Some eclectic karate musings....

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while, it’s just been a busy time with holidays (had a week in Malta – very nice, and a weekend visiting a vineyard – yes we can make wine here); decorating (new bathroom and decorating my son’s bedroom); gardening to catch up on now that summer has finally arrived (and is about to disappear again); weekend visitors and various other things.

In karate terms: my husband passed his 2^nd dan for which I partnered him; I’ve just finished teaching my after-school karate classes for the summer and I’ve been covering some club classes while my instructor has been on holiday.

So, this post is an eclectic mix of thoughts that I have mulled over in my mind over the last couple of months…..

1.       I’ve had a hard time shaking off the disappointment I felt at not dan grading with my husband in June. It’s silly, I know, but I’ve experienced a whole roller coaster of emotions about it over the last few weeks from disappointment to anger to resignation back to anger. It’s ridiculous I should have felt like this. My head told me to wait until November but my heart wanted to do it in June. Attending the grading with my husband was a really hard day emotionally, particularly at the beginning when everyone started warming up and again at the end when certificates were presented. A lesson in humility I suppose. During the actual grading I was okay and I just got on with supporting my husband who did a really good grading. I’m on a more even keel again now and looking towards my own 2^nd dan grading in November.

2.       Why do students find it so hard to learn stances? I’ve been doing a lot of teaching recently and I’m always constantly amazed at how sloppy many students are with stances. You can tell them until you are blue in the face to ‘bend the front knee (in zenkutsu dachi)’, or ‘bend the back leg’ (in neko ashi dachi) and they still don’t do it – even at brown belt! When you watch them do kata above the waist they are looking pretty good but watch their legs and there is hardly any attempt to use the proper stances at all. I’ve tried getting them to do a basic kata such as pinan nidan with their arms behind their backs so that they just have to concentrate on their legs but they still just walk through the pattern with hardly any discernible stances! Do you have any effective ways to teach stances?

3.       I think I have found the source of my leaning problem in karate. This problem raised its ugly head again during my pre-dan (it has plagued me for years!). However, my husband seems to have pinpointed the subtle thing that I am doing wrong and I am practising hard now to correct it. It appears that when I am transitioning between stances during kihon combinations or kata I am slightly hyper-extending my back and pushing my hips forward. You would think that this would make me lean backwards but it actually results in me leaning forward slightly when I change stance. I also think it makes my stance transitions slower because my weight is not correctly balanced between my feet and there is a slight pause before I can move. My husband said that I need to tuck my pelvis under more to straighten my spine (like you do in sanchin dachi). When I try doing this in zenkutsu dachi I can get my hip back more and step forward more quickly because my weight is more evenly balanced. I also don’t lean as I step forward. I am now practising to make this feel a more natural movement and hopefully some of my other problems may disappear at the same time i.e. leading slightly with the hand rather than the foot and occasionally losing balance.

As you can see my karate seems like a series of highs and lows at the moment, but that’s par for the course isn’t it.?We’re on a long journey, not in a race. It’s normal to have training plateaus, move forward, slide back again, have Eureka moments or discover small flaws in technique that are holding you back. Keeping going is the most important thing and not letting disappointments blow you of course.

So I am keeping going – I have started training daily, i.e. a little and often strategy. I find training about 7.15 in the morning the best time for me. If I’m not in the gym by 8.00am then in my heart of hearts I know it will not happen! The day will take over and I won’t get around to it, so I’m trying to be very disciplined with myself. I’m determined to crack the problems that plague my karate and stopped me from grading last month.

The biggest battle we all face really is the one inside ourselves isn’t it?

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Karate punching is like swimming...

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How many times has your sensei told you that the power of your punch should originate from the ground? That you draw power from the ground and then transmit it up your legs, through the hips and torso and down your arm. You believe him/her because you respect them, they have years more experience than you and they can punch harder than you (and you should believe them because it’s basically true) but you can’t quite get your head around why it should be true.

Drawing power from the ground gives karate a mystical, magical quality as if Mother Nature herself is giving you some ‘power assist’. If, like me, you tend to prefer more rational explanations then it’s easy to think that drawing energy from the ground sounds like twaddle.  But it isn't twaddle; it can be explained by the laws of physics.

I have recently been privileged to have a sneak preview of John Cole’s excellent book chapter on forces called ‘Push and pull explains all techniques’. I don’t want to pre-empt anything John has to say on this topic before his book is published but suffice to say he mentions Newton’s third law of motion which states: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  If we apply this law to people then basically, when you apply a force to an object it responds by applying and equal amount of force back to you. You transmit some of your energy into the object (e.g. by pushing it), the object transmits an equal amount of energy back into you.  What happens to that energy once it comes back to you depends on several factors: if you happen to be the smaller, lighter object then you will probably move; if you are not able to move freely, you’re restrained in some way, or the returned energy is being transmitted to a small surface area (e.g. you pricked your finger on a needle) then the energy may cause injury to you instead or alternatively you may be able to utilise the returned energy in some other way.

In my title I said that karate punching is like swimming. More specifically ‘drawing energy from the ground’ is analogous to pushing yourself away from the side of the swimming pool to gain momentum. If you can swim then you will know from experience that it is quicker to get some speed up if you push yourself away from the side of the pool with your feet than to just start swimming from a standing start. Why is this? Newton’s third law of motion explains it…..you push against the wall of the pool, transmitting energy into it and the pool wall ‘pushes’ an equal amount of energy back to you in the opposite direction. Since you are in a horizontal position in the pool (and you are weightless in water) the effect of receiving the energy back is to propel you in a forward direction.

A karate punch works on the same principle. If you take a firm stance and push down into the ground with your feet, transmitting energy into it, the ground responds by pushing an equal amount of energy back into you. Since you are in a vertical position the energy is transmitted upwards (opposite to the direction you pushed in). Though you are lighter than the ground below you the effects of gravity pressing down on you make it unlikely that you will respond by launching upwards (unless the ground below you was a trampoline!) The received energy doesn't normally injure you either because it is spread over the relatively large surface area of your feet (It might hurt more if you just pushed the ground with the top of your big toe) Instead, you are in a position to utilise that returning energy to enhance your punch.  How you achieve that is worthy of a blog or two of its own; suffice to say that with the correct sequence of muscular contraction and relaxation, starting with the lower legs, upper legs, hips, torso, shoulders and finally the arm and fist the energy can be transferred from muscle group to muscle group until it finally leaves your fist!

This won’t happen by chance though – only through training and practice can you learn to utilise the energy that you received via Newton’s third law of motion by pushing into the ground first. Without training this energy will just dissipate from your feet or half way up your legs and be wasted.  The harder you push into the ground the more energy you’ll get back (the harder you throw a ball at a wall the further and faster it comes back to you; the harder you push off the pool side the further and faster you’ll glide through the water).  Punching is only different because we are complex beings and we have to train to learn how to utilise that energy effectively.

The point of this blog post was not to explain the whole physics of punching but to give the scientific explanation (in layman’s terms) of why sensei is right when he says you must draw your punching power from the ground.  Do I make sense?

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A blog worth reading...

I just wanted to bring your attention to a new blog that I have been following on women's self-defence. As I have mentioned in previous posts I don't think that martial arts training easily meets the self-defence needs of women and traditional martial arts generally fail to address avoidance and awareness training (the pre-event phase) in any detail at all. 

Invicta Self-defence blog is written by Alexis Fabricius who has been training in martial arts for the past eighteen years, and owns a women's self-defense company in Toronto, called Invicta Self-Defense. She has black belts in karate and kung-fu, as well as a strong background in jiu-jitsu and kickboxing. 

Her blog started in March and has so far covered topics regarding safety when on a night out, safety in parking lots, body language, intuition, sexual violence and some simple escapes from grabs. She writes in a very informed, easy to read style. I would advise any female reader (and male for that matter!) who is interested in understanding more about avoidance and awareness strategies to book mark this blog. 

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Pre-dan for Nidan

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On Saturday I had my pre-dan course. This is an assessment of your ability to meet the standard for the dan grading a few weeks later. Like I mentioned in a previous blog, I was expecting to grade for nidan at the end of June.

However, the verdict of the grading panel at the end of the course was that I was ‘borderline’ and they have left it up to me to decide whether I want to give it a try or postpone until the next dan grading session in November. My husband (and martial arts partner) has been given the all clear to grade for nidan in June.

Prior to the pre-dan course I would have imagined this scenario of whether to press on regardless so that we can grade together or grade on separate occasions would have been quite a dilemma for me. As it happened the decision seemed very clear cut. Before I had even left the changing rooms I had decided that I would postpone my grading until November and concentrate on helping my husband to pass his in June.

We have graded together on every occasion since white belt, which, if you include our kobudo gradings amounts to 17 gradings; but it was inevitable that at some point our grading schedules would part company. I have done well to keep up with him this long but this time I just can’t keep up, I’m not ready for nidan grading yet and he is. My husband has four years more experience in martial arts than me, he did jujitsu before karate and holds a black belt in that art as well, and this experience massively influences his ability to do karate.

I don’t want to hold him back and I don’t want to risk failure for myself so it makes sense for us to grade separately this time. I would hate to be one of those passed it by the skin of her teeth or pulled it off on the day people. It’s just not budo. I want to feel comfortable in my skin with nidan so I need to be patient and wait.

There are advantages for both of us in grading separately. It is doubly exhausting to both grade yourself and be a grading partner for someone else at the same time. You have to remember their techniques (which may be different to your own) so that you can remember what kind of attacks they want from you at different times during the grading. It will be easier on both of us if we only have to concentrate on one role at a time!

I can now focus on helping my husband to finish his preparations for his grading and make sure I am fully familiar with his techniques so that I can be a good partner for him. I know he will return the favour for me in my preparations for November.

So I soldier on! I will have to do another pre-dan assessment in October which I won’t particularly look forward to (they don’t tend to be very positive experiences for me) but hopefully I will get the all clear next time!

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A kid's sparring alternative...

Kid’s love sparring don’t they? Their faces light up when they are told to get their sparring mitts on and they run off enthusiastically to fetch them out of their bags.

Though I'm not a huge fan of sports karate for adults I do think it’s a great exercise for kids. It develops fitness, courage, reaction times, and a sense of strategy. It also toughens them up a bit and teaches them to show a bit of humility whether they win or lose.

So it is with some sadness that I can’t introduce the kids to sparring in my after-school class. Why? Because they have no sparring mitts! These are kids doing a 6 week introductory course in karate, wearing just their P.E. kits. No gi, no belt, no kit!

To give them a taste of the thrill of sparring I’ve had to be a little inventive. I take in as many belts as I can find (all my old coloured belts, my kobudo club belts and any other spares I can put my hands on) and teach the kids how to tie them on. Then I have cut up several old white belts into strips of about 10 inches long and give them one each to tuck into the front of their belts – this tab becomes the target.

We then do a bit of ‘shadow sparring’ to learn how to move around in sport karate and practice a couple of basic block/punch combinations against imaginary opponents. I then pair them up and get them to use the same technique of moving in to their partner to do a reverse punch but instead of punching (no mitts remember) they pull out their partner’s white tab.

After they’ve each had a few goes at moving in to pull out the tab of an unresisting partner they move on to doing it in a more competitive way with both partners trying to get each other’s tabs. This starts to re-create the energy and flow of a real sparring bout with the kids learning to move around each other, guard their own tab and moving in to grab their partner’s tab.

Once they’ve got the hang of it we have a mini competition which helps to teach them the basic rules and etiquette of a sparring match. I divide them into two groups and sit each group either side of the sparring area. I then call up one from each group (matched for size and age) to compete whilst everyone else watches.

I act as referee and get them to stand opposite each other, bow, get into fighting stance and then at my command (hajime) they start to ‘spar’. A point is scored when one of them pulls out the other’s tab and the match is stopped (yame), the kids are put back to their starting position and the point awarded (ippon). They then bow to each other and off they go again. We carry on like this for a set period (usually a minute) and the winner is the one with the most points. At the end the opponents are brought back to starting positions and the winner announced (kachi). All the kids get a chance to have a go at this ‘shia kumite’.

Alternatives include ‘best of three’ points to win or winner is first to score a point. There are rules about staying in the area and penalties and warnings for bad or dangerous behaviour (not that this needs to be invoked very often!).

The kids really enjoy this opportunity to have a go at ‘sparring’ in this way and seem to get a lot out of it. I have found it a useful way to simulate sport kumite when sparring mitts are not available and many of the same skills can be learnt and practiced in a safe way. I haven’t yet introduced any kicks into this style of sparring but there is no reason not to use roundhouse kicks because our real kumite sessions in the club involve only touch contact anyway and we don’t wear any protective body gear.

Hopefully if some of these kids enjoy my karate sessions enough to make them want to join the main club they will be able to hit the ground running a little when introduced to real sparring with mitts!

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