Chambering hand

[Flying Crane]

Years ago we were taught that we could develop extra thrust by pulling the other shoulder back but I don't believe this. In fact by pulling the shoulder back we are actually reducing the power of our punch. We have our energy going backwards as well as forward.

This is not correct, but it must be properly applied and understood in order to work.

In some Chinese arts such as Tibetan White Crane, the very basic punching technique is done in this way, but with much greater exaggeration while we pivot back and forth as if a pole was stuck thru our centerline into the ground and we were pivoting around it. Most people from an Okinawan/Japanese/Korean/Kenpo background would probably believe it is over exaggerated and poor technique. In fact, if you understand what is being accomplished, it makes a lot of sense and with this methodology you can hit like a sledgehammer while expending surprisingly little effort.

If you don't understand the method properly, nor what is being accomplished, then it is understandable that you would feel it is not a good method.

 

[seasoned]

Kata are (supposed to be) a training tool. What is the point of a training exercise that obscures what it is trying to teach? Mysticism? Convincing people to train and pay for something they don't understand for longer? If that is the purpose of the chamber, then that purpose should be made obvious. After all, chambering your hand as is traditionally practiced in the kata will look and feel different from a twisting/pulling/anchoring grab. Our own kata distinguish the two.

When I speak hidden, I am talking about the founder of the given kata. Nothing then, could look like it was suppose to, because their art was obscure from all, except the closest of students. Today, most techniques are no longer hidden. That is why the most advanced kata right up to GoJu’s highest, Supairenpei, has chambers. Somewhere between white belt and black belt that same move we did over and over again took on a whole new meaning. If anything is hidden, it is hidden right before our very eyes. There is nothing left then to share, for those who have an open mind, they have but to except. :asian:

 

[seasoned]

This is not correct, but it must be properly applied and understood in order to work.

In some Chinese arts such as Tibetan White Crane, the very basic punching technique is done in this way, but with much greater exaggeration while we pivot back and forth as if a pole was stuck thru our centerline into the ground and we were pivoting around it. Most people from an Okinawan/Japanese/Korean/Kenpo background would probably believe it is over exaggerated and poor technique. In fact, if you understand what is being accomplished, it makes a lot of sense and with this methodology you can hit like a sledgehammer while expending surprisingly little effort.

If you don't understand the method properly, nor what is being accomplished, then it is understandable that you would feel it is not a good method.

I believe what k-man is explaining is power transfer. Power up from the ground through the legs, directed by the hips upward, to the shoulders, rounding the shoulders forward and down the arms and out the fist. This concept is taught with the practice of Sanchin kata, but this is for another thread.
:asian:

 

[redantstyle]

in the context of my main art, it is prohibited. my teacher used to say 'dont go backwards to go forwards'. main thing is it is a telegraph.

it's got use, just not as a phase of a hand strike.

we have a drill where a defender stands with his back to the wall so that no part of his body can go move backwards in anyway.

i use a parallel movement, but its a block for strikes from the flank.

regards.

 

[Makalakumu]

Kata are (supposed to be) a training tool. What is the point of a training exercise that obscures what it is trying to teach? Mysticism? Convincing people to train and pay for something they don't understand for longer? If that is the purpose of the chamber, then that purpose should be made obvious. After all, chambering your hand as is traditionally practiced in the kata will look and feel different from a twisting/pulling/anchoring grab. Our own kata distinguish the two.

Chambering the hand is a grappling move. It is the ONLY reason its done at all. This completely changes the distances involved in kata application. One of my teacher's described real kata application as a hockey fight. You grab a hold of the jersey and beat the other guy up.

The reason why it isn't obvious is because it was hidden on purpose. Karate kata were meant to pass on information, but they were also meant to hide it. If you didn't know what you were looking at, then the kata would be meaningless. The "chambered" hand is a casualty of those days.

Now that you know its for grappling, you need to change your thinking about it.

 

[K-man]

This is not correct, but it must be properly applied and understood in order to work.

If you don't understand the method properly, nor what is being accomplished, then it is understandable that you would feel it is not a good method.

I prefer not to think in terms of right or wrong because it is what works that is important. For every application of kata my students offer I ask "Would you do this on the street?" Would you pull your hand back to carriage in a street fight unless you were pulling something toward you? I doubt it.

In some Chinese arts such as Tibetan White Crane, the very basic punching technique is done in this way, but with much greater exaggeration while we pivot back and forth as if a pole was stuck thru our centerline into the ground and we were pivoting around it. Most people from an Okinawan/Japanese/Korean/Kenpo background would probably believe it is over exaggerated and poor technique. In fact, if you understand what is being accomplished, it makes a lot of sense and with this methodology you can hit like a sledgehammer while expending surprisingly little effort.

Pivoting back and forward around the centre is fine. Boxers do it all the time when they are raining punches. However they don't pull their hands back to carriage. For a start it would slow their speed and it would expose them to a counter strike. I would have to be convinced that this technique delivers maximum effect. If we think of our body swinging on a hinge we can see that for maximum power a right fist strike would have our body hinged at the left side. We would transfer our weight forward over the left foot while cocking the right hip, rotate and thrust the right hip continuing that rotation through to the shoulder accelerating the arm and fist forward.

If our hinge point was at the centre of our body, half our body is pushing forward and half is pulling back. The moment of the applied force is halved. That is not to say that such an attack would not be effective. It depends on the circumstance.

An application to consider would be this. With an opponent within striking distance hold his/her right wrist with your left hand about half way between you. Now quickly pull your opponent towards you with your hand rotating as you return it to carriage. The pull unbalances your opponent but the twist of the hand at the end causes him to check and he may even lift his head to the left exposing his neck to your strike.

Not the only explanation but one to get you all thinking about the applications you train in your katas without thought. :asian:

 

[exile]

Kata are (supposed to be) a training tool. What is the point of a training exercise that obscures what it is trying to teach? Mysticism? Convincing people to train and pay for something they don't understand for longer? If that is the purpose of the chamber, then that purpose should be made obvious. After all, chambering your hand as is traditionally practiced in the kata will look and feel different from a twisting/pulling/anchoring grab. Our own kata distinguish the two.

OK, this is where history comes in. The whole modern interpretation of kata—which actually goes back well into the early 20th century so far as Japanese karate and its spinoff arts, such as TKD, are concerned—is based on Itosu's deliberately misleading packaging of kata for children's use in school. Chambering as we are commonly taught it never existed in the original applications, any more that the knife-hand 'blocks', which are typically strikes to the throat, or 'down blocks', which are typically parts of takedowns or attacks on the assailant's forcibly lowered head, are actually blocks. There is a 'public', literal version of kata, which follows Itosu's concealment conventions, and a practical, combat-ready reading of the kata, which has a name in Japanese: kaisai no genri, the 'theory'—the decoding method—for kata. Chambering is just as much a part of the systematic disguise as the blocks which are in fact strikes, the punches which are in fact parts of breaking neck-twists, or the pivots which are parts of throws.

Take kicks, for example. In Taekwondo, you chamber the kick, then strike—but for practical attacks where the actual strategy involves closing, not opening the distance to your attacker, the chamber is the strike—a knee strike to the ground or abdomen, typically associated with some upper body method of anchoring the attacker so he can't move back. In TKD, these knee strikes were systematically reinterpreted as chambers to middle or higher level kicks—but in many cases, this makes nonsense of the associated moves, which clearly are based on close-in controlling methods.

Or take the retraction chamber. There is a huge amount of work on the kata which involve this kind of move, and the point is, you are always pulling part of your attacker's body toward you into your strike when you do this—a point that Iain Abernethy, mentioned above, or Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder, in The Way of Kata, based on their understanding of Gojo-ryu, develop in detail. The key element which is often ignored in interpretation of kata is muchimi, the transition in the use of the striking hand into a grabbing hand (and vice versa). In the Taikyoku kata, for example, the initial turn+down block already incorporates a lock on the attacker's gripping hand: you and he are facing each other—he's not coming in at you from the side—and your 90º turn-plus-'retraction chamber' encodes a reversal of his grip on you with your 'free' hand, pulling his arm toward you, while your 'blocking' arm strikes his upper arm above the elbow, completing the pin, which you use to force his head down, at which point your 'down block' is a spearing elbow strike to his face followed by a hammerfist to the side of his temple or throat. And that striking fist then grips his ear or hair, pulling it back toward you (another instance of muchimi/hikite 'retraction chambering') while you step in with the the other fist to punch him in the side of the jaw or neck, and so on. The point, with respect to the bolded material in EH's post, is that the kata have been stylized so that this is not explicit, but for the pioneer karateka and their students, the anchoring/controlling use of this retraction would have been understood. And this kind of stylized reference to what would have been commonly understood techniques is probably very common in the kata and hyungs we now learn and practice, but usually without the kind of guidance that gives us instructions on what moves the movement themselves were supposed to correspond to.

There's no point in practicing the kata unless you can read the actual use of the movements involved; but those uses were obscured by deliberate policy when karate started entering 'mainstream' educational facilities, and were subsequently lost as the focus of karate shifted from no-nonsense street defense to group training, morale-building, character-building, you name it, a process which got into high gear when Funakoshi brought karate to Japan, but which Itosu set in motion when he got karate accepted as a physical education requirement in Okinawan schools in the first decade of the 20th century. The whole bunkai-jutsu movement came into being to try to recover the practical applications encoded in these kata—and in those applications, 'chambering' is always part of the main technique: a striking movement, a deflecting movement (as in the double knifehand 'block'), or an anchoring/trapping movement. One thing it is not, though, is a time-wasting 'coiling up' movement.

 

[seasoned]

Chambering the hand is a grappling move. It is the ONLY reason its done at all. This completely changes the distances involved in kata application. One of my teacher's described real kata application as a hockey fight. You grab a hold of the jersey and beat the other guy up.

The reason why it isn't obvious is because it was hidden on purpose. Karate kata were meant to pass on information, but they were also meant to hide it. If you didn't know what you were looking at, then the kata would be meaningless. The "chambered" hand is a casualty of those days.

Now that you know its for grappling, you need to change your thinking about it.

I would wholeheartedly agree with your post. In a close quarter striking art, as Okinawan GoJu, kicks are low, strikes are short, and grabs are done early on, in a confrontation. The unique thing about a traditional karate art is, you learn punch, kick, block from day one, which gives you SD right away. What you don’t realize is, you are building a strong foundation for grappling. Once that door of understanding is revealed in the higher ranks, it all ties together.

 

[K-man]

OK, this is where history comes in. The whole modern interpretation of kata—which actually goes back well into the early 20th century so far as Japanese karate and its spinoff arts, such as TKD, are concerned—is based on Itosu's deliberately misleading packaging of kata for children's use in school. Chambering as we are commonly taught it never existed in the original applications, any more that the knife-hand 'blocks', which are typically strikes to the throat, or 'down blocks', which are typically parts of takedowns or attacks on the assailant's forcibly lowered head, are actually blocks. There is a 'public', literal version of kata, which follows Itosu's concealment conventions, and a practical, combat-ready reading of the kata, which has a name in Japanese: kaisai no genri, the 'theory'—the decoding method—for kata. Chambering is just as much a part of the systematic disguise as the blocks which are in fact strikes, the punches which are in fact parts of breaking neck-twists, or the pivots which are parts of throws.

Well worded 'Exile' you can come to my school anytime. People look at me as if I am stupid when I say there are no blocks in karate. My aikido teacher also makes a similar claim. Not only there are no blocks in aikido, there are no throws either.

 

[mook jong man]

In Wing Chun it is in the forms as a tool to stretch out the shoulder muscles and the pectoral muscles .
Over time this is thought to facilitate more relaxed , faster striking and cultivate the proper erect posture .

 

[exile]

In a close quarter striking art, as Okinawan GoJu, kicks are low, strikes are short, and grabs are done early on, in a confrontation. The unique thing about a traditional karate art is, you learn punch, kick, block from day one, which gives you SD right away. What you don’t realize is, you are building a strong foundation for grappling. Once that door of understanding is revealed in the higher ranks, it all ties together.

People look at me as if I am stupid when I say there are no blocks in karate. My aikido teacher also makes a similar claim. Not only there are no blocks in aikido, there are no throws either.

Amen to K-man, and to seasoned too!

I think much of the problem has to do with our modern mania for compartmentalization and stylistic purity—I have no idea just how this happened, but anyone who's looked at MA history in some detail will recognize that originally Karate was a synthesis of both striking and grappling methods. This is true both of the Okinawan striking art karate, which was a synthesis of Chinese, native Okinawan, and (if Abernethy is correct) Japanese bujutsu of the Minamoto era, brought from the mainland to the Ryukyus by the Satsuma invaders, and—as our own Simon O'Neil (SJON) has pointed out in his recent book on the bunkai for the Taegeuk hyungs in TKD—of the KMAs as well, where it's very likely that Yudo (i.e, Korean judo) influenced at least some of the original Kwan techical content, and that many of the movements that are given a standard Itosu-style interpretation need to be seen as controlling moves setting up the finishing strike.

The karate pioneers did their bit to conceal the actual combat application of kata—but I'm pretty much convinced that we've collaborated with them in that cause by this extremely parochial style of classifying MAs we've fallen into as 'striking', 'linear', 'hard', vs. 'grappling', 'circular', 'soft'—you know what I'm getting at here, eh? However it's phrased, there seems to be this insistence that there is a kind of species difference between e.g. the karate-based arts on the one hand and the 'grappling/evasive' arts such as Aikido or Hapkido. My guess is, the original pioneering masters didn't make that kind of extreme distinction. They would have seen chambering moves for what they were—ways of forcing the attacker's body into a configuration vulnerable to an overwhelming counterstrike by the defender—regardless of what their 'home art' was. If the culture of the MAs had less of this 'doctrinal purity' aspect, I think we'd have a much more practical perspective on the technical content of our respective art, including the interpretation of formal patterns...

 

[Makalakumu]

Another thing the "chambering" hand is doing is redirecting momentum. The so called blocks, done in powerful stances become strikes that the attacking opponent literally throws themselves into.

Also, it's interesting to note that in some postures the "chambering" hand may be used or not used and that affects the application. Sometime a motion is an effective parry or blocking motion where the other hand is usually sitting somewhere on the centerline as a second line of defense. The "chambering" shows the pulling in application. If you aren't pulling in, then it's assumed the hand is doing something else that is useful. Thus, the form resembled a learning device rather then a stand alone training method.

 

[geezer]

OK, this is where history comes in. The whole modern interpretation of kata—which actually goes back well into the early 20th century so far as Japanese karate and its spinoff arts, such as TKD, are concerned—is based on Itosu's deliberately misleading packaging of kata for children's use in school.

I recently watched a video of an interview with Sensei Patrick McCarthy where he made exactly the same point. I'm a not a Karate stylist but I ran this by a friend who has been in old style Okinawan Karate (Soryu) for decades. He agreed, and I'm convinced.

BTW the videoclip is at www.martialartsview.com --episode S4:E4, "The Scholar Warrior" Sensei Patrick McCarthy.

Now, in the system I study, Wing Tsun, we use a high chamber with the fist pulled back and hovering along the ribs in our forms, but this position is never held in fighting. Unlike the forms seen in many other martial arts, Wing Tsun forms are not conceived as a series of imaginary combat sequences. Instead, they are a combination of physical training and a sort of "alphabet" of techniques that can be applied in a great variety of situations. So our chamber does several things. It stretches the chest muscles and isometrically strengthens the back, providing balance to all the inward tension we use in many techniques, such as tan sau and fook sau, which pull our elbows toward our centerline in front of us. The chamber is also the final position of our "withdrawing elbow" movement which can be use as a rear elbow strike. But it would not be use as a grappling or pulling technique, since even when executing grapples, we never pull our opponent back toward us. Instead energy is always extended forward and away from our center.

 

[Makalakumu]

Thanks for that link. Its a great explanation!

 

[K-man]

Another thing the "chambering" hand is doing is redirecting momentum. The so called blocks, done in powerful stances become strikes that the attacking opponent literally throws themselves into.

All the basic goju 'blocks' utilise both hands. The first hand deflects, but does NOT stop the attack. The second hand delivers a powerful strike, often with the forearm.

We were always told 'uke' means block. It doesn't. It means to receive.

 

[redantstyle]

If our hinge point was at the centre of our body, half our body is pushing forward and half is pulling back. The moment of the applied force is halved. That is not to say that such an attack would not be effective. It depends on the circumstance.

i have a little experience in the tibetan body method and i must concur that it generates tremendous force. it's waist driven (lower spinal rotation) and big on the vertical axis (shushuma) alignment. it's not really a matter of the one half of the body pulling back. the oppositional leverage increases rotational force significantly. and as i understand it, that motion is a kind of taiso, if you will. a gross motor dynamic and based moreso on momentum than structure.

regards.

 

[punisher73]

As others have stated, the chambering hand is called "hiki-te" and is involved in pulling something back with it into the next technique. Either a limb or a jacket to off balance.

As always there is an apples and oranges comparision being made between karate training methods and sports methods. Boxers have a chamber as well, and there is based on what is best for them in the ring under the rules with big gloves on. Look at how they held their hands in old bareknuckle bouts when they had to worry about low kicks/stomps and hip throws and you will see that it more closely resembles the karate methods. Boxers know they are only dealing with two weapons--right arm and left arm and that it is coming in the form of a punch and those punches are only going to be from the top of their head to just above their naval. Their guard/chamber is based on maximum protection to protect those areas. They also know that they can't grab onto their opponent's limb to pull them. It does not mean that boxing can't be effecive, it's just that it's methods are for a very defined use.

Secondly, karate was based as a civilian self-defense system. It was NOT designed for on the battlefield, it was NOT designed for unarmed peasants to defeat the samauri, and it was NOT designed for two willing contestants who enter into a ring and then square off looking for an opening first. Karate and it's training methods were designed for "normal people" who are attacked by either grab, push, pull, punch (as McCarthy calls it Habitual Acts of Violence) and then you damage your attacker and get away. NOT stand there toe to toe and duke it out. The kata (and other training methods) are ways of dealing with the most common types of attacks that men have used for a VERY long time.

Again, apples to oranges. You are comparing two different goals and training methods to their own unique situations and trying to mix the two.

Here is a VERY good blog on many training methods (basis is Goju-Ryu) and this one is on chambering. Read it and apply WHAT the chamber is really for and it used to achieve.
http://dandjurdjevic.blogspot.com/2008/08/chambering-punches.html

 

[Flying Crane]

I prefer not to think in terms of right or wrong because it is what works that is important. For every application of kata my students offer I ask "Would you do this on the street?" Would you pull your hand back to carriage in a street fight unless you were pulling something toward you? I doubt it.



Pivoting back and forward around the centre is fine. Boxers do it all the time when they are raining punches. However they don't pull their hands back to carriage. For a start it would slow their speed and it would expose them to a counter strike. I would have to be convinced that this technique delivers maximum effect. If we think of our body swinging on a hinge we can see that for maximum power a right fist strike would have our body hinged at the left side. We would transfer our weight forward over the left foot while cocking the right hip, rotate and thrust the right hip continuing that rotation through to the shoulder accelerating the arm and fist forward.

If our hinge point was at the centre of our body, half our body is pushing forward and half is pulling back. The moment of the applied force is halved. That is not to say that such an attack would not be effective. It depends on the circumstance.

An application to consider would be this. With an opponent within striking distance hold his/her right wrist with your left hand about half way between you. Now quickly pull your opponent towards you with your hand rotating as you return it to carriage. The pull unbalances your opponent but the twist of the hand at the end causes him to check and he may even lift his head to the left exposing his neck to your strike.

Not the only explanation but one to get you all thinking about the applications you train in your katas without thought. :asian:

I suppose in a way my comments were off-topic, as what I am describing is actually fairly different from the main topic of this thread. Our retraction in the Tibetan method leads to a sort of a "chamber" in a way, but it's a different kind of chamber and a different range of motion from what I suspect most people in the discussion are imagining. The purpose of it is quite different.

I guess I was just pointing out that there are some methods out there that do use a retraction/reverse swingback that helps drive tremendous power forward into the strike. It's different tho, and I'll concede it probably does not belong in this discussion.

 

[DavidCC]

At a seminar with Ron Chapel I was the lucky participant who got to exeprience another effect of the chambered position.

having both hands chambered, far enough retracted so that the fists are against the ribs, creates a very protective posture in the torso. he called it "shields up". I was able to take a much more powerful strike to the body in this posture than I could without it.

The muscle and skeleton systems are very complex and inter-related. I know that small changes in position in even one little piece can have consequences in every other piece. SL-4 Kenpo uses a set called "Index Set". It trains a number of index positions that are key "waypoints" in any movement. While executing any specific movement using the proper indexes for that movement insures maximum efficiency. The chambered hand is one such index position. Another piece of information I have is that the chambering movement has very different effects on the body based on wether the hand is open or closed (although I don't fully undertand all the implications of or reasons behind these things, I practice them as taught. I Learn how to do it now, learn why to do it over time...)

So my point is that this movement and posture has purpose and effect that go beyond technique application and muscle-memory. While I don't fully understand it all, I trust the person who taught me what I do know about it and believe that over time I will learn more about it as I practice it.

 

[hkfuie]

I
...So our chamber does several things. It stretches the chest muscles and isometrically strengthens the back, providing balance to all the inward tension we use in many techniques, such as tan sau and fook sau, which pull our elbows toward our centerline in front of us.

Fabulous post, Geezer.

On this one point I wanted to add my 2cents: I spent some time doing less chambering and developed a muscle imbalance that caused alot of pain in my neck, esp. after doing pushups. It took me a couple of years before I found the doctor to help me get things improved. The thing is, when I would do a workout with lots of chambering I would feel it in my back and neck pain improved for a few days. Anyway, I think this is an important part of keeping my body balanced so I can continue training/practicing for a long time.

But the primary purpose, I believe, is the grappling applications many have posted. The contribution to muscle balance is also important to longevity for me.