Marfest 2012 report...

Aikijutsu

I have been so busy lately that I just haven’t had time to blog. Well, that’s not exactly true; I’ve been doing lots of blogging actually but for the Marfest 2012 blog. But Marfest is over again for another year – now I have the entire post festival write up to do!

I went up to the Marfest last Sunday in Sunderland with my husband; I wouldn’t miss it for the world I love going to the festival. ..

Despite a dip in public attendance this year the festival was still a fantastic event.  Martial Artists from all over the North East descended on the CitySpace centre with their families and friends to watch or participate in the demonstrations and taster sessions on the ‘come and try it’ mats.

Judo

Marfest is as much about the camaraderie between martial artists as it is about the displays of martial art. Over the 12 years the festival has been running a community of martial artists from all disciplines has gradually gelled together to not only demonstrate their art to each other and the general public but to also exchange knowledge and information, support and encourage each other, and to form strong and lasting networks and friendships.  

The strength of this support network was demonstrated very clearly in the afternoon when there was a gap in the order of events. To fill the gap, Peter Seth (Marfest organiser and 4^th dan Aikido), Geoff  Aisbitt  (4^th dan Aikido, 3^rd dan Aikijutsu) and student’s of Christine Poole’s Jujitsu club (British Jujitsu Academy NE) did an impromptu display of Aikido and knife defences. This was impressive because these people do not normally train together (though Geoff does sometimes do some aikido training with Peter), practice different though related arts and had not rehearsed this display at all! This required a lot of trust and cooperation which was possible because the Marfest has brought these people together on several occasions now and so they know each other.

Jujitsu weapons

The other demonstrations though were definitely planned, well rehearsed and displayed professionally. 

There were some last minute programme changes.  Sensei Paul Simpson (Kempo Jujitsu) was unable to make it. However, John Barrass (founder and senior instructor of ESDCS – Evasive Self Defence Combat System) stepped in to cover the vacant ‘come and try it mat’ for the afternoon, teaching his style of close-in reality based street defence. John is a very experienced martial artist who has attained black belts in four arts, including 4^th dan in jujitsu.

Shotokan karate

Peter Gruffity (Capoeira instructor at Group Senzala North East) has supported Marfest over many years but was unable to put on a demonstration this year. However he did attend the festival and did a couple of taster sessions on our ‘come and try it mats’. For those of you unfamiliar with capoeira, it is a Brazilian art form developed by African Slaves in Brazil over 400 years ago. “It combines the potency of violence and fight, the fluidity and expressiveness of dance, the soul-calling power of music, the wit and playfulness of clever games, and the showmanship of acrobatics into one beautiful art form.” (source: http://www.groupsenzala.co.uk)

Ninjutsu weapons

Joe Harte (Taiji, Northern School of Taiji in Co. Durham) was also present and led a short taiji session over lunchtime. He was also available throughout most of the day to talk to people about the principles and practice of his art form – an opportunity taken up by several people.

Of course many of our regular participants were in attendance giving their time freely and generously for this charity fund-raising event – Geoff Aisbitt (Aiki arts), Christine Poole (jujitsu), Phil Doherty (DFM), Mike Campos (taekwondo) and Paul Tennet (Kung Fu).  Newcomers this year included John Bruce (karate), John Simpson (Judo), Mick Farrow (Cane-do) and Bill Patterson (Ninjutsu)

I have lots of video clips of the event but unfortunately it is taking a long time to upload them to YouTube. However, they will be available on the Marfest blog once I've sorted them out!

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What exactly is kobudo?

Kobudo

What exactly is kobudo? I have been training in kobudo for the last two and a half years and I’m still not exactly sure what kobudo is. The basic description of kobudo that I would give to a layman would be ‘weapons training’ but that is very simplistic. After all a gun is a weapon but training to use a gun is not kobudo!

There is a distinction between the terms kobudo and Okinawan kobudo. The word ko-bu-do  breaks down to mean ‘Ancient’ (ko) ‘Stop War’, meaning ‘Peace’ (bu) and ‘Way’ (do) i.e. the ancient way of peace ( sometimes also known as ancient martial way). Some of the weapons used in Okinawan kobudo are based on ancient farming and fishing implements, such as tonfa, nunchuku and kama, whereas some were designed to be weapons such as the sai which was used by the domestic police for crowd control purposes. However, most of these types of weapons were used widely in much of Asia before they ever reached Okinawa so why they are referred to as ‘Okinawan’ weapons I don’t really understand.

The term Kobudo actually refers to the ancient Japanese arts, i.e. those that pre-date the Meiji restoration of 1866 -1869 and include battojutsu, ninjutsu, jujutsu, naginatajutsu, bojutsu, kenjutsu and many others. The term kobudo is synonymous with the term koryu, meaning old school. In this interpretation, kobudo includes some empty hand arts such as jujutsu and ninjutsu so to describe kobudo as ‘weapons training’ really is incorrect!

So can Okinawan kobudo and kobudo (koryu) be mixed together? It would seem strange to do so because the Japanese arts were used by professional warriors on the battlefield whereas Okinawan kobudo was used by civilians as a means of self-defence or civil-defence. Samurai would have had no use for a pair of nunchuku or tonfa on the battlefield and Okinawan civilians were banned from using bladed weapons such as swords.

Here lies my confusion……

I am learning kobudo in a jujitsu club. So far, so good. I have trained with a sword (actually a bokken) – a Japanese ancient art. Still so far, so good. I have also trained with a bo which is used in many cultures around the world, including Okinawa and Japan. My other two weapons are nunchuku and tonfa, both from Okinawan kobudo BUT I am not learning to use them in an Okinawan kobudo way, I am using them in a Japanese way. Basically I am doing jujitsu using tonfa and nunchuku.

In Okinawan kobudo, which is a precursor to karate, both tonfa and nunchuku are used pre-dominantly as blocking and striking weapons, whereas I am using them for locks and throws as well. Want to know how to do a reclining leg throw with a pair of tonfa? – I’ll show you. Want to do a half-shoulder throw augmented with a pair of nunchuku ? – I can show you that as well.

But is it kobudo? Or is it a hybrid? Or is it a form of weapons cross-training? Does it matter? After all, it’s effective….

What is your understanding of the term Kobudo?

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Knife awareness seminar - bridging the gap between traditional and reality training...

Image from Photobucket

Last Sunday my husband and I attended a KEWAP seminar (Knife and Edged Weapons Awareness Programme).

I was interested in attending this course because I thought it offered something different to our usual karate training - a course focused on the practicalities of personal self-defence out on the street, specifically defending against attacks with knives and other edged weapons.

I was a little surprised that only a handful of us turned up for the course but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise because those of us that were there obviously had a lot of personal attention from the instructor. Also, as a small informal group, we were able to have a lot of useful discussion together about various aspects of personal protection.

The course was different in many ways to the usual kind of courses we do. To start with we wore ordinary outside clothes and kept our shoes on. Secondly, the practical training was interspersed with mini lectures and power point slides. I thought this format worked well as it gave the instructor a chance to educate us on a variety of issues such as self defence and the law – what you can and can’t do to defend yourself; awareness issues; how to assess developing situations; how to use the environment to create and manage distance and a discussion on different strategies one can use.

The instructor also showed us some slides of weapons that have been used in real fights. Did you know that there are gas-powered knives that force the blade in further and knives that are also guns that fire bullets at you as the blade goes in? I was quite staggered that such grisly weapons existed!

In between these short talks we did some practical knife defence training. We learnt about half a dozen different ways of disarming a knifeman depending on how he was attacking with the knife, including situations when you have your back to the wall. What struck me about these techniques was that though I hadn’t specifically done them before the principles of movement and technique that I have learnt in karate and kobudo were being directly applied in these self-defence moves.

I thought that we all picked up these techniques quickly because we already knew how to move, evade, block and apply locks. So, applying what we already knew to this new situation of knife defences was not too difficult, it was just a case of relaxing some of the more stylistic aspects of karate in order to be able to respond more intuitively and naturally.

A case in point was when we moved onto the topic of pre-emptive striking. The instructor told us that in order to strike quickly and without telegraphing the move first we shouldn’t pull back the punch first. This made sense but since we have trained to punch from the hip it was hard not to instinctively pull the punching arm back first before striking. However, after a few minutes practice of punching a focus mitt it was starting to feel more natural. The instructor emphasised the importance of using the hip thrust to add power to the punch so this was very much still a karate principle being employed.

Apparently my punches against the focus mitt in this way were quite hard but I know this is only because of the gyaku zuki training I have had. The standard karate training has helped me to build up strength, speed and power in my punching and this was not lost when the punching technique was varied to omit the pullback.

I sometimes feel that there is a gap between the defensive moves we learn as part of karate training and the self-defence moves in reality based training but I also feel that this gap shouldn’t exist – it can be bridged with thoughtful and intelligent training. I feel uncomfortable when I hear people say, “this is the art of karate but in real self-defence we do it this way”, as if they are completely different things. To me they are just flip sides of the same coin – not different coins.

On this KEWAP course I think the instructor helped to bridge this gap. We learnt a lot of new self-defence techniques – techniques that have been tried and tested in real situations but we were applying many of the principles we already knew from our classical karate training. The instructor even showed us how some bunkai from Pinan Shodan and Seipai can be used in knife defence scenarios.

Overall, I thought this was a great course, taught in a very effective way. It was informative, practical and enjoyable.

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Eyes Wide Open...

A lot of martial artists, particularly instructors get very frustrated when they see a lot of crap being taught or talked about to students. They get frustrated when other instructors teach techniques that clearly don’t work or don’t push students hard enough to achieve a high standard because they are afraid the student’s will leave (taking their money with them).

In my view there are three types of bad instructors:

1. Instructors who lack knowledge and skill and therefore teach to a low standard. 
2. Instructors who are highly skilled but misinform you about what you are learning to do e.g. they tell you that you are learning self-defence but you are in fact learning sport.
3. Instructors who are too indifferent or lazy to correct student’s mistakes and then allow them to pass gradings at a low standard.

However, no art, no club and no instructor is perfect so if you want to become a good martial artist yourself then you:

•  have to train with your eyes wide open, 
•  be objective in your assessment of the system you train in and 
•  don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Let me explain a little more about what I mean:

Train with your eyes wide open

Don’t take everything you are taught at face value. For example, if you are training in a traditional art such as karate and you are told that you will be learning self-defence then think about how much time you are spending doing application work. Karate is composed of kihon, kata and kumite. These are initially taught as separate elements but at some point they need to all come together and that is during the application of principles to self-defence. If your club only ever treats these three cornerstones of karate as separate elements and does no application work then you are not learning self-defence.

Remember that ‘good technique’ and ‘good techniques’ are not necessarily the same thing. You may develop the technically perfect spinning hook kick but is a spinning hook kick a good technique to have in your self-defence armoury? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t; the point is you may meet people who are technically perfect in the performance of all their techniques but the techniques themselves may be useless. 

At some point, as a student, you will have to make your own decisions about whether the things you are being taught are useful and effective. Some of what you will be taught will be excellent, some will be okay and some will be useless – take some responsibility for deciding yourself (this gets easier as you get more experienced) and  remember to train with your eyes wide open.

Be objective in your assessment of the system that you train in

No system is perfect or complete - whatever your instructor says.  A system in its infancy may have an incoherent structure and either a deficient or excessive number of techniques until it has evolved to a more coherent and optimal state. A mature system will have developed bias as its founders hone it to their own strengths and beliefs about what makes a good system. However, whatever evolutionary stage your system is in it should be dynamic, slowly changing, evolving and improving. 

If your instructor boasts how he is still teaching the system the same as it was 300 years ago in Okinawa or Japan you might want to be a bit worried if you are expecting to learn realistic street defence.  The world 300 years ago was very different to the world today, particularly in relation to the law. What was acceptable practice back then may leave you in prison today.  Though ancient fighting arts may have little contextual currency today they may still have cultural and historical value and so be worth practising in order to conserve them for future generations. If you’re interested in historical preservation then studying these arts may be for you.

Though a living martial art needs to avoid stagnation, you need to be sure that in a very new, contemporary system that the founder hasn’t completely thrown out the baby with the bath water and just made it all up. A good contemporary reality based system is generally still based on many traditional principles and its instructors generally have a lot of experience of traditional martial arts. Those that don’t often end up re-inventing the wheel but not managing to get it quite round.

So be objective in your assessment of the system that you train in. You have to get to know it and you have to give it a chance. No system will provide you with 100 percent of what you need or want, so try and assess its strengths and weaknesses. If it’s giving you 80 percent of what you need then it’s probably not doing badly.

There is no point in flitting around from one system to another either, trying to find perfection – you’ll never get anywhere. Find a system that gives you much of what you want and then look at how you will fill in the gaps. This brings me to my third point…

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

In my opinion cross-training between different arts is a good thing. Not everybody agrees with that. Some people think that cross-training confuses students because different arts often have a different way of moving and follow a different fighting strategy. This can be true but if you cross-train intelligently the two arts can work synergistically together.

So how do you cross-train intelligently? Well first decide which your main art is and stay true to the strategy of that art. Then choose a supplementary art that complements rather than contrasts with that main art. I do karate as a main art and kobudo as a supplementary art.  Some people would say that kobudo is a part of karate and in some systems it is. But then jujitsu could be considered a part of karate because the kata contain throwing techniques. All arts overlap to some extent and share some techniques or principles so you could argue that there is no such thing as cross training – you are just broadening you horizons.

To cross-train intelligently you also need to think what it is about the supplementary art that you want to learn – is it a more flowing way of movement, to learn some new techniques which can be integrated into your main art, or just gaining a new perspective about self-defence? Be clear on what you are trying to get out of cross-training and then it may work very well for you.

Conclusion

When you first start training in a martial art you will slavishly follow your instructors teachings, you have to and should do because you don’t know any better. However as you progress up into the dan grades you may start to (and should) become more objective in assessing and identifying your systems strengths and weaknesses and your instructors’ biases and beliefs. It is up to you as a student to decide whether this system is really working for you and whether you can plug the gaps with intelligent cross-training.

Learning a martial art is an active process not a passive one. It requires the student to think objectively about what they are learning, keeping their eyes wide open and working out for themselves how to overcome any deficiencies in their training.

So train intelligently – it’s your responsibility…

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Should a kyu grader be cross training?

By cross training I mean training simultaneously in two or more martial arts. Is cross training a good thing for a kyu grader to be doing? I suspect there are opinions for and against a kyu grader cross-training in different martial arts so I’ll make my confession early in this post: I am a cross trainer!

As you know, I do both karate and kobudo (with some jujitsu thrown in on a need to know basis). But should I be doing this so early in my martial arts career? The arguments against often ring in my ears: You need to focus on learning the basics in one martial art first (at least up to shodan); your time and attention will be diluted and you’ll end up doing both arts badly; or stances and techniques will be similar but different and you’ll get confused as to which to use.

These are all potential pitfalls but I genuinely don’t think cross training is creating any problems for me at the moment. In fact I think that cross training is actually enhancing my performance in both karate and kobudo. This is what I feel are the advantages and disadvantages of my cross training:

Advantages

Core principles: When you have been training in a martial art for a few years and you are starting to understand its principles; and then you look at what other martial arts are offering you start to realise that there is a lot of overlap between them, it’s just the emphasis that is different. Most striking arts include some grappling and most grappling arts practice a bit of striking. Core principles such as ‘block/evade, counter, finish’ become much more apparent and enhanced when you witness them in use in more than one martial art.

Attention to detail: In karate there is a lot of attention to detail in teaching us how to punch and kick correctly. The bio-mechanics of striking is explored in detail and we spend a lot of time practicing our combinations to get this right. The exact position of hands, feet, shoulders, hips, stances etc is criticised and corrected to help us perfect these techniques. However, the attention to detail for learning grappling is much less. On the whole this makes most karateka better strikers than throwers. In my kobudo (jujitsu) club there is very little attention to detail on how to strike but a lot more detail on throwing and locking techniques. The result is that jujitsuka are better grapplers than strikers. Since I have been training with weapons in a jujitsu club I have become a better and more confident thrower (and learnt to be thrown). In the jujitsu club we do break fall practice every session and so I have become a more confident faller than many of my karate peers.

Different perspective: Karate is often labelled a ‘hard’ art and jujitsu a ‘soft’ art. Beginners in both arts can often misconstrue what is meant by this. Junior grade karateka often interpret ‘hard’ as ‘tense’ and assume muscular effort means more power. They are often told that they are too stiff and rigid in their movements. It is only with experience that you start to see that to achieve ‘hard’ one must relax in order to gain speed only tensing at the last moment. The beginner jujitsuka often interprets ‘soft’ as slow and without power. With experience he comes to realise that the ‘soft’ flowing movements of jujitsu come from being relaxed rather than slow/powerless and that this, together with an understanding of the dynamics of throwing creates strong, fast and powerful throws.

By cross training I have come to realise that both karateka and jujitsuka are trying to achieve the same thing: soft flowing movements (through relaxation), to achieve hard powerful techniques. They just approach it from a different perspective.

One of my weapons is the bokken . To use a bokken you have to develop soft flowing movements in order to ‘cut’ quickly and powerfully. By training with the bokken I am learning to relax. This is a skill I am transferring to my karate training. Utilising the principle of ‘soft’ my karate techniques are becoming more powerful. I am benefiting from the different perspective that jujitsu gives.

Enhanced understanding/transference of certain principles: Sometimes when you are training in a martial art it is easy to become a little complacent about your performance of a particular technique and think you are doing it well – take blocking for instance. You know all about twisting your wrist at the end of a block and assume that you are doing so correctly. Then you take up a weapons art and have to block a strike from a bo or jo with your tanbo or tonfa. If your forearm does not twist out correctly you do not block the bo with your weapon, you block it with your forearm – and it hurts! You soon learn to do your blocks correctly and snap out of your complacency.

When you are applying a wrist lock to your opponent using a tanbo (short stick) you do not get any feedback about how hard you have applied it unless your opponent tells you. Partners get good at giving each other feedback about technique (it’s self preservation really) in a way we sometimes don’t in karate. Weapon’s training can teach you to be a more careful and considerate partner because the damage you can do to each other is potentially more serious.

To block a downward strike from a bo or jo you need to block it whilst the bo/jo is at its slowest point i.e. whilst it is still fairly vertical and has not picked up a lot of momentum on its downward swing. Perhaps this is also the best time to block an otoshi (hammer fist) strike in karate? When you cross train you start to see parallels between similar techniques and can transfer this knowledge from one art to the other.

Disadvantages:

I have found a few disadvantages to cross training but these are relatively minor and do not outweigh the advantages. Some of the break falls are performed slightly differently in karate compared to jujitsu so I have to alter which way I do it depending on which club I am in, but that is not a major problem. Altering stances is a little more problematic. In karate the stances seem to be an integral part of the technique, often used to unbalance your partner and to shift your weight quickly and dramatically from one foot to the other or from front to back. In jujitsu the higher, lighter stances enable you to move around more quickly but most of the technique is performed using the arms, upper body and hips. There are exceptions to this such as body drops and inside hock (but then these techniques are not dissimilar to some take downs in karate). Sometimes I find that my stances are too deep and rooted for some of the jujitsu techniques to work well and occasionally in karate I have started to forget to bend my front leg enough when in zenkutsu dachi!

My overall experiences of cross training are very positive and I would recommend it to anyone. However, it is important to remember which your main art is. For me it is karate. Kobudo is an adjunct, an art which gives me new insights, a different perspective and helps me enhance skills which are relevant to karate. It’s also great fun.

 

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