Entries tagged as karate
Kata Vs. Kumite
One of my favorite reads lately is at 24 Fighting Chickens. It's a Shotokan site, but most of the stuff there can be generalized to any form of martial arts. I can't say I agree with everything written there (or even with half of it) but it's all well reasoned and well argued stuff. They have a very nice set of podcasts as well.
The reason I bring this up is that the current front page article is about the relationship between kata and kumite. I happen to have been thinking about this a little bit myself and came to much the opposite conclusion of the Fighting Chicken authors.
I'll paraphrase their argument first. It basically says that kata do not have much of anything to do with one's fighting prowess, or more specifically to one's sparring prowess. As evidence they point to competitive karate and the fact that kumite champions are rarely, if ever, kata champions, and that kata champions do not often evolve into great sparrers (if that's even a word).
I can see the point they're trying to make but I have to disagree with it for a couple of reasons.
First, all their argument proves is that the traits that make a champion kata performer are not the same as those make for a good fighter. That is, the people predisposed to do one well don't necessarily do the other well. Think of someone like me - I have poor reaction time. I could never be a great fighter - NEVER - in the sense of being able to win competitions against others of comparable experience. The best I could ever hope for is to be better than people who are less experienced or less well trained than I am - which is, in fact, all I hope for. No matter how I trained I could never win fighting competitions. On the other hand, while my kata are nothing great, I could imagine working really hard at them and one day do well (or at least adequately) in a kata competition. My lack of good reaction time will simply not matter during a kata competition.
The real question is whether a kata champion is better at fighting than they would have been had they never trained kata, and the answer is, I believe, yes. I'll tell you why.
Before my Shodan promotion in June of this year I was practicing my kata a lot. During that promotion I had to spar quite a bit. A guy from another dojo told me I was moving well, which shocked me - I'm not good at moving around, generally speaking. In retrospect, he was right - I was moving around as well or better than I ever had before (though still not nearly as well as someone who is actually good at this). For example, after/ while blocking kicks I like to close with my opponent and try to land a few punches before they can regain their balance. I was doing this well during the promotion, though again, I mean well FOR ME, not compared to anybody else.
I was sparring in class the other week and felt that I was not moving very well. However, I'm stronger and in better shape than I was back in June. What changed? I think it might be the fact that I haven't been practicing kata.
How is this possible? I'm glad you asked. It seems improbable, after all. If you watched one of our kata we almost never assume the positions and stances that we use while sparring. How could kata have improved my movement?
I think that moving your body around in weird or awkward ways (such as are found in may kata, with 270 degree turns and whatnot) teaches you a fundamental kind of coordination and make you better at moving your body in general. I can't pull out any studies to prove this, but I myself am a lot more graceful than I was before starting karate practice - I'm better at doing anything physical than I used to be (I used to be really uncoordinated, now I'm just below average). So spinning and turning and moving in deep, awkward stances has made me better at shuffling, sidestepping, and dodging in a less awkward fighting stance.
This is also an argument in favor of the deep, awkward stances you see in karate practice. Why practice moving in a deep front or horse stance? Because if you get strong enough and agile enough to be mobile in a deep front stance you'll be much quicker moving around in a shallow fighting stance. You're using leverage and position to make the movements harder to develop your own core ability to move around. Think of it as comparable to running around in a weight vest - you get stronger, and when you take it off you'll be faster at moving without the vest.
Should we then fight in a deep, awkward stance, then resume our normal shallow stance for tournaments or promotions? I think that if we did we'd miss out on the timing and coordination you get from fighting. You'd be unfamiliar with moving in a fighting stance. But practicing kata, or walking practice, in a deep stance will get you good at keeping level, coordinating your hip movement, and driving off the floor, and with a little fighting practice you should be able to transfer that to sparring.
I am not saying that kata alone will make you a great fighter. Some will argue that, but not me. I do think that getting good at kata will make you better at fighting, but you need to practice kumite as well.
Osu.
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Royal Jester? Royal Flush? Court Jester? Court Flush?
There are a lot of different strength training programs out there. Some focus on timing (when to work out as opposed to which exercises to do), some on tempo, some on poundages, and so forth. One popular type of program is to describe in detail a small set of exercises - somewhere around 2 or 3, but sometimes more, - and claim that doing these particular exercises produces an overall strength increase sufficient for most people's functional needs. Some of these programs have you build up to these exercises by starting with easier versions (so the "royal" exercise might be pullups, but if you can't do them, you do assisted pullups or body rows or whatever until you can do "real" pullups). Some of them also overdo the promotional advertising and claim truly magical results from doing that particular combination of movements.
The first such program I heard of (although it may not be the first one) was Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning. If you're not familiar with it, he basically tells you to do Hindu Squats, Hindu Pushups, and neck bridges in large numbers (as in building up to hundreds of repetitions). Many of Pavel Tsatsouline's programs/ books take this format as well. Enter the Kettlebell? Swings and... I can't remember - is it swings and presses or swings and snatches? (sorry!). Naked Warrior? Pistols and one-armed pushups. Power to the People? Deadlift and bent press. You get the idea. Simplefit is pushups, pullups, and air squats done in a variety of routines (for time, max reps, sets, etc.) In a way, many powerlifting and O-weightlifting programs take this format, at least the ones that really emphasize the 3 core lifts, but that's more a function of the competition - if you're going to snatch in competition, you'd better make the snatch a BIG part of your regular workouts.
I like these programs a lot (although some are definitely better than others). Why?
- They're simple. There are only so many variations you can do on 2 or 3 exercises, and it's certainly many fewer than can be done with 12 or 15.
- They give you a chance to really master those movements. Look at Pavel's stuff in particular. You focus on those 2 movements, but he gets really technical about how you generate tension and so forth, so you get a chance to really master the form in a way you wouldn't if you were trying to learn many movements at once.
- They require either little or minimal equipment. By definition, you aren't going to need to buy 7 different pieces of equipment to do 2 exercises.
- They are usually brief. I imagine there are some very high volume limited exercise programs out there, but most of these programs can be accomplished fairly quickly. Compare them to a typical 75 to 90 minute bodybuilding routine with 12 exercises and you'll see what I mean.
- These programs won't overkill any particular movement pattern. It's not like you're going to overtrain your quads by hitting them 6 different ways - if you're only doing 2 exercises it's fairly easy to pick 2 that won't overlap much.
- The exercises chosen are usually efficient, compound movements that involve the core nicely.
- Once you learn these movements you can focus your skill training on mastering your martial art instead of on strength training.
Are there any downsides? I think so.
- Some people might find these boring.
- No set of 2 or 3 exercises is going to adequately build strength in every range beneficial to a martial artist. In fact, one of the planes of movement that I think is most important to a fighter is usually underworked - hip adduction and abduction. Hip abductors and adductors are both very important for lateral movement and for kicking high. You're not going to find 2 exercises that will produce the right amount of strength everywhere you might want it although some might come close.
I've been trying to come up with my own royal flush of exercises, narrowing down my routines to the smallest possible handful of exercises that cover all your strength bases. I'm not sure how successful I've been, but here's my stab at things:
I figured I'd start with the core exercise for developing punching power - the kettlebell swing. Then I needed something for hip abduction/ adduction. Isometric stretching is okay, but it won't do anything but adduction, and I wanted something more general. Then I needed an upper body exercise that would work the core nicely so you'd be able to transfer all that hip drive into your punches and blocks.
Joe Berne's patented (not really) Royal Flush of exercises:
- Kettlebell swings - works glutes, hamstrings, lower back, and shoulders - produces the "hip snap" that drives all your strikes.
- Side lunges - works adductors, abductors, and knee extension for high, powerful kicks.
- Scott Sonnon's 1/4 Turkish Getup. Perfect for generating punching power with the upper body. My new favorite exercise.
Ta daa... And you can do the whole routine with a single kettlebell. You might want a few kettlebells, of different weights, but you won't need two at once.
Are these enough to develop overall strength? I don't really think so. Are they enough to get a pretty good start on striking powerfully with the hands and feet AND moving yourself out of the way of your opponent's strikes? I think so.
I'm a little concerned about hip abduction (not having your hips kidnapped, I mean lifting your legs to the side) but I have a hard time finding good abduction-centric exercises. If you know of any (other than leg weighted leg raises) please post to comments.
I'm also concerned about strength imbalances. Is there enough upper body pulling with the back hand drive on the getup and the swings? I don't really think so. I'd like to add renegade rows or bodyweight rows or pullups, but that brings us to 4 exercises. Still, this is a pretty good start.
One other option is to do these routines (Pavel's, Furey's, mine, simplefit, whatever) in a rotating way. Assuming you've learned the movements, you could pick 2 days a week for strength training and alternate these routines. Week 1 do Enter the Kettlebell, then Power to the People. Week 2 do the Royal Court, then the Royal Flush. That way, any set of muscles that are left out by any one plan will most likely get hit by another sooner or later. You'll probably make slower overall progress but might be better rounded and less bored.
I'd also like to learn more about the side lunge. I tend to get knee pain from doing them, and I don't like lifting my foot off the floor with weight in my hand. I'm considering switching to reverse side lunges (you keep the weighted, bending leg in place and slide out the straightened, non-weight bearing leg) or some other variation but haven't worked out all the details yet.
Please post any nice ideas you have for very brief strength training routines!
Osu.
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Hubris? Me?
My natural tendency is to question everything and to be critical of everything. If you tell me the best way to drive a car, I'm going to wonder if you're right, doubt you, try to think through the physics of driving myself, and go through a process of questioning before I believe you. I'll do this even if you're a much better driver than I am. I'm not claiming this is a good attribute, though I tend to think it is, I'm just saying that it's the way my brain works.
But every once in a while I also wonder just who the hell I think I am to question the methods of the old masters. What (if anything) makes me think I can figure out a better training methodology than the old Okinawan masters who produced such fine karateka in the past? Why should I even bother to attempt to come up with anything better?
I actually have some basic answers to these questions. If you doubt my training systems I'm not going to defend them here, but I will try to make some points that might make you think that it is possible that there are better training methods than the old ways, whether you agree that I've stumbled upon them or not.
The thing to remember about the old masters is that their training methods didn't have to be very good for them to produce great karateka and great fighters. What do I mean? Think about who they were training. Students of karate back in the day (let's say pre-1965, for argument's sake) were pretty serious. From what I've read most trainees started when they were young - teenagers or early twenties at the latest. I imagine most were either fairly healthy and fit to begin with or, in those rare cases where the sickly or infirm took up the art, were willing to work very, very hard to improve. They trained a lot. It's not uncommon to read about these guys training four to six hours a day for months or years at a time. The trainees were mostly men. The trainees were culturally conditioned to endure boring training and often brutal training to various degrees. Read stories of old kyokushinkai schools. Those kids beat the crap out of each other daily and kept coming back for more.
The point I'm trying to make is that you give me a healthy teenage male willing to train for six hours a day or do kata thousands of times over to master a technique and my training methods don't have to be very efficient in order to pretty good fighters or karateka. You don't have to correct the pelvic tilt of most teenagers - they haven't developed postural problems or muscle imbalances yet. You give me a kid willing to stretch for an hour a day to gain flexiblity or run an hour a day for stamina or do a thousand pushups a day for strength and I don't need an efficient or carefully balanced system to get them fit.
On the other hand, you give me an out of shape forty year old woman with a desk job and two hours a week to train, and those same methods might not work so well. You might need corrective exercises to fix muscle imbalances. You'll need more efficient methods of developing endurance and power than just training harder and longer than everybody else.
You want to get me in shape you're going to have to come up with some better methods too. I don't have 45 minutes a day to stretch. I need Thomas Kurz to show me how to get more flexible in just a few minutes a day. I don't have hours a week to build up my endurance. I need Tabata intervals so I can get in good shape in just 40 minutes a week.
I think you get the idea.
If you have six hours a day and a young, healthy body you don't have to work out smart or eat right. Don't believe me? Find some high school athletes, kids in great shape, and find out what they eat (it's mostly garbage). Then find a forty five year old with the same diet. The forty five year old will be a metabolic mess. Us old farts need really sound nutrition and really smart training to make progress with our limited schedules and failing bodies.
So in answer to my own question yes, I do think I can figure out a better training system than the great masters of karate history. Not on my own, mind you, I have no special insight into this stuff. But by pulling the right pieces from all the great trainers whose brains I can pick electronically I can come up with principles of training that are way more efficient and effective than what was done in the old days.
Does that mean the stuff I'm doing now is the best possible workout method? Of course not. I'll keep reading and keep trying new things so I can advance the quality of my thinking. And you should no more just take my word for everything than I'm taking everybody else's word for it. Read, try new stuff, and do what makes sense to you.
And if you figure out some stuff that works better than my stuff, tell me about it. That's how progress gets made.
Osu.
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Twisting Tendons and Internal Torque
I've read a couple of blog posts recently that made me think about martial arts technique. Check out this post on koshi - it is about old Okinawan methods of generating power. It starts out pretty straightforwardly, but by the end, the "advanced techniques," it makes relatively little sense to me. Just what is meant by "internalized movement?" What the hell is moving internally? Your liver? You're generating power with your appendix, your spleen, what? I find it relatively easy to ridicule these notions.
Try out this post. It uses language that is even more nonsensical to me, although it's all coming from a Chinese, rather than an Okinawan, source. Same nonsensical stuff though - joints moving on their own, with no muscle action? Opening and closing joints, stuff happening that wouldn't make sense to anybody even remotely familiar with an anatomy book.
When you approach writing like this there is among many of us an urge to dismiss it immediately and often with disdain. I respect that urge, I really do, and I tend to participate in it. But it might be useful to keep a few things in mind.
The first is that these people clearly do not know how to explain well what they are doing. The tendon twisting post in particular makes no sense. BUT the fact that they cannot explain what they are doing coherently does not mean that they are doing something wrong or that it is ineffective. It is possible that their words just do not convey the reality of their techniques very well.
For an example of this, take acupuncture. The qi channels that those needles supposedly open or whatever don't exist, but the fact remains that if you stick the needles in the right spots you can do wonders for people, especially in pain management. Many doctors and Western trained people dismiss acupuncture because it's "backstory" makes no sense. The fact is, however, that it works, at least for some things.
I cannot rule out the fact that either Mr. Gooden or Mr. Phillips or both have incredible skills in body mechanics and are tremendous martial artists based on the fact that what they say they are doing (opening and closing joints, twisting tendons, utilizing internal torque) is nonsensical. I can rule out the fact that they are scientific thinkers, but that doesn't make them bad people or bad martial artists. It is entirely possible that both these gentlemen can hit harder than me, fight better, and move more quickly.
The second thing to keep in mind is that you have to maintain skepticism in the face of these kind of descriptions of body mechanics, especially because they make no sense. Just as there are people who would immediately dismiss these guys as idiots, there are others who would gasp and pant and proclaim how cool they are and go find a tai chi class to attend immediately. That's equally stupid.
What to do, then? How do we resolve our non-understanding of what these guys are talking about?I have a secret weapon here. A person I trust completely happens to tell me that the theories Mr. Gooden is relating, at least, are potentially very effective. So I'm convinced - but I don't expect you to be convinced by this story - I mean, come on, "a guy I know believes it..."
The only way we should take these guys at their word is if representatives from either camp came out and participated in some kind of objective testing. I'd love to see someone Mr. Phillips endorses as a skilled instructor come out and hit one of those pressure sensing makiwara contraptions. Let's see how hard he can really hit without involving his muscles and so forth. Let's see Mr. Gooden break something, or hit a heavy bag, using internal torque alone.
If you can get a 150 lb. tai chi instructor to hit harder than a 150 lb. kyokushinkai sensei then I'll believe there's something to it. Until then, I have to regard any technique that can't be explained with real anatomical concepts, the way someone like Pavel Tsatsouline can explain things, with the utmost suspicion.
An open mind is a good thing, but if it's too open, all kinds of crap can get into it.
For now I'm just going to have to stick to techniques that I can understand.
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Fighting Speed
I'm slow. I've always been slow. I come by it honestly - I come from a long line of slow people. I contributed to it by reading a lot as a kid instead of playing tag or football or whatever. End result? I'm a fast reader, but you need a calendar to time my 40 yard dash.
The problem with being slow is that when you spar, the slower you are, the harder it is to get out of the way of the people trying to hit you. (remember: "best defense - no be there"). You can make up for it with timing, strong technique, etc., but it's still better to be fast than to be slow, all else being equal.
So, being the person that I am, and being tired of getting my ass handed to me in sparring sessions, I started looking up articles and books on training for speed, online. What I found was a preponderance of materials that focus on improving one's running-in-a-straight-line speed. They had drills for improving running form and all that so you could go 10, 40, or more yards more quickly than before.
But that's not the kind of speed I'm worried about.
There's nothing wrong with straight line speed. In fact, being able to run fast has serious self-defense implications - you get jumped by 3 guys, you might be able to stun one and run away, but if you're me, the other two will catch you (us?) before you can get to a safe place.
But if you want to get better at the stuff that happens before you run away, if you want to be a faster fighter, that's a different kind of speed.
Think about the last time you sparred. Where did you line up? 2 meters apart? 3? I've never had a match where we started out 10, 20, or more meters away from one another. And even if you did, you don't need to close that distance quickly.
The speed you need in a sparring session is the ability to take a step or two in any direction, quickly. Think about it - you throw a kick or punch at me, if I can get one step to the side, you're going to miss. I don't need to travel 40 yards to get away or to close on you and hit you unless you're an octopus.
Fighting speed is about quickly moving from a standing fighting position to a spot one or two steps away in any direction - in some situations you need to close quickly, in some to move to the side, in some to retreat, but rarely more than one or two steps. It's also about stopping and changing direction while moving one or two steps in any direction (like when you close on someone and suddenly realize you have to sidestep or back up or whatever).
So how do you develop fighting speed? It's not by sharpening your sprinting technique - relaxing the shoulders, lifting the knees, all that. You don't do all that when you sidestep or close on someone in a fight. Which means that all those books and DVD's on improving 40 yard sprint times aren't much use to someone who wants to get better at sparring.
Here's what I think:
There are three parts to improving fighting speed. The first part is knowing when to move by reading your opponent, having good strategic ability, and so on. In other words, the faster you can realize that it's time to sidestep or close, by reading your opponent's position and recognizing that it's time to move. My old teacher could hit me anytime he wanted. Was he a great athlete? Well, he was, but it was more that he saw every opening in my defenses immediately, and could read my every move before I made it by noticing subtle tells and shifts in weight and so on. He also knew what to do instantly - he was so experienced that he knew if sidestepping, blocking, or closing would be more effective. I, for a contrast, often only realize that I should have sidestepped a technique after the exchange is over. No matter how strong your legs are, if you don't know which way to go, you're not going to be a fast fighter.
You develop these skills through sparring practice and through sparring related drills. It's not a function of fitness - it's all neurological, it's about how quickly you can get from seeing the guy in front of you to deciding how to move to optimize your fighting position.
The second part of fighting speed is to develop the muscles that actually move you around after your brain has decided that you need to do it. Imagine someone who is very skilled but has badly damaged knees or just weak legs or hips. They might instantly see that they should sidestep a certain attack, but if their legs give out, or can't generate much force, they can't do it.
That strength - the leg and hip strength that moves you around in a fight - is a function of fitness, and I think you can do a lot of exercises that can improve that fighting - movement - specific strength. And they're not the same as the exercises you'd do to improve your straight line sprinting speed.
What are they? Well, I have to save something for the next post.
The third part of improving speed is minimizing your mass. For a given level of strength (the ability to generate a certain amount of force) if you can weigh less, you can accelerate more (F=ma, so a = F/m, so if m is bigger, a is less). Adding muscle mass to your hips and legs might make you faster - the increase in force generation might compensate or more than compensate for the increase in mass - but extra fat (or even long hair) does nothing but slow you down.
So lose the fat.
By the way - I'm not going to address the skill component of speed much, but I'm not knocking it at all. The skills involved - reading your opponent, timing your response, having good strategies at your fingertips - might be more important than the fitness/ strength component. I just don't have anything to contribute to anybody's ideas of how to develop those skills. There are lots of books by martial artists about how to develop fighting skills, and you should get one (or many) of them. I think I might know a little bit about the strength part, so that's what I'll write about. In the next post.
Osu.
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