are not only used for ballistic attack, but are also used to receive and redirect force and put you in a position to return force without changing positions. I don't want to have to stop and reset my position to manipulate someone. I want to be able to manipulate them from the position I'm currently in.

One thing I've learned while doing this is that you need to give constant pressure. This could be deemed sticky hands, but it's more than just keeping contact, it's keeping pressure. I want to bog down the other person, to throw off their balance and keep them reacting instead of acting. I want them to have to move, shift and reset to manipulate me, so that they're always a step behind me. Part of how I do this is using stances, weight shifts and stable arm positions to lean on them. The end middle block position is a surprisingly stable position for leaning on someone. If the other person doesn't use structure than they'll be bearing some of your weight. Proper stance integrity is essential when I do this because if the person suddenly shifts than I need to have my balance.

Another lesson is angles. Use them. Angles, angles, angles. When ever I read something or heard something where someone was talking about angles they always seemed to explain it like you were lunging at someone from a few feet away at an angle, usually a 45 degree angle. I think it can be a little more subtle than this. It's really the difference between pushing a boulder and rolling a boulder. Another example would be walking furniture. You push at an angle and then the other side at an angle or you tilt it at an angle and walk it back and forth. It's the same with a person. You don't want to push into the center of their mass you want to push at the angles and tip them.

Just a few thoughts.

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.

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.

Empty Technique

On a certain level karate is about the perfection of technique, but this is a very small level in my opinion. While there are those that say that karate is not violence, I say that it is very much about violence, but because it is about violence that it draws our attention to the fragility of life. The pursuit of technique is empty. The pursuit of personal growth and improvement is full. It has the same shape, but is not the same thing.

A person can practice a movement or a kata one million times and while this may be the culmination of one's karate training it is not the goal. The goal is survival. It is not winning, or losing, fantasy, dreams, heroics or zen, it is living. Techniques, mindfulness, and determination can all play a role in survival, but if one survives without these things they've still achieved the goal.

The perfection of techniques for it's own sake stagnates into aesthetics and empty ritual. It becomes a picture of the thing, but a picture is not the thing itself. If one is attacked suddenly by a wild two-legged beast, does one want to strive toward perfect technique or survival? If our attention during training is drawn toward technique rather than overcoming, than where will our attention be during that dire moment?

Perfection of technique should be aimed at the perfection of survival, not the perfection of vanity.

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.

Gambling

The better you are at karate the less you want to fight.


This type of phrase gets thrown around a lot not just in karate circles, but also in other martial arts as well. I believe it's true, but I'm often disturbed by how people interpret these sayings. I don't believe it has anything to do with becoming an invincible deadly karate monster. I don't believe it has anything to do with how strong you are, but about learning how weak you are.

There is definitely an aspect of not wanting to hurt other people, because of the consequences. Legal, moral and mental repercussions of a brief violent encounter can last the rest of your life, even if the rest of your life is the few minutes it takes to bleed out after the event.

Karate teaches a person how to break someone by attacking the anatomical weak points of the human body by using leverage, geometry and physics. The reason the weak points are attacked is because they are weak. They are easy to destroy even by accident and they can cripple. Who recovers fully from a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament)? No one. A karateka has these exact same weak points. Anyone with reasonable health and mobility can break these without any sort of special training.

Violent encounters are a gamble where death is always on the table. No matter how skilled, strong, fast, mean or well prepared you may be, you can still die. The United States has arguably the most powerful military on the planet. Yet, service members still die in combat, because violence can be a coin flip. What's the best way not to lose in a Casino? Don't gamble.

This is why the more I learn about karate, the more I avoid violence.

Karate Snobs and Secrecy

Guilty. Of the first at least.

There are definitely all kinds of karate snobs that range all over the spectrum. Even the biggest, clown wig wearing mcdojo hanshi sifu can be a snob, but let's be fair the snobs usually reside on the shiny hardwood floor side of things right next to their hand crafted Okinawa toilet paper. You know who you are. This can just be part of maturing through karate, but I think it sticks with some and it's just as much of a problem as a mcdojo.

I'll be the first to admit to doing this. My first dojo was very traditional, run by a very high ranking individual, who belongs to a very reputable karate organization in Okinawa. The dojo looked like many Okinawa dojo. Anything that wasn't super traditional to me was bogus. I'm still guilty of being a snob, but at heart I'm really trying to make people better. I want people to think, explore and learn. This requires permission and there are about 0 reputable karateka that I've heard of that do this.

They act like they're giving permission, but they really aren't. It's a giant "catch-22." It goes something like this.

"You need to explore what karate means to you under a qualified instructor."

I saw what you did there. Qualified can mean basically anything. Especially in karate. These people will basically call all karate bullshit, but then say that you have to find someone good who can teach it. Hmm, one of these things is not like the other. What kind of logic is that?

This is compounded by the fact that secrecy is still alive and well in karate. This is secrecy through omission. This is usually done for "moral" reasons. They don't want people to misuse it.  These karateka want to get to know you, feel you out for eight years and then start teaching you how everything actually works, but you have to get an invitation to their super secret dojo first. Sometimes they'll only teach the good stuff at certain times. My first dojo only taught good stuff at noon on weekdays. This makes a lot of sense if you live on a small island with very intense weapon bans, but means very little if you can go to your local Walmart and walk out with a shotgun in about 20 minutes, or a cheap utility knife at a gas station.

Karate takes a lifetime of practice. Wild slashing with a utility knife takes as much time to master as it does to get it out of the packaging. Which do you think is more dangerous?

These are great karateka and they'll be better karateka than I will ever be, but these actions push people to bad places. People are forced to pick the lesser of evils and then have to waste eight years before they figure out whether it's crap. They'll most likely be brainwashed by then anyway. Soft clap. Bravo.

I've got one thing to say to all of you.

"Fuck you."

The secret is that you have to do it all yourself. You have to learn on your own, you have to study on your own, you have to practice on your own, and you have to think on your own and most importantly you can't stop. You can't find a place you feel comfortable and stop. There is no stopping. There is only more doing. No matter how awesome your sensei is and no matter how great a teacher he is you still have to do the work. The sensei doesn't do the work for you.

The next secret is that it might not work and probably won't work, not because it's a bad martial art, but because you have very little experience breaking people. The kicker is that you're not supposed to get experience, because self defense is about keeping yourself safe. The criteria for success is not getting into fights.

Here's your permission from a non-reputable karateka. Go practice for fun. Find a kata you like and a little bit of space and practice, practice everything, think, study and think some more. You have to do the work on your own anyway. Cut out the middle man and keep your money. Practice for fun, fitness and problem solving. Kata is like a puzzle half the fun is figuring it out. Start slow there's no rush. It's literally supposed to take the rest of your life.

Here's a riddle for all the karate snobs:

If the worst mcdojo in the world keeps people out of trouble and keeps them out of fights, is it bad karate?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Modern Violence and Karate

The key to understanding old school karate and their training methods is violence. Not the type of violence that most people are aquainted with, such as movies, television and sporting matches, but social and asocial violence. Violence is what links the past and the present.

The past is filled with such extreme violence that in comparison the conflicts of today look about as dangerous as chamomile tea. Any injury could become infected and lead to death, or cripple you and cause you and your family to starve due to lack of income. The stakes were much higher in the past. They didn't have many of the safety stops that we enjoy in the first world, such as medicine, law and order, and welfare. However, the criteria for surviving in those conditions are very similar to surviving a violent conflict today. Avoidance and ruthless efficiency.

Even old manuals on civil self defense arts mention the importance of avoiding conflict and escape. Along with behavioral rules to be respectful, to mind your manners and to keep your mouth shut. It's not empty character building. It's how you stay out of fights and survive. If you're nice, respectful and courteous to everyone you meet, the conflicts you have with people drop significantly. According to Marc MacYoung, the best indicator that you're about to be attack is you're being an asshole.

The physical part is very similar as well. The opponent should be downed in one move. The longer the conflict goes on the chances of injury and death go way up. Attack and defense must be simultaneous and you must have a handful of moves ingrained so deep that you act automatically.

Reading about modern day violence is what made me understand karate the most. I suggest that if you want to study karate more deeply you look to modern texts on violence, social behavior and crime. It's a bridge to the past.

Keep in mind that this is not an endorsement of karate for self defense. Karate can be used for self defense, but it must be remembered that karate was developed during the 19th century in Okinawa. The moral, ethical and legal ramifications are different for that time period and environment than the time and place we live now. Know your laws.