One of the main reasons that people get involved in Karate is to defend themselves. Of the three BIG reasons its one that stands out as a huge FAILURE for most students. That’s right, I said FAILURE! I will explain that in a bit…..
The other two reasons for Joining Karate in the first place are Health/fitness and…well it looks cool. At least those are the two most popular when you look at an overall reason for joining Karate. If you train with even a half way decent instructor those two reasons are fulfilled and you get what you paid for. I mean if you come in and are given a work out regiment kind of class or given things to do at home as well as the club, well that will help your fitness level and just the movements in class should help keep you relatively fit. And as long as your instructor can muster a half ounce of interest…Karate will be cool!
Now as for the failure to teach self-defense, that’s a relatively new issue and its two pronged…first off the instructors got scared to teach real self-defense lest they get sued and lose everything when someone gets hurt…and then they simply forgot about it and started teaching sport Karate with little to do with real fighting. But shouldn’t Sport Karate still give you enough to go on to learn defensive tactics? You would think….but most studies suggest that you would be wrong…and personal experience…well it tells me that sport minded or combat sport guys are setting themselves up for a very painful lesson.
I am not saying that sport Karate and training for tournaments is bad, I am saying that some instructors got stuck in that rut and forgot that Karate is not about scoring points, its about taking out attackers with ruthless intent and ending hostile attacks with equal if not greater force. For the last thirty years plus I have trained with some great sport guys and some great Budo Karate guys and most of them agree that they don’t really see violent situations going the way they would think they would training in Shiai Karate styles. And to be frank I have seen my share of sport martial arts guys get creamed in street confrontations. I even remember one of my Sensei’s students telling me about a fight he got into that he first felt he was set up to win…and then thought he may die in!
To much training in Point fighting will KILL you in the end. You will be a lean fighting machine in the ring and a great target on the streets. See first off when you train in sport Karate you are looking for that single technique to land and score you a point…not hit and KO the other guy, we would lose a lot of members if that were the case! So, to be honest…its like a really violent game of Tag! One guy rushes in and lands a perfect Gyaku zuki Chudan and yells at the top of his lungs and rushes away to save his own face from accidentally hitting the other guy….in the street…that does not work so well. You would rush in, tag the guy…and get bum rushed and tackled or he would simply rush after you and blast you with kicks and punches. NO ref to say “No Lad….he got you first, Now back up and start again”. Also, there are rules about contact…both depth and target. In the streets there are rules like this to…hit hard…hit anything and rip the crap out of what you can grab!
Some rules also don’t make much sense if you are looking at Karate as a form of self-defense. In Karate you can not grab your opponent by the wrist, clothing or bear hug them ext. They do this because…well people get hurt when you grab them and yank them around….like they would on the street. So by removing this no grabbing ability and making it a rule that you can’t grab a leg when kicked or an arm or rush in and tackle the guy, you take away much of what is done on the streets these days. By adding back into the Dojo training some real self-defense training and allowing for grabbing you now have to train how to NOT get grabbed as much as you do how to get grabbed.
Back in the day it was Us (Traditional strikers) against them (traditional grapplers) and both sides were equally delusional when it came to who would win in a street fight…The fact is that if a Karate guy went against a judo guy in a street fight…the winner would be the guy that DID NOT FIGHT TRADITIONALLY! Both Karate and Judo have been scrubbed clean of self-defense training in most clubs and yet still advertise that they are great for self-defense to the public…..but don’t fool yourself….we are not the only ones. Judo, Karate, Muay Thai, Tae Kwon Do, Jiu Jitsu, Aikido, Kung fu…you name it…sports or other issues have crept in and torn the heart of self-defense training out of them. Even modern MMA is not going to save you on the streets…besides…you get hurt training that way!
Karate used to have joint locks and ground work in the training protocols as well as “pressure point” fighting that was not some mystical junk but more…”Its soft here…rip it off” kind of “nerve strike/pinch” training. Hell even when I started Karate we would hear a lot about “ so you hit the guy in the throat and he goes down” kind of stuff and just knew Sensei had been hit in the groin and throat when training to show how it worked….but had to change it to accommodate our less “durable” generation of Karate guys and gals.
The other thing that killed the arts ability to be taken seriously is the ground itself. Years ago the Gracie Family came forwards and threw down the gauntlet and said “you can’t beat us with your stand up crap” and various other rude and boastful things…that turned out to be correct. They took on Kempo guys, boxing guys and a myriad of standup fighters and then brought the UFC around to prove they were right….but why were they right? They were right because we implemented rules that basically made ground fighting Taboo and stopped us from being able to fight back or use distance against ground fighter, explode and hurt them once they hit the floor.
Watch what happens in a tournament for instance…..a fighter sweeps the legs out from under his opponent and has a millisecond to launch and successfully land a single blow…if he does we say “IPPON” and he wins…if not we stop them and let the other guy up! The grounded fighter learns he is safe if he hits the floor and the attacker learns nothing but “hit fast and dance back because you CANT fight on the ground”! The truth is that 80% of fights end up on the ground! But the further truth is that ground fighting often looks as stupid and amateurish as stand up does.
So, the Gracies brought a style of fighting that made them look like GODS to the arena of NHB (no Holds Barred) Fighting. They took out bigger strikers by bringing them into a world that they had been trained was Bad and that they should never be in. My contention is that now that MMA has evolved past the taboo of the ground, we are seeing more how to defend ourselves as strikers. If you get taken down you fight till you can get back to your feet, work to get back to your feet and blast elbows and punches, knees and even head butts to the bottom or top fighter to not give up.
Ground fighting aside the other issues we have in Karate and self-defense training is that most instructors teach an hour long class on basics, Kata and Kumite and approach all “fighting” as Kumite. So they will do three step, one step and semi free and possibly free style sparring…then when it comes to self-defense training we see them teach Three step, one step, semi free and free style sparring and just call it something different. Only one instructor aside from my own has ever taught a class that showed different grips or different joint locks that you were put in or that you could use against an attacker. Stand up grappling is the first initial phase of any self-defense interaction on the street. I have never seen an attacker Kiai and start from a down block position or a front stance position…and if they ever do…I will be the guy wetting himself laughing in the corner!
The fact is that self-defense is ugly, dirty and has no rules. It can start off pretty much anyplace you could imagine and if you are not trained in it you often are so sensitive to the pressure of the attack that you freeze when attacked or shut down because you simply don’t have a reference point to work with. You NEED to be trained on the different situations that you may encounter.
One of Dingman Senseis old students once told me about a situation he got himself into on the streets. He was walking along and saw a group of kids ( a bit younger than him) acting up on the street corner. Like a moron he continued to walk towards them thinking his brown belt (Back in the day that was about the level that you started to feel and look kind of scary in the Dojo) was enough to protect him. The inevitable happened…one of the kids mouthed off and said moron mouthed off back…and then the situation escalated. First a kid grabbed him by the hoody and shoved him hard. He stepped back and in place of the ground for his back foot to land, he tripped over a attacker who was set to trip him up. The fight went downhill fast from their! The kids all circled him and started kicking at him. He baled up and took as much as he could but was really getting beat down!
In the end he got his wallet taken, a bloody nose, broken ribs, a broken hand and his EGO was very broken. He even figured it was his lack of ground skill that cost him his wallet and got him beat down…so he went to Judo and studied the only art for ground fighting in Winnipeg at the time (this was pre UFC). The sad truth is that he learned nothing about how to defend a group attack in Judo and left Judo after getting his black belt there as well as earning his Karate Shodan as well. But he never did learn how to NOT get beat up by six kids a decade younger than you on average. I could have told him for free…Don’t mouth off and don’t put yourself in a position to get your arse kicked in the first place!
So, what are my suggestions for how to teach a good solid self-defense oriented class? Well first off don’t do it all the time. Once or two classes a month based on actual street self-defense will be enough for most students to keep in mind that what we do has direct links to self-defense. You don’t want to alter the rest of the training to simply add a component of like “if subject A attacks with a knife you do move B and C” that too is the wrong path. You want to build a open minded approach to training and give options. Make the students think and give them the knowledge that solid foundations in Karate will be a key ingredient to not getting your life taken in a mugging….and how to defend more than just your pride in a tournament.
I think that offering up several alternatives that still jive with the basics of Good Karate is important in the long run if you want to make a student more comfortable defending themselves. And you have to introduce a “What if” kind of mentality when it comes to the ground. The Gracie’s were fantastic when no one knew how to fight on the floor. They were like a 100000:1 favorite that they would tap you out…and make it look easy. But as soon as people began rolling and learning the odds became more like 10:1, and once we added Ground and pound kind of striking they were a 2:1 favorite. Add the ability to get up and strike better than them and the odds were more like 1:1 for most pro fighters. So, learn how to use distance, not get taken down and how to get back up if need be and you have a great plan for a self-defense program.
Next introduce joint locks and standing grappling again. They are in the Kata and you can have tones of fun with them if you do them safely. Push your students to be safe but explore different situations like head locks, bear hugs, knife attacks and two person attacks. But also be real. If a gang of people attack a student chances are they wont become Chuck Norris and jump in the air and start kicking the attackers like Power Rangers while bird calling like Bruce Lee…they will crumple like humans do and get beat up…so make sure they know how not to get into that situation before you teach them how to defend themselves in different positions.
As an instructor I try to let people know that you probably will be a brown belt before you figure out how to use Karate in a fight, and a Black belt before you notice the holes in the very game you are studying. But some wont ever see that Karate should be a component of training and not the whole thing. Sport Karate has its place and Dojo Karate training has its, but Goshindo (self-defense) training is lacking in both areas and it would serve students well to keep in mind that what they are often doing is guided calisthenics to keep the body moving and learn new skills. The applications of said skills are vast, but if you want to learn how to defend yourself you need to train in defending yourself.
Its like leaning how to do Horse Jumping and being told that you can now work a rodeo, or learning how to ride a horse in a race and your coach saying…Got a rodeo for you to ride in! they don’t jive! The other thing I always compare it to is being a doctor. If you were a GP (Dojo Karate) and you were asked to do heart surgery (tournament fighting) you would probably kill your patient (Fail at the competition) , and if both of you were to be asked to deliver a baby…from a horse! The basics are mostly the same but the application of the basics and fundamentals are all different! They specialize and self-defense cannot be specialized.
For the most part, students are lied to a lot! But we are used to it in our society and most of the time we walk on by and don’t pay attention to the details that show we are getting lied to! As instructors we have to make it clear that what we teach is Budo Karate or Shiai Karate…and for the most part both Budo Karate and Shiai Karate instructors will say they teach Budo Karate! The reason being is the stigma of teaching only sport Karate in some cases is embarrassing and in others the instructor does not know the difference. Both styles of teaching however will give you a solid base in Goshindo……but don’t fool yourself, it probably wont let you learn a lick about how to get out of a head lock or how to really defend against an angry attacker….and it may teach you some bad habits like “don’t kick in the junk!” Or “no eye pokes” when those are the most effective techniques for defense in some cases.
So, I put it to you, the reader…..Do you think you know how to defend yourself…and be real. Don’t let your ego get in the way because…to be frank…your ego wont protect you from getting your ass kicked!
No comments:
Post a Comment