Imagination in Martial Arts & Fitness Training

Muhammad Ali was the greatest fighter of all time, well at least he believes so. Whatever, he produced many great quotes. Dubbed the ‘Louisville Lip’ by the press they came thick and fast. Some had wise words others cheeky. Below are two of the wiser quotes

The man who has no imagination has no wings

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life

Both of these are worthy sentiments and have pertinence for your martial arts and fitness training. Clearly, if you view training the same after thirty years of training you haven’t trained very much at all. This is very much related to one of the things that really shook me was written on the once excellent but now defunct Goju Forums. Someone had said that some people do ten years training three times when they get to thirty years of training. This seemed awful to me but was truly put into context when another contributor said that there were others who did three years of training ten times!

Now that’s scary!

Why oh why would you want to do that? The same old stuff repeated time after time. Where is the progression? Sure you may very well work your way through the belts and get a high dan ranking but you know yourself if you’re merely collecting them like some styles collect kata. It has little meaning and must be incredibly boring.

That’s where the imagination comes in. I really like that Ali quote, if you have imagination you have wings. Imagination brings the martial arts alive. Training with Steve Morris has given me the confidence and desire to really use my imagination in training. Although observing imaginative training methods has not been restricted to him alone, he is the most inspiring in that regard.

Imagination coupled with intelligence in creating training drills, relating these to fighting requirements can get you out of the humdrum of dull repetitive training which seems to be for it’s own sake rather than improving someone as a fighter.

Sure repetition is required to master skills but with imaginative drilling this can be achieved in a fight specific manner. In my previous existence as a traditional karateka we would train basics in line, then marching around, then in padwork and with partners and then in the kata performance and even in bunkai. That’s a lot of basic training leaving little time to really apply and test what we learned. In the end there seems little point in mastering the perfect chudan block.

With imagination and a little intelligence these could have been combined into drills that tested the skills learned, but too often these skills were tested in an artificial stylised manner with little bearing on reality. I remember watching the grading at a progressive karate club and being surprised at the way in which minimal importance was given to the kata performance, in my eyes the form was all over the place. But the application of the moves were better and well….. more imaginative than those I’d been shown. Imagination can be used in a similar vein to make fitness training and conditioning more specific to your needs, rather than simply going to the gym to push weights around or plodding round a park.

These days I use kata less than ever, in fact barely at all. I do, however, refer to sanchin, and other kata’s from time to time. I believe sanchin in particular has a lot to offer as a model to illustrate certain concepts, such as structure to resist being pushed. I don’t get anyone to perform the actual kata but I do refer to it.

Tomorrow I am giving a private lesson on a kata I haven’t performed for a long time. There won’t be much, if any performance but there will be a lot of imaginative application on my part.

Listening to the feet

In the last post I discussed the wide range of motion possible at the foot/ankle comlex of humans. This is derived from the mobility achieved from the 28 bones, comprising 25 joints, contained within this essential yet underused boday part.

That last asertion might sound a bit daft but it’s not made without foundation. Of course, we use our feet everyday, even the laziest of us has to walk about a bit, thereby rendering feet essential but are feet underused?

Maybe not underused in terms of getting about but definitely in terms of optimising the full potential of the foot/ankle structures. That IS confusing, I’ll elaborate.

After many years of karate training I underused my feet as the training tends to ignore the concept of ‘rooting’ in anything more than a perfunctuary manner. Not universally true but genarally so. By the time a karateka is curious about the softer side of things he/she can have some difficulty in learning to ’access’ their feet. Particularly if the curiosity leads to the interal arts the terminology can be confusing let alone the concept itself.

I first came across this side of things on a small sanchin session with Mike Clarke in Southampton. One thing he demonstrated then taught us was how to  drop our weight using the structure of sanchin stance. This leaves you very solid in your stance. Involving what I call ‘fat, flat feet’ this sinking of the wieght increases the surface area of the foot in contat with the ground and so improves stability.

Trouble is solidity without mobility is errr, limited! It was a long time before I was able to manage both. The process of managing both invovles ‘listening’ as the Chinese arts call it, or, and a little more up my street, becoming tuned to the kinaesthetics of the foot. This means you need to become consciusly aware of whats happening in the foot as you move. Not consciously interferring with whats going on, but just observing.

I used to travel to courses in Kent which covered this sort of thing. On the way back I’d need to go through London and the Tube was a good place to ‘listen’. Bounding up steps to ground level or riding out the bumps between stations was great practice.

Steve Morris mentions walking as a great way to get a grip on the kinaesthetics of the feet, and other joints for that matter. It’s a very useful method for discovering various movements possible at the foot and ankle and how these effect the efficiency of walking. How changing foot position alters how you push off from the floor and at what angle. How you use the foot to stop or adjust to avoid an unseen obstacle. All this and more helps you to be aware of  and then attempt to optimise whats happening. It’s a very useful process.

human gait cycle

Quite recently, Steve Morris showed us the importance of the roll across the joints at the ball of the foot and the importance of that in normal gait. It was striking that none of us were using this natural part of the gait cycle to its optimum. This will be elaborated on in the next post……

Our Amazing Feet

I recently wrote about the importance of the feet in the delivery of ground reaction force to the hands while striking. That is, by driving from the feet the power of a punch can be enhanced. I was reminded of this concept when skipping through an old text book Joint Structure and Function: A Comprehensive Analysis
from the Functional Anatomy course I took at university.

It’s been a while since I had a good look at the anatomy of the foot and it struck me how amazing the structure is. Previously, I couldn’t imagine that the foot/ankle complex comprised of 28 bones which formed 25 joints. That’s incredible! I had always thought of the foot as a pretty solid structure with joints at the ankle and the toes, and very little else.

Obviously the foot/ankle complex has a weight bearing role within its stability and mobility functions. It provides the base of support for the body and acts as a lever for ‘push-off’ when initiating movement. During mobility it has a dampening effect of rotational movement while it’s flexibility helps absorb body weight  as the foot contacts the ground and contorts sufficiently to conform to the terrain on which it is placed. This contortion is what I want to consider in this post, although the other functions are intrinsically linked and cannot really be considered separate.

The structure forms three arches – medial longitudinal arch (on the inside), lateral longitudinal arch (outside) and the anterior arch (across the foot) -  which combine to allow the foot additional movement to simple extension and flexion* at the ankle  (more than just a hinge action at the ankle). Actually, an incredible range of motion across the foot/ankle complex is possible which is used during regular gait. The two diagrams below illustrate this nicely (from root2being)

This means that the front portion of the foot can remain on the ground during extreme pronation and supination, thereby enabling optimal push-off at a variety of angles. Put simply the foot bends and twists, and internally compensates for the resultant contortion, to ensure we can push against the floor as long as possible in a given direction. This maximises traction at the front of the foot allowing ground reaction force to be transferred into the movement.

The amazing range of movement at the ankle and within the foot mean we can stay ‘grounded’, and so press against it, while moving and adjusting our position. Of course we need to be able to do ‘grounded’ in the first place and maintain it during movement.

Naturally, we press against the floor and can push off effectively in a variety of angles, when playing football for example. However, certain training methods in the martial arts,  can encourage us to use our feet less effectively than natures default. I often observe people who fail to use the feet while striking, they are often pointing away from the target allowing only a small portion of the foot to press against the floor in the optimal direction.

You wouldn’t use penguin feet to push a car, so why would you do the equivalent of this while striking?

*this motion at the ankle is known as dorsiflexion and plantarflexion

More on your marks

Lyoto Machida has taken the MMA world by storm. He has brought something a bit different to the table, his fighting style incorporates his Shotokan and specifically sport karate background, which along with his other martial arts training has helped him fight his way to the UFC Light Heavyweight Title.

He has had the karate forums buzzing due to the success of one of their own. For non-karate background MMA fighters he has proved a tricky customer, his illusive counter attack style is unusual in the UFC and has helped him to some great victories. While successful does Machida’s style support the use of ‘traditional’ stance training, such as sanbon kumite or the like? I’d argue against this assumption. If you refer to earlier posts (e.g. Marks, get set, GO!) I contend that this training begins from a position that fails to support positional movement, something akin to the sprinter preparing for a blocks start in response to the ‘get set’ order, when he/she should be set!

However this view is not held by everyone, Dan Djurdjevic, from ‘The Way of the Least Resistance‘ argues that

stances are points of transition; they are snapshots in a continuum of movement. Yes, they are often held statically in training for the sake of conditioning. But this is an exercise only…….. The traditional martial artist will flow through these postures in a dynamic way, never pausing. A camera taking stills will however be able to pick out individual points where the stance “was held” – however fleetingly.

This all sounds very good, and is clearly a huge improvement on the sanbon type training. Dynamically flowing through the postures never stopping, sounds much more like it. He includes some examples of Machida delivering punches to Evans from their fight at UFC98 and concludes that similar movements are apparent in many martial arts because “the human body can only be put into a limited number of functional postures”. Absolutely, I concur completely. All of this seems to negate the stiff sanbon type of training, as there is no flowing evident with these drills hardly being dynamic.

So if the stances are merely snapshots within movements why bother with the exercises to hold them or bother to practice them out of context of the entire movement? Dan expands saying

Virtually every traditional stance is just a lower, harder to hold, more “formal” manifestation of a move you will make in sparring

One example being the forward stance which “is just a boxer’s stance elongated with the back knee straightened” but which can be lunged into, similar to the first few steps of a sprinter out of the blocks (from another post). I would pretty much have to agree with all of this, other than the need to take the movements out of context and practise them ‘formally’. DD suggests the reason involves “kinaesthetic awareness” and “muscle-specific exercise”

The kinaethetics of any movement are gleaned sub-consciously as you practice that movement, while a contextually accurate movement is muscle-specific; as you learn you get a feeling for the movement rather than accurate knowledge of “a framework of known points in time and space”.

There is simply no need to practice separate parts of a movement out of context. By isolating parts of the movement the whole is compromised, and in terms of the sprinters starting position the movement is initiated from a sub-optimal position, i.e. sanbon kumite involves moving from lunge position to lunge position in a rather stilted way. If isolation of parts is necessary perhaps it would be better to practice the starting steps of a sprint!

Rather than practicing the sub-optimal stepping in stance, it would be better to practice lunging forward to punch on a heavy bag. For example, this KO with (lunge) step could be practiced on the heavy bag or the similar, very famous Marciano KO of Walcott. This practice could include the entire movement, thereby allowing the body to glean the kinaesthetics not only of the lunge step/stance but also of the shoulder and hip rotation, opposite side retraction and the diagonal action of the body using the serape muscles. There needs to be some bending of the bow……

On your marks 3

A comment on the last post, made by John of Massachusetts, indicated that the clip of the elite level Shotokan fighters did show fast Shotokan techniques delivered from traditional stances, that’s the gist anyway. I chose the clip precisely because of the high standard of the fighters. While these fighters are able to deliver fast punches and kicks, the stance they adopt, fudo dachi I think,  fails to support fast positional movement. In order to successfully make ground quickly they need to adjust the starting position before they move.  If you observe the video carefully you will notice this adjustment.

This adjustment, particularly from the bounce, rapidly shifts the fighter through the equivalent of the get set and go phases of the sprint start. Bouncing up and down in the starting posture does not provide the correct lower leg angle to propel the fighter forward with plyometric action at the ankle curtailed.Does that make sense?

If we return to the sprint start analogy, the get set phase positions the sprinter to explode out of the blocks, the bouncing stance does not position the karateka to explode, an adjustment is required. The sanbon kumite of the original grisly clip provides even less opportunity for explosive movement as the plyometric action is completely absent. To illustrate what I mean follow this link to an article analyzing the blocks start of Usain Bolt, notice how the angle at the ankle of the right foot changes as he begins the movement, it goes back before moving forward. This is the plyometric action or the stretch shortening cycle, which greatly increases power. The starting position in the blocks completely supports this; forward posture and lower leg angle.

The Karate fighters in the clip tend to move from a position that is not set up to support explosive movement, of course the blocks position is impossible to attain but nevertheless the fighting stances they adopt have limited forward posture and usually have a less than ideal lower leg angle. This results in them having to make an adjustment before they can explode out of the blocks, as it were. It’s the equivalent of not being in the blocks properly when the gun goes.

Despite this drawback the bouncing is clearly more dynamic than the stiff movement of sanbon kumite although the starting stance is not too different to that used in sanbon. Note the centralised weight, supporting stability rather than mobility.

To achieve the equivalent of the starting blocks position the fighting posture needs to support rapid positional movement, with the weight forward and a lower leg angle supportive of a plyometric action similar to that in the Usain Bolt link. Clearly, that would be better than adopting a posture that requires a big adjustment before rapid movement can be achieved.

While the fighters in the clip above start in a sub-optimal position they still move quickly, this is achieved through a lot of feinting and minute positional adjustment to draw the opponent into making a half movement against which they can time their strike. While the rules of the tournament are far removed from street fighting there is still plenty of skill on show. The timing and distancing is very good and this is what Machida has successfully taken to MMA, but thats another post.

On your marks 2

In the last post I likened the three phases of the sprint race start to the initiation of movement or attack in martial arts. I proposed that the ‘get set’ position was the better of the three, with the ‘on your marks’ phase being unprepared and the ‘GO!’ phase being over committed. Put simply it’s better to be ready to move than not but not at the expense of over committing.

The grisly old clip in that post provided an example of the ‘on your marks’ phase in action. The stiff, robotic, linear movements in this clip are practised in a lot of ‘traditional’ martial arts but  is a very crude example. The Karateka are ‘stuck’ in a long stance and can barely move as a result, the weight is centralised with the legs so wide that ‘stance’, as in a way of standing, is indeed an appropriate word.

Often in karate people are told that movement comes from the hara/tanden or the centre. Pure nonsense of course, ask any child how they move and penny to a pound they’ll say with their legs or feet. The trouble is, when starting from a position that does not support free movement a preparatory movement is required, which could come from the core. Of course the core plays an essential part in the process of movement, linking the top and bottoms sections of the body.

Clearly, if you adopt a fighting posture analogous to the ‘get set’ position, i.e. ready to go, you have an advantage over someone in a posture synonymous to the ‘on your marks’ phase, i.e. requiring a preparatory  movement before you can move. Put simply, if you start from a position which allows you to move you have an advantage over an opponent who isn’t ready to move, that’s obvious.

Of course the old clip is karate at its most crude, here’s a more dynamic clip of two karate men training in a ‘traditional’ format, ippon kumite (one step sparring) and so starting from an ‘on your marks’ start.

The video shows the attacker and defender switching roles scrolling through a number of pre-arranged attacks. They start and finish in a long stance that fails to facilitate movement, clearly a huge flaw in the drill which leads to some rather peculiar adaptions to the standard model in the old clip. The bloke on the left has a tendency to ‘flail’ with his back leg when retreating in an attempt to move quickly, while both ‘bounce’.

Despite showing far better movement than in the old clip, including lateral retreats, the whole premise is to block and counter. This manifests in the competition version of karate, thus…..

These are elite level karate athletes, moving much better than the blokes in the old clip, freed from the restraints of formal training but still not as well as they might. Starting from a position that is sub-optimal for movement, synonymous to ‘on your marks’ position rather than ‘get set’ the movement options are limited. The rules of the competition don’t help and other factors contribute to creating a fighting environment that does not support free movement; if something goes wrong they cannot get out of the way again. For example, once they commit to a movement, if it doesn’t work they get hit, via block and counter even. If they feint a movement and the opponent reads it they are in trouble because they return, or are in the process of returning, to the starting position. The whole moving in stance premise is flawed, with the stance being a huge part of the problem.

As these fighters adopt similar movement strategies they start on an even playing field. If a fighters were to adopt a ‘get set’ posture that fighter would be set for movement and would have an advantage over the others, but the years of training sub-optimal movements make this radical adjustment unlikely.

Marks, get set, GO!

On your marks; get set; GO! The starters orders as a race is about to begin. These remind me of how to and how not to hold yourself in sparring or when addressing pads or involved in any type of training. The picture illustrates the phases of the start of a sprint quite nicely; preparing, ready, off! If we compare the ‘state’ of a sprinter in each of these three phases to those of a martial artist addressing focus mitts or a sparring partner we can pick the most suitable. You will need a bit of lateral thinking for this post, lose the literal thinking…..

On your marks

During this stage the sprinter is merely getting into the blocks, placing his hands and feet in the correct position. The athlete is not ready to race either biomechanically or psychologically, he is preparing. In the picture above the bird on the red pepper is on his marks.

Get set

Now the sprinter is in his blocks, hands are in position, the body is raised and the optimal posture to drive forward is assumed; biomechanically ready. He is focused, ready to explode; pyschologically ready. The bird on the yellow pepper is ‘set’.

GO!

The trigger has been pulled and the sprinter is off, exploding out of the blocks and the race has begun. The third bird has pushed off and is flying.

If we adopt a posture or stance analogous to the ‘on your marks’ position we simply are not ready to move let alone strike. While nobody is likely to adopt a position literally resembling the ‘on your marks’ position of a sprinter, i.e. kneeling on the ground, people do adopt analogous postures which are unprepared for movement. The adoption of ‘on your marks’ postures unsuitable for movement is rife in Kihon training in Karate.

This old clip makes grisly viewing, and it’s not just the blokes on the beach in their thongs that’s unsightly. The protocol of adopting a posture that is difficult to move from and then expecting efficient movement is an oxymoron. The sprinter moves to the ‘get set’ position for a reason, he/she wants to be able to explode into the race. The clip shows no explosion whatsoever, just stiff robotic movement. The Karateka in the clip may be psychologically prepared but they certainly are not prepared for biomechanically efficient movement.

If we reject the ‘on your marks’ position as too static for explosive movement, we may be tempted to opt for the GO! position as there is plenty of explosive movement occurring. The bird is flying while the sprinters have exploded out off the blocks and are off. Obviously, a posture analogous to this is not plausible as we would be too committed to a particular movement and therefore unable to adapt to a changing environment, focus pads being moved for example. We would be fine psychologically but over-committed biomechanically.

That just leaves the ‘get set’ position, which of course is ideal. Starting from a posture that supports free movement naturally supports many explosive actions to be made. Being biomechanically set for movement it is possible to express the psychological preparation in a bagwork session. From a fighting posture analogous to the ‘get set’ position we are literally set, ready for action; obvious really.

This logic leaves Sanbon kumite and the like redundant as it attempts the impossible. The old clip shows dynamic movement (moving to strike and avoiding this movement) being attempted from the equivalent of the ‘on your marks’ position, which does not support such movement. The postures adopted fail to ‘set’ the body biomechanically for effective movement, resulting in sub-optimal movement. If the practice is redundant it needs to be binned, that would be a small progressive step.

Physiological Arousal and Mushin

mushin

Often in UFC fights the commentators mention the class of fighters post fight. When the match is over they tend show each other respect. For a sport that is so brutal at times, this is always good to see, in terms of sportsmanship. This post-fight show of respect also highlights another concept, namely control of physiological arousal, as often a fighter can switch from a highly aroused state to a much calmer state, just like that. From a Sport Psychology perspective physiological arousal can, hypothetically, be thought of as on a continuum ranging from comatose to raging, or something along those lines anyway. Meditation or chess would be firmly placed toward the comatose end, while sprinting would be toward the raging end. It’s interesting to speculate what the optimal arousal for fighting or MMA would be.

In Japanese arts they talk about mushin, that state of no mindedness in combat when the mind is unconcerned with thoughts or emotions and so open to everything. In Wikipedia mushin is described thus

“There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react towards an opponent without hesitation. At this point, a person relies not on what they think should be the next move, but what is felt intuitively. It is not a state of relaxed, near-sleepfulness, however. The mind could be said to be working at a very high speed, but with no intentions, plans or direction.”

Clearly, this would be desirable to a fighter, mind absent of thoughts of failure, fear etc and free to tactically respond to the opponent while being sufficiently aroused to strike effectively. Often in Japanese arts they also strive for mushin during kata performance, again from Wiki

“Many martial artists, particularly those practising Japanese martial arts such as aikido or aikijutsu, train to achieve this state of mind during Kata so that a flawless execution of moves is accomplished — that they may be achieved during combat or at any other time”

All very good in theory, but there is potential for trouble when the mushin is achieved in kata but not applied to fighting. The mindset required for kata performance is fundamentally different to that required in a fight or MMA match. During kata performance an open mind while the striving for perfection allows the practitioner to concentrate on the execution of technique, or, preferably, the underlying principles (see Kinaesthesis and Proprioception 2). During a fight or MMA match a person’s physiological arousal has to be further toward the raging end than if he were practising kata. That’s pretty obvious, but the point is that the state of mushin derived from kata practice is not synonymous with a state of mind required for fighting. It may very well be better than a fearful, anxiety ridden state but it is not optimal. Although, while a highly aroused state is desirable, it is possible to be overly aroused. The following clip shows examples of highly aroused MMA fighters, many of whom show none of the class I refer to at the start of this post but definitely plenty of arousal.

A couple of things spring to mind, firstly a kata mushin would be of limited value if faced with any of the fighters in the clip, most of whom seem to be close to the raging extreme of the arousal continuum. Secondly, these fighters seem over-aroused, they are so close to raging that they are unable to stop once the fight is clearly over. This may very well seem like an appropriate mindset for fighting or MMA, although successful in the examples in the clip, there is a danger of a fighter gassing if the opponent survives the storm. Alternatively, the raging fighter might end up losing quickly as in the following clip.

To me it’s obvious that Thompson was overly aroused, while Fedor’s brother Alex had a more appropriate mindset. The Emelianenko brothers and Cro Cop amongst others have a calm exterior which belies vicious explosive action when required. These highlights of Fedor and Cro Cop clearly illustrate this. Sure they are highly aroused, you can’t strike like those fighters without being so, but, importantly, they are not overly aroused. This state of highly aroused yet calm seems to me to be very close to that described in the first Wiki quote, which while being toward the raging end of the continuum its not too close.

To reiterate, the ideal state would be highly aroused but not too close to raging, free from thought and emotion allowing intuitive action; feeling not thinking. Mushin, if you like, but fight mushin NOT kata mushin! I’m not suggesting that a mushin man would always beat a raging bull in a China shop (to quote the commentator in the last clip), that would be absurd. Rather, I’m suggesting that raging is not optimal, a calmer yet highly aroused state, possibly synonymous with mushin, would be more appropriate both during the fight, so strikes can be delivered with optimal power, but also afterwards, so an opponent can be shown respect, unlike some of the fighters in the first clip.

Form over Function – Saifa Kata

One of the Goju kata’s, Saifa, translated as tear and destroy is partly about creating a whipping motion into your strikes. I first came across the notion that this concept was apparent in saifa when watching Higoanna Sensei’s Goju Kata video made in the 70’s I think. The videos came in a horrendously expensive set, which provided performance and bunkai to all Goju kata. My copy wasn’t expensive and wasn’t original.

In fact, the final movement provides a template for the whipping punch described in a previous post, the hip-shoulder-arm action. Unfortunately this section of the kata is often performed in a manner that negates the whipping action completely, and so disregards the good bit! In this clip a world champion fails to exhibit this action in his kata. Although he’s very precise in his movements, nice form!

Oddly enough this whipping action is omitted in this peculiar version of saifa, and from this more regular one, and is still missing here, this guy gets a little closer to it, but none of these clips come close to doing the whipping action any justice.

Eventually, here’s a clip of the video as I remember it, and lo and behold there’s a whipping action at the end, in the final movement. Not quite as whippy as I’d do it nowadays, but its there if you look carefully. At the time I loved this video, the music was fantastic too but sadly missing from the clip.

The disappointing thing in all of this is the fact that so much is lost; it took some significant reverse engineering on my part to ‘rediscover’ it. I was always puzzled somewhat by the ‘whip like motion’ comment at the start of the clip. To be fair, we did train some whipping actions, from other sections of the kata, but it was never extrapolated to punching.

It is a great shame that by emphasising the value of a ‘pretty kata’ performance over one illustrating something of value so much is lost. Perhaps, a little more untidy in execution than those that put their kata performances on you tube, the whipping action in the final section of the kata is analogous to that used successfully by Mike Zambidis et al . It may be that I have interpreted this section of the kata incorrectly, but then it’s my interpretation and so to me, at the very least, it’s valid. I may be incorrect in some people’s opinion, but that doesn’t really matter.

Lateral NOT Literal

At university, in the Anxiety in Sport module, we were given an outline of the course work at the start of the semester. There were two essays (45% and 55% of the total mark), with the option of an ‘oral exam’ forming part of the second essay’s portion. When the first piece of work had been returned, the second  was presented. The lecturer explained that we could opt to have this work constitute more or less of the overall mark by opting for the oral exam or not. This exam would comprise 15% of the total 55%. The exam would be an hour or so and involved sitting in the lecturer’s office with two hats: one with a theory on Sport Anxiety, the other with a number of sporting scenarios. You’d pick a theory and apply it to the scenario. You were given some kind of concession with the essay too. I thought that was a gift – a chance to get 15% on the board in an hour and an easier essay.  Bargain!

It turned out that I was the only one out of about 80 students to take him up on the offer. I really enjoyed it; we ended up chatting for ages. To me it was easy, and it is – as long as you understand the theory. I was interested in the subject and I enjoy sport. He explained, however, that it was unusual for students to be able to apply theories in that manner. I found that difficult to believe, as I found it easy. He explained they had trouble thinking laterally. At this point I didn’t really understand what he meant as I thought it was normal to apply theory. The lecturer was sufficiently impressed  and ended up offering me a PhD studentship.

lateral thinking

In the Martial Arts, literal thinking is rife, while lateral thinking is stifled. It’s odd that normally intelligent people will be bamboozled and over impressed by ‘no touch knockouts’, pressure point ‘fighting’ and the like. Often they simply believe the instructor, as they may be famous or whatever but, rather than questioning and thinking laterally, or out of the box, they show an all-encompassing faith in the extraordinary or rather ordinary (see below) similar to that of a Spiritual Church congregation.

Although it doesn’t stop there, the literal interpretation of kata or forms in Martial Arts is shocking. The complete lack of imagination in design of kata interpretation, such as these beauties from Gekisai dai Ichi, are fairly common. OK, these are extremely literal and they are from the first kata, but this illustrates a point. This, coupled with an intelligence deficiency when passing them on, is commonplace. I have been guilty of this myself, in the past, but not now.  Give me lateral every time.

Training with others, and then particularly Steve Morris, has made me more lateral than ever. I now don’t really think of kata in terms of techniques, but rather as principles with examples provided, which can be played with. I’ve explained before some of my views on sanchin underpinning Goju, which gives an indication of how I now use kata.

This thread*, posted by Ken Milling concerning a Morris post on Sanchin, shows a lack of lateral thinking in differing degrees fairly representative of that virtual karate playground and probably of the vast majority of the traditional martial arts world. The irony is, that there are only so many ways to skin a cat, and, as such, traditional martial arts have the ‘secrets’ there but people just don’t have the curiosity to look for them. They seem content to be spoon-fed literal kata interpretations for whatever reasons.

This literal attitude is exemplified in the KU thread when someone says:

“but grappling in sanchin?? A little too abstract IMO. It would be nice to include grappling (or rather takedowns) in karate, but that would require a paradigm shift which might not sit well with organisational/stylistic convention or hubris”

In my honest opinion karate could do with a paradigm shift – from literal to lateral.  Just use your imagination, ignore the limitations of style and get some science into your art.

*I actually mention the advantage of lateral over literal thinking on that thread somewhere.