But Can He Fight?

But Can He Fight?

Published: 4-12-2012

By Spencer Sensei

I’ve recently read an interesting book. It was titled “Shotokan’s Secret- The Hidden Truth Behind Karate’s Fighting Origins” by Bruce D. Clayton. Clayton’s book is an attempt to link his Japanese karate with its Okinawan roots. To someone that has studied karate over three decades this book was informative and entertaining, but to the novice it may be a little tedious. A beginning karate student, in most cases, doesn’t know bunkai from a basketball, nor could they careless how karate evolved. They want to learn how to defend themselves. This book’s target audience is old students like myself with nothing better to do than speculate on why we do what we do. When I began training in karate, one of its’ appeals was its mystique. The karate perception was that it could make a man a superhuman fighting machine. Sadly, today there seems to be less interest in karate than in the seventies when I began to train. The market is flooded with karate schools, and karate classes are shrinking in size. I began to ponder upon what drove me to find someone that could train me in the martial arts. Looking back, I puzzled over why I first began to train. Why did I go down that path, so many years ago?  Is the student’s motivation different today than in past decades? My realization was that I began training in martial arts, so I could better defend myself.

One of my favorite movies is the pseudo documentary “The Warrior Within.” Okay… so it is a very old movie, but I enjoyed it so much that after my VHS copy wore out I found and purchased a DVD version on the internet. After it arrived in its brown bubble wrap envelope, I popped it into my DVD player. Yeah… the same commingled of jazz and mellow rock flowed from my speakers as several martial artists gave their 1970ish insight into the world of karate, kung-fu, and jujitsu. My favorite line from that movie was a brief quip by Master Moses Powell (Sanuces-ryu), and it struck me like a slap in the face. Powell sensei was a bear of a man, yet his ukemi (falling) was as smooth and natural as a snowflake falling on calm winter’s morning. Watching his roll-out is pure poetry, but it was what he said that made me remember why I began training in the martial arts. Master Powell said, “I’ve seen guys bend machetes with their throat and stuff, but what I really want to know is… can he fight?” It was then that I realized why I began training in the martial arts. I wanted to be a combination of Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, and James Bond. I wanted to be able to defend myself in any situation and look cool doing it. I wanted to learn how to fight in the most efficient manner man has ever known.

Our goal as martial arts instructors should be to teach the beginning student skills that they can easily be deployed in an emergency. Instead, we focus on kata competitions and point-fighting. Neither of these will give the student real-world skills without years of training. Kata could be a great tool to instruct the beginner on what to do in a given situation, but no one teaches the novice the self-defense behind the techniques. Most karateka don’t receive bunkai instruction until they reach black-belt level, so the novice student practices kata over and over again in vain. They never see their adversary as they perform the moves. In other words, they cannot live their kata, so its real-world application is lost. Many a black-belt woman leaves the dojo thinking they could defend themselves, but could they really stick a finger in an attacker’s eye if necessary. Have they been mentally prepared for a violent encounter? If not, they’re walking around at risk, and their martial arts instructor is to blame. Women are naturally averse to brutally harming another person. Before martial arts instructors delve into the intellectual and complex methods of self-defense, we need to give the student a rudimentary ability to defend themselves first. The martial artist’s foundation must be in place. As the student’s skills progress you can begin the intellectualization or philosophy of when and where to fight. Reasons for self-defense should be comingled within the curriculum, but first a student needs to learn how to fight.

In the seventies everyone believed a black belt should be invincible. Over the years my belief that a black belt should be invincible has been tempered with reality. For example, a black belt acquaintance of mine got into an altercation on big construction job in 1980. He tried to impose his will on an ironworker. The construction worker in the fracas beat the black belt like a drum. The black belt believed that the technique he had learned while sparring in the dojo would support his real-world needs. What he discovered was that focused strikes to the face are not as affective as grabbing a karateka’s kicking leg and pile driving him into the ground. After driving my acquaintance to the ground, the ironworker add insult to injury by jumping on top of him and pounding him in the face until a few well-meaning bystanders pulled the ironworker off. Another black belt friend of mine got into a fight in a parking lot in the nineties. Yes… there might have been a little road rage involved. The point is that after my friend delivered, what any sane judge would have ruled as a clean point to the face, he too had his leg trapped. His opponent was not as violent as the ironworker, so he simply spun around forcing my friend to the ground. He then quickly kicked him in the ribs got in his car and drove away. In the later instance not much more than my friend’s pride was injured, but regardless the karate system he had trained in failed him. It did not teach him how to fight, which most certainly was his reason for his beginning karate training in the first place.

In Bruce D. Clayton’s book, he speculates about the real impetus for the development of karate’s deadly techniques. Matsumura (Bushi) sensei was a palace guard and like our secret service he had to perform his due diligence to keep the king safe. Any potential attack had to be planned for and the trained response had to be executed without thought. His job was to place himself between the royals and an angry mob. He and his fellow guards had to hold the mob at bay until all members of the government had made their exit. Okinawans were, by law, not allowed to carry weapons, so his karate would be the only thing that separated the king from a gang of ruffians, or a drunken samurai of the Satsuma clan. Only techniques that were effective were cultivated by these men. Frivolous wide flowing circular strikes and blocks gave way to short and effective: punches, open-hand strikes, kicks, and grasp removal techniques. Kicks were to the legs and scooping sweeps would keep the attacker’s off balance. The palace guards would not have kicked to the face even if they had been able because their balance would have been easily compromised. Clayton sensei believes that only the quick moving footwork of Shuri-te karate would have been practiced in the palace, but I believe the Naha-te kata like Sanchin would also have had its place too. In Sanchin the body is pounded and hardened. If a guard needed to seal off a hallway, there is no better kata than Sanchin to prepare you for that endeavor. Matsumura kept what worked and stripped away the superfluous, because he had to fight to survive. Fighting was such a part of Matsumura sensei’s world he married the only women on Okinawa that could fight like a man. Yeah… he understood the value in training to be able to fight.

It was the late seventies before I could train consistently. In the early seventies the problem was trying to find an instructor that would stay in business more than a few weeks, but finally around 1977 I found a Shotokan instructor, teaching at a community center, and that instruction lasted a little over a year. After six months of drilling in basic karate technique, body conditioning, and learning the kata Heian Shodan, I was finally allowed to spar. I was thrilled. My thoughts were at last I was going to learn to fight like Bruce Lee. In the years of my training, we didn’t use protective equipment because in those days the philosophy was that in a real fight you’re not going to be wearing protective equipment. Instructors believed that wearing protective gear would cause the karateka to develop bad habits. Also, there wasn’t much protective equipment to be purchased in the small town where I lived anyway. Yet, it only took one trip to the doctor, after receiving a full force shin kick to my nether regions, for me to see the benefits of wearing protective gear. I gleefully purchased a groin protector, and later I bought cloth covered hand and shin pads. When we went to tournament, we were not allowed to wear the hand and shin pads, but my cup was always firmly in place. No doubt the Japanese instructors at tournament, had they known, would have looked down their nose at my cowardice, but that was a pain did not want to feel again. By the time I had began studying Tae-Kwon-Do around 1980 foam hand, foot, and shin protection were common items. No Moses… protective equipment did not teach me how to fight, but it allowed me to practice while minimizing injuries.

I enjoyed sparring and spent as much time as was allowed pursuing that aspect of karate. There was a downside to all that protective equipment and the installing of kumite (fighting) rules. Suddenly I became less concerned about protecting my groin because of the cup, and I became less concerned about covering my face because of the rules in place that protected my noggin. My kicks were normally directed to my opponent’s face because I was not worried about someone sweeping my support leg. Out of that I developed a bad habit of holding my kick at face level for a second, so my opponent and I could both enjoy and admire the technique. Somewhere along the way hip rotation and focus (Kime) gave way to slapping my opponent with a quick back-knuckle technique and claiming victory. Point-sparring became a game, and I began to lose what little knowledge I had acquired previously about how to fight. My stances began to turn sideways to cover point-fighting target areas, and by doing this I reduced the effectiveness of my rear (Power-side) weapons. Still… point-fighting did teach me how to move my feet quickly, so it wasn’t all bad. It would take more drilling and a greater understanding of fighting before I squared my hips and redeployed my power-side weapons. Another Point fighting issue was learning to control the technique. The problem was after spending years stopping my kicks and punches short of their target, I had to concentrate to change my focus when I jumped into a full contact application. Yeah… I thoroughly enjoyed point-fighting even though I developed a few bad habits as a result of my participation. Point-fighting is a great instructional tool to teach the student footwork in a small area, but it cannot be the end of instruction on how to fight. A black belt that has never experienced full contact fighting is going to get killed in a real life and death fight. I’ve point fought for years Moses… and yes it helped me develop my fighting skills, but I did not stop there.

I had second degree black-belt in Korean karate when I began training in Isshin-ryu. Isshin-ryu is an Okinawan style, and my first Isshin-ryu instructor understood the importance of teaching real-world karate. He exposed me to full-contact kickboxing and jujitsu. His philosophy was that to be an effective fighter the karateka had to understand how to fight in any range. Many karateka once they find themselves on the ground are at a loss. They’re out of their element, and they panic. Like him or not, George Dillman has a saying relating to this, “Under stress we regress.” This means that once you’re out of your element you forget your training. It is also a physiological phenomenon that your vision becomes reduced in a fight, and if it is not controlled, you’ll be blinded by tunnel vision. One way to always be in control is to be comfortable in all ranges of combat. It is also true that you will not be equally skilled in all ranges, so you should play to your strengths. You must also know your enemy. Punch and keep away from a grappler. Do not wrestle with him. Kick a boxer. Take a kicker to the ground. Learn to tell an opponent’s preference by looking at his/her stance. I thought I understood fighting until I began to train in real-world karate.

So you’ve decided to start training your students in real-world martial arts. The question now is how can you accomplish it? Let’s look back and then look ahead to see ways of pushing students into real-world training. All students start with floor exercise to teach them rudimentary stepping and punching, but to teach a student how to really throw a punch there must be more instruction and at a more intense level. Master Harold Mitchum said that he would start practice by kicking the makiwara (Punching Board) until his foot went numb. No modern student would stay with you long if that were a requirement today, but makiwara training taught people how to punch more effectively as it resisted their blows and callused their knuckles. A student must feel the impact at the end of a punch or kick. Makiwara training taught the student how to respond to pain too. When you punch or kick someone without pads it hurts. Recently I’ve added bag work to my karate curriculum. The heavy bag, in my opinion, is the modern makiwara. We still spar, but now we drive both our fists and legs into the bag with full force. Our bag work is not a now and again thing it is a normal part of every class workout. Kicking had always been part of our bag work, but I didn’t allow younger students to punch for fear of a hand injuries. Parents frown on their child not being able to write and do their schoolwork due to a karate mishap. My students, I could tell from the way they punched while sparring, did not understand the mechanics of how to punch properly. There was no weight transfer from the back leg to the front leg. Hip and shoulder rotation were missing. There was no focus. Their punches were all made using arm strength only. Power was missing, and I was failing to teach my students how to defend themselves. Now I have begun to use bag gloves to protect the children’s hand when they punch the bags because they’re cheaper than lawsuits, and we can work on the real-world delivery of a blow. Today these younger students can feel the resistance to their punch. They can feel the impact on the shoulder. While performing on the bag, we can teach them to keep their hands up to protect the face as they punch. Hip rotation, shoulder rotation, weight transfer, and stances can be emphasized. These things were taught originally as the student pounded the makiwara and deformed their knuckles, but obviously with our litigious society we cannot do this today, but no one will argue that those who trained in this manner, by the Okinawan masters, could not fight.

So you might ask, “If it’s all about fighting, why learn kata?” Kata is situational self-defense, so it is all about fighting. Whether you believe that kata was created to defend the Okinawan king, came from the Shaolin temple via Kwia-Chang-Kane, or if it is merely a vehicle to personal growth, the truth is that kata is a series of offensive and defensive strikes that can, if properly practiced, enhance your ability to fight. Teaching akachan (baby) bunkai must be done to make kata a vehicle to teach a student’s awareness of what to do in a given situation, or with each kata performance you’re wasting the student’s time and you are simply teaching them a mediocre esoteric folk dance. Kata practice must move beyond the mindless repetition of moves. Break the kata into pieces and practice the bunkai. The bunkai practice must be made with one student attacking (Uke) while one defends (Tori) to develop the timing necessary to make the self-defense viable. This bunkai does not have to be as unique as sensei Javier Martinez’s tuite, or as questionable as sensei Dillman’s. It can be as simple as punch, kick, and block. Doing this helps the student to visualize the self-defense inside their kata, and hopefully will give them the desire to learn advanced self-defense. Performing kata one hundred times and knowing only the baby bunkai helps teach you to fight.

The question remains. What is our fundamental purpose for teaching and training in the martial arts? If our purpose is to teach us to be better people, wouldn’t that be better served by working for a charity or seeking the spiritual side of our being? Over the decades karate has become more of a social creature, and less of a means to defended oneself. I fear there are countless karateka in the world that thinks they are ready for an unprovoked attack. Karate competition has overruled practicality. The best fighter never wins in a point-fighting competition because you cannot measure a karateka’s heart nor their ability to take or deliver a blow. Today kata competition is more about appearance than substance. Has out focus been lost? Instructors are fearful of lawsuits, so we, my self included, have gone overboard with the use of protective equipment. In the final analysis will karate survive if we do not teach karateka to fight? This may be one reason that many young people have gravitated to mixed martial arts (MMA). MMA simply stated is only about fighting. We must be about more than just fighting, but we also need to teach our students how to fight or we do them a disservice.