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.

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.

Are You a Real Karateka?

Why?

The first question is a little easier to answer. The why part is a little harder to answer. The easiest explanation is that you go to a karate dojo, but even this answer gets murkier if you ask more specifics. The 20th degree black belt and the pilgrim to Okinawa are usually equally sure that what they're doing is the "true" way. The majority of people are pretty positive that there is a checklist of what constitutes karate, but it seems like everyone is working off a different checklist. People and other martial artists in general have a check list for karate whether karateka like this or not. Basically karate is Japanese, it is comprised of punches, kicks, blocks and doesn't work. The fastest way to piss off another martial artist is to say their stuff looks like karate. On the next Brazilian Jiu jitsu video you see on You Tube, write the comment "looks like karate" and sit back as the hate rolls in. This embodies the basic types of classifications and generalizations about empty handed fighting systems. They're divided by country of origin, technique, training practices, tradition and aesthetics. All of these lines look really blurry when we start to look at them more closely. For the sake of brevity, I'll talk about only a few general aspects.

Let's first look at the name karate. It means empty hand. Every good little karate kid knows this. It's also pretty common knowledge that the name changed to this from China hand or China Hand. Karate being a synthesis between the local fighting art of Te or Hand and Chinese fighting arts. But karate is Japanese, right? Is it?  Okinawa is now technically part of Japan, but it was its own independent nation and heavily influenced by China. Karate was adopted by the Japanese and changed to promote their needs. So is karate Chinese, Okinawan, Japanese or a mix? If we look at the name literally as Empty Hand then it would seem to encompass all of the unarmed fighting arts. Some have even claimed to trace the roots of the unarmed martial arts back to Alexander the Great, so wouldn't that make all martial arts European? Things are already looking pretty blurry.

These are mostly outside labels, but karateka have their own individual labels that they use to distinguish themselves. This usually has to do with technique, training practices, aesthetics and tradition. The entire basic argument behind all of these is "We don't do it like that we do it like this." You could say that karate is only stand up striking, until you find someone who uses karate on the ground. You could say that karate has mostly linear movements until you see a Goju Ryu stylist perform Saifa. You name the training practice, aesthetics or technique and you can find a karate stylist practicing it. Tradition is the biggest divider between karateka, which is basically saying that you belong to a different branching stream off of the glacier that is the past. We're all cousins and fairly close cousins.

So are you a real karateka and why?

Should you even care?

The most important thing for any martial art or self defense system is that it should enrich your life. It should get you healthier and not break you. It should be fun and not a chore. It should allow you the freedom to think as wide and as deeply as you wish.

Everything and Nothing

The martial arts are weird and especially karate, because we talk about them as if the martial art or the technique does all the work when really it's you who does the work. Technique is just the movement of our bodies. The martial arts are like an idea, real and not real at the same time. They are everything and nothing.

The same thing goes for kata. I like to call kata the shape of the weapon, because it's easier for me to think about it with this filter. Kata is very abstract and this gives it a handle of sorts. It helps me picture what I'm thinking about. By shape I don't mean the embusen, I mean the actual movements and all the parts of the movement. If I could take a photograph of a movement with a low shutter speed, the blur of movement that the camera captured is the shape. It's not the beginning or the end that is important. It's only a guide. It's me who does it, not the kata or karate. There are plenty of ways to interpret kata movements. There are definitely different legitimate ways to look at the same movement. There is no right or wrong. There is only movement. Because of this, kata essentially becomes everything and nothing. Because it's nothing it has the capacity to be anything, because it can be anything it's essentially nothing.

This ties rather well into the idea of mushin no shin, or mind without mind. Thought without conscious thought, or no mind. There is me, my opponent and that is it. My resolve against theirs. Everything else is irrelevant.

Makes me think of the union of mind, body and spirit in a more tangible way. Interesting.

More BAB Training

J got a little overwhelmed today. We worked angles of attack and conditioning defenses against them. Getting grabbed from behind is a fear of hers so she dropped back into feral flailing mode a few times, while I dragged her to the ground. She got better though. J did the same thing for me, and I had to keep reminding myself to work toward the goal. If there's an opening for escape, I need to take it and I started to. We followed it up with a few minutes of infighting. J threw me a few times, but she still gave up once. We'll need to work on that some more.

All in all a good end to the day. A little tired, a little dirty and a little wiser.

Bunkai is not Application

Contrary to the popular definition of bunkai it does not mean application. Bunkai means analysis. Thinking.

Webster Definition: A careful study of something to learn about its parts, what they do, and how they are related to each other.

Personally I think what trips most people up is careful study and that it's an independent activity outside of the classroom.

More on this later.

Searching for Karate

I spent a little time reading over some of my first posts and decided that I should give a better explanation to the purpose of this blog. While it's a place for me to record my training and a place for my ideas to coalesce, it's also about self discovery and hopefully offering a little bit of motivation. Let me start by trying to explain the name of this blog, In Search of Karate.

You might be asking yourself "why not do a quick google search?" or if you're really old school "why don't you flip through the phone book?" If you're too young, they're those yellow things that mysteriously appear on your doorstep, which seem to be forgotten there and then turn into mush. There are plenty of people out there teaching karate, claiming they teach karate and are all too happy to tell you what karate is in exchange for money. There's Wikipedia and other sources that will explain exactly what karate is supposed to be and plenty of people writing blogs like this telling everyone what they believe true karate to be. No matter what the setting each person needs to decide what karate is for themselves, what karate means to them. It can be fighting, self defense, fitness, spiritual development or any combination of all of these. It can even mean hanging out with friends and meeting new people. Just going to a school is the easiest. There have definitely been times where I've wanted to throw up my hands and say "screw this, I'll just find a school and get some colored belts and have fun playing at martial artist." I've done it in the past. It's what brought me to Seidokan when I was in the service. Going alone is hard. Even when one has a teacher, some things are impossible to teach. A lot of karate is about feeling. Until you feel your body moving in unison, all of it moving towards a single point with all your weight behind the technique than every time someone says that "power comes from the hara" than you won't know, won't listen, won't understand until that first time when recognition hits and you'll know what your sensei was talking about. Until then you just think you're doing it right, you won't know. No matter how many times you hear that kata is everything, you won't understand that it is the tool, the textbook and the teacher. Karate is a search and a journey.

This blog is also about motivation, encouragement and giving people permission. Paying for a class and standing in front of a sensei is not the only way to practice karate. You don't need uniforms or belts or someone telling you what to do. As far as I'm concerned all you need to practice karate is a kata, patience and discipline. Anyone who practices a karate kata practices karate. It takes patience to learn the lessons and discipline to keep at it, but this is all you need. Too many believe that karate is only practiced at a school that if you're not paying a class fee than you're not practicing karate. Karate is not a credit card or your electricity. It doesn't require a monthly payment to practice. It just takes practice and your only payment is sweat. I want people to know that when there's a will there is a way especially when karate is concerned. I want people to know that they have permission to practice karate however they want.

This is what this blog is about. It's about discovery, practice and most of all asking why.

Karate Programming: the hardware

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

There will be videos, at some time... maybe

Much of the stuff I'd like to talk about and explain requires video. The written word, as much as I love it, just isn't the best vehicle for this kind of stuff. It's like trying to teach someone how to walk through text.

Unfortunately one of the many drawbacks of being frugal and an independent practitioner is that you have to use what you have and take what you can get. Finding training partners and willing participants can be a challenge. Especially since I have to find them, convince them and usually teach them. All of this has to happen while leaving their ego intact to a certain degree. This is especially true if they're a karateka, because my general idea is that most of what people do is a complete waste of both time and money, under certain circumstances.

So my wonderful wife and training partner/ student will be assisting me at some point in making these videos. But I don't plan on demonstrating on her, I plan for her to demonstrate on me. I have about five inches and 70 pounds on her, so me demonstrating a technique on her doesn't really prove that much. I personally feel that techniques exist so that they can be used on someone bigger and stronger than you. Basically if it doesn't work on someone bigger and stronger than you, it's not the technique, it's just you being bigger and stronger.

She is definitely capable of breaking me if she felt so inclined, but getting her confidence to a satisfactory level to demonstrate is a different issue.

So hopefully, some time in the near future, there will be wonderful videos of her dropping me like a bag of rocks.

Power comes from your feet

In close range combat you don't have the time to speed things up to put more power into your strikes. You might just have a foot or even a few inches. Luckily boxing someone's ears is devastating and you don't need that much power. I digress. The point is that close range power has more to do with your lower body than your upper body. It's somewhat amusing when people thing that slighting changing the motion of their arms means that they are somehow not using arm strength for their techniques. Why are my arms so tired? It's because you're not using your mass and you get your mass moving by moving your lower body.

Gravity is your friend and hopefully soon I'll have some videos showing you how much of a friend it is. Basically by dropping weights on stuff and showing how devastating a little  bit of weight moving a short distance can be.

Have you ever noticed that there's lots of kata where you drop into a stance. Literally drop like a bag of rocks down from a higher stance to a lower stance, it's because gravity is your friend. Ever had a little cousin, niece or nephew who only weighs 60lbs or even smaller suddenly decide they want to be picked up so they jump on you and nearly knock you off your feet? This is what I'm talking about. Do you try and push a car by planting your feet and pushing just with your arms? No, you take a low stance, hmm I wonder if that's relevant, and you lean into it to put all of your mass behind it. It's the very same concept. You just use the structural support of your skeleton to keep yourself from collapsing, move just a tiny bit faster and presto, you can blast through someone twice your weight if you remain efficient in your movements.

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.

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.