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.

Strength in Karate: Total Body Strength

As mentioned in a previous post, strength is an important part of the martial arts.  It runs counter to the way many of us think about the martial arts but pioneers of modern karate were famous for their strength.

Gichin Funakoshi was said to never have lost an 'okinawan hand wrestling' match (I don't know if that was more like arm wrestling or more like thumb wrestling . . .) and Funakoshi himself wrote that his instructors Azato and Itosu frequently conducted an arm wrestling contest (in Karate-Do Nyumon).

Donn Draeger was famous for his arm muscles and one of his lasting contributions to Japanese martial arts was to introduce Judo-ka to weight training.

Shorei Goju-Ryu's founder, Robert Trias, seems to be typical of many of the early martial arts importers in that he had boxed and served in the military prior to his martial arts training.

As martial artists we know that skillful technique can allow a weaker person to overcome the stronger, but there is an underlying assumption of a base level of strength before we can implement skillful technique.  If that's confusing, let's put it this way -- a karate-ka doesn't have to be stronger than their opponent to win, but they do have to be strong enough to perform their technique.  Good technique and tactics can avoid a force-on-force shoving match, but good technique requires the strength to hold proper body alignment under external force.

Which is why the most important type of strength for karate is what I call 'Total Body Strength' or the ability to tie the whole body into a single unit to effectively transfer force from the ground into an opponent (or from an opponent into the ground).

Fortunately, strength is probably the most improveable athletic ability.  It's certainly the simplest athletic ability to train.  Unfortunately, developing Total Body Strength takes repeated effort over an extended period of time, especially since the martial arts require good strength-endurance and not just high maximum effort strength.

Here's a list of exercises for building Total Body Strength.  I've ordered them by how transferable I believe they are to karate performance:

1) Carries -- Carrying weights for distance makes you strong in a connected way.  Try holding the weight in your arms, overhead, across your shoulders, or in your hands at your sides. Try one handed and two handed carries.  These are even more effective with unevenly distributed weights, like sandbags.
2) Heavy pushes and pulls -- Think of pushing a car with all of your friends in it.  Or, if you don't have a lot of friends, use a sled purpose-built for conditioning.
3) Push Press -- Using your legs to drive weight over head is a very pure example of directing ground force to the your hands
4) Stabilization 'Core' work -- Practice Pallof presses, planks, and suspended pushups.
5) Swinging things -- You can chop wood, sledge hammer an old tire, swing kettlebells and clubbells, or throw medicine balls

Traditional Okinawan karate conditioning focused on 1) and 5). It's still common to see Goju-ryu practitioners hold heavy jars of sand by their finger tips while performing San Chin kata.  And the 'stone' implements of Chi Ishi and Ishi Sashi were used by Okinawans much as kettlebells and clubbells are today.

Also 'traditional,' at least in my personal experience, is to use your training partners as weights for carrying.  I spent several karate classes with a partner on my back while I walked in deep forward fighting stances.

If you spend time bringing your base strength levels up via exercise, you will still need to make sure you can apply that strength in the context of karate.  San-Chin practice is intended to train karate-ka to summon all of their strength and apply it to blocking and striking. 

At Broad Ripple Martial Arts, we teach San Chin as a black belt kata. For the purposes of transmuting trained strength into karate-useful strength you can learn just the basic step, block, and strike sequence that is the core of the kata. 

If you don't know the San Chin exercise or you are unfamiliar with any of the exercises listed, you should ask!  Any black belt instructor will be able to show you San Chin, and most of them can show you the exercises I've listed. 

And I don't need to remind you that there is a CrossFit certified trainer running a gym right in the dojo, do I?

What Comes After the "First Level Interpretation?"

Intermediate and advanced students at Broad Ripple Martial Arts know that the bunkai we memorize for grading is only the 'first level' bunkai.

The reason it's important to understand that the bunkai taught in class are only the 'first level' is that they only work at all if the attacker is extremely compliant.  Think about the low block-rising block combination we practice at the end of Pinan Nidan.  As the bunkai is taught, the attacker starts from out of range with his attack so that the defender can step towards the kick and still meet the the attack with lower forearm or fist.

But why would someone trying to kick you start to launch that attack from too far away to reach you?  And if they did why would you run towards them so you could be in range?  A bunkai like this is not trying to teach you 'how to fight.'

The reason we have these unrealistic bunkai is as a teaching tool for the kata.  Having a concrete goal for each block and strike helps us remember the form and helps us to generate real intention with our performance of the form.

But the standard curriculum at Broad Ripple Martial Arts leaves open the question of what comes next? What is the 'second level' interpretation of our kata?

There are several possible 'interpretations' for each movement of our kata because there is no verified historical interpretation for the kata practiced in Shorei-Goju Ryu, even for those kata for which we know the original author (e.g. the Pinan Kata).

Many martial artists have dedicated themselves to understanding kata as tools for training realistic self defense responses to attacks.  My favorite of the moment (as an author of books and articles) is Ian Abernethy.  His explanations of how to intepret the kata, and some of the drills he builds off of those interpretations resonate with the way I envision karate 'working.'

Check out his page; he has posted a few interpretations of kata that I like very much as examples of 'second level' interpretations.  For the technique shown from Kushanku/Kanku-Dai, think about the swim block-spear hand-turn-hammer fist combination in Pinan Sandan.  And his technique for Pinan Godan starts off with a very familiar throw (note that he points out a mistake many of us make . . . and how to train to fix it) but adds a very nice finishing submission.

Maybe the next time you are practicing bunkai outside of class (you are practicing on your own, aren't you?) you can try these variations and see how you like them.

Pressure Points

One of the more mysterious subjects in the martial arts are the very effective places to strike your opponent,  called pressure points.  Pressure points have a long history and in the eastern arts have been associated with the theories of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine).  There are honest-to-goodness 'ancient scrolls' describing these points  (e.g. the Bubishi) and discussion of some vulnerable targets also show up in medieval European fighting manuals (e.g. Sigmund Ringeck's Commentary on Liechtenauer).

Because of this interest and long history many modern authors of different training backgrounds and degrees of credibility have published pressure point manuals.  I used to keep a well thumbed copy of Bruce Tegner's Nerve Centers and Pressure Points with it's precise descriptions of the effects of strikes broken up by the relative size of the striker and the strikee.

But the longer I've practiced the less enthused I've become about pressure points, at least as written about in the Bubishi and by George Dillman (Kyusho-Jitsu: The Dillman Method of Pressure Point Fighting)where a relatively gentle strike to a small point at the correct time of day incapacitates a grown man.

That's not to say that I don't believe that there are vulnerable points that we should practice targeting, just that I prefer to practice hitting vulnerable areas that are a little more familiar than the Lung Meridian Point near the clavicle.  I practice striking parts of the body that demonstably cause significant pain or are structurally weak and therefore easily broken.

Many of the targets I consider high-value I've experienced first hand in a sparring situation.  These include the point of the chin, the bridge of the nose, the solar plexus, the heart, the liver, kidneys, the groin, the knee, the IT band (on the outside of the thigh), and the middle of the shin.

Other targets that I believe to be effective but haven't (fortunately) directly experienced are the base of the skull, the temple, the corner of the jaw, the corner of the cheek bone, the side of the neck, the throat, the clavicle, the bladder/pubic arch, the instep.

I'm sure I've left some out (elbow joint, sternum, . . .). One reason for my waning interest in the meridian system and it's complexities is that I realized I wasn't very good at hitting the many targets I already have to choose from.

As martial artists we want to constantly strive to improve, but I still have plenty of improving to do in learning to target the 'obvious' targets.  Most likely, you do to.  So my advice is not to worry about pressure points until you can reliably hit the targets we all know about.

The Game of Martial Arts

All of us that have been in the martial arts for long enough have a series of 'lightbulb' moments.  One of the best of those moments for me was the first time I kicked my instructor upside the head.

I was visiting my parents on a break from school and had stopped back in at Steve Perry's dojo (not the Journey singer or the science fiction author) to say hello.  Turned out I was the only one around, so Sensei Perry and I had a short class and then went a few rounds.  Before the first round I said to him "Sensei, the club I've been training at (Coung Nhu Cypress School at University of Florida) allows groin kicks and I'd appreciate it if we could include them for our practice."  His response was "Sure, all of the tournaments I did back in Indiana allowed groin kicks."

We lined up; I started to sweat.  Sensei Perry had been winning tournaments around the country before I could spell my name.  He had been sponsored by Budweiser and been on a team with Billy Blanks (before the Tae Bo bit).  He was still in excellent shape, having boxed in high school and taken up karate under Robert Bowles in Ft. Wayne.  I had seen him walk a line of brown and black belts from another school and beat each one (in a single point match).  And he had been my instructor for four years . . .

The round timer buzzed and we bowed.  I circled, he toyed with me, probably tagged me with a reverse punch or two.  Then I threw a front roundhouse kick to the groin, he blocked.  He returned the favor, and I blocked.  I launched a faster and harder roundhouse kick to his groin, he blocked and countered with the same. I blocked, stared at his belt . . . and threw the fastest front roundhouse kick to the head I'd ever thrown.

It made a very loud noise when it smacked into his head gear.  He stopped and acknowledged the point and proceeded to beat the tar out of me for the rest of the round.  When we were done he got a rueful smile on his face and said "You really got me with that one."  Although his praise was warming, the best part was that I had known when I threw it that I was going to nail him -- that there was no way I could miss.

I floated home on a cloud.

I wish I could say that since then I've been unbeatable in sparring but that's not how it works.

But I did use that event as a springboard to understand the game of karate better.  I had always learned combinations by rote, and tried to throw them in sparring.  Or I had tried to surprise my opponent by changing angles or throwing feints.  Both of those methods can be successful and should be part of your sparring tool box.

These methods are limited, however, and the way to get good at match fighting is to learn to pair attacks that 1) force a predictable response and 2) limit your exposure to counter attack.

Let's look at that front leg groin kick to front leg head kick combination:

It works so well because the threat of a groin kick draws a lot of attention -- it demands respect.  By driving a hard and fast kick towards Sensei Perry's cup, I made it nearly impossible for him to not cover up.  And when I followed that with another kick that looked like it was going to the same place he naturally covered again.

This sort of misdirection is very dependable once you get some practice in.  It relies on the same principles that stage magicians use to keep us from noticing where they are tucking our card.  The 'ultimate' in the game of martial arts is to chain together attacks so that the opponent's reactions set them up for each attack in sequence.  In this way you can literally steer your opponent into your attacks.

The classic example applies to an opponent that uses their front hand to block a back fist to the head.  The back fist-reverse punch combination takes advantage of this tendency.  The back fist draws their hand up and the reverse punch slides under the front elbow to score.  If your opponent drops their arm down and retreats to cover the reverse punch then they have opened a line of attack for the back fist. . .and so on.

A few other excellent combinations are back fist (head)-reverse punch(body)-rear leg roundhouse kick(head), front leg sweep - reverse punch, same foot snap kick(groin)-roundhouse kick (head).

And not all manipulations of your opponent use a combination of strikes.  Many opponents will stalk you around the ring.  This makes them easy to draw into your striking distance by backing up in a big-step, big-step, little-step pattern.

Really, the options are endless. . .

Rereading this I'm disappointed that this explanation cannot spark in you the enthusiasm that I felt when I first pulled this off.  There is no substitute for the experience of making this work in the ring.  But I hope that reading this helps you understand what you are trying to accomplish in the Game, so that you can feel excitement for yourself.

Strength in Karate: Kicks

One of the attractions of karate is that it teaches us how to defeat a bigger, stronger opponent.

And this ability of the small opponent to defeat the larger is talked about in a lot of ways. We say "technique wins," "we use the opponent's force against them," "use proper leverage."


And my personal favorite -- "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."

And while all of those things are true enough, I think that in a day and age where many karate students have never been in a physical fight outside of the dojo those sorts of sayings result in some misconceptions.


Perhaps the biggest is that because we rely on technique, we karateka don't need to be strong.

Now, there are a whole host of non-martial reasons to be strong. Resistance training and increased muscle mass have been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, decrease the risk of certain types of cancer, improve our ability to live independently into old age, and be attractive to whichever gender we want to be attractive to (ok, that last one might be anecdotal).

But it turns out that strength is also a pre-requisite for effective karate technique. And ignoring this fact can stall a student's progress.

In my mind the techniques where this is most evident are kicks.

As a concrete example, anyone that can sit down and spread their legs 100 degrees apart is flexible enough to throw a side kick at waist height. But many beginning students struggle to kick this high. The most common reason that this is difficult is that the student doesn't have the hip and oblique strength to hold their leg out to the side. This is not unexepcted because the strength required to do it is very specific -- it's not something that's developed via other activities.

One sign that strength is holding back your kicking is the inability to kick correctly as high as you can passively stretch. Another is the tendency to hold your breath while kicking. Many students treat kicking like throwing a shot put. They get ready to kick, gather themselves up, take a huge step, hold their breath, and fling their leg out. All of this happens because the student feels like their leg is heavy, so heavy that only a massive effort can launch it into the air.

We don't think of our arms as heavy. When we want to throw a punch, we just move our arms (with a little practice). But the feeling that it takes effort to kick persists with many students for a long time, largely because the muscles which lift and position the legs are under-developed. And this leads to telegraphed, breath-held, and labored kicks.

The best way to improve our ability to kick is to practice correct kicking (of course). But when we specifically need to improve the strength of our 'kicking muscles' it is helpful to remove the element of balance and focus on controlled leg placement. I've arbitrarily broken this into 3 levels.

Level 0: Stand near a wall or chair, and place a hand (preferibly the hand that is on the same side of the body as the kicking leg) on it to help with balance. Practice the three basic kicks (snap kick, side kick, round house kick) s-l-o-w-l-y. Strive for a smooth execution at a rate of 3 seconds for each kick. Work both legs. At this level the goal is to kick near waist height for 10 repetitions per kick, per side.

Level 1: Use a balance aid as above. Try to minimize the contact with the balance aid. For each kick move from a get ready stance into the chamber position for 10 reps, from chamber to extension for 10 reps (don't put your foot down in-between!), and then perform slow full kicks (3 seconds/ kick). Again the goal is smooth execution at waist height for 10 reps at each 'position' (chamber, extension, full kick).

Level 2: Perform the Level 1 exercises without a balance aid. Once you can do that for 10 reps of each position with reasonable control, you will have very 'light' smooth kicks. Progression from this point on can work towards slower kicks (10 seconds is a good goal), weighted slow kicks (via an ankle weight), holding the kicks at full extension for time, and higher slow kicks.

Consistent practice of these kicking exercises will give a student the hip and abdominal strength necessary to kick well in as short a time as possible. Most students will notice an improvement in their kicking speed, accuracy, and height in as little as 4 weeks.

In case you were wondering, consistent means 3 - 6 times a week every week. Start easy and progress in number of reps and up the levels slowly -- this is a race where the tortoise will be beat the hare.

Conflict Management and Emotions

The other night I got really angry at a frozen pizza package. I cussed, I thought evil thoughts about packaging engineers. And then I finally said "What am I doing? -- Just cook the pizza."

Now imagine my frozen pizza package emotional response during a 'self defense situation.' Not so good, huh? Why do people tend to get stuck in maladaptive emotional states? And how does that relate to self defense?

Read this:

http://www.conflictcommunications.com/monkey-trap.htm

I have personally enjoyed Rory Miller's first book, "Meditations on Violence," and I routinely read and recommend Marc MacYoung's website "NoNonsenseSelfDefence.com." If you haven't used either of these resources yet, why not?

Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body

I was flipping through A Book of Five Rings this morning, and landed in the Water scroll. This passage caught my eye (translated by Vicor Harris, Overlook Press, copyright 1974) :

The spirit of "Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body" is to stick to your enemy and not separate from him. When you approach the enemy, stick firmly with your head, body, and legs. People tend to advance their head and legs quickly, but their body lags behind. You should stick firmly so that there is not the slightest gap between the enemy's body and your body. You must consider this carefully.

I just went through an introductory class at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. One of the positions we practiced was what the instructor called the 'T-clinch.' If you have a brown belt in Shorei Goju-Ryu, you'd recognize the T-clinch as the position in the 2 man drill you should be in after your initial angle and strike. That is to say, your opponent's shoulder (preferably their weak side shoulder) is in the middle of your chest, and your feet are on either side of your opponent's foot. In the BJJ method I was shown, one of your arms would wrap your opponent's hip and one would trap his far side arm. The opponent's near side arm is trapped by your body, and so you are able to easily neutralize your opponent’s attempts to unbalance or strike you.

Which is exactly the point of Musashi's Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body.

Generally karate-ka seek safety in distance. More distance from an opponent means more time to react to techniques that are crossing the gap in sparring or more chance of successful escape in a self defense situation.

But there are times when distance is not the safest place to be. Jimmy Hoffa famously said (after being shot, I think) “Always run from a knife and rush a gun.”

I’m going to leave the gun situation to Mr. Hoffa’s greater experience, but at Broad Ripple Martial Arts we apply the same concept to defense against blunt object attacks. Clubs and guns both have as their main advantage that they extend the effective range of their wielder’s offense. By increasing the distance between us and an armed attacker we enter a range where we can be struck (and by a lethal weapon, no less) and cannot strike back. Extra distance causes the same problem if an unarmed opponent has a much greater reach, or if there are two opponents and there is no place out of reach of both them.

What Musashi was advocating with the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body is to bring yourself so close to your opponent that they have no opportunity to strike. And I imagine this is exactly what Jimmy Hoffa was thinking about gun fighting.

Remember that Musashi was writing about duels, and there are two major differences between the violence he is discussing and the violence that self defense training addresses. In a duel between two swordsmen they are both armed with approximately the same weapon and they are bound to fight within their cultural rules. A duel is a sanctioned fight, a bout.

The typical self defense situation addressed at Broad Ripple Martial Arts would not include a weapon in the hands of the karateka and it is assumed that the violence is predatory or criminal and therefore without rules. In particular, there is no ‘rule’ against running away!

What is interesting about this is that the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body is probably more commonly important in self defense than in dueling. If a swordsman presses close to his opponent, they will both be unable to execute common cuts, and both will be restricted in their grappling attempts if they retain their weapons. In the blunt weapon self defense situation, an unarmed karateka sticking close to a club wielding attacker has brought an asymmetric situation closer to parity.

But when is it best to ‘stick’ and best to run?

Anytime the exit is away from the club and I am physically capable of running, I’m sprinting as fast as I can. And that’s exactly what we teach:

“Run if possible”

“If it’s not possible, find a bigger and better weapon”

“If that’s not possible, ATTACK the club.”

Attacking the club should bring the karateka into close contact. And then it's time to apply the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body. Sometimes validation feels good, and having the most renowned swordsman teach a technique we teach is pretty solid validation.

What Makes an Effective Technique

"Use your whole body!"

"Turn your hips!"

"HIPS!"

If no one's yelled any of these at you lately, you might not be training hard enough. Usually, you'll hear one of these go by when an instructor wants you to pull, strike, or punch with more power. But power in the martial arts doesn't mean work divided by time, it means the ability to achieve the goal of the technique.

When an instructor wants to see more power, they want to see a technique that would be effective.

Technical correctness is the primary way to make your techniques more effective because it makes them more efficient. In this case, technical correctness means body and bone 'alignment,' accuracy of the contact point (target), and the angle of contact.

(I have put alignment in quotes because we usually only discuss alignment in a static posture but it's critical through the entire process, so I have come to prefer the phrase 'body mechanics' over 'alignment.' But Trias used alignment, and so most instructors I've met in his lineage also say alignment.)

At Broad Ripple Martial Arts we say a technique needs speed, penetration, and a cross between whipping action and momentum to be effective.

Penetration is the most about correct form:

Penetration is a function of distance. If a technique is thrown too far away, then there will be no travel available to hit through the surface of your opponent. Remember, to break a nose, you hit the nose on the guy behind your opponent. Penetration is only possible if the striking implement is rigid. That rigidity is determined by bone alignment (e.g. the wrist must be held straight in a punch) and the angle of contact (e.g. throw a hook punch from too far away so that your fist doesn't make right angle contact, and tell me how much penetration you achieve). Making a correct fist and pulling the toes out of the way for a snap kick aid penetration.


Speed is about technique first and then about effort:

Efficient technique removes unnecessary motions and allows all of the effort to go into increase the speed of the technique. This encompasses keeping the elbow down when punching, staying relaxed, non-telegraphic movement. Keep in mind that the speed we're discussing here is the actual physical speed of the technique and not the apparent speed (the amount of time your opponent has to perceive a technique) although non-telegraphic movement aids both types of speed. Once your technique is 'correct enough' you can work to move faster and faster. Ideally, you want your technique to feel like it goes from a standing start to full speed instantaneously. Think about a sudden sneeze or a convulsive shiver, and try to make your techniques launch out as fast as that.

Whipping action and momentum:

First, let's be clear that these two characteristics are opposite ends of a spectrum. A large transfer of momentum (like a push) is about as far away from a snapping, whip-like strike as you can get. At the same time, a skilled karate player can throw whipping, snappy reverse punches that cause no damage through an entire tournament. So when we say a cross between whipping action and momentum we mean you need some momentum transfer and you need some snap. Some techniques (e.g. backfist) tend to fit better near the whipping action pole and others (e.g. hammer fist) tend to live closer to the momentum pole, but that's mostly a question of habit and tradition. In general, we add momentum to karate techniques by correct body mechanics, like turning the hips strongly in a gyaku-tsuki or a mawashi-geri. We add whipping action by pulling the striking implement back (after sufficient penetration is achieved) as fast as possible. This retraction can occur from the hips, as in gyaku-tsuki, or from the striking limb alone, as in oi-tsuki or kisami-tsuki.

Drilling to Improve the Three Elements of an Effective Technique

Penetration:
Since penetration is mostly about distance, rigidity of the striking implement, and angle of contact the best drill to improve is to work each technique on a substitute target. The Dojo has heavy bags, kicking shields, focus mitts, rebreakable boards and thai pads. All of these substitute (meaning not a human) targets give you the opportunity to work on penetration.

Make sure to work from different distances for each technique, learning where the optimal distance is if you don't move your base and how far you can move your base without losing balance. And always remember to hit through the surface of the target! The full extension of your technique should force your striking surface through the target's surface. You can check this by letting one or two slow motion techniques miss the target. Make sure a minimum of 2 inches of travel past the surface is possible before you continue.

As you are working on your penetration, there is no need to turn this into a cardiovascular drill. Keep the pace manageable and maintain focus on hitting the target squarely, without any give in your striking surface.

Speed:

The effective speed of a technique is as much dependent on the timing and deceptiveness of your application of it as it is on the physical speed of it. On the other hand, once you have the technique well-imprinted on your muscle memory, challenging yourself to throw it as quickly as possible while maintaining good form is an excellent training method. There are two basic approaches:

Starting from a static position, launch your technique as fast as possible to the target. Try to surprise yourself with how your technique gets to the target. And a target is absolutely essential -- doing this in the air forces you to apply the brakes to your own technique, which will not help your speed.

Carefully monitor yourself for technical flaws and do not practice the same 'wrong' technique twice! I have seen it written that each bad repetition of a technique takes 10 good repetitions to repair, and that it takes approximately 10,000 good repetitions to achieve mastery. Fortunately, even achieving a journeyman level of technical correctness is sufficient to put us head and shoulders above the crowd.

You can also practice throwing as many of a given technique as possible in a fixed amount of time. This drill is very advanced, because it is so easy to throw bad technique. If you find that you are throwing higher and higher numbers of your technique by using inappropriate body mechanics, bad distancing, or in any way other than speeding up your technique, you need to stop the drill immediately. Although even a bad technique might work, you don't need to practice to perform bad techniques. They come naturally.

So it's been said, a bad technique is one that isn't capable of having all 3 necessary characteristics -- speed, penetration, and a cross between whipping action and momentum. Although you might be drilling your speed, if you increase speed but make your body alignment or angle of contact so bad you can't generate penetration or momentum, you aren't helping yourself.

Whipping Action and Momentum:

The best tools for this attribute are a medium weight bag and the kicking shield. In general the 'ideal' cross of whipping action and momentum will cause the hanging bag to 'jump' off the hand, and not swing. If you combine the ideal amount of whipping action and momentum with proper penetration, the bag will fold around your hand, foot, or elbow AND the bag will jump.

If the bag swings gently, or your partner behind the kicking shield is pushed around, you are transferring a goodly amount of momentum but are probably not generating sufficient whipping action. If you pop the bag or shield and make a great cracking noise, but the bag stays still or your partner doesn't shift at all, you have great whipping action but insufficient momentum transfer.

It'll be obvious if you actually do these drills that it's not really possible to separate the three elements of effective technique. A zero penetration technique will have no whipping action or momentum; a slow motion technique won't penetrate the surface of a target. There are benefits to focusing on specific attributes of your techniques. A narrow focus will allow you to progress rapidly on those attributes. On the other hand, a narrow focus limits your growth overall. Drill these attributes separately, but don't lose sight of the overall goal: effective technique.

Happy training.

Who Succeeds in the Martial Arts?

Martial arts instructors have noticed that the most talented students often don't stay very long. If a person comes in who can do a reasonable imitation of all the basic kicks and punches in one class, learns Pinan Shodan in the next class, and goes and wins their first sparring match in the next class, most instructors figure they'll be gone before blue belt.

This seems backwards, right? Generally people that are good at something enjoy it, and shouldn't less effort mean more enjoyment?

My take on it is that most of these very talented individuals don't value what they are learning. It's the difficulty of the process that makes the rest of us so attached to our practice.

But if it's not the most talented students that usually stick around, who is it?

In my opinion, the majority of successful martial arts students have three traits:

1) Persistence -- they don't quit because they don't like to quit. When they aren't able to do something the first time, they practice it again and again and again and . . .

2) Emphasis on 'the right way' -- they believe that there is a right and a wrong way to do things, or at least that doing things the right way is easier and more efficient

3) Comfort with a social hierarchy -- they enjoy or are at least comfortable with the belt structure being a visible indicator of who is in charge of whom

Each of these traits give people who have them huge advantages in the first 3 - 5 years of martial arts training. But after that (which you might notice is generally after black belt status is achieved) they can become limiting.

Persistence becomes stubbornness and can prevent us from understanding new methods for training. Emphasis on the right way turns into 'the way I was taught must be right.' Comfort with the hierarchy becomes "I'm a big man on campus in my black belt" and leads to sloppy training.

It can be hard to see when behaviors that used to be very helpful to ourselves become roadblocks. And it can be even harder for an instructor 'pointing the way' for others to remember that behaviors that aren't good for the instructor might still be good for the less experienced martial artist.

A Karate Solution to a JiuJitsu Problem

A couple of weeks ago I learned a new takedown. The closest video example I've found is Chris Wells showing it as a 'spiral takedown' on youtube -- check it out.

At any rate, this sort of takedown is a whole new category for me. I've never practiced working from the collar tie position and I've never practiced reaching down to 'tap' a leg. It's pretty exciting to learn something so new. Of course, being completely new, it's something I'm no good at doing.

So now I've got a problem -- I want to be good at it, because it's an easy way to put some on their back with very little exposure to being thrown myself. And I'll probably see it in class again in, say, two years.

So how do I get better at it? How can I even remember how do it?

I hope everyone reading this is shouting "Practice it on your own!" at their computer screens. Because that's what it takes. But it's a throw and I learned it with a partner. And I don't have a convenient training partner. So one option, and it's a good one, is to find a training partner. If I could still train at Broad Ripple Martial Arts, I'd be able to rustle up some partners and some mat space. But where I'm training now, I still need to build those relationships. So in the meantime I need another option.

Fortunately, this is not a new problem. The teachers of the Chinese-Okinawan-Japanese arts solved this problem a long time ago. If I want to practice a partner technique without a partner I can use kata.

We learn kata as set routines. That's because we use kata to transmit the basic (and not so basic) techniques of Shorei Goju Ryu from teacher to student. But we can also use the concept of kata to practice any technique we want. Really, when you practice basic techniques like seiken-tsuki or han uchi ken you are doing a (very) short kata.

And that's how I'm going to practice my new takedown: In the air, without a partner. It'll probably look like goofy dancing to most people. But since I'll know what it means, I'll know it's making me better at tossing people onto the floor.

There are advantages and disadvantages to practicing this way, and understanding those can help you understand how to make your kata more effective training.

But that's for another post.

Want to Get Better Faster?

Here's a tip that helped me make my greatest gains in skill:

Practice every day!

Your first thought might have been "I wish I had the time." Maybe you thought "That's not easy at all."

But think about this -- how long does it take to throw all of your basic kicks? How much time do you need to practice moving your hand first when you throw a reverse punch?

Most of us don't have the time or the inclination to train for several hours every day. But everyone can spend five or ten minutes a day refining a technique, visualizing the form they learned the night before, or doing some light shadow boxing in front of the television.

Practicing everyday lets you focus on what you need to work on. By making a small commitment each and every day you will deepen your practice and speed your skill progression.

Here's what I'm currently practicing every day:

Thai style roundhouse kick

Lead hook (focusing on properly covering with the rear hand)

Sometimes I get carried away and work on the new throw I learned last week . . . and then I've spent 6 minutes on all three techniques.

What's your current practice? Start with one phrase from a kata or one basic technique, and let us know how it goes.

Welcome to the blog!

A number of the higher ranks at BRMAA have decided that we could use a place to share more content than what is possible on the mat and a blog seems like the perfect place for it! You will want to keep an eye out here for videos of our self-defense curriculum and kata. We'll also feature articles leaning more towards the philosophy behind what we do as well as theoretical exploration along with some suggested reading that you might find helpful.

As Sensei announced on the mat recently, we are working to raise the level of performance across the board and having access to some of what has helped to shape the higher ranks who are teaching you is one way to get yourself where you need to be.

Thanks for continuing on this journey with us and know that we are all still walking it together.