Two Man Progressions

As any Broad Ripple Martial Arts student 4th kyu and higher knows, we practice a drill called 'Two Man' as part of our curriculum.  I don't know why we don't use the plural (i.e. 'Two Men') but we never do. Also, we usually pronounce those capital letters because it's a great drill: exciting, difficult, and makes for pretty good entertainment at promotion time when students move from purple to brown belt.

And as those of us holding dan rankings know, it's just the start.  The curriculum also contains 'Two Man with club,' 'Two Man with knife,' and 'Three Man.' 

But there's a pretty large amount of space between Two Man and Two Man with a weapon, and this post is about some options in that space.  And by options, I mean ways to have a good time while practicing karate.
Here's Two Man in a nutshell:

Two attackers face a defender.  The defender's goal is to always keep one of the attackers between himself and the second attacker.  We say that the 'theory of Two Man' is to 'form a line' and that we form a line 'by cutting an angle'; we also say 'Stay Out of the Middle!'  All this means that when either attacker twitches, the defender takes a deep step towards that attacker, angling so that the defender just brushes the attacker's outside shoulder (meaning the shoulder furthest from the second attacker).  The defender strives to step and launch a strong attack at the same time, and the generally attempts to move so that only one attacker can reach the defender at a time while continuously delivering effective strikes until the attackers are unable or unwilling to continue.  For the purposes of the basic drill, the strikes are non-contact and the attackers attempt to react realistically to strikes.

Re-reading that, I can tell it's a description that won't make any sense to someone that hasn't seen the exercise.  But until we can get a video up of it, that's about the best I can do.  In all honesty, if you haven't practiced this drill already, you're not really in the intended audience for this post.

As with any drill, there are several limitations imposed during Two Man both to ensure safety and to keep the drill focused on what is meant to be practiced.  Often these restrictions are assumed -- for example there isn't much benefit to having an attacker run away in the beginning of a Two Man drill because then it becomes another drill entirely.

Once a drill is understood and a reasonable amount of proficiency in it is established, removing some of those limitations is an excellent way to make the drill progressively more difficult.

Here are some of the progressions of Two Man I've enjoyed.  N.B.:The safety of these drills is entirely dependent on the control of the participants.  I always practiced these drills starting off slowly and gradually increasing the pace and intensity.  After you've warmed up and built some confidence in all participants' control is when it's safest to push the intensity envelope.  Long term you will learn more by playing safely than by playing fast and hard because you will have fewer injuries.

1) Two Man with light contact: I prefer headgear with a face shield and boxing gloves.  For safety I never allowed any grappling or low line (below the groin) attacks with this option. With boxing gloves it is very easy to hit hard enough to hurt, so go easy.
2) Two Man with grabby attackers: The attackers try to hold onto the limbs or body of the defender.  This impairs the defender's mobility and can be progressed up to allow take down attempts.
3) Two Man with kicking shields: This variation teaches you when you can generate powerful techniques and when you can't. It's far from perfect, as the defender can only hit the shield and the shield is only on the front of the attackers, but it's very interesting to see how the drill changes when the defender can really drive through the attackers.
4) Two Man with body manipulation: The defender tries to control one of the opponents via clinching, spinning, and joint locks (carefully!), while still striking to end the drill.
5) Two Man with rapid changes of roles: This gets confusing quickly, and so is best done no-contact.  Essentially a fourth person yells 'rotate' and one attacker becomes the defender.  This variation is excellent for foot work.
6) Two Man with sparring rules: My personal favorite, although it is probably least helpful in developing self defense skills.  Put on your pads, use only the targets and strikes allowed in tournament sparring, and have fun. Don't stop for every point, but have the defender try to keep forming a line while scoring on the attackers for an entire 3 minute round.

Several of these occur naturally during class, but some of them you'll have to create the opportunity to practice.  If you already can make your way through the basic drill, give these variations a try and let me know how it goes.

And, one more time, be safe! Start slow, ramp up the intensity, and have fun.

Aiming the Reverse Punch

I've noticed that almost every single karate-ka throws chest height reverse punches in sparring. 
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is very interesting that we generally train to punch at the solar plexus in kata and basic technique practice and then punch higher as soon as we put on sparring pads.  And it becomes a problem when it becomes an ingrained habit that prevents us from being able to target other parts of the opponent's body.

Often a chest height reverse punch is an indication of an uncontrolled technique.  Or at least it indicates that the technique is not being consciously aimed.  Let's try an experiment.  Find a wall.

Perferably one with some kind of pattern on it.

Pick a spot on the wall near your solar plexus (here's where that pattern comes in handy) and touch it. 

Step back until your your arm is at full extension and your finger is on the spot. 

Now, Move your finger to a spot straight out from your shoulder (your left shoulder if you are using a finger on your left hand). 

If you actually did this little exercise, then you already know that you can reach a spot across from your shoulder that is farther away than a spot across from your solar plexus because you had to bend your arm, step back from the wall, lean back, or otherwise make same space.  For me the difference is not quite an inch.

The reason that many of us punch to the chest in sparring is that we fling reverse punches out into space and hope they land.  Since they aren't going anywhere in particular, if they don't impact our opponent before they reach extension they end up at shoulder height. 

And having our techniques go just any old place is bad, or at least limiting.

If we try aiming our reverse punches to places where our opponent's hands aren't in the way, instead of the places where our reverse punches tend to go on their own we'll probably win a few more points.

So next time you score with a reverse punch to the body that ends up in an armpit or square on your opponent's pec, challenge yourself to hit a floating rib in the next exchange.  You'll be a better martial artist for it.

The Devil's in the Details . . . but Maybe Not the Ones You Think

I had an instructor that said BJJ was a game of millimetres (ok, he wasn't British, so I suppose it was millimeters).  What Blake meant by this is that a technique which is 'a little' off can work as poorly as not having any technique at all.

Karate is the same way, of course.  And it's not just distance, but also time where fractions of a unit count.

An evasive step taken a fraction of second too late or too early leads doesn't move you out of the way.  Throwing a kick from a hair too far away or a hair too close means a technique that misses or is jammed before it can accelerate.

As instructors, we have experienced these near misses and so we understand that the details are critical to successful application of technique. This is the main reason why we hammer on the details of proper execution.  The need for exact performance gives birth to the pursuit of perfection; if precise is good, then very precise is better, right?

And while I think that the pursuit of perfection is key to a lot of the 'side-effects' of martial arts (you know -- goal setting skills, self-actualization, confidence), I think we also need to keep track of what makes the techniques effective and what is just an aesthetic choice.  In our pursuit of perfection both sets of details matter.  But I prefer to put more effort into the details that make karate work better.

So, while I am definitely in favor of striving to get your pull-back hand chambered precisely on the floating rib, having your toes pointed down when you strike with your knee, and moving from stance to stance without your head bobbing up and down, I have to admit that the effect these have on the utility of your karate is probably small potatoes.  All of these have some value to add to the effectiveness of technique, but none of these prevent your technique from working.  I would classify these as aesthetic details.

On the other hand, the 'details' of where your weight is relative to your opponent's, your posture, the direction your centerline is pointing, and keeping your shoulder packed tight are actually central to making your karate functional.

This is especially true when you are doing any manipulation of your opponent's body.  And before you think "well, I'm not advanced enough for all that arm bar and wrist lock stuff," remember that deflecting your opponent's strike is a manipulation of their body and that we teach escapes from holds starting with your first self defense class.

To make what I'm talking about more explicit --

The next time you can't quite get your escape from a bear hug to work, ask an instructor to demonstrate it.  Instead of watching where they put their hands, how they step, or what they say they are doing, notice where they put their hips are relative to their opponent's hips.  Notice how upright their posture is, and how bent over their opponent is.

And then find your partner and try to do what the instructor did: put your hips where the instructor put their hips are and break your opponent's posture they way the instructor did.

If you want functional karate pay attention to posture, transfer of weight, and positioning relative to your opponent.  And focus on making these 'details' exactly correct.

The Most Important Martial Skill

I know this is one of Sensei Boggs' frequent points, but I think it's impossible to over-emphasize. There is one skill that all students should take away from martial arts training:

We all should know how to fall safely.

At Broad Ripple Martial Arts this is called 'unfalling'; the japanese word is romanized as ukemi.  We teach 'break-falls' for when a student is falling forwards, backwards or on their side.  We also teach 'roll-falls' as a safer way to fall with forward momentum.  These techniques are close to standard across the entire range of asian martial arts, probably because they are effective and important.

There are two reasons we all need to know how to fall safely: 

1) Falling is one of the most common causes of injury across many agre groups accounting for appoximately 30% of injuries requiring medical treatment (see, e.g. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_241.pdf).  I believe that many of these injuries can be avoided with some training. 

2)Throwing techniques are part of our karate curriculum, and it's hard to practice throws if your training partners keep getting injured.

For what it's worth, falling is the only part of karate I have used outside of the dojo without any modification at all.  I have flipped over bicycle handle bars, slipped on ice, been tripped playing soccer and landed in very nice breakfalls or roll falls.  Most recently I very stupidly dislodged my home pull-up bar.

That last one really highlights the value of training breakfalls.  Despite having unexpectedly fallen from nearly five feet in the air onto an unpadded floor, I did not injure my head, I did not have the wind knocked out of me, and I immediately regained my feet.  I did bruise my elbow enough to have to change my next workout, which I take to mean I should practice falling until I get better at it.

Once you have the basic technique down (learned on a mat), I highly recommend taking your falling skills outside.  Start slow and gentle, on grass on level ground, and progress (carefully and slowly) to rolling on clean asphalt (new basket ball courts are fairly gentle).

Seems to me it's better to pick up a bruise or a scrape in careful practice than to find out you don't really know to fall the next time you fall for real.