Lack of Posts Lately
Seems fitting that I start his article off by apologizing for the lack of posting lately on my part and give a huge thanks to all of the other writers that help make this site possible. Noah has been saving me lately – this site would be really bare the last few weeks without his help. I am also happy to announce that there have been a few more people asking about becoming contributing authors, so there will be some more perspectives on here over the next few weeks.
Let me move into explaining why I have been so busy. I am currently cadre for a program at the Air Force Academy called Summer Seminar. We bring in a group of high school juniors (17 years old) who we think would make good applicants to the Air Force Academy and spend five days trying to give them an accurate view of what we do here and the pros and cons of becoming part of our academy. My part in this program is to guide eight or nine of those potential applicants around and offer a more personalized “tour”. It sounded easy enough, but I find myself starting my day at 0500 (5 am) and ending at 2300 (11 pm) daily. Obviously leaving little time for this site. What I have been doing however is talking to some of them about the various clubs on campus, including the Karate club. The initial perception most of them have about Karate is less than encouraging. Let’s talk about changing that.
Abandoning Bad Application
I have been doing a lot of work lately to transition from the common “child friendly” applications that are very common in modern Karate back into more and more combative applications that would be effective in an actual fight. The first step I took a few years ago was to eliminate point sparring from my curriculum. This encourages two bad behaviors in a karateka. First, the students want to “get in, strike, and get out”. Taking the cue from tried and tested combative arts such as Krav Maga, I found Karate applications to be much more effective when my students always continue striking until the opponent is unable to fight back. This can mean ending in a take down, knockout, or death (not in training). I still use the same techniques, I just don’ stop after the first contact.
The second behavior is the desire to put large distances between the student and the opponent. Many modern applications of kata revolve around the lunge punch and other long range attacks and how to defend against them. When I start students much closer to each other, they are able to take pieces of kata and apply them in a far more realistic looking scenario against an attacker who grabs, scratches, knees, slaps, and chokes. You know – things people actually do in a fight.
What About the Children
The exception to this transition is when teaching children. What started these child friendly applications was Itosu’s introduction of Karate to children. In the same way that programs like JROTC and the Boy Scouts mimic military functions in a friendly manner, kid’s class at a karate school should take everything it can from pure karate – such as, philosophy, discipline, respect, and structure – and teach that along side child friendly application until the kids are old enough to be able to safely learn more lethal techniques.
Adults on the other hand, do not need to “graduate” from the children friendly techniques. Start them off with effective techniques and slowly progress them into more lethal moves – rather than starting with the useless and eventually rounding out with the semi-practical.
Changing the Perception
Ideally this will help change how people look at karate. I know after demonstrating only a few minutes of what effective, lethal, karate looks like to my group – I had half of them asking how to sign up when the arrive at the academy. This included people who had previously seen the Army Combatives Program at West Point and were more impressed with what I teach here. Why? Because they have only ever seen karate in the movies, and we all know it doesn’t actually work. Let’s stop fooling ourselves and pretending that knowing how to defend against the lunge punch will somehow make us safer on a dark night.
Thoughts
If you run a school or even teach at a school, let me know what you think about this. So many of the karateka I talk with that want to learn to defend themselves rely on training in other arts because of a lack of faith in their karate to provide a complete defense. Shouldn’t we work on making our karate a complete defense rather than trying to find something else to do when we are done dancing and calling it self-defense?
Note: The image is of my friend Warren’s school patch. I am not implying they teach bad karate, but ask yourself what came to mind when you first saw it – that is the perception I want to change.
I’m glad you were able to change the perceptions of at least a few people!
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao-tzu
I’m glad it got to a few people too.
In order to move forward, we need to look into the past. Pre-1900′s karate is far different in application than what has evolved today. Luckily, it seems the current generation recognizes that clearly and are making a push to bring it back to Karate’s roots.
I think you are very right, but we must both look into the past and start looking into the future. I am a huge critic of the belt system. It is good that we look back and realize karate worked before we had belts, but we must also ask ourselves – what are we going to do in the next ten years about ranking systems in our own styles and schools.
We looked into the past and found better applications of karate, now what are we going to do differently this year to make sure more people learn about those applications – rather than staying stuck in the current system of teaching.
The belt system question is an interesting thing- in essence, it standardized what was once only tested in actual combat and duels. It also provided a framework for competition and is now used in many schools as a revenue generator and student retention technique. When I started martial arts about 20 years ago, I started in ITF Tae Kwon Do and ‘getting my next belt’ was a huge motivator for me. Fast forward to now where I train with a small group of like-minded Yudansha in Okinawan Kenpo, and promotions aren’t the motivator. Simply learning and exploring martial art is what keeps us coming back each class. For me it is likely a ‘maturing’ on my part, but how can a teacher expect to retain students in today’s ‘instant reward’ culture while still staying true to the old ways where belts really didn’t matter and knowledge did? It’s a question that we (as Karateka as a whole) really need to think about. How to we keep interest when people are new but still help them understand what is important in what should be a lifelong journey?
Ted, I have been trying to tackle this problem as well. Like you, I am a 3rd degree black belt in Shorin-Ryu Karate. This is a tough one because of a couple of reasons. One is the recent get there quick programs. What I mean by that is because of the huge popularity of MMA, people want to get into the fight/ring fast. Most MMA schools that teach Muay Thai, don’t really teach Muay Thai, they teach the basics strikes that come from the style and throw people in the ring. Other programs like BJJ are completely based on drills and sparring (ie no kata, kihons, etc). MMA is seen as a way to strip out the “unnecessary stuff” and use only the stuff to help you finish the fight fast. Personally I don’t think we can directly compete with that because that is not what karate is about.
The second is the irreparably damage the McDojo has done to what people perceive karate to be. And this one I simple don’t have an answer for yet…. (although we could all start by choking out these wannabe instructors in front of all their students…. okay I am joking… at least half joking…) Where I live, the perception is that karate is for kids…. adults train at a MMA gym… overcoming that perception is quite a daunting task indeed.
Those are my perceptions of the challenge. Of course I didn’t present a single solution, but it is a good conversation starter. I think we, as a community, should have a discussion about it.
Some excellent points in your reply. The “accelerated” programs are definitely a problem when trying to convince people why to stick with traditional karate that has a lot of that “unnecessary stuff”. I think the real problem lies in our approach at teaching. I was once at a seminar with a high ranking shorin-ryu instructor who explained that once you reach your shodan, Then you should start learning the application. What I do instead is teach one kata, then work on the complete application of it, and then move on to the next. Students invest a month into learning something they initially see as useless dance before finding out how important it is, rather than spending years learning tons of dances without really understanding why. I agree karate has the disadvantage of requiring a larger time investment than MMA, but we can review our teaching methods to make us more competitive for the good of all who are learning the art.
Your second point is also very valid, and part of me wonders if this is how Gichin Funakoshi felt when he introduced Tode (China Hand) to the Japanese. They perceived everything that was from China to be inferior, so he just changed the name and continued teaching the same art to a much more receptive crowd. I often refer to what I teach as “Combatives”. When I explain that I utilize traditional karate to teach a practical combatives class, people are far more willing to hear me out before considering it a joke. Perhaps we are at a point in the life of Tode/Karate that we need to give it a different name and make it more accepted by the locals – not the first time it has been done.
Hopefully that continues a much appreciated conversation starter.
I’ve been playing with the idea of how I would structure my system of karate, were I to one day pass it on to others, and I can’t help but wonder if we have it in reverse. It’s a small change, but a radically different approach. For a long time, karateka have learned kata and then learned how to apply them, but the kata did not come before the applications to begin with–someone learned the techniques of the kata and then put them together in order to practice them, remember them and make them easier to pass on. With all of the development going on right now, would it not be possible to teach students kihon (the most basic level of techniques), followed by more complex techniques that come from kata, then the kata that they come from, and then move on into breaking the kata down into other applications? This is just stuff coming from a relative beginner in the martial arts, of course, so perhaps this has been tried and failed but it seems like an interesting, modernized approach to me.
As for you calling your karate “combatives”, Ted, I don’t think that is a bad idea–names carry reputations with them in people’s minds, even when two things with the same name are completely different from each other. We may value the traditions of our arts, but we can’t deny the fact that we
do not live in Japan/Okinawa, and so our culture is vastly different and
our arts may need to evolve to fit in, much like when toudi became
karate, as you mentioned. “Combatives” is a generic term for techniques used to engage in combat, so it applies just as well as any other name you could give it and “karate” and “toudi” were generic terms to begin with, really. If you called it “Empty Hand Combatives” I doubt most people would assume it was anything other than a modern military-based martial art system, but if you called it “Sentou-Waza Karate” (which means the exact same thing) you would be accused of forming your own karate style, traditional karate people might very well try to discredit you, and those outside the martial arts world would likely make the same assumptions about it as they do about a strip mall McDojo just because you called it “karate” and gave it a fancy-sounding Japanese name.