Tag: mma

Karategi-clad cheerleaders

Eric Balough

It has been a while! Enough of that… let’s get into it…

Last year, I was at a place in my life where I could once again dedicate time to the study of martial arts. Like many practitioners, it has been a lifelong journey of learning, trial, and many, many errors. In addition to stepping back into a dojo, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym, and a sunny basketball court, I’ve spent a great deal of time researching history and applications of various martial arts. It borders on obsession.

There are so many good resources, both in print and in video, that showcase the history, culture and effectiveness of classical karate, it is hard to name them all. I’ve reviewed a handful of books (and more to come).

But even with all of this material, knowledge, expertise, and proven effectiveness both in controlled environments like the UFC and in the chaotic circumstances of real-world self defense, karate has a horrible reputation among modern day martial artists and keyboard warriors alike. Why?

Two words: sport, karate.

I tried…

Since coming back to martial arts after about a four year hiatus, and becoming a part of various online communities, I’ve tried to take a very live and let live approach with respect to various we’ll call them “interpretations” of karate. But frankly, I just can’t pretend anymore.

This change of heart culminated about two weeks ago when my son and I competed at a national-level sport karate tournament. I haven’t been to a tournament of this size for nearly 30 years, and obviously, a great deal has changed since then. Prior to this, we also competed in a smaller local tournament, and still made many of the same observations. The difference between the two tournaments? The scale. I’ll get to this in a second.

So what is it about sport “karate” that has me so bothered and why does it matter?

So first thing is first… karate is an Okinawan cultural artifact, and in my opinion, it should be treated as such. As a Westerner, there are many linguistic, historical, cultural and religious undercurrents that lead to the development of karate that I can study but never fully appreciate. There are certain traditions that I can imitate (bowing, wearing a dogi -which is actually Japanese, salutations in kata, etc.) but they are not mine to change or adulterate. Even within the vast amount of room for creative interpretation of kata, techniques, and teaching methods, there are limits to what a non-Okinawan may actually change without some sort of Okinawan acceptance.

Everything about sport “karate” smacks of a cheap mass produced facsimile of the original that strips out the soul of the art in favor of pleasing crowds and making money (kind of like a Disney Star Wars trilogy…). It is hollow, vapid, and utterly devoid of any meaningful traditional, cultural or historical value.

A prime example of the sport “karate” kata

One of the ways to “win” in sport “karate” traditional kata division is to find an obscure kata and mutilate it as much as possible without actually changing the movements. The lady in the video above is performing Go Pei Sho.

Now, contrast the above performance (which received many applause and a won the competitor a grand championship) with the demonstration below (which, by the way, also has an introduction which includes the historical and cultural significance of the kata).

A really incredible demonstration of Go Pei Sho

The popularity of sport “karate” has completely overshadowed the practical and cultural value of classical karate just by virtue of the fact that sport “karate” schools pump out blackbelts by the thousands every year. The tournaments are massive, and the financial incentives to hand out flashy prizes and cash awards are vast.

The simple truth of sport “karate” is that it is a money machine machine disguised in “confidence boosting” and “achieving fitness goals” marketing jargon. While it may indeed be a confidence builder and help some people with fitness, it does so at the expense of someone else’s cultural heritage (we’re good at that in the US).

You ain’t seen nothin yet…

If you think the histrionics of the Go Pei Sho performance was bad, we haven’t even discussed the shenanigans with Okinawan and Japanese weapons.

By far, three of the most popular weapons in sport “karate” are bos (staffs), nunchaku, and swords.

An “extreme musical” weapon form… which won the division

Bo and staff performances include all of the obligatory yelling and screaming that one sees with empty hand kata, but now there are props to showcase hand-eye coordination. And to be completely fair, there is an incredible degree of skill involved in the tricks and twirls that one may see. But at what point does it cross the line from a martial art to a dance? Funny you should ask…

Let’s ask the founders of modern karate what they think:

…It is not a dance competition trying to decide who has the most gorgeous display… it is a form of self-defense that can be the difference between life and death.

-Konish Kazuhiro, Excerpt from Mabuni Kenwa’s “Karate Kenpo: The Art of Self-Defense”

Once a kata has been learned, it must be practised repeatedly until it can be applied in an emergency, for knowledge of just the sequence of a kata in karate is useless.

-Funakoshi Gichin

“Kata are not some kind of beautiful competitive dance, but a grand martial art of self-defense, which determines life and death.”

-Mabuni Kenwa

“You may train for a long time, but if you merely move your hands and feet and jump up and down like a puppet, learning karate is not very different from learning a dance. You will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to grasp the quintessence of karate-do.”

-Funakoshi Gichin (again)

The early Okinawan karate masters were exceptionally pragmatic. According to most available accounts, the primary influence on Okinawan todi came from the Fujian Province in China. While kung fu styles have their own practicality, they also add a bit of flair. That flair is essentially stripped out of todi/karate and we’re left with a simple, utilitarian, and brutal system of self-defense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw_dzWTIsh0
Tokumine no Kun demonstrated by Michael Calandra

In other words, if something didn’t work, or it was just for show, the Okinawans discarded it. The quotes above (of which there are dozens more) only serve to reinforce that point.

So what relationship does bo twirling have to karate? Simply put, it doesn’t. If it does not have current or historical self-defense value, it is not karate. Full stop.

One can easily find the same examples of other watered down Okinawan kobudo weapons such as nunchaku, sai, eiku, kama, or tuifa (tonfa) in sport “karate”, so I won’t belabor the point.

But wait… there’s more

As horrible as the empty hand and Okinawan kobudo sport dances are, it actually gets worse… Yes… seriously.

Let me preface this by saying I am no sword expert. I have a handful of swordsmanship classes under my belt, but I do practice with a live blade. In other words, I train with a sense of paranoia and respect for the weapon in my hands. And frankly, real iaido kata are kind of short, and unless you know what is happening, somewhat boring to watch.

Iaido kata

In the clip below, the gentlemen demonstrates what I believe to be good fundamentals. His stances are grounded, he cuts instead of chops, and the techniques demonstrated are legitimate sword techniques (maybe including some of the jumps – I don’t actually know). But let me start the video where things get dicey…

“Traditional” katana division

Notice how the competitor cleans the blood of his imaginary opponent off of his blade using his sleeve? Not only is this impractical, it is dangerous. Sorry… I’m not trying this at home with my live blade.

But hey… it looks cool, and I think it originated from Kill Bill.

Trading pom-poms for belts

I’m just going to leave this here…

If you’ve made it this far, I think you’ve already figured out what I have to say about this.

Wrap-up

So why does any of this matter, and why make a fuss about it?

From an outside perspective, this is not much different than a cheerleading, gymnastics or dance competition. And if it were an one of those things without a disguise, I wouldn’t care.

It matters because fundamentally, karate is for self-defense. Many people start karate (or other martial arts) with a variety of goals (weight loss, confidence, etc.) that include being able to handle oneself in a dicey situation. Sport “karate” does not deliver on self-defense, and as I’ve shown, it teaches poor fundamental that include techniques that can get the practitioner hurt or worse.

Confidence is fine. But being a 3rd degree black belt in bow spinning is not something that can or should give someone the confidence to take on a ruffian who wants to put a knife in their gut (hint: just give them your wallet…). But being disguised and marketed as a “martial art”, many sport “karate” practitioners may have that false confidence that what they do on the dance floor or in the point sparring ring will translate to saving them in a dimly lit parking lot.

Karate, true classical karate, is a legitimate and (potentially) lethal self-defense system. But the majority of “karate” practitioners in the U.S. and other western countries actually participate in militant cheerleading. This is why karate has a horrible reputation… because the majority of karategi-clad screamers aren’t actually practicing karate despite their claims.

What they do is not what we do, and I am actually done being nice about it. I can’t pretend to be okay with labelling something that can easily get a practitioner hurt or killed as “karate” when it has no documented links or roots to karate.

The goal of the Village Karate of Stafford is to join the efforts to restore information that was lost about the traditional Okinawan martial arts and elevate their status legitimate self defense systems that are applicable to our times. In some cases, we can piece together bits of information that is scattered around the world like a bunch of forensic historians. In other cases, we just have to experiment with concepts, just like the forbearers of karate did, and figure out what works (and then ditch the rest).

Float Like a Butterfly…

Eric Balough

One of the benefactors and proponents of the modernization of karate was a man named Konishi Yasuhiro. He served as a sounding board to many of the masters who would go on to found the first major formalized branches of karate in Japan. In his one of letters, “Kenyaku no Shikatsu” (“The difference between life and death lies with your fists and legs”) he warns against some of tendencies of training in karate that modern day critics still observe.

What is at the core of this criticism you ask? Kata. (E.g. the karate version of one-person drills.)

You’re doing it wrong…

Konishi’s main point in his letter was about the importance of speed and timing in a fight. He calls the awareness of distance between you and your opponent ma-ai. In his words, good practitioners of karate would keep this principles in mind while they train and even “while they dream”.

Even in the early days of the popularization of karate, Konishi observed that “[he] noticed practitioners spend unnecessary energy on pointless movements which, in the end, only draws laughs from experts at their wasted efforts.” He goes on to say that there is an over-emphasis on physical fitness and how an individual performs a technique at the expense of training ma-ai.

Central to this criticism is the way kata is trained where the tendency is to treat kata as “immovable forms” or dance competitions trying to put on “gorgeous displays“.

Instead, he says, “[kata] are intended to behave like water being swirled about in a bowl, something that is capable of a multitude of changes and limitless ability to adapt to what is around it.”

Sting like a bee

So how does Konishi suggest that one train? And how does a karateka make use of the tools and drills, including kata, to train for a self-defense situation?

He says, “the way you utilize the distance between you and your opponent is far more important than the effectiveness [of the actual strikes] you apply. It follows that other details of the encounter… could be thought of as an after effect of reaching your ideal distance.” In other words, good techniques applied with poor timing or at the wrong distance are essentially meaningless, and worse can be dangerous because they leave you exposed.

Boxers, wrestlers, Brazilian jiu jistu practitioners all have their own versions of solo drills

So how does kata factor into all of this?

Based on what the forbearers of karate said, kata should be used to practice speed, timing, distance, power and transferring of weight.

But as we’ve seen from Konishi’s writings, kata is simply not enough. For kata to be effective, it must be paired with two-person drills that use kata as a template, or lesson plan, for specific self-defense applications. The drills must increase in terms of speed, resistance and chaos so that they can closely replicate a real self-defense scenario.

Whether these new self-defense schools realize it or not, they rely on the same format used by good dojos (karate schools) minus the kata. Boxers, wrestlers, Brazilian jiu jistu practitioners all have their own versions of solo drills intended for the same purpose. The main difference between kata and these other one-person drills is that they usually don’t have a prearranged pattern to them. (Definitely don’t tell them that they are doing a version of their styles’ kata!)

So, kata is not useless… as long as it is not the only thing being trained.

If kata is the sole focus, and it is not being paired with additional training that focuses on speed, distance, timing, resistance and violence of action, then, as Konishi says, you’re just getting ready for fancy dance competitions.

The takeaways

So to wrap this up, karate, like any other self-defense system or martial art, requires an understanding of your spatial relationship to an attacker. Defending yourself means that you close (or increase) the distance to a where you feel that you can gain a position of advantage, and then apply whatever technique is best suited to the situation. 

The goal of the Village Karate of Stafford is to join the efforts to restore information that was lost about the traditional Okinawan martial arts and elevate their status legitimate self defense systems that are applicable to our times. In some cases, we can piece together bits of information that is scattered around the world like a bunch of forensic historians. In other cases, we just have to experiment with concepts, just like the forbearers of karate did, and figure out what works (and then ditch the rest).

Source: Karate Kenpo by Mabuni Kenwa, translated by Eric Shahan, 2020

“Karate doesn’t work”

Eric Balough
Photo from Motobu Choki’s book “My Art and Skill of Karate”

“Karate doesn’t work.” – Every martial arts “expert” on the internet

You know what? They are probably right. (gasp!)

Let me explain.

The mean streets

In the infamous “street fight”, the experts have this vision in their head of a street brawler and a gi-clad karateka (karate practioner) facing off in mortal combat (you 80s and 90s kids just had a theme song pop in your heads… you’re welcome). The karateka bows, gets in a ready position and then gets in his fighting position with his rear hand drawn on his hip (i.e. nowhere near guarding his face). The brawler flies in with a wild haymaker and the karateka responds with a move from one of the many kata he’s learned and then crumples in a heap as the brawler connects his fist to the karateka‘s face. The fight is over and karate is defeated by the “streets”.

And yes, this tends to be the argument. While this may be a completely inaccurate description of karate, it might not be far off from how many karateka might respond in a such a scenario.

Fancy war dancing

Before we get into the numerous terrible assumptions about the above scenario, we need to understand one of the signature features of karate: kata.

There is an idea that kata involves facing down a horde of brittle boned ninjas. Do a funky block this way, the ninja robot explodes. Turn another way throw your fist through another ninja and then change directions again… finish and bow to all of the dead imaginary ninjas…

To non-karate practioners, kata is about as silly as the description above. They don’t see the utility. Worse, most karateka don’t know the utility of kata beyond “facing eight enemies” and the apparent explanation of the kata.

So we have a problem. The pundits claim that karate is useless, and kata teaches nothing but dangerous and stupid techniques. And most karateka lack the understanding of karate to set them straight.

At the moment, we’re left with the explanation that kata is just a fancy war dance.

So what *is* karate?

The long explanation is probably the subject of another post (or series of posts). So in short, we’ll just say that it is a complete fighting and self-defense system developed in Okinawa under a very particular set of circumstances.

So let’s come back to kata and the infamous hand on the hip.

First off, in most karate schools, students learn kata and they learn kumite (fighting), and they are separated. Depending on the style of karate, they may not know why this is the case. I certainly didn’t know learn this when I was studying karate as a kid.

The popular explanation for this outside of Okinawa is that you learn kumite to protect yourself “in the streets” and kata to maintain the traditions of the martial arts. This is completely false.

Popular YouTuber, and self-proclaimed Karate Nerd, Jesse Enkamp categorizes self defense scenarios into consensual fighting and non-consensual self defense. The scenario we outlined at the start of this post is an example of “consensual fighting”.

Kata is not designed for consensual fighting. It is designed as a lesson plan and one-person drills for specific self defense applications.

And that silly hand on the hip? That is actually doing something important.

Lost to history

So why are karateka so bad at explaining their own systems? Many times, they don’t know what they don’t know because some of those explanations, which were transmitted from person to person, were lost in a kind of diaspora to history.

Thanks to the internet, karateka across the world are able to piece together scattered bits of information that were isolated for 70 or 80 years.

The goal of the Village Karate of Stafford is to join the efforts to restore information that was lost about the traditional Okinawan martial arts and elevate their status legitimate self defense systems that are applicable to our times. In some cases, we can piece together bits of information that is scattered around the world like a bunch of forensic historians. In other cases, we just have to experiment with concepts, just like the forbearers of karate did, and figure out what works (and then ditch the rest).