The Return?

Some thoughts on social distancing in the dojo.

Now the first thing to point out is that I am no expert on the virus or on the transmission of viruses via the airborne droplet method, although it does appear that very few other people with an opinion on the topic are either 🙂

There is a big collective sigh of relief going on at present among certain factions of the martial arts fraternity as we are starting to be allowed to get back into the dojo.

That is the key phrase at present “we are allowed to”, not “should we?” or “is it genuinely safe?” or “what are all the implications” or “am I fully informed?”…I could go on (and no doubt will 🙂 )

Many of us have done a “covid aware” instructor course on line which was, to be polite, probably worth as much as the paper it is printed on. I wonder how many people checked the veracity of the information contained within that course or the qualification of the people running it to issue any sort of validation at the end of it.

I suspect (and again, I may be being unfair, but I doubt it) that the majority just got excited about having a certificate to put on their social media and gave it no more thought than that.

I do know some (well one person actually) who has done a full risk assessment and sought proper medical advice however the majority are basing their return on “we are allowed” and “I’ve got a certificate”.

Now, there are a number of reasons for the rush to return, some down to plain enthusiasm for the art, some who just want “life as normal”, some who think the benefits outweigh the risks, some for purely financial reasons, some for a mix of any of them. None of anybody else’s reasons are really my concern, I have opinions obviously but there is nothing to say they are any more valid than anybody else’s, we are none of us experts (certificate or not! 🙂 )

The big argument with the announcement of thing opening up has been on the subject of social distancing, “why is it ok for pubs/gyms/yoga to open up but not martial arts classes? We can easily keep distance as well as them, if not better!”

The reason most things are opening up are not because it is now safe but because there is a financial imperative to do so. It is considered “safe enough” IF everybody is sensible and sticks to the rules.

“Safe enough” equates (as I have said previously) to “acceptable losses”, we are at the stage where the majority will probably be ok, there will be local spikes where people don’t pay enough attention ( or are just unlucky) and the relatively few we lose will be balanced out by the wide scale economic damage that’ll be done if we don’t start opening up.

Which brings me back to the “we are allowed/should we?” debate. Of the instructors I know the mix seems to be about 66% to 33% in favour of “ we are allowed” and people will make their own choices on that, as will I.

However, this brings me back to the topic of “social distancing” and how it supposedly works and protects you from infection.

The rules have varied widely from country to country and are typically between 1m and 2m apart. The UK advice, in our typical woolly fashion is that it should be 2m, unless that is a bit difficult, in which case you can go down to 1m.

The point of this separation, as far as I can make out, is to avoid the transfer of droplets, breath to breath, between individuals. There is some leeway on this because there is also a duration component it seems. If someone passes you in the street at less than the required distance the risk is pretty low within the few seconds window of the transition.

So, one of the big arguments I hear within karate circles is that, if classical training is your thing, that we are ideally situated to maintain “social distancing” due to the way our classes and training are structured. As long as we stick to kihon and kata training and observe good discipline we can easily maintain our distance.

Now, I’m not one to rain on anybody’s parade (honest 🙂 ) but have people really thought this through?

So, as we said, the point of the separation is to avoid the transfer of breath droplets by staying safely out of each others space, particularly where any exchange could take place for an extended period of time. It is difficult to find definitive timings on “droplets in the air” as this is very dependant on the size of the droplets (which vary considerably in combinations in each breath) and external conditions. The closest I go was “some considerable time” for some droplets but for the sake of this consideration let us take this to mean seconds, rather than hours or minutes.

Unlike a number of activities, even if we maintain our distance participant to participant we are not static in space. Distanced line work or kata still involves moving through a space recently vacated by the next person in the line, either in front, behind or, in the case of kata, either side.

Now, I am aware that I am probably larger than the average but my average step length in stance for line work is around 1.5m, so lets assume that the average is closer to 1.3m. This being the case, each time I step forward I am moving directly into a space previously occupied around a second ago by another participant, repeat this 5 times and I remain in that same relative breath space with each step. The same is true for them during the return phase, whether we move forward or backwards. Add kata performance into the mix and the same effect happens, except we now have 4 people in the mix.

Now the thinking could be that this is similar to passing someone in the street as you are only in the same space for just a few seconds, however, although you are never in the same physical space for long you are effectively in the same “breath space” for significant amounts of time. It is not unreasonable to assume that during a 30 minute kihon workout that you will sharing “breath space” with any given individual for at least 15 minutes. Move on to kata and you are now sharing breath space with more individuals for another 15 minutes.

This can sort of work outdoors as environmental factors can aid in the dispersal of exhaled droplets far easier, and typically you can err on the side of caution for spacing as well. In a confined space this is far less of an option and droplet have no external factors to aid dispersal.

Have you ever walked into a dojo well into a physical session and been able to taste and smell the air. This is a combination of sweat and breath in aerosol form floating in the air that surrounds everybody in the room (you wouldn’t be able to taste or smell it otherwise).

So, and this is just an opinion, the only way to remain in separate breath space for true social distance is if your drills and kata can be done in a static location.

All that is doable but requires quite a lot of thought and a change in training method for students who may not be ready to change the concepts of everything they have previously learned.

You can reduce the amount of airborne droplets by making participants wear face masks but current wisdom would appear to be that this is not a good option for people engaged in strenuous physical activity due to potential CO2 build up by breathing your own recycled air over a prolonged period.

I am not offering any answers in this piece as I personally don’t have any. I am not suggesting that you should refrain from returning to the dojo, that is down to your own choice as “we are now allowed” 🙂

All I am doing is making the point that it is not as simple as washing your hands at start and finish of training and sticking to 2m spacing. It is just something extra to think through as part of your risk assessment and whether it rates low enough to warrant taking the chance.

The truth is I have no idea what the numbers are on this sort of risk but it is a factor that tends to get glossed over by the assumption 2m apart fixes the problem, no 2m apart reduces the risk because you are typically not sharing “breath space” if you are in a static situation or if you are mobile but just briefly passing through someone else’s space.

So if your risk assessment tells you that you are managing all the risks effectively and you are happy that you’ve covered all the possibilities and made rational choices before returning to training then more power to you.

If your thought process is “but we are allowed” then you may need to go into a little more depth.

Have fun 🙂

“You are not true Karate-Do…and are false!”

This is an interesting one as this was sent to me in a private message, intended as an insult, by someone who IS true karate-do apparently, who then ran off and hid, by deleting his post, leaving my group and blocking me on social media, rather than having a grown up conversation, (and it should have been a grown up conversation, the man is 58 and I am 62 ).

Although I have remained relatively unscathed by this sort of behaviour during my time interacting on-line I am aware from many of my peers, most of whom have many decades of karate training behind them, that this (and much worse) is not uncommon from those who know themselves to be “true” karate-ka

Anybody who knows me will be aware that I would obviously be devastated to be on the receiving of a telling off from a white belt who, having returned to training after a very long break, is able to recognise my lack of understanding of the true way of karate (because I tried to engage in a discussion rather than bowing to the wisdom of a trite “old masters” meme).

Ho hum, I have no doubt he’ll find his spiritual home out there as there a plenty of places for people who think (or rather don’t) that way. ( Have a good life Michael 🙂 )

However, having said all that there is a point to be made here as he could be said to be partially correct.

There is a very good chance that I am not “true karate-do”, although in my defence, I do not and never have claimed to be. I am just a man who teaches what he knows about the physical aspects of karate. I am not a life coach, a spiritual leader, a guide to the mysteries or anything else people may want me to be. What you see is, pretty much, what you get.

Now, this obviously depends to a very large extent on what your definition of “true karate-do” is but I think it would be possible to make a fair argument that I am not it.

I certainly came up through the ranks in a group that prided itself on it’s “traditional” values and am well versed in the rituals and dogma of karate-do.

Since I went down the path of independence I have certainly cut down significantly on the rituals and pretty much completely abandoned the dogma. It comes from a culture that is not my own and does not fit comfortably with my views or the training culture that I try to operate in and adhere to.

Does this mean that I have also abandoned the values that went with them?

I don’t believe so but my personal values were already well established long before I got involved in serious martial arts training and I do not need a set of rituals to enforce my behaviour and interactions with others. I am who I am in spite of my martial arts training, not because of it.

I come from a generation where mutual respect, good behaviour and good manners are expected as a matter of course, despite the external picture I may occasionally (and intentionally) paint 🙂 , and the marketing of martial arts practice for children as a way of parents abrogating this responsibility to a third party for money is not a positive move in my (obviously outdated) view.

I am fairly old school and gave up teaching children some years back as it was not what I wanted to be doing with the limited time I had but a phrase I used often in those days was “I’ve never met a child who needed a slap, but I have met many parents who did!”

Does karate-do achieve the desired result with children?

It certainly can do and can have some very positive effects so I have no real argument with that.

However, the same can be said of many, if not most, organised activities that provide a focus and a goal, karate is not particularly special in that respect. It can also have some very unhealthy attitudes and outcomes in the suppression of free thought as well that need to be watched out for if you are trying to produce well rounded and complete individuals from young children (for some adults it is seemingly way too late).

That is all a bit of an aside however to the topic of whether I am “true karate-do…and false”

My personal statement would be on the first part, am I “true karate-do”? I have no idea, it is not something I claim, I do not really have an opinion on it nor is it a particular aim of mine. It is one of those things best decided by those who know better than me (as mentioned at the start ) and will be down to your definition…although if pushed, I would say not.

Am I “false”, that will come down to the picture you have painted for yourself of me, and, to be honest, is not my problem.

I very much try not to be, what you see is what you get. Although I would say that even if I was, (it’s called marketing, apparently, and is all the rage at present in the karate world 😉 ).

I make no claims of anything past being a fat old man trying his best (and not always even that ).

However, stick a karate Gi and a black belt on someone and people will paint their own picture of who and what you should be, not who you are.

Don’t be surprised if that leads to disappointment occasionally.

Kata – What’s the point?

I know if you trawl though my back catalogue that I have visited this subject before but the topic came up on Facebook again today in a post by Don Came and I thought it worth revisiting.

I will make the caveat here (as I often do) that anything that follows are just my thoughts and opinions, I am not a “purveyor of karate facts”. I also only discuss the things that are pertinent to my reasons for training, they may not be the same as yours 🙂

Someone had made a comment somewhere along to lines of “we don’t need kata, other arts don’t use them”

Now for any karate-ka the initial knee jerk reaction is to fall back on the stock position of “kata is the heart of karate, without kata you are not doing karate” which is true, but it equally could be not true.

Firstly you have to define what kata is in order to even be able to converse on the subject.

For me, and many others, kata is any sequence of movements (i.e. two or more) that you do as solo practice for a set of techniques (of course, to fully understand that you need to define what “technique” is as well 🙂 ). So in that case, anybody who does any sort of solo visualisation practice in any art does kata, they just don’t call it kata because the word “kata” is just a label applied to Japanese based arts and is certainly not exclusively linked to karate in that culture.

Some people would define that as Kihon but me, being a contrary person, I don’t really define it that way. For me Kihon is a single technique (which may be a simple or compound movement) which you can break down into it’s components to examine the minutia of the body mechanics involved, this is the definition of “fundamental” for me.

Combinations of kihon are not still kihon, they are a kata (of sorts), typically with less meaning but still with a purpose (albeit only in some places).

However, what the wider karate community typically regard as kata are “the kata”, the clearly defined set of “traditional” solo forms associated with what ever their chosen style of karate is. For my base style of Shotokan that is 26, (or 15, or 27, or 25, depending on a change in the wind on a particular day 🙂 )

The upshot being that when you discuss whether you need kata or not is that karate people tend to understand it as whether you need THE kata.

So, from this point on in the discussion when I talk about kata, assume I am talking about “the kata”.

“Kata is the heart of karate!” It is, and it isn’t, I will make what will be (for many) a contentious statement here. There is nothing that I teach through the use of kata that I couldn’t teach without reference to kata at all. All the concepts and principles stand alone and are available for teaching without ever knowing that kata exists.

When I teach a self defence class to non martial artists I don’t refer to kata at all, to do so would be to muddy the waters and make people think they are learning something outside of their experience.

Does that mean that the concepts and principles that I teach are different? of course not, why would I teach something sub-optimal to one group over another.

Does that mean that the non martial arts people only get a sub set of what I do? Yes, of course they do, they are getting simple, functional, low skill versions that are quick to learn and easy to hold on to.

You do not have time in this circumstance to expose people to all the nuances, variations, subtlety and adaptability that come (or should do) with long term martial arts study.

So, I can teach a group something useful and practical in a short space without kata.

The argument would be of course that these people are not learning “karate” so naturally they don’t need kata. My argument would be that they are learning karate because that’s all I know, I have nothing else to teach them.

So, going back to my karate group. Pretty much everything I teach these days revolves around kata so for my class kata genuinely is the heart of my karate so it may seem a bit at odds to say that I don’t need kata.

So, to clarify, apart from the performance aspect (which I do teach), I don’t see kata as a thing apart any more than I do kihon or kumite. They are all just parts of a whole and, for me at least, not distinct enough to separate out.

Whilst I could teach all the stuff I hang on kata without the use of kata in a karate class I would still have to come up with and define consistent drills for the practice of the ideas and principles I am trying to convey.

I would then have to find ways to link those drills in many possible combinations to transition from one potential outcome to a number of other variables and then codify it into some formal solo form in order to allow for solo practice of the sort of details of movement that are hard to focus on with a partner.

So, how quickly would I have moved back to teaching kata? The only difference is that I am now teaching a kata that only I (and my students know) rather than classical kata.

This can work quite well, John Titchen does this in his DART group and has developed a number of his own kata to teach his concepts to his students and his stuff is highly functional, but I don’t believe he refers to this side of his teaching/training as karate. So the model is similar.

The down side with doing this for me is (apart from a lack of patience to do the work 🙂 ) that I am limiting myself and my students to exposure only to my karate. What I do is very much a sub-set of the overall art and I tend to (as we all do) favour the things that work for me or appeal to the way I think, my body type and my age.

By sticking to the classical kata I immediately have a format that is portable and widely known and also addresses approaches different to my own. This forces me to understand and examine possibilities outside of my own narrow view and be exposed to other ideas hung on the same framework. It also allows for the occasional light bulb moment when something previously undiscovered comes out of playing with these kata.

I will now say something else that can be taken as contentious.

It is commonly said that “every kata has a unique lesson to teach us”. Personally, I don’t believe this to be true particularly.

My teaching is based pretty much on 5 or 6 kata as far as understanding karate and function is concerned (and I could probably halve that number quite happily). I teach a lot more kata than that for the sake of the fact that I am still teaching the art rather than for true function, and to limit people to just what is within my understanding would be to do them a disservice (who knows what they may find and where as they follow their own path and ideas).

It is true that occasionally something will pop up in the practice of one of these kata that suggests something new (which I may well never have seen otherwise) but even in that circumstance, once understood, I can typically find it in and relate it back to the core kata I practice because, as I already indicated, kata is just the frame that I hang MY karate on.

My personal experience, when looking at applied karate, is that most people look for and find meanings in kata that pretty much match their own pre-existing processes. If you are a striker you will see strikes, if you are a locker you will see locks, if you are a thrower you will see throws and so on and so forth.

There will, or should be, some commonality in what you see down to the fact that there are universal principles of combat that need to be adhered to before anything you may paint over the top can be applied. If you are genuinely looking for meaning in your kata then they may force you to think outside your own particular box to make sense of them.

This all exists in kata but is not explicitly taught by kata. It is quite possible to know the movements of many many kata but still have no understanding of the principles that lay underneath.

So, having drifted somewhat away from the original question, do I think kata are essential?

I find kata an invaluable tool and it is the core of what I teach and train. I like the art, I like the look and the feel, I like the history, I like the path of discovery, I like the continuity, I like the portability and the fact that they are a common language where ever I go. So from that point, yes.

Could I still teach everything I teach without them? Yes, with a little more work and a little less universal appeal (and where would I be without my universal appeal? 🙂 ).

Would it still be “karate”? Despite it being the same stuff my guess would be not in the eyes of many. I would probably have to refer to it as “Empty Hand Defence”

Come into my parlour…

…said the spider to the fly

Due to the busy life I lead these days I have been spending a good amount of time drinking coffee and watching the big fat spider who lives on the outside of my window. She’s been there a good few weeks now so I have had plenty of time to watch her at my leisure.

She is a very honest predator in as much as, once you are in her trap, she’ll catch you, kill you and eat you (although not necessarily in that order).

For me she demonstrates the epitome of what we train for. That moment of desperate panic when we have walked into the trap, unknowing and unaware.

Having watched her at work she is very good at what she does. The small and weak she is on in an instant and the deed is done. For larger prey she will hold back from and approach more warily, picking her moment and her angle but even so, if they are not strong enough to break out of the trap then they are typically still considered fair game and the end is the same, just the tactics change.

For those others foolish or unaware enough to fly in but are big enough or dangerous enough to be a serious risk, the trap is designed to not be strong enough to hold them and after a few seconds of irritation they are out and on their way, in those cases she doesn’t even make the attempt.

The seemingly dangerous ones who fall into the trap but can’t quite make it out are typically where most of us in self defence sit.

We have failed to avoid and we are in the trap. We may not be under attack yet but we are being sized up and evaluated, we may be risky but we are still prey. The longer we remain, flapping about and expending energy, the more likely it is we will fall.

Once she has decided you are a target she will join and battle is commenced. I would guess in those circumstances she is successful 75% of the time, that is because all the odds are stacked in her favour (otherwise she wouldn’t have even tried), but sometimes, just sometimes, something big enough, strong enough and angry or desperate enough manages to fight it’s way free.

And this is where the physical side of self defence sits, that desperate struggle to survive when all the odds are stacked against you. This is not a one to one fight where the odds are even (despite this being the popular view of what most people think self defence is), this is fear and panic and desperation and the odds are very far from in your favour.

You spend all your time training in the hope that you may make it into the 25% who get away relatively unharmed but the chances are quite high that you won’t (and those that do still carry damage with them).

We spend 99% of our time training for the physical struggle and even then the odds are that if we are already in the trap and have been selected as a victim we will lose, but we might, just might not (and that’s still a lot better than no chance at all).

If we are really lucky we may spend the other 1% of our time learning about how not to fall into the trap in the first place, which is interesting as this 1% covers the only thing that has a 100% success rate.

There are an awful lot of flies who never fall into the trap through blind luck and ignorance and it is the same for people, there are a lot of victims out there who never get picked, not because the are good at avoidance but because blind luck has just never put them in the situation, and if their luck ever fails them, then their chances are very slim indeed.

So we train flies to be wasps. Wasps get caught sometimes to but they fight like bastards when it comes to it, sometimes they even win, but not as often as you’d like to think.

How much more effective would it be to train flies to see the traps and just not get caught in the first place, it’s quicker, easier and far more effective as a defence method.

Having said that, imagine being a fly with a sting in the tail that could fight like a wasp 🙂 (wouldn’t you feel pleased with yourself 😉 )

The Gender Gap

I know I am opening a big can of worms for myself here as, once again, it’ll be a man explaining (predominantly) to other men about the problems of women and how WE should deal with it.

Hopefully the women who know me will understand where I’m coming from and those that don’t will just think I’m an arse, and there’s nothing to say they might not be right (just ask the women who do know me 🙂 ).

I will try to avoid talking about the things I will never have an understanding of as I will never experience them, I may not always succeed (but that’s men for you 🙂 )

When I first started writing I seemed to be constantly having a pop at classical karate, that was pretty much just me going through the process of reconciling what I perceived to be problems with “traditional” training and the direction I wanted to go. I still see those problems as existing but they just are no longer MY problems.

These days I seem to be much more frequently taking a pop at what I see to be developing problems within applied karate. Not because they are endemic and wide spread (although some may be well on the way) but because they have the potential to become so if we don’t nip them in the bud.

As with everything I write, these are just random thoughts and opinions based on what I see going on, not the final word of authority (I am not that man 🙂 ).

This has been bubbling along in the background of my mind for some time now but was brought to a head by looking at the group photo of a recent seminar I ran and reviewing the video footage of some of the stuff I taught, and the comments I made with it.

My thinking is that, unlike classical karate, we have the potential for a problem that they don’t really have to face big is a “biggie” for us.

Although there may well be culture and attitude problems in many “traditional” dojo that need to be addressed they do have the luxury of a training style and syllabus that is eminently suited to teaching males and females of all sizes, builds and ages in a single methodology. There are some limitations obviously but by and large they can do this at a technical level without issue.

However, practical (or pragmatic or applied, what ever flavour you want to apply) doesn’t have that luxury.

If we are billing ourselves as “practical” we have to define for what. Everybody thinks that is easy, we just define it a “practical for use as the physical aspect of an overall self protection strategy”.

But this is where it immediately starts to fall down.

The problems and resolutions I need to practice as a 60+ year old man are not the same same problems and resolutions I would need as a 20 year old man.

We can tell ourselves that at the stage where things have turned physical then it’s all much the same but I don’t believe that to be true. I am unlikely to be attacked in the same way as a 20 year old because the context of the situations I will tend to find myself in will most likely be very different and so the precursors and triggers and actual attacks are also likely to be different (as with all these things, there will be obvious crossovers).

I would also say that as a 1.9m 105kg (6’3” 16.5st, post Brexit 🙂 ) man the techniques, entries and angles I would apply would be very different to those desirable for use by a 1.7m 55kg man. Things I can make work easily would be just impractical for a far smaller person as the laws of physics still take precedence over technique.

The argument could be made then that I should teach and train techniques based on what will work for the smaller person as, if it works for them, it’ll work for anybody.

The problem with that approach (as I see it obviously) is that it just isn’t true.

There are angles that, as a large person I cannot achieve, there are shifts and positions that are just never going to work for me because I am never going to get under some things, or into spaces that a smaller person would find easily, and of course the (literal) elephant in the room, size and weight are a massive advantage, why would I not train to maximise that advantage where possible and so negate my main weapon.

So from a point of view that good body mechanics and principles are universal, technique and strategy are not and need to be appropriate to the context.

There is no “one size fits all answer” in practical karate. So, you (try to) train in a variety of ways that suits everybody and just add the caveats where necessary.

So, after a very long detour where I talk about how difficult it is for men, lets get back to me expounding my views on women’s problems (and I am aware I am digging myself some big holes by playing devil’s advocate but sometimes someone has to to get the conversation going).

Just looking from a physical perspective to start with.

The first issue that I see is the tendency to treat women in a predominantly male environment as just being “smaller men” (this can work in a “traditional” environment but not so much in a practical one)

Just from a physiological standpoint this isn’t true.

Your structure is different to ours, particularly in the fundamental area of the hips, the balance of lower body to upper body muscle mass is (typically) different and so your points of balance will be different and the relative power generation potential will be different. The upshot is that to assume what works for a small man will work the same for a woman of the same height and weight is potentially not true.

Your adrenaline response curve is also significantly different to ours so the immediate “boost” under stress will not be available.

The next issue is to look at the focus of the material.

Even in the most sensible places I’ve trained the majority of the “practical” material is focused on, having failed to avoid the fight, how to pre-empt, survive, dominate and escape from the fight.

All good things but they come from the premise that if things go do wrong you are going to end up in a fight!

I could make up some numbers (or do the research 🙂 ) but my understanding is that the vast majority of women are never going to find themselves in a one on one fist fight with a man BUT 90% of the physical responses we teach them are based on the assumption that this is the context.

So while we are teaching sound fighting skills, which (don’t get me wrong) are good things to know, great for building confidence in your ability and just plain good fun, are they really “practical” in that context?

So, and I know this will cause a few hackles to rise but, being treated the “same” as the men is not the same as being treated “equally” to the men.

If you were being treated equally we would have a lot more focus on a broader set of situations and solutions in training.

This post if getting quite long now so I think time to take a breath and come back with a part two once the first part has been pulled to pieces 🙂

De-escalation, the “magic” word.

I shall start this piece with a sweeping statement (I know, that’s not like me at all 🙂 ).

I said in an old piece some years back that “technique is not magic”, well I am going to add to that by saying that, despite it being one of the main watchwords of the modern self protection industry, “de-escalation isn’t magic either” (and nor is “situational awareness”).

The reason I am saying that is for the same reason that I used the “technique is not magic” line in the first place.

There was (and still is in many places) the feeling that technique is like a magic spell of self protection, if you know and can perform a technique correctly then it will work for you in all circumstances against all attackers despite the context, circumstance, variables in play and even the laws of physics. It only takes a very small amount of actual experimentation to know that this is total horse shit (but who ever does that? 🙂 ), however, horse shit is still flavour of the month in many places, especially where there is money to be made out of vulnerable people in search of a quick (and easy) fix.

Unfortunately the same can be very true for the skills of de-escalation.

In a self protection sense, assuming you have failed to avoid a situation arising, (through your magic “situational awareness”), then de-escalation is very much the preferred option to putting your “self-defence” skills to the test .

Now the problem with “doing de-escalation” in your dojo is that it is virtually impossible to simulate a real situation.

If anything it is far more difficult to do that to simulate physical techniques in a training situation.

At least with physical techniques you can break down the elements into trainable parts.

Can I hit hard? Yes, I train it on a bag all the time.

Can I hit hard from odd angles and sub-optimal positions? Yes, I train it with pads and a partner.

Can I make it work on a static opponent to test the technicalities? Yes,

Can I test it on a moving partner to see if it works in sub-optimal conditions? Yes,

Can I test it on an increasingly non-cooperative partner to evaluate the degradation and reliability (and find the point of failure)? Yes.

Can I hit a live human really hard in the head (this is a biggy as many can’t), Maybe, with protective gear and appropriate supervision you can come close, perhaps, but you will never really know until it happens.

However, you can practice the component parts to a level of competence, understand and acknowledge the flaws in the training and hope that it all comes together when needed.

As I said (many times now) technique isn’t magic, it’s just a way of tipping the odds more in your favour than they would have been without training.

However this all becomes a lot more esoteric when it comes to de-escalation skills.

You can certainly practice de-sensitising yourself to people shouting in your face, to abusive language and someone in your space. You may have to bring people to that slowly (some not so much 🙂 ) but this can be done in a graduated way.

My problem with practising de-escalation skills is how do you practice talking down someone who doesn’t really mean you harm in the first place in a meaningful way?

The issue isn’t so much with simulation of the situation, that is relatively easy, and you can say the words but this is a skill (possibly more than any other) of being able to read the cues, both verbal, physical and physiological, and often these cues will be microscopic (and fast if it’s all going to go bad).

You can pick up the big common preparation cues of things going bad from watching CCTV (so this is certainly worth doing) and reproduce them in dojo training, which may allow you to pre-empt an actual attack, but there is very little material available for successful de-escalations other than anecdotal, and this is not necessarily that reliable given the way all humans backfill the story in their minds post event to make sense of what happened (but may be the best we have).

Reading body language tends to happen on a subconscious level, so training it in a conscious way is a hard thing to do, particularly as your training partner is unlikely to be giving an accurate presentation of the physiological signs. So whilst you’ll be learning to read cues, some of them will be the wrong cues (and you won’t know which 🙂 )

What you need in order to train these things effectively is a very good “bad guy” and these are surprisingly rare in a martial arts class. You need someone who can push the limits to a stage where they may genuinely mean you harm but can still turn it off. I have tried this once or twice (on the receiving end) and it’s very uncomfortable and I doubt many students would do it very often.

So of course this adds to the flaws, with the right people in the right circumstance you may be able to get close to the real situation but you would be unlikely (outside of specialist training) to stick with it long enough in a standard class situation to really adapt and learn so all you are ever going to get is the broad strokes and hope that’s enough.

This paints a bleak picture but again, it’s just a case of understanding the flaws and doing the best you can within the limits of acceptable training.

You just need to understand that “doing de-escalation” is not a small part of training, it is an entire skill set and not one (as a martial arts instructor) I have the competence to teach, so I don’t (past the point of general discussion).

So, should you practice these skills? Certainly, but like all skills they are not “magic”, they may help with the odds (on a good day, with the wind blowing in the right direction) IF you’ve had the right instruction. How you find that is a different matter.

Obviously a McDojo!!!

I do have to laugh whenever I see this trotted out on the many karate forums and FaceBook pages out there.

It’s is the conventional response trotted out by the hard of thinking to pretty much any situation that doesn’t fit within certain parameters. The main definition being (it seems) “anyone doing anything that isn’t what WE do”.

If you don’t wear the white pyjamas – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

Don’t do the traditional kata – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

Teach “senior” kata to lower grades – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

Don’t use the Japanese terms – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

Allow students to question or have an opinion – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

Don’t take yourself too seriously – “Obviously a McDojo!!!”

…you get the general idea 🙂

The idea of the insult being that you are being compared to a disposable junk food outlet that just peddles low value crap for the sake of turning a profit.

Let us take a moment to consider the analogy…

Assuming this insult is aimed at comparing martial arts clubs to a well known chain of fast food purveyors there are some interesting comparisons to be made.

Said fast food chain was originally established in the 1940’s but really took off in the mid 50’s and has never looked back, particularity once the original founders (apart from hanging on to the name) were taken out of the equation.

It has grown to be the largest “restaurant” chain in the world.

It is known worldwide and has branches in pretty much every town and city, sometimes on every street corner it seems. It operates (or did) as a franchise set up, it has a combination of it’s own stores and a massive revenue stream from fees and kickbacks from the franchise owners but to the outside world it is just a single brand. It offers a standardised product and quality and you can walk into any branch anywhere in the world and know pretty much exactly what you are going to get.

It doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to point out that this parallels pretty much exactly the timings and workings of the largest karate organisation in the world, and is the same model followed by the spin off’s trying to do the same thing. As long as you wear the badge, follow the rules and keep the cash coming back to head office you can be part of the biggest brand in the world. You don’t have to be the best, you just meet the standard minimum requirements

However, for reasons that escape me, the teacher and clubs or groups that would be directly comparable to the small independent street corner cafe are the “McDojos”.

“Can I get a burger, fries and a shake?”

“No sorry, we don’t do that. I can offer you sausage and chips and a cup of tea?”

“Oh, this place is shit!!!”

This is despite the fact that traditional sausage, chips and tea are far more nutritious, tasty and filling than your average “traditional” burger in a bun (and for our American cousins, I am aware of the difference between a McBurger and 8oz of prime ground beef cooked to order on a griddle in a good diner 🙂 )

Now, I’d be the first to admit, there are also some really shit cafes out there as well so you take your chances, however you don’t have to go back and have the chance to shop around and find a good one and stick to it, try different things off the menu and see all that it has to offer.

You could have something different every time you visit probably and by the time you’ve exhausted the menu the cook will probably have learned a new recipe you could try.

Of course, if you are happy to eat the same really average food out of a cardboard box every day for the rest of your life that’s your choice to make, at least you don’t need to think about it or make any real decisions (and, to be fair, you can collect all the little plastic toys, so that’s nice 🙂 )

Remind me again where the nearest McDojo chain store is? 🙂

Where am I now? (and who else really cares?)

Although I have always made it plain that whatever I may be saying or thinking at any given time is only really valid in the context of that time, once it’s written and published it can’t be unsaid. I try very hard to make a point of thinking about the what and why of what I’m doing at any given time and not fall into the “but I (we) have always done it this way” trap.

I’ve been writing my random thoughts down now for some years so occasionally something comes up on some forum somewhere where I think “I already have something for that” so go and look it out to post. So it is for this reason, and not (just) plain narcissism 🙂 that I go back and read over old stuff that I have written.

The issue with doing this is that I very often find that I no longer think the same on a number of subjects, my views will probably still be the same but they also may have shifted, from a little to a lot.

The problem is that once you have written something down and published it then people use it to define you and what you think, they no longer need to engage because they have put you in your pigeon hole and “know” what you are about.

I can understand that, I do exactly the same with other people so it would be foolish to expect any different.

The difference is that when you are speaking from reasoned thought your views and approach may well change over time in the light of new evidence or better understanding, where as if you are arguing via dogma then your views are unlikely to change (or even to be your own views often) as no thought or reason needs be applied in the circumstances where you “know” yourself to be right.

We then come to the topic of “tone” as well. Whilst I may still think many of the same things as I did years ago it is obvious when I go back and read them that I was a far angrier man than I am these days 🙂

I laugh at it now because I see the same behaviour in so many others who have since picked up the path but I do worry sometimes about their reasons.

When I first started writing I was not that far removed from having walked away from my long term training and group. There was an incident that made it a lot easier and that may well have been why I was so cross for a while but by and large it was just because my path and theirs had started to diverge some time previously and it was just time to move on.

It is very easy when you first become enlightened to the path of “practical” karate (itself a misnomer as you need to clearly define “practical for what?” before it means anything) to become very zealous.

You suddenly become aware of what is missing from your training and the concepts that it entails and, following that revelation, you immediately assume that everybody else has missed it too and that you need to put them on the right path. This will always lead to frustration because very often it’s not that they don’t know but just that they don’t care because their goals are different to yours.

It’s something you need to come to terms with but it’s your problem, not theirs.

I certainly fell into this category and my way of dealing with it was just to rant at other people (this always works well as a strategy for getting people to listen 🙂 ).

Although it’s been quietly going on for a long time there has been a massive upturn in the last 5 years in the direction of “practical karate”, although (despite popular opinion in some quarters) it’s still just a drop in the ocean in the massive world of “traditional” karate.

I can’t point the finger too much because I see a lot of people now ranting about the same things I used to have a bee in my bonnet about but I do worry slightly about the reasoning behind it.

I can’t be certain because I don’t know some of these people well enough to see their thought process but there is starting to be the same whiff of dogma about this “new way” as there is about the previous way (which is not a healthy move IMO), which can make it very difficult to have a conversation with these people.

I have even found myself taking a contrary position and arguing a viewpoint entirely the opposite to what I believe in order to try and elicit a reasoned argument for any given point. Sometimes this works but more often than not they just dig into their position and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about (which is surprising given that I could argue their point a lot better than they could, it seems 🙂 ) or I just get told “your need to read what Iain Abernethy says on the subject” (despite the fact that I have been doing that since before many of them were, metaphorically, born 🙂 )

So, to get back to the point, where I am these days?

I am very happy following my own path. I have enough experience to be self sufficient in my chosen area of study but also have enough good people in my peer group to backfill the holes (of which there are plenty), to check my ideas with and to just point out to me (when need arises) that I am just being an arse or am plain wrong.

I no longer feel the need to change the world, just to do my best to do what I think is right in my little part of it.

I do however still “poke the ant nest” on occasions just to see what people are thinking, or more importantly IF they are thinking (this is surprisingly rare, unfortunately).

I co-run a group to help guide those people who are thinking for themselves but just need access a bit of outside help and feedback from those who’ve been there as they grow, and that is a great thing for me personally and keeps me optimistic that there is some hope, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary 🙂

So, if you find that it seems like I’ve gone out of my way just to annoy you at some point with a tasteless and disrespectful meme, or a pointless argument of some point that you just “know” to be true then just take a moment to ask yourself if there’s a reason. You may decide that the reason IS that I’m just an arse (and you may be right, but at least you’ll have thought about it! 🙂 )

If you are interested in being more than just a “follower” then check us out sometime on http://www.bunkaibastards.co.uk

Kata – The Textbooks of Karate?

I was doing some “Master Po” bullsh*te on one of the Facebook forums today (where they seem to prefer that sort of thing to genuine information) regarding why kata were like books which is why I’m now subjecting you all (now there’s a presumption 🙂 ) to this far longer ramble on the topic.

The question was basically, in this modern age of accessible information, whether we still needed kata to train karate.

Obviously this started the usual flurry of “it’s not karate without kata” or “kata are the heart of karate” and the “why don’t you just go and teach kick boxing if you don’t want to do proper karate!!!”

These responses are usually very vocal and usually from the hard of thinking who, when pressed on the topic (or any topic really), could not give you any reason why these things are important, just that they “know” they are because someone higher up the food chain once told them so.

However, that doesn’t mean that the question and these responses are not worthy of consideration and some thought.

You will often hear it said that “Kata are the text books of karate” and without them all you are doing is punching and kicking. Again, it is not uncommon to hear this from people who actually do only teach punching and kicking (despite what they may claim), this doesn’t necessarily mean the words are untrue though.

This is why we should be wary of writing off the cliches that surround karate just because of who said them, the fact that many people don’t understand the why of what they say doesn’t necessarily make the words themselves meaningless (just the context of where they were said).

So, back to the book analogy…

To say that “kata are the textbooks” of karate is a bit misleading, kata were the workbooks of portions of the karate of the individual who originally developed them. They can be like any current class workbooks, they contain basic information and worked examples of what they are trying to teach and spaces for you to fill in and demonstrate your own understanding and that you have learned that lesson in homework (don’t forget to show your working! 🙂 ).

If you then take that “workbook” and call it a “textbook” what you learn from it are not the lessons it was trying to teach, which would eventually lead you to being able to solve other, unlisted problems on your own but you are simply parroting the worked examples and calling it wisdom.

Worse than that of course are the book collectors (only in my personal view obviously).

A book can be a real thing of beauty, it has a look and feel (and smell) that are tangible but the reality is that they are of worth because of the lessons they contain.

Many people have a shelf full of pristine first editions, they must never be touched, or looked at, as that would affect their value. If you were to examine it you may leave your mark on it and that would never do.

It is true that some people place far more value on a book that has never been used than a well thumbed third edition with turned over page corners and sticky notes protruding from some sections.

This would horrify the collector as all the beauty of the original work has been destroyed but I suspect the owner of that particular work has milked all the lessons from it they can, and will continue to visit it for years to come.

Real kata is much the same, it has a lived in look and feel to it, it may be a bit dog eared in places but you can tell immediately you look at it where the important lessons, the relevant pages or just best loved sections are, and if you come back later, that may well have changed with time.

The collectors kata will fit on the shelf perfectly with the rest of the set, if you ask the owner what’s in it they will tell you “all the wisdom in the world” but you can’t look at them as that would destroy the beauty and worth, they just need to be admired as a work of art.

If you were to look at my bookshelf you would see a sorry old mix of examples, some of which are thumbed nearly to death, some of which are as good as the day they were bought and some that are covered in dust as they are hardly touched any more. Some are new and some are second hand, and none the worse for that!

My kata are pretty much the same, some are thumbed almost to death as they have been examined, notated, pulled apart and reassembled as they have been studied in real depth over time. Others are a thing of beauty just to be looked at (or as close as you can get as a 60 year old fat man with a dodgy knee and hip 🙂 ).

Sometimes I may even have two versions of the same thing (who would have thought such a thing were possible? )

And again, some are second hand as (apparently?) some people are a bit better at understanding some of the lessons contained than me (who knew? 🙂 ).

Following on from a couple of recent conversations I’ve had I would like to point out (in case it isn’t obvious to anyone reading 🙂 ) that the stuff I write is only ever my opinion.

I am not a “purveyor of facts”, my remit is not to educate and inform, it is just to entertain (myself mostly and others occasionally), however if I occasionally post something that causes the reader to take a step back to think something through that they have previously just taken for granted then that’s very much a result in my (well thumbed) book!

“There are no blocks in karate”

This has become a sort of mantra during the rise of (what is seen as) practical karate.

It is based on the fact that all blocks in karate are too slow to be effective, don’t reflect the way people actually fight in the real world so are useless outside of the dojo, have you moving in the wrong direction, at the wrong distance, with the wrong timing etc. etc. You can write a good and justifiable list of why there are no blocks in karate…and you’d be entirely wrong!

Obviously there is a possibility I am mistaken here (much like Capt. Redbeard Rum “opinion is divided on the subject” 🙂 ) but I believe that there are plenty of blocks in karate, they are actually trained as what we call blocks in karate, are trained pretty much correctly in traditional styles and are almost entirely misunderstood by those that train them that way.

Of course you have to define what a block actually is (in my world).

People will point out that the word “block” itself is a mistranslation of the intention and it should actually be “to receive” or “reception”. This is true, however it masks a lot of what is going on by ignoring the fact there is typically always a blocking element in the traditional “block”

What I refer to as a block is anything that provides a cover and interception of an incoming technique to prevent it landing as intended so, like much of what I train/teach, the term is a lot more general than is typical in the average “1000 technique syllabus” where everything has a name and a (very) specific purpose.

What can be missed in the traditional labelled versions of a standard block is that it is already a full compound movement that includes everything you need to cover, defend, attack and finish in the one technique.

You will very often as a beginner to be taught to “block” and then as you start to advance you move on to “block and counter”, however if you are doing this it’s because you’ve missed that the “block” is the counter.

In almost every basic blocking technique there is a lead hand that is thrust out or raised (which typically becomes the hike-te) before the step, either forward , backwards or at an angle and “block” is performed.

If you look at this in the light of how people fight “in the real world” this initial, high speed, throwing out of the hand very much mimics the totally natural flinch or cover you see in a genuine confrontation where you have been caught off guard.

If you try it against more natural and realistic attacks you’ll find it is actually very effective as a block in as much as it covers and deflects with very little effort, and, with a little practice allows you to catch and pull the incoming limb, giving meaning to the hike-te as an active part of the technique. It doesn’t require a particularly high level of skill or accuracy to be effective, just a willingness to go with your natural reactions and to commit to the technique.

If you look at this part of the traditional block as your “block” you will quickly see that all the follow up parts and body mechanics of the labelled technique are in fact geared to placing you in the correct position to apply a full power counter appropriate to the situation (rather than the idea of the “block” being so powerful it will “discourage your attacker from continuing” 🙂 ).

It also make sense of the distance and timing issues and maximises the effects of both your and your opponents momentum.

This is not new news (and I certainly didn’t invent the idea) but it’s surprising how many never take the step back to see the blindingly obvious, both on the traditional and practical side.

Traditional moves and body mechanics developed they way they did for a reason, they should work with your natural responses but should give you, through proper training, the ability to maximise your effect and minimise your effort.

If you take the time to understand the fundamentals, karate is actually very simple and is (can be) very effective, but in that form it is neither flash nor elegant enough for some, or clever and complex enough for others.

At risk of being pretentious, if you scrape away the “art” you will find the art. 🙂