In our organization Dingman Sensei knows and says that Kihon is GOD when training. If you don’t know how to do a good front kick…how are you going to throw one in Kumite and not hurt yourself? Well, I am going to go through a bunch of different things and training ideas that you need to go through to improve your form, your techniques or your Kihon waza as it were…All of which I train on a regular and semi regular basis. I will give some ideas on how to improve specific techniques but lal of these techniques in one way or another can be used to build the technique and some may be a bit different for you..but they work and you should think about picking these up and doing them to fix up bad form or to improve your current form.
Before I start however I have to elaborate on what makes good form or good techniques so you know what it is that you are focusing on. A good technique has these common elements:
Good form:
Good form means proper placement of the joints in movement. For instance when you do a Knife hand block/strike your elbow should never proceed your wrist in our Knife hand blocks and in the forearm block in Teckki your elbow and wrist should never be out of alignment and Should not go behind your shoulder. In Mae Geri you need to Coil-kick-recoil….in that order!
Bad form can lead to injuries in training, and also a less than effective technique. This is why we train so darn hard in getting proper alignment for good form.
Good timing:
Good timing means more than just countering at the right time, which is important but in Kihon waza I am talking more about the compartmentalization of a movement series…which is cheap Kinesiology talk for “the process and appropriate timing of specific movements in a series of required body alignments” so, when you front kick (remember this is going to be an important technique but we can do it with any movement) you must first raise the toes on the kicking foot, plant your weight on the support leg, Chamber the foot and use the core to strengthen the lift, Execute a kick, recoil and finally place the foot of the kicking leg down. Done out of sequence and the person kicking will have a less than perfect technique and can harm themselves.
As an instructor I cannot tell you how many times I have taught Mae Geri and seen some weird interpretations of the movements. The student will jerk their leg up, not chamber it and execute a “Goose step” form of a front kick or actually reverse things and start off with a straight leg and then coil after the leg has made impact…it’s a weird looking revers front kick like a pulling in motion.
Good timing in this case is all about executing the movements in the proper sequence and at the right time. The other poor timing issue I see is when someone start off slow and then gets jerky with movements, like they chamber for a side kick slowly then shoot their leg out and twist at a funny angle and wrench the hip hard, forget to recoil and then slam their leg down feeling like they just kicked really hard….Yah, they did…but in three years I will sell them my uncles walker!
Proper Target:
One of my pet peaves when testing juniors is when they throw their limbs about like they just have to execute some form of a move to garner points in testing….Not true, and the worst offender is the Uraken/Yoko geri to Empi in Heian Yondan and the Uraken/Yoko geri in Heian Nidan. The juniors are never taught to strike a proper target and to select one, they just throw their back fist at any level and try to kick as high as they can.
When you throw these kinds of techniques the targets are selected for you, or you can modify them as needed but they must have a specific target and show that the target is corresponding to the same spot on their body…so a temple strike back fist should never be aimed above your own head!
Good trajectory:
A technique has a specific path that it takes, and you should not modify the path, actually most of the time it is poor form to start a technique on one trajectory and change it when performing Kata or Kihon waza. Take for instance the much abused straight punch….NOTE I SAID STRAIGHT! The junior levels have some kind of strange heat seeking missile that moves with their body and makes the techniques sway and move as it off course more than it is on course, only to be pulled back to the target at the last second.
Or the back fist that shoves the elbow way past target and shortens the back fist distance of movement and thus lessens the impact and power you can apply. The most important thing about trajectory is to keep the move on track!
Good power:
Power is the application of force and movement! Power is the produce of force with velocity (speed of movement) not just pushing hard and not just using speed to snap something. Yes, speed has its place, and yes strength/force has its place, but a good technique has its root force in the core of the body and the connection used will apply movement to a limb at a great speed and move the limb into the target.
Okay, fancy talk aside….to often a student will hit air like they are superman and then you put a shield in front of them or a partner and they turn into Olive Oil (not real olive oil, the pop eye character)! You have to have some focus and power in your techniques or what is the point of slapping someone with your back fist? HIT THEM HARD!!!!
Well-conditioned:
By conditioned I am talking about the ability to hit something without hurting yourself so bad that you have lost the fight. Strong wrists and ankles, good strong frame and bones will help you in a real situation as well as making a technique look real! If you have hit a Makiwara and you now know what it’s like to hit a hard surface, if you need to strike someone in real life you won’t feel shocked by the impact.
Aside from solid striking surface and a strong body “well conditioned” also means practiced. A famous martial arts strategist said “Don’t fear the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks 10 times each….fear the man that has practiced 10 kicks….10,000 times each!” and no…it was not Bruce Lee…he just stole it! Focus on using the techniques and ingraining them in yourself so you can use them at a seconds notice. Practice them in the air, with partners and on impact training.
Good flexibility:
Lets face it we are not all gifted with great flexibility that just sprang out of great genes….some of us have to work at it and as I got older I found that I have to work on it to. My hips are sore and my lower back tight, but being a parent, less training time in the dojo and also getting older have given me all this. So, I stretch!
If someone is INCREDIBLY tight then they need to work on specific stretching to work on better kicks and even better stances. However all of these are attainable with some good old fashion stretching. Push yourself to have limber hips and lower back and you will find your form improves along with that. I am not saying you have to do the splits, I am saying you need to relax your hips and get some length in your legs.
Simplicity
The more complicated we make the form of a technique the more chances for us to look silly and throw overly complicated techniques that end up making the form useless! Watch as a junior learns how to do a front kick for the first time….its like learning long equations and doing it in Russian! Slow down, remember that Karate is the act of removing useless movements to do a simple task with power, speed and grace!
Good Explosiveness and speed:
Once the form is down you need to add speed and explosiveness. Speed is the over all rate of movement of a limb or the body in relation to the space it is in. Explosiveness is the rapid acceleration of that limb or body from rest to full or maximum require speed.
I bark at the senior s to speed up all the time, what I should be saying is “ACCELLERATE AT A MORE RAPID ONSET”…but that just sounds weird. ….And I already have a reputation so I wills tick with “Go faster”! The smooth Acceleration required for good form comes from practice and more practice…..watch juniors again and see the ‘herky jerky’ movements that come from not having good control of their speed and application of explosiveness…add that to the fact that they cannot catch a slow and old senior and you start to see what bad form and poor control of speed and explosiveness get you.
They are natural feeling:
If it feels weird, do it till it feels natural! The way we move is somewhat based on natural movements. I mean we are not asking you to disjoint your body and perform a movement that you should not be able to do…we are using basic biomechanics to build up your movement skills to apply natural movement in a slightly unnatural way…meaning we don’t front kick down the street but we can do it if we wanted to with out altering our body.
Some of our moves are not things our body does on a daily basis, for instance how often do you throw a shuto Uke at work…hopefully not very often if at all….but the movement is natural. We are just ingraining the move net specifics to make the move second nature so when it is called upon you don’t have to think, you just do the block and counter naturally.
Correct attitude:
This one seems weird and it is the hardest to teach. Attitude and intent refer to the techniques proper application and the seriousness when doing them. PAY ATTENTION is the best way to suggest proper attitude to beginners. Some people think that Karate techniques done in the air are “Throw away” techniques. They are not. Not only can you accidentally hurt someone, but you can harm yourself as well.
Kids provide a specific challenge in attitude when training, most flail about having fun, which is good…but instructors have to be very careful with this kind of added danger. For individual training the most important thing is to pay attention when practicing and remember “no detail is to small as to allow distraction when doing Kihon waza”.
They are connected to your core:
Good techniques generate power not from your arm, but from your hara (belly) and or core. Don’t throw a punch from the shoulder, but from the core, and use your core to connect to the floor for added power. Kicks are very much connected to your core, throw a round kick without a strong side muscle and you end up with an ankle kick!
Train yourself to always use the core when doing a technique so you are throwing it from the proper spot and supporting your center!
Solid focus-Contraction and relaxation:
Too Tight, Too loose! Those are two horrible habits when doing techniques. But by learning when to relax and when to contract you can add power, speed and focus to your movements. Watch a good technical player move, they are relaxed and their techniques snap into a solid rock like focus for a split second then evaporate back into a relaxed and ready state.
They are used at the proper time:
Nothing worse than seeing someone try and cram a front kick into a move when they are to close, or trying to lunge a punch in when they are to far away….or throwing two techniques in the wrong order or wrong timing.
We do not have techniques or Kata that have a back fist and side kick done at the same time….READ TOGETHER. T he moves don’t make sense and you end up throwing a sloppy back fist and kick together. Try a back fist THEN a side kick and you can concentrate your movements to add power and better form.
Okay, so now you know some elements that make up good form, and you can kind of understand what we mean when we are talking about form and techniques, so in my next blog I will go over self-training, Dojo training and partner training exercises that can be used to improve in these areas.
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