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?