The layered bunkai theory is stupid
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Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
The problem with breaking metacarpals can be somewhat mitigated by making sure the back of hand is flat, as in all knuckles lined up so as to have a splinting effect. Often, inexperienced people ball up the fist and swing wide which often causes the fourth or fifth metacarpal to take all the force of impact unassisted by the larger ones. Squaring the back of hand is more difficult in a big glove, so boxers tape or wrap the hand to help structure and protect the hand. The way I explain it to my students is to spread the back of the hand, lift the most proximal 5 th metacarpal knuckle so it “feels” like it’s on top. Then fold the fingers over the palm leaving just enough space inside the fist so that it could hold a pice of chalk tightly but not break it. Then fold the thumb over the index and middle finger(if it reaches) and lift the proximal index knuckle by pressing thumb against it. At the same time be retracting the saddle joint of the thumb to the wrist. From elbow to knuckle should be like one stick. Make sure the thumb does not ride proud on the side of fist or you can end up with a thumb like mine.
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Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
I don’t say this way is the only way or anything of the sort, just my way.
If one trains hook punch; his hand won't come back to his waist.
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Fungus
Black Belt
my typical straight punch to say the heart level with 2 knuckles.
On a long hook I would however tweak the wrist angle to match the trajectory. The option is of course to move your whole body, to always keep it straight, but that would limit the tools in a fight I think. It would also be tweaked if I aim at the temple for obvious reasons.
Fungus
Black Belt
No, but you can throw it from any stance you want. This clip doing the hook the kamae dachi (fighting stance) after a jodan uke so after the attack the hand should come back to the guard, if you step back to original stance.
Kyokushin does not have it's kihon hikite at hip level like shotokan. We keep it in the armpit/heart level even in kihon.
I honestly think it would be very hard to truly spar with the techniques in most katas, the same reason you can't shoot someone just a bit. Because of the environment they arose from, katas are collections of approaches meant to shock and disable the enemy (which is a true enemy, not a sporting opponent) in a pretty definitive way.
Imho, that's a bit of the point for which karate kumite is the tag game it is: you use some of the moves but you use them at a much greater distance where - even if you go wrong - they don't usually cause great bodily harm. The worst that happens is a failed punch and a broken lip, or a miscontrolled mawashi geri which actually lands on the head of your opponent (and you get disqualified as a consequence, losing the bout). It still feels tough (not many people get smashed on the face in this time and age) but it's got little to do with someone wanting to mug you in a dark country road at night - and no police to call. The way the moves are used in the sport don't make much sense in a situation when someone _wants_ to do harm to you, but make perfect sense in the sport as they allow both competitors to get home safe and sound most of the time.
It may certainly be my own limitation, but I have personally tried to find ways to practice-spar close combat and in the end all I get to is either that me and my partner need to keep the execution too slow (and speed is of the essence for the katas to work, so they are not the same techniques, really) or we end up reinventing some variation of kumite drills of some sort.
That is, I think so far, the reason for which kumite was introduced - stuff like ippon kumite is as close as you can get while still practice safely.. and it's not very close.
'course I could be wrong
I soon found that the shoto idea that you have to pull your hand at hip level is to be taken with a grain of salt. Oftentimes it's good - the idea is that you imbalance your adversary both in the vertical and horizontal plane, pulling him forward _and_ down, but in the heat of the action often a mostly-horizontal pull will do the job just fine, helping our forearm or elbow or uraken to smash into him.
To me, what matters most is the violent and explosive nature of the action - pulling does more of the striking job than the striking arm not in the silly sense of "more power" but because it speeds up your opponent towards whatever you want to hit him with. It needs to be fast, violent and unexpected to work, however.
What I found is that the downwards movement is helpful with people who are way bigger than you, and thus can resist much more out of pure strength (to say, I'm 174cm and my elder son is 193 and about 25Kg heavier: in a nontechnical fight he can just lift me up and proceed to smash me on the ground).
In that context two planes of pulling - towards me and downwards, as the shoto hikite prescribes - can give me a better chance both to imbalance someone big _and_ to get his chin or neck in striking range - otherwise it's up there
I guess a possible reason for teaching it that way was just the "we're all civilized now so let's forget all this antiquated fighting thing and just get a class of two dozen young people in great physical health" idea that Itosu first and Funakoshi then aimed at. Simplifying helps in that context.
If most of you opponents are your size or you are a little smaller but very strong, you can probably get away with an almost-horizontal hikite in most cases.
(You ageneral) It's only hard at first because are fighting in a manner that is truly foreign to you and as a result you may not trust the technique. But after eating a few punches you get the hang of the technique and why UT works. You'll find comfort in where the technique fails because not you know when nit yo use it or how not you use it. At the beginning it will feel like your about to get knocked out, but you have to keep going so that you become familiar with the application of the techniques.
Those who know how to control the technique. They understand the points of no return, where power and speed cannot be stopped or altered. Most people who do kata are so far from being able to do application of kata that they lack the skill to injure anyone with it.
Most people shouldn't be sparring above 45% of their power.
My $.10 is that talking of "percentage of power" is misleading. A bullet that you throw with your hand does not have the same properties as one exiting the muzzle of a gun. It's still a bullet, but they aren't the same thing, Just ask someone to be in the path of one or the other.
Most kata techniques - as I understand and practice the ones I focus on - need to be executed fast, hard and with full momentum, or they just aren't the same techniques. You still have a bullet, but you're not practicing shooting. For example I sometimes practice with pine or spruce sticks bolted to a frame and joint by pine or spruce joints (the only limitation is that it's time consuming to carve the joints). Either the joints break or they don't, and if it they don't you simply aren't doing it right. If they do, I dont care if I were using 80 or 90 or 100% of "power". There's no "I could if I wanted" in my book. If you can, do.
That's why I think it's hard to spar kata with a partner.
No need to agree with me, of course. I do respect different opinions, and the right to hold them. There is more than one path to the top of the mountain.
I much agree that many people are far from the applications, but then again it's not why they do it. For me it's a special interest and the one thing that makes me keeps practicing.
The thing that helps me is to spar with someone who is outside of my system. I still have to manage the speed but it's easier to do so when two people aren't fighting the same way. The better I come with timing the easier it is to be fast. Without being too concerned with using too much power.
As long as your sparring is partner can acknowledge that your strike would have landed with force the easier it is. Those who can only tell that they are in danger when they are hit hard are the worst sparring partners for me because now I have to make sure my strikes land so that I disrupt their strikes. When I get to that level then now I'm sparring to really protect myself from serious injury.
I used to do medium intensity one a week and some days I hated those sparring days because I knew I was going to get banged up.
Absolutely a brilliant idea.
isshinryuronin
Senior Master
The thing is, kata was not designed for sparring, but against common street attacks (as you said) including a lot of grab releases, even though many do not know this as sport competition and mass instruction have devolved this aspect. So, such applications remain only as advanced, "hidden" bunkai, and that only if one has a knowledgeable teacher in this regard.
Still, there are a few techniques in most every kata that can be used in sparring. One just has to look for them, find them and practice them. I've used a few in sparring to great effect as they are often moves the opponent is not used to.
Thank you. The endless possibilities of learning are always good.
I have yet to meet someone in a TMA school who is at that level. I've meet some muay thai people at that level and they were still able to spar with less power and still dominate me at the lesser power. The only difference in outcome is that my face wasn't destroyed and my limbs weren't broken. If you and I sparring you, you should be able to tell when my front kick presents a risk to breaking your ribs even if it lands softly. If you don't acknowledge it in your head then you aren't being honest with yourself. If I see that you underestimate it then I add some weight to the kick so that you become aware.
The issue is less about my power and more about allowing someone to kick you in a vulnerable spot. Or that a kick slipped in before you were aware of it.
Consistent taps on the head highlight that you allowed a hand to enter deep into you personal space and did knotting to stop it. The practitioner should understand this without needing to be hit in the head 1/2 power.
I have a video of me telling my sparring partner "you keep letting me have those" he had no clue I was landing kicks on his ribs. So I kicked him a little harder. He looked at my kicks as something not powerful and continued to walk through them. We did intermediate sparring and he caught the same kick to the ribs. It was hard enough to bruise his ribs and stop his attack. But I still don't think he acknowledged it. If we went full force then I would still be able to land the kick, but I think I would have broken his ribs since he could not see when the kick came in and the kick landed without restriction.
If he can't acknowledge the kick then he can't acknowledge the opening in his defense. Which is the real issue and not the power of my kick.
Can you create a form that you can use it in sparring without any changing? I believe you can.
For example, if your form contains 5 moves:
1. right front kick,
2. right jab,
3. left cross,
4. right hook,
5. left hook.
If you attack your opponent like this, your 5 moves combo can always put your opponent in defense mode. If you repeat this 10,000 times, very few people can escape out of your attack.
If your traditional form cannot be used in sparring, why don't you create a form yourself that can be used in sparring?
Here is an example.
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Agreed. This is basically what my shadow boxing trains. It trains possible combos bases on forms. The biggest difference is that I add angles to the footwork and set up movement that leads into the techniques.
The biggest thing that I noticed is that previous sparring experience helps and the biggest risk would be from those who try to make shadow boxing like forms. Previous sparring experience helps with accurate visualization of an opponent's stance and movement.
This is another one of your posts that is absolutist, and therefor almost certainly wrong. Just because you drill a combo 10,000 times, that doesn't mean you'll get the reaction needed on the first step to progress to the second, and so on.
It's pretty easy to have combinations in a form that can be used in combat. Shadow-boxers do it all the time (even if they don't repeat it as a form). It's just still subject to the conditions of the fight. And I agree with you - most folks (after a certain point in development) should create their own forms, to work on whatever they need to work on, want to work on, or just enjoy the hell outta working on. Sometimes they should pass some of those on to some of their students, who would benefit from that same training.
I think the argument over whether forms can be used in sparring/combat may be missing the point of some forms, as well as the intent of some stylistic training methods. I don't know of a style that doesn't occasionally do things that can't be used quite that way in combat. The clearest example is use of the speed bag in boxing - you're not going to punch like that in the ring, but you're working on specific principles. It's probably arguable whether that's time well spent (those principles could be developed in ways that have more direct application), but lots of boxers have used speed bags without accidentally trying to use that technique in the ring.
When you grab your opponent's leading arm and punch his face with your other arm, 99% of the time, your opponent will use his other free arm to block it. If you can predict that (with your common sense), you will have better chance to deal with his free blocking arm (such as to change your straight punch into a hook punch and allow your opponent to block into the thin air).
You attack your opponent's opening; your opponent responds to your attack and may create another opening. You then attack that new opening. This is the simple process in a fight.
- A body kick may force your opponent to drop one of his arms. This will open his face up.
- You use jab to attack that opening. Your opponent may use his arm to block it,
- You then grab/pull his blocking arm and follow with a cross.
- ...
Unless your opponent steps back and dodge, most of your opponent will respond the way as you have predicted. I just don't know any other better way to train solo (without partner).
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