After reading a comment by Jon Law (of Epic Martial Arts Blog) in one of my previous posts, I had a look through some of the recent posts on his blog and noticed that form was being discussed, particularly with reference to the “form police”, who if I’m understanding it correctly (and Jon, correct me if I’ve messed this up!) are the group who, commenting from a traditional martial arts perspective, take pride in their high degree of anal retentivity when it comes to correct form in the dojo/training hall/etc.

Personally, I think that I tend to sit more within the “form police” than the other side of the argument. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the extreme effectiveness that modern styles with less emphasis on form than the traditionalists, like MMA, or styles like Muay Thai, Keysi or even Krav Maga bring to the table of martial arts in contemporary society – I’ve seen some of these at work (though not in person – only in video form), and the sheer power that these accomplish is nothing to be snuffed at.

Rather, I find the importance placed on form in traditional martial arts, especially if you have a good instructor who will also question the rational behind form in an effort to continue with their lifelong learning of martial arts, is a key point about them, and that there is a great deal of benefit to it. I’ve found the the emphasis on form is essential to learning the delicate art of control in your chosen form of martial art. Standing in funny stances with plenty of minute correction is one of the cornerstones of my road to understanding the inherent functions of my body, especially with regards to my physical disability. A lot of what I discussed in an earlier post, I believe, can be attributed to my constant drive to better my form, and the emphasis on form in class.

Being interested in Japanese society, culture and history is another reason I enjoy learning karate, and the emphasis on anal retentivity when it comes to form is something I therefore appreciate as a piece of cultural inheritance. The fusion between the Ryukyu attitude to martial arts and “traditional” Japanese budo, especially in a revisionist sense since the “birth” of the contemporary shotokan model occurred post-Meiji where the interpretation of traditional values were being adapted to meet the needs of Japanese modernisation, comes through in the way karate is taught. What some see as frustrating, I see as a reflection of this foreign culture I continue to hold an interest in, so there’s another reason why I’m a proponent of form.

Control, in and of itself, is also an important benefit derived from good form. Control in the sense of controlling the level of contact or impact (important in a self defense situation if you happen to get hauled into court I imagine, as well as sparring in class), and control in terms of accuracy. In the recent seminar I attended, I was amazed at how easily and accurately specific points on the body were demonstrated in order to maximise the effectiveness of the technique. This ensured that not only was the strength and power behind the blow sufficiently powerful, but that the total accuracy of the attack to specific nerve clusters would add even greater potency to the technique. Granted, it takes a very large amount of time and skill to get to this degree of proficiency, but it’s an important point nonetheless.

But to counter this, there should also be an understanding of the difference between form in class, and the application of your technique in a “real-world” scenario. If someone comes at you with the intent to harm you, there’s little point dropping into zenkutsu-dachi; I imagine it would be far better to shorten your stance and work from there.

Which brings the question, in the context of this example – why emphasise low stances (i.e. form) to such a degree if its not useful in a combat situation? While I don’t have all the answers, my gut feeling is that the principles remain the same – draw your power from the ground and maintain stability, and the extra conditioning you endure whilst doing proper low stances ensures a great level of application of the same techniques when in a shorter, more practical stance. Therefore, attention to form has been instrumental in enhancing your real-world combative technique.

Even in saying all of this, how I would use techniques in a self-defense scenario reveals a bit of a dichotomy – if I kicked with my real leg, there’s little point in MT-style round kicks as I lack the hip motion, so I would use front and side snap kicks or thrust kicks learned through attention to proper form. If I kicked with my prosthesis I loose muscular accuracy and control, which means my most effective technique would be to emphasise more or a MT-style kick where I sacrifice control/form for raw power.

But still, if it weren’t for the emphasis on perfecting my form from early on (and continuing to do so), I wouldn’t have the level of mastery I currently have over my body. And whose to say I still don’t have so much more to learn now that I’m on this path? I’m in this for the long run, so we’ll see where I end up.

With all this being said, I’d like to emphasise that none of this intended to disrespect any other martial art, or to call any other style “wrong” or “inferior” – I believe that we can all learn from our many varied experiences, and how one person learns a martial art may well be fundamentally different to another. Just take myself for example – how many other martial artists are out there are training with one leg; have a fascination with Japanese society, culture and history; enjoy the slow process of burning away the imperfection to remain with a perfectly formed core; and nerd it up on the internet with a blog? So, for me personally, I cannot over-emphasise that working towards perfect form is an inherent rationale behind my training. At the same time, I respect those who criticise the overly judicious proponents of the argument that form is everything because it does not fit with your attitude or approach to martial arts or self-defense.

Of course, to temper these two views is the extent to which form should be emphasised, which I’ve addressed in part. I realise that form is still a part of any fighting system (otherwise its likely that it wouldn’t be a “system”), but traditional martial arts tend to place a greater emphasis (or anal retentivity) on form versus practical application of a technique. It’s an at-times delicate balance, and while I’ll tend to slide more towards greater form, I still respect those who go the other direction, because their reasons behind their training are very likely to be different from mine. And you know what? That’s fine by me.

Wow, this was only meant to be a short blog, but I’ve rambled on for much longer than I expected!!! I can only hope I don’t change my mind on the whole form thing in a few years – anyone who wants to have a dig at my change in opinion will have a brilliant little example to ridicule me with if so by bringing up this post 🙂 See, there’s another thing – there weren’t anywhere near enough smiley faces in this blog also, so here’s another one 😛 Thanks again to Jon for writing some excellent posts on the topic and inadvertently encouraging me to write this post! Hopefully my jumbled rambling makes some sense to someone else apart from me!!!

Bloginated Saturday, 21st March 2009 / Technique
Tag-isms: Form | Long-winded rants | Technique

I had one of those lightbulb moments last night. After doing maegeri’s (front kicks) for years, something finally clicked last night. It was definitely one of those weird, frustrating but ultimately refreshing training moments you get every once in a while.

Let me give some background – maegeri’s are front kicks. The execution is simple – raise knee, leg goes out to strike with the ball of the foot, retract leg back, leg goes down. Simple. Once you get beyond elementary skills, you start perfecting your technique – grounding yourself better, make the kick faster, pull the toes back every time to ensure your striking with the ball of the foot, use your hips, perfect a “whipping” motion, dynamic extension, etc. The one problem I’ve had is that there have been numerous times practicing my kicks on vertical striking pads or on a boxing bag where I’ve mangled my little toe. I always thought it was because my little toe is somewhat demented, in that I can pull back all my other toes, but my little toe refuses to move, so if I strike, there’s an extremely good chance my toe will be bent back or to the side, which is annoying and painful. My theory is that all the abuse I’ve exposed it to over the years of having only one leg malformed it in some way, and that there wasn’t much I could do to improve the quality of my front kicks with the stupid little thing. Until last night!

I’ve found that by adjusting the horizontal angle of my foot a fraction to the right, I’m now not only kicking more prominently with the ball of my foot, but my little toe is no longer getting in the way! The extra bonus is that the slight change in angle has also re-enforced the kick, as it has brought all the bones and muscles into tighter alignment. The stupid thing is that I should have realised this ages ago, as it follows the same precepts behind any standard punch in karate – align the bones, lock them in at the point of impact and focus the strike on the two knuckles nearest the thumb. Obviously in the case of the maegeri, exchange “knuckles” for the area of the ball of the foot around your big toe.

So yes, hooray for me and my lightbulb moment. I didn’t go too full on with my kicks on the bag last night since I hadn’t warmed up my knee enough (and I was conscious of the time I had available to fit in my usual workout), but hopefully I’ll be able to get in some additional practice with my kicks from now on to improve them.

Mind, I also intended to squeeze in some additional kata before tonight’s training, so I should have done that as well. I blame it on my nerdy score-burger over the long weekend just gone, as its more convenient to place the blame on an inanimate object than myself. And because I’m so proud of my nerd achievement, I’ll also pollute the blog with a post about it in the near future 🙂

Bloginated Wednesday, 11th March 2009 / General training, Technique
Tag-isms: Crappy technique | Maegeri (front kicks) | Technique | training

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 24 August, 2007

Part of being an above-knee amputee is accepting that it’s tricky learning new techniques and mastering ones you’ve already been taught – granted this is difficult for anyone trying to master any kind of martial art, but when you’ve lost a limb (or part thereof) in a discipline that is designed to work your entire body in perfect harmony, you get some tricky stuff coming up. To this day I still can’t fire off a decent round kick with my right leg as I have very little support from my prosthesis on my left – I don’t have a foot to subtly shift my centre of balance, I don’t have an ankle to control the pivoting of my body, and I don’t have a knee to take the weight and securely leverage and assist my hips in swinging through a powerful kick; in contrast, I can feel all of this working in natural coordination when I kick with my fake leg and accordingly stand using my right. The best analogy for someone able-bodied is to imagine that they have to kick with their good leg whilst they balance on a stilt attached to their hip with a hinge in the middle in place of a knee – not only do you have to balance yourself by default, but if you shift your weight a little you’ll go arse-up as the hinge will cause the leg to collapse on itself. It means that your stance isn’t as stable as you would like, and its from your stance that you deliver true power.

On a technical note, there are legs with knee units that can counter the ‘collapsability’ of the knee unit I use; the side-affect of such a knee is that by doing this, I lose the ability to swing my left leg around and snap it back like a nunchaku. The knee I use is better suited to the way I use my leg, and it has the benefit of being servicable locally.

So, technicalities aside, I’ll get to the point of this post. Due to my physical condition, there has been a bit of self-taught/self-learnt techniques, or rather, variations of existing techniques better suited to my body. I’ve started working these out over time, but I thought it might be a good opportunity to start to write about them, if I haven’t mentioned them already 😛

The easiest (and the first) variation I learnt came early on, after I’d been training for about 6+ months and I had my boxing station to help with my training. When breaking down a simple round-kick, the move consists of raising your leg (bent) so that it’s horizontal to the floor, swinging through with your hips and letting your leg swing out, quickly retract it once it hits full extension, then return to your stance. The variant on this technique is what I call a ‘torque kick’; the principle movements are the same, but it employs a greater swinging action by using your supporting knee and your hips to generate a much greater level of impact.

I’ll explain by using myself as a reference – remember that my right leg is the good leg, and the left is my above-knee prosthesis; I’m not sure if this will be of much use to below-knee amputees, but I thought it might still be interesting in case the technique some how helps them. First up, start off in a short fighting stance. Slide your right foot across a little to your left, keeping your foot pointed straight ahead like you normally would in a short fighting stance; keep your left leg in the same spot. Doing this should twist your hips very slightly.

Next, keep your right leg in the same position, but twist your right foot further to your right about 10 – 15 degrees and turn your hips slightly clockwise. This movement is what earns this technique its name – you’re literally holding your body in a twisted position and have all the muscles in your leg, hips and torso torqued nice and tight.

Next, release all of the built-up pressure and swing the leg out using your stump, leg, hips and torso (in that relative order) into the target. The result, with practice, should be an incredibly powerful round-kick into your target. When I got the hang of the move, I spent a good 10-20 minutes pounding my boxing bag with the kick repeatedly, using both the foot and the steel pole of the ‘shin’ without the padded cover as striking points. The technique proved so effective that I actually tore the bag apart, sending shit everywhere. It was supremely awesome in the heat of the moment, but it also meant I had to grab another bag 😛

All that being said, the technique is certainly not without fault. It’s difficult to master control of the technique, making it extremely dangerous if performed outside of the appropriate circumstances, and never, ever use it when sparring; never.

Secondly, the pressure it places in your joints (ankle/knee/hips/lower back) is quite high and without the proper precations and care, you could do yourself a pretty serious injury to these vital parts of your good leg and your lower back – don’t say you haven’t been warned!!

Finally, if you don’t connect with your target and you haven’t mastered control of the technique (which is difficult as it relies un unleashing a large portion of stored energy), you’ll be leaving yourself open for a nasty counter attack. Again, don’t let me tell you that you’ve been warned 😛

I was going to write about a couple of other variations I’ve worked on, but I’ve waffled on enough for one post 😛 The names I’ve attributed to some of the other variations include the spinning-heel strike (like a modified roundhouse kick, but taking advantage of the strength of the artificial foot), modified jumping round kick, inside-out hook kick, jumping inside-out hook kick and modified-ish jumping roundhouse kick (possibly evolving into a modified tornado kick – we’ll see how it goes).

I’m hoping to actually throw together some footage of some of these techniques as well as some basics that show how amputees can perform and control a number of the basic moves if people are interested, and will probably fire up a blog and send out a bulletin whenever I get around to doing it. I’ll probably get it done whenever I manage to get Wifey to take some training photos, which we’ve been meaning to do for ages. I’m keen to share all I can about how these excellent moves can be modified to suit the limits of what amputees can do. I think what I’m afraid of is coming off like some kind of faux-expert, when I’m a student through-and-through, and am always learning from my teachers and from personal experience. Humility is the best trait one can have when doing martial arts, and my fear is that this won’t be reflected if I throw some footage together or what-not. Having had to learn a lot of this myself through trial and error, I’m hoping that by showing it in motion it’ll be easier for people to understand.

Bloginated Wednesday, 18th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs, Prosthesis or amputee stuff, Technique
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | prosthesis | Technique | training

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 30 May, 2007

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it much before, but my first formal introduction to martial arts training came when I was in Year 4, when I was about… 8 I think. Either that or it was Year 5 and I was 9. Regardless, I was in primary school, and I was still in the throes of “Angry Sean-o”. Most people I talk to now can’t believe that I was a little punk when I was a kid. From the age of about 5 or 6 until about 11, I was a great big pain in the arse. I used to answer back to the teachers, would regularly have to see the principal, would get constantly grounded, used to pick angry fights with my older brother Miguel, I started up a ‘fight club’ at school when I was 9 (not that (a) Fight Club was anywhere near to being created in all its uberness, or (b) a primary schoolyard organised scrap constitutes a ‘fight club’ :P) and was generally an arsehole.

Anywho, I had this passion for martial arts, and my Dad thought that it would be a good idea to take himself, Miguel and I to Taekwondo classes by the time we returned from a few years in Darwin and I was hopefully old enough to tell the difference when to use the martial art, and when not to. To be honest I wasn’t sure what the outcome was – I was still a pain during the time I did Taekwondo (which was for maybe a year, possibly more?), but to my credit I don’t think I actually used it to randomly injure too many kids… I know I would have used it on Miguel because we used to fight pretty full-on as kids, but outside of that… I don’t know. I remember picking a fight in class when the teacher was out getting something… I’m not sure why, I was probably bragging about the fact I did Taekwondo knowing me 😛 This  proved to possibly be a good thing however…

You see, the kid I picked a fight with used his hands, and I learnt the hard way that in order to kick at someone, you need some room… and being wedged between classroom desks and chairs is hardly fertile ground for delivering a clumsy kick at someone. So, in short, I lost the scrap, and probably looked pretty goofy as well 😉 I’ve never forgotten the lesson though – be wary of your surroundings.

But back to Taekwondo. I only managed to scrape to my yellow belt, which in my mind’s eye took forever. I daresay the reason I stopped going was because I had a habit in those days of being pretty fickle with stuff – I did swimming for a few years and was getting really good, then got bored of it and stopped. Did Taekwondo for a while, then stopped. Got really into basketball (basketball was very in circa 1992-1994, as were parachute pants and Megadrive; things change :P) for a few years, then stopped when I got to high school. In fact, I pretty much stopped everything when I got to high school – changed my focus to studying and by then I’d gotten out all of the angriness… or learnt to suppress it 😉 That, also, is the subject of another blog.

So, how did I go with TKD? Not too sure to be honest. I mean, I see the kids at karate, and while you have to admire their effort, they’re not exactly excuding perfect form. I’d be kinda weirded out if they did; in that sense, watching little kids do martial arts isn’t entirely unlike watching junior, like primary school soccer or footy – the kids get out there, and kick the ball somewhere and run after it. It’s very cute, but we’re talking elite sportsmen for the most part. Sure, it probably solidifies concepts or foundations for later on, but I’m getting distracted again… 😛

Anyway, I remember doing all the moves and stuff, the kicks, punches and so forth. It was actually a good thing I reckon in the long run, even if I only did it for a short period of time. I felt it made starting karate a little easier since I remembered some of the basics – chamber your punch, long stances, first kata, raise your knee for your kicks – and the lesson format was kinda familiar, too. And all training halls with the wooden floors and kinda aged stone walls (aka your average community gym/hall) have that same smell/feeling when you go inside.

It’s so long ago that I can’t remember in much detail how I coped with learning different things, how I overcame stuff, how my technique evolved… if it did at all 😉 But I knew from experience that when it came time to learn a martial art that I couldn’t do Taekwondo – too much focus on leg work and not enough on upper body techniques. I know this is a generalisation (and conversley, TKD practitioners criticise karate for the quality of their kicks; in fact, most martial arts have participants who have a habit of criticising different styles or different arts altogether [again, food for thought and the subject of further blogs!]), but I believe that I’ve made the right choice in choosing to go down the path of karate.

I waffle on too much 😛 Quick summary – I did Taekwondo as a kid, it was fun, but I was fickle and gave it up 😛 My Dad and brother kept going a little longer and got to their green belt (it went white >> yellow >> green), but they stopped after Miguel got hit by a car and broke his leg, which is pretty understandable.

Well, next time I report I daresay will be a post-training round-up. Oh, and for those interested I’ve added a few more photos and stuff to my pics; nothing training-related, just random stuff 🙂 Enjoy!

Bloginated Wednesday, 18th February 2009 / History, Karate, MySpace blogs, Technique
Tag-isms: 2007 | History | Karate | Taekwondo | Technique | training

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 24 April, 2007

Well, it’s been a week since I did the sensible thing and rolled my ankle. To be honest, not a lot has happened over this period of time – I’ve been icing my foot and Wifey’s been helping me strap it each morning. The biggest problem I had was that, with the foot a bit stuffed, it put a huge amount of pressure on my stump, and by Wednesday I could feel the blood vessels on the end of my stump get pushed to their limit of how much more abuse they could take, and not surprisingly the bloods vessels burst, bruised the end of my stump and its had to scab over to heal itself up. I’ve been taking the leg off at night, using my suave and sophisticated walking stick during the day at work (though I had to head home early on Wednesday last week – ended up taking the leg off at work because it was so sore and left the office at 2pm), and have tried to get around on crutches without hurting my ankle 😉 It’s been a bit tricky, but in the good news – the ankle is all better, it’s just the outer edge of my foot that took the brunt of the fall and waiting on to heal up, and my stump is almost healed up at the end. This is definitely a good thing – it doesn’t sting when I walk now. I’m hoping to get back to karate next week if my foot’s ready (’cause I’m pretty confident my stump will be fine before the end of the week).

Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been much in terms of training happening. I started again on doing static stretching on Saturday night (splits and stuff) and keep my leg in good shape (plus it helps with my knee as well), and I’ve decided to start focusing ony mental training. In a couple of books I’ve read on karate or martial arts in general, the authors have commented on the benefits of mental training. I’ve found that by taking my leg off I can sit in the Lotus position, so I’ve decided to start concentrating on my breathing and focusing my chi. One of the books I read most recently was one of Jyastin-kun’s, and the author referred to a study where a group of athletes divided their training in varying degrees between mental/physical training, with the former involving picturing the execution of their technique mentally in a meditative manner. Apparently the group that spent 25% time on physical training and 75% time on mental “image” training outperformed those who trained 50-50 75-25 and 0-100 on mental-physical training.

In the book on Japanese fighting arts I recently read, I remember coming across something similar, this time a story of how the great Masutatsu Oyama (founder of the Kyokushin style of karate) experimented with two training regimes on two of his students – one was trained purely in the physical degree of karate, whereas the other was given less physical training but was subject to mental training also. At the conclusion of the experiment, the former was better developed physically than the latter, but when the two of them sparred, there was no comparison – the latter soundly bettered his fellow student.

It’s always difficult to differentiate fact from fiction, so that’s why I’m giving this technique a go. I’d talked in a previous blog about the difference my breathing and focusing my chi has made in the past, so since there isn’t a lot that I can do physically at the moment, I thought it would be a good time to work on this side of my training. For the moment, I’m going through my kata in my head while I focus on my breathing, and will continue the same training with going through my regular techniques in my head also. As always, I’ll post up what I find comes about from this. I know there has got to be a way to develop that incredible inner power and technique masters of the martial arts develop despite their height or size; given I’m short and of medium build, I’d say this might be that extra something that helps me become a better martial artist. I hope 🙂

Oh, before I close off – I watched the truly woeful American Ninja on Foxtel last night:

It was soooooooooo funny, I’m not sure if the lead guy actually has any martial arts training – he spent more time rolling around like a stunt man than anything else 😉 And everything blew up, it was cool. Because it was so, so bad. I love 80s action flicks – they’re so shonky! And yes, I subjected Wifey to it – she had trouble breathing when the evil French guy was showing off his army of ninjas training in fluro yellow, orange and blue ninja gis, just randomly jumping and diving and falling around this uber dodgy obstacle course. And I loved how these guys in ninja outfits come running out of the jungle in broad daylight. Because, y’know, ninjas really blend into the jungle scenery in the middle of the day. If the movie had a dodgy pash/shag scene, it would have completed the atypical 80s ninja/martial arts action flick mould. Ah well, I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities for dodgy flicks as we go – Bloodsport is on later this month, and there’s always room for a blog on Showdown in Little Tokyo 🙂

Bloginated Tuesday, 17th February 2009 / Karate, Movies, MySpace blogs, Technique
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | mind training | Movies | stupid injuries | Technique | training | YouTube videos