Attack The Elbow

In order to understand kata and apply the principles contained therein, one ought to be able to identify what exactly is being depicted in the kata. Simple, provided you accept that everything in kata is about fighting an opponent within arm's length, and in this instance that an adversary's straight arm is an invitation to break it. The cup and saucer pose found throughout kata is a popular and recurring "image" of this principle.

Traditionally, the cup and saucer pose is referred to as a chambering, ostensibly for a backfist and sidekick.  Domingo, my partner in the video below, assures me that if I were to break his nose with a backfist, it might end the fight.  Domingo is too kind.  I spar knockdown karate with Domingo regularly. He's got more muscle and bone mass, and heaps more motivation. A backfist, I'm afraid, would only stoke the hellfire sure to follow such a foolish move.

In the video, I demonstrate an elbow attack from a clinch, such as I might find myself in if Domingo lands a glancing blow and I grab and hold, and a situation where Domingo is raining down punches and I cover-up. Of course, a lapel grab might also be a situation where an elbow attack might be warranted. The art is not memorizing an application for every scenario, but being able to apply the principle to any scenario. 

Note too that a full understanding of the straight arm attack principle is recognizing that anything can act as the fulcrum over which the elbow is destroyed. Future installments are planned to demonstrate this principle. Stay tuned and make yours, a better karate.

Balance, Transitions and Kokken

Some friends and I are practicing knife defenses, sweeps and joint manipulations of SSBD in the video above. It's a bit rough, admittedly, maybe even ugly, and that's the point. When you consider the never ending perfection that karateka seek when they practice kata, what is done in the "air," that is without an adversary except for the one in your mind, the practical takes a back seat to esthetics, and that can be detrimental to your health and safety.

The following is a list of karate technique you will see in the video: juji uke (knife pass and trap); chudan soto uke (arm bar); kake ashi dachi (foot sweep); zenkutsu dachi (foot sweep). In addition you will see a knife held in an ice pick grip used for capturing and controlling. If unarmed, kokken may be used to hook and control the opponent's offending limb.  An expert might appreciate these things, but a beginner needs a partner (and a knowledgeable instructor).

As Uzi, Massimo and I practice the technique, note how we try to disrupt the adversary's balance before sweeping. Arm bars, stabbing, pushing and position are used to displace the opponent to the point that the sweep becomes effortless. Notice too how arm bars soften up the adversary for weapon disarms and chicken wings.

A word on transitions, kake ashi dachi (cross legged stance) and zenkutsu dachi (front leaning stance) I hope you appreciate, by now, are not intermediate steps to a final objective.  If you have any practical fighting experience you understand that there is no tactical reason to ever cross legs (in the case of kake ashi dachi) when transiting sideways unless you wish to give your opponent an advantage. The stance represents a sweep. When Uzi executes a zenkutsu dachi, notice how he uses his torso as a fulcrum in an arm-bar to unbalance me for the sweep. The notion that stances are transitory phases of a body in motion should be put to rest. When combined with the images of what the adversary is experiencing contemporaneously, the dachi (stances) represent takedowns or some other technique of dominance or control. Kake ashi dachi- it only looks like you are crossing your legs, but remember that the other guy is falling. Zenkutsu dachi- it only looks like you've over committed to your lunge, but remember that the other guy has been unbalanced an is about to fall.

Finally, the video closes with a loop of Uzi repeating a key point for head control and the neck crank. Details, details.  I hope you found this interesting and helpful in your quest for a better karate.

My thanks to Maul Mornie, and SSBD brothers Uzi and Massimo.

Understanding Kata: Couples and Collisions

For some, Karate is principally about striking.  Mechanically, we would be talking about collisions. It is kicking and punching, and also managing the kicks and punches. Kata, the dance so misunderstood, would then be a catalogue of such technique. The footwork and body mechanics, from this perspective, is oriented towards facilitating collisions between fist and nose, foot and ribs. This, however, is a limited perspective. Karate is not only about collisions, but also about couples: force couples (a system of equal and opposite forces on parallel paths).

"GTFO," you say. Hang on. The force couple is the foundation of many martial arts. You will recognize it in the Yin-Yang symbol- the circle with swirls of black and white. When you combine equal and opposite forces on parallel paths you get rotation. You will also see force couples in kata if you know what you are looking for. Here are some clues: simultaneous pulling and pushing actions; pivoting and turning (obviously); certain actions and poses to which no application can be attributed other than "chambering."

In this excellent demonstration by Maul Mornie (SSBD), we see a force couple in action at the 1:16 mark. There are several names in karate for this move, gedan bari and manji uke, come to mind. Traditionally, gedan bari, although a compound move, is thought of as a downward sweeping block, and little consideration given to what the other arm is doing besides simply chambering. Similarly there is a kata move most interpret as a violent removal of the male genitalia- again hardly a thought to what the other arm is doing. What Maul Mornie demonstrates by the simultaneous pulling and pushing is a force couple which rotates his opponent around the horizontal axis.

Force couples abound. Not only can they be applied to torsos as in the previous example, but also to limbs. Here, Lorenzo Bagnai (Isam Firenze) demonstrates an arm-bar. Lorenzo once said to me, "Se non c'è coppia di forze non c'è nessuna tecnica." (no force couple, no technique) To which I replied,"Huh?. . .you mean like gunting in FMA (scissors)?" "Esatto!"

Speaking of scissors ("hasami" in Japanese) there is the infamous crab claw takedown (kani "basami") of Judo. This just to illustrate how pervasive the principle of the force couple is. Look for it in your kata and you will have a better karate.

Where is the threat?

If you have been assiduously practicing your kata, you might be under the impression that the greatest threat came from the left hand side, particularly when four toughs block your path.  Yeesh!  In my previous blog, I ranted about the insanity of the multi person attack scenario.  Now, I ask you to prove it to yourself.  How would you fight four attackers?

While you are cogitating on that, let me say that apart from avoiding dark places where four baddies can sneak up on you, you can really only deal with one person at a time.  So, either find a way to line up the four assailants that you might take them on sequentially, or prepare to take a beating.  You see, it doesn't work.  While your mind is fixated on fighting four men, you miss out on the important kata lesson of dealing with the most dangerous threat, and that is the single attacker in front of you.

The right and left hand symmetry of  kata is not to emphasize multiple attackers, rather it is to demonstrate that the man in front of you may present you with an attack from either side.  Your responses, then, is to move off-line to a side which is advantageous to you.

If you dispense with the multi-person attack scenario, and think of only one attacker, it will be easier to see how a combination of moves set-up complex technique.  You will see that kata is intricate and at the same time conservatively simple.  If the strike to the face does not immediately have the desired effect, follow-up by wrapping your arm around the back of his head, and turn whilst simultaneously dropping your center of gravity.  Which kata did this application appear in?  (Hint, it is the one where you were told to elbow the guy in front of you in the chin at the same time as you elbow the guy behind you in the gut.)

That's crazy. Me, Tarzan.

Happy New Year!  Sorry for the scarcity in posts.  Between natural disasters and personal upheavals there was no time to ponder the deep meaning of Karate.   With a little time to breathe and since I am out of practice, allow me to rant  about the shallow stuff.  In a chat with fellow karate geeks, one of the pillars of a system I am fond of  was quoted (I'll paraphrase for you), "kata is not only a fight with multiple opponents but it teaches you the main technique of karate."  I would like to take this moment to argue that no kata ever demonstrated how to effectively deal with a group of attackers.  If fighting multiple attackers is the premise of all kata, karate ought to be dismissed as outright foolishness.

Think about the Heian/Pinan series of kata for example.  If you were surrounded on four sides, you are seconds from getting pounded into a grease stain, so forget about turning to the left.  It is hard enough fighting one attacker, if you want to take on four you had better have a firearm and standoff distance, so let just deal with one attacker m'kay.  Let's place that attacker squarely in front of you, what would you do?  I would step off line, maybe to the left, maybe to the right, to get a better angle on my opponent.  Maybe I would stay in place, occupy his center.  It would depend on what attack I am countering, but it would always be against the person directly in front of me.

"But, but, but," you start to object, "what about all those turns?"  Oh, you mean the embusen, the pattern of lines your feet trace on the floor as you purportedly meet attackers who ambush you in the capital letter "I" formation, or something similar to the Nazca drawings.  Recognize that patterns exist in kata, just as they exist in poetry and song.  They exist to make the message memorable, but they are not the message.  I don't know how many times I read, ". . .his armor clanged upon him, as darkness clouded his eyes," every time a soldier died in one of Homer's epic poems.  Mnemonics.

The embusen, helps you remember a theme, elbow joint destruction at the bottom of the "I" and punches in the vertical part.  Also, kata have complicated embusen so as to accomodate turns, not for the purpose of meeting multiple opponents.  The turns are the  most important part of the kata as they contain the most destructive technique.  Grab hold of the guy you are tussling with, turn suddenly and drop your center of gravity.  Depending on what part of your opponent you grabbed, you either snapped a limb or threw him to the floor.  Kata is that simple and that complex.  But fighting multiple opponents? That's crazy.  It is not that fighting a gang of toughs is impossible, it is simply not the primary, not even the tertiary lesson.

On kata teaching the main karate technique, yeah, sorry, not really.  Teachers teach karate.  If you are ever told to repeat kata many times until you understand, then your teacher, and his teacher before him failed.  This kind of karate frustrates me to no end.  It is the same as expecting the illiterate to learn to read by tracing words from a book.  I know of one illiterate autodidact who taught himself to read.  His name is Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Moves like Jagger

I have been quietly (ok, maybe not so quietly) bemoaning a development in karate I find disturbing: musical kata.  The state of kata is bad enough, what with the narrow understanding of bunkai, adding music pushes the martial arts to the glittery side of art and rendering the martial unrecognizable.  Is there a way out of this death spiral?  I would argue in the affirmative.  Understanding is the key.  The truth is easy to recognize, even if disguised by music and dance.

Take the kembangan (flower dances) of Silat.  I've asked Alvin Guinanao to provide me with a vid of his moves which you will find above.  Notice the fluidity and balance.  Note the delicate hand gestures and intricate footwork that belie truly powerful and destructive self-defense technique.  "Well that's all nice," you might say. "But where is the powerful and destructive self-defense technique?"

Here's a view of Alvin's ground fighting class.  It doesn't look so dance like anymore.  Some of it vaguely resembles certain Judo throws (osoto gari, kosoto gari, kosoto gake).   You might remember my post on stances, or heard me in conversation refer to karate's funny ways of standing as takedowns.  Compare Alvin's flower dance to his ground fighting.  Now think about kata and how you might reinterpret it.

As for Alvin's delicate hand gestures while performing a kembangan, check out his class on blocking technique.

Why Silat?

When it comes to kata bunkai, it helps to view it from a distance, and I don't mean from the nose-bleed section of the bleachers.  I mean view it from the perspective of South East Asian martial arts like Silat. For the past few months I've been training with Duane. D., the US representative of Maul Mornie's  Silat Suffian Bela Diri and I must say that the experience is like hitching a ride on the long journey to understanding bunkai.  If you look at the some of the video's in Maul Mornie's YouTube Channel, you'll get a glimpse of the type of applications to be found in this rich and varied system.

Today, I had the good fortune to have met and trained with Grant S., SSBD's group leader of Germany, who happened to be visiting.  With Duane, I had been practicing basic knife and open hand fighting drills.  From Grant's perspective, the most advanced technique is simple technique.  In two hours, Grant taught a progression of simple knife passing and blocking technique, culminating in wicked joint destruction technique.  Duane and Grant assure me that what I have been exposed to is just a hint.  Maul Mornie's seminars are the main courses to the appetizers I've been given.  Maul Mornie is coming to NYC in October and I plan on being there.

While training with Duane, I was driven to find out what else is available in the world of Silat.  I contacted Alvin Guinanao of Silat Buka Lingkaran to see if he gave any seminars in my area.  Alvin teaches a comprehensive fighting system which includes weapons, standing and ground fighting, as well as locks, chokes and grabs, or pretty much what I think Karate could be if more folks understood the kata.  I became familiar with Alvin's work while researching all things Silat.  I am fascinated by the way he turns what looks like a dance into a full-blown deadly martial art.  Karate's kata always seems to fall short in this regard.  For some reason, karate's proponents focused on the individual and lost sight of the opponent.

Anyway,  I asked Alvin if he would consider giving a seminar in NYC and he has agreed.  I am very excited about this.  My karate buddy, Joe C. is helping me put this seminar together.  If you are in the NY tri-state area and want to experience Silat, or are more than mildly curious about making your karate a better karate, you have got to participate in these seminars.

Thought experiment

The story goes that what we know today as Karate we owe to intrepid Okinawans who travelled to China to pick the brains of Chinese masters. Later generations of karate masters based their authority and expertise on how close their relationship was to the original travelers to China, which brings me to a joke told to me by my friend, Bob the chef.

It goes something like this:

A new monk, let's call him Brother Al, is assigned the task of copying ancient manuscripts by hand. The original manuscripts, too valuable to be handled by the monks, are kept in a vault where they've been stored for ages. Only copies are available to the monks in the copy room. Brother Al, being a sharp guy, his joining a monastery not withstanding, asks Abbot Bud, most senior of monks,"Abbot Bud, how can we ensure the accuracy of our work if we only copy from copies?"

Abbot Bud ponders the question as Brother Al looks on. Alarm builds in Brother Al as Abbot Bud's demeanor changes from beatific calm to wide-eyed concern. "Good question, Brother Al, mind the other brothers while I run down to the vault." And with that, Abbot Bud hikes up his robes and sprints as fast as his sandaled feet can carry him across the stone floor. Hours pass, no Abbot Bud.

A concerned Brother Al and two other monks, Josephus and Reggy, make their way to the manuscript vault and find a distraught Abbot Bud. A page of illuminated vellum is crumpled in his tight fist. "It was never ib, it was never ib, it was never i frickin b" Abbot Bud repeats, his eyes swollen with tears. Josephus and Reggy steady Abbot Bud while Brother Al smoothes the wrinkled page. "He's right, my brothers," Al reads, "it's e b r, the word is supposed to be celebrate."

I often think kata can be like ancient manuscripts with transposed or missing letters, even missing pages. Here's a thought experiment-if the first transcription of the kata "manuscript" was flawed, how would you know?

The BS Bunkai Test

Some people wanna fill the world with silly bunkai. . . My good buddy J shared a Hein nidan (Pinan sono ni among the Kyokushin karate crowd) bunkai video he had found online. While we both had a laugh at the instructor's expense, deep down it alarmed me. I checked out some other interpretations of this kata on the net. Poor Heian nidan. Sadly, this particular kata is a magnet for very shakey, logic defying interpretation. If your BS detector isn't sounding off, it's time for re-calibration.

The first hint of fishy bunkai is an elaborate response to such a simple attack as a punch to the face (from that pesky guy standing to your left). One doesn't need any special training to respond to a punch to the face. If one is accustomed to sparring, a parry followed by a counter work well. If one is inexperienced, stepping back, covering up, running away work too. So what gives? It seems to me that some folks are offering up hokey cures for non-existing ailments. And another thing, if you were getting punched in the face and you tried doing the "suggested" arm-twisty maneuver, it's a sure bet you'd get a few more shots in the face. Try it. Reality is the best cure for fishy bunkai syndrome.

The test:

Walk into any boxing or Muay Thai gym. Put on head gear and a mouthguard and ask an obliging partner if he or she wouldn't mind throwing punches at your face. Tell your training partner that it is your aim to catch the first punch and turn it into victory. Get back to me with the results.

towards a better karate

I am writing for a small audience of karate practitioners who believe their karate could be improved. If you see the rise of Mixed Martial Arts and begin to doubt your karate training, this blog is for you. If you have heard of hidden applications in kata, this blog is for you. If you are a practitioner of other martial arts like Judo, Aikido, or Tai Chi, and still hanker for more, this blog is for you. If you think kata sucks, this blog is for you. I fit the above profile and these are my thoughts on making a better karate.

The three K's
Traditional Karate may be said to be incomplete without it's three main components:kumite (sparring); kihon (basics); kata (forms). Kata is the DNA of karate. Like genes, kata give evidence of karate's origins, and also its potential. A better understanding of kata will help us determine where our karate may have gone wrong and how we might fix it. Naturally, any change in our understanding of kata will dramatically change our practice of kihon and kumite.

In the posts to follow I will explain how I interpret kata and make it integral to my karate training. For now, I will leave you with the thought that drives my obsession: Kata reveal that Karate is the original Mixed Martial Art.