The truth about what instructors say

Senseis say the silliest things

Instructors say the darndest things….er children say the darndest things; instructors just say silly things on occasion. We are all human and we often open mouth and insert foot…to the knee joint! I am not immune to this, in fact I often have to plead insanity or stupidity after I open my mouth and say some thing totally stupid! Hell I am the first person to admit that I have an issue with internal monologs going terribly wrong, but I draw the line at saying dumb things that start to cause harm or are just down right lies!


I have been around instructors that have said things and I have to do a double take to see if they are joking or possibly have a head injury causing them to spew such things…I have trained with instructors and had conversations with probably hundreds of instructors, both face to face and online and often have to throw things back at them and ask for clarity…normally it sounds something like “are you for real….you just said that?”

Most of the time the infractions are not so bad, but here are some that kind of get my blood pressure up and cause me fits……



I would spar with you but I am far too deadly to spar with a simple white belt!

Really, so what you are really saying is A) you suck so bad and are in such bad shape that a white belt will make you look bad…or B) you have no control and learned nothing about how to use a technique in a way that shows control!

Any black belt should be able to train with lower ranks without fear of hurting them. Karate and most martial arts is about control and use of techniques. If your skills are set for just blasting people then you are not doing a martial art, you are doing a combat sport. If you cannot control yourself enough to train with a junior, how do you expect to run a club? LAME!!!



You cannot teach my martial art without a license because it is far to deadly!

Have two things to say about this…first off what the hell are you teaching that is so Deadly…sure is not Karate or a martial art! Secondly, The real translation should read “you cannot teach my martial art without a very expensive license because I need to make a crap load of money of you morons before you catch on that I am just teaching watered down Tae Kwon do in fancy uniforms…that I make money off of as well”.

I love this one, it normally is said by those that have late night commercials that make me laugh so hard I gag on my coffee! Anyone that says this probably just moved out of their parents basement and now run 12 schools…..filled with children wearing silly gis and paying WAY to much to learn this deadly art!



My 21st Dan masters level is recognized around the world!

Not so much really. First off the Dan ranking system was set up to teach humility as much as it was to show rank for others. It was set up to recognize skill and progress, then what people are giving to the organization at specific ranks. The thing is there is a specific “years between and age” requirement for most organizations. This keeps it real, like you wont get a 13 year old Yondan in a legit organization or a 25 year old Judan!

The other thing is that the original dan rankings were limited to Judan, or 10th Dan. Anything above is a “modern creation” or also known as BS! I have met one guy that said he was an 11th Dan in Shotokan Karate, not JKA mind you. He was horrible….but he had a nice Dojo and Car. It is also important to point out that this self-made man (rank and financially) self-appointed himself all ranks after Shodan!...alsmost one a year! Yup, he only had 15 years in the arts and at the time I had 19 years under my Shodan belt. Point being….Rank is often not all its cracked up to be. Don’t go buy the guys rank..go by what he can offer as an instructor.



You need to learn a weapon to be proficient in street fighting!

I call BS on this one right away. Learning to use weapons is fun, but it has NOTHING to do with real fighting and anyone that tells you it does…does not know much about the subject and should be avoided. First off you cannot carry them in the street….old tired argument but you get the point. Secondly knowing the mechanics of working with weapons, which mostly is a form of manipulating leavers and such…its NOTHING LIKE REAL STREET FIGHTING!

Do not get me wrong, there is a lot to be learned and tones of benefits from learning to use and work with a weapon. It teaches a deep level of respect for the dangers, it teaches a new form of physical skill that can benefit you in lots of ways, but you don’t NEED to learn a weapon to be a good street fighter, mostly you need to unlearn most of what martial arts teach you to be a street fighter.



All street fights (or a quoted number) go to the ground!

So not true! Many years ago a grappling teacher started saying that between 60-80% of all fights end up on the ground. But that was a personal assertion he made and not a real number that was researched. Hell, I don’t think that there is any real research on street fights…how can their be!

Personal experience probably has a lot to do with it. If you took a kick boxer, a jiu Jitsu guy, a wrestler and a boxer and put them in 100 Street fights I think you will find that the Kick boxer and boxers street fights stayed standing 90% of the time and the grapplers both end up on the ground 80% of the time….so, what does this prove, well it proves that grapplers like to fight on the ground and strikers like to fight on their feet! But it does not give the kind of numbers we are getting quotes on.



Karate is useless!

Karate is a tool that can be used in many ways. It can be used to help bring discipline to the undisciplined, it can be used for fitness, self-defense, it’s a great way to get rid of stress, it’s a great way to express yourself and a great way to get rid of extra energy. Karate can only be useless for specific things, like yes…knowing karate will not directly affect your ability to make the perfect omelet or to speak French! But it has many uses, and as a fighting art, which is what I think they were getting at in the first place, its only as good as the person that is using it.

Over the years we have seen examples of “KILLERS” in the ring, cage and even octagon. Those that are so dangerous that they have shown they can use Karate to blast people to the point that they lose contact with their faculties and go to sleep…Lyoto Machida started a renaissance of sorts with his use of Shotokan Karate in the MMA cage. Others however have shown that skills in Karate can be translated into the combat arts of MMA and used to remove people from consciousness, but more important to me it has be used by millions of people for other reasons.

So, “Karate is useless” well that just shows how ignorant and one minded people can be. If your definition of Karate and the needs you are looking to fill are not meeting up, then perhaps you need to review where you are training and with whom, then figure out if you want to travel else were to get what you are missing.



I have trained under (add instructors name).

I love this one. If you have to tell me your resume with in ten minutes of meeting you…you lack confidence in yourself…or you are selling me something! Both are not good. I don’t care if you spent hours training with some guy in a seminar where he wont remember your face in a week because you were part of 100 other faces, the fact is that I have trained with countless instructors in this fashion and yes I have taken something away from their classes, but I would NEVER say I trained with them and infer that I was some kind of special student…any more special than the 100 others. I do respect when people say “I train with (XYZ Sensei) as my main instructor every day…not I train with ZYX instructor once every 3 months and see him for a total of 3-5 hours during that period!

I am less interested in who you have trained with than I am with what you learned! Show me, don’t tell me.



My instructor was descended from Samurai!

a)Probably not….B) who cares? During the Meiji period many business men “purchased” their Samurai heritage from a money hungry government. Basically meaning that the business men could now claim being Samurai when in fact they did not have the blood line. This confused the situation greatly when they also suddenly “found” that they had this samurai blood line they purchased and it went back multiple generations…in other words they created a history that was not real.

Nothing wrong with someone claiming Samurai heritage if they have it, but it would be the same as me suddenly saying I was royalty and 16th in line to the thrown of England….when in fact all of England would need to perish and only a few million others before I get my hands on that thrown and crown!

It was a fun and interesting sales pitch to say you were a great great grandchild of a samurai back in the 70’s and 80’s and I even thought it was cool, till I figured out that it basically meant that you were the decedent of someone in the army….then I realized that my grandfather served in WWII and my great grand father was in WWI…so, by that case…I am the decedent of someone that was in the army…ergo…I am samurai!

Really though…what does a Samurai and Karate have to do with each other? Its not like the samurai did Karate!



My master killed a bull with his own hands!

You don’t have to live in Texas to call BS on this one. First off we need to look at this from two different angles, what kind of bull and what condition was the bull in! The master in question did Knock the horn off a bull, but it had been loosened by a hammer before hand and the bull in question, was a smaller Japanese bull, sick and pretty much ready to die…it was after all at a glue factory!

Killing a north American bull with your bare hands would be a sight and you would earn “master bull killer” creds anywhere you go! The difference, well the instructor in question Ko’d a staggering 190 pound bull that probably would have fallen over on its own given time, the North American Bulls we see are measured in the TONES not pounds to make it easier, It just sounds way cooler to say they KO”d a bull or took it horn with a Shuto over they beat on a dying and sick bull. And for those interested…the footage is available on YouTube.



You MUST respect me, I am your teacher!

Not true! Hell I don’t respect anyone right off the bat, I also don’t disrespect anyone right off the bat. Show me respect, work with me and I will respect you. Stand around demanding respect and acting like an A-Hole and you get what you get!

Just because I teach Karate to a group of people does not mean I have the right to demand things of them and bully them. Those that demand respect often get fear and not respect! I would rather be respected for respecting others and treating them the way that I want to be treated than pushing someone into respecting me.

I had a person that I trained with, and sometimes took class from who was a major D-Bag and basically ordered people around and “COMMANDED” Respect. Truth is he gave no respect to anyone and got very upset when he did not get it back. To bad Charlie, you need to give to get in this case!



I hate mouth warriors, they don’t get real Kratty!

One of my old seniors who is not training anymore used to use this term a lot. “mouth warriors” was supposed to mean those that pay lip service to Karate but do not really “live” Karate. I happen to agree with him…..but his definition of living Karate is what I don’t agree with. Obviously he took it and ran with it for a short time, running around teaching it and spreading Karate, great. But when the chips were down he left Karate and proved he was a “mouth warrior” for sure.

To me a mouth warrior is someone that talks a lot of smack and does not back it up. They say how great karate is but they fail to live the Dojo Kun, they don’t remember why and who created Karate. Not a bunch of sports jocks looking for medals, praise and trophies, but sincere people looking to promote an art that can be used by anyone to be healthy and push themselves physically and mentally to be better people.



I am your Sensei, that means I am a master!

I have said it in the past, and I will say it again…I hate the term MASTER! If you are a teacher (sensei) you are not the master, you are the instructor…teacher…grand poo bah and owner of a Dojo/Club/Gym…but you are NOT a master.

The term master denotes mastery over someone/something and as we know you don’t master Karate, you practice it. And you are not a master over someone…you instruct them.



This is a short list of stupid stuff

How to translate what you hear in Martial arts to the truth!

Bad Sensei says!

How to translate what you hear in Martial arts to the truth!


I have been training in the martial arts since I was six years old one way or the other and with little time off. I have trained in Traditional Japanese arts since I was young and had my shot at eclectic arts, Chinese arts, modern arts, some martial arts from around the world and basically the vocabulary changes, but often the confusion that is left behind after an instructor says something lingers and generates generations of false stories and such…and I am here to clear it up!

A interest and saying can grow into dogma, someone’s quick answer that is meant to put a student aside while an instructor moves onto more “important things” or an answer that is given to give an answer for answers sake can scar the very fabric of our social and intellectual worlds in Karate….Okay, maybe not, but the fact is that some instructors say things and it inspires levels of silliness and stupidity that are truly cringe worthy.

So, in this long overdue Blog entry I am going to translate some very misunderstood terms, some over used terms that mean the opposite or nothing at all and hope to clear up some long held misconceptions that others have generated over the years.

Things you hear that simply make you cringe…or should
Some cringe worthy things are horrible because they make you sick to your stomach, like when I tell people about my many injuries and start getting into the really gory ones. Other cringe worthy things are less about your stomach flipping and more about your sense of “Man that’s just STUPIDLY EMBARASSING TO ANYONE THAT HAS EVER STRAPPED ON A KARATE BELT” kind of cringy! This is a list of those, really what the F were you thinking before you opened your mouth kind of cringe worthy!

I’m a 12th Dan (any Dan after 10th…)
For those that Don’t know…and for those that do know better the original dan rankings that Kano created went to 10th dan. Funakoshi only gave out dan ranks to 5th because he felt that was the highest required rank for mastery of Shotokan, and many of the other masters refused to use anything above three for their students.

To be a 10th dan or above you would need to have a life time of dedication…actually a few! If your instructor or friends instructor or anyone else for that matter says they are higher than 10th Dan laugh a lot and walk away! No, wait…run!...BS stains!

I’m a 7-10th Dan (coming from any instructor under 45)
As a 40 year old and knowing what martial arts are all about I can truly say that if a person in their 20s stated to me that they were a 5-7th Dan I would really think that they were full of it…and if they were my age and said they were a 7-8th Dan I would laugh…and once a guy introduced himself as a 9th Dan in some karate style I did not know and he was 30 years old. I told him it does not count if you give yourself rank advancement and walked away!

The problem with high ranking instructors in north America is most are political or greed driven. They think that rank means they have power and or they feel that it will help pad their wallet, and the issue is that it does to some extent. Younger money hungry instructors tend to “grow” dan ranks to pad their resume when really hard work in the dojo and at home is all they need. Rank is Rank at the best of times!

I hold 3 (or more) high level black belts in different arts!
Can not tell you how often I have been told this. I have a shodan in Judo and Sandan in Karate and it has taken me this long in my life to get this far with family and work ext. If I was to not get married, Who needs school right…and work…well that’s for wimps.. Well, maybe I could get a Rokudan by now in Karate, a Sandan in Judo and add a kendo shodan…but that all takes time.

May favorite is someone that suggests that they have a black belt level in six different arts and they are all vastly different and one is BJJ. BJJ is one of those arts that not everyone is going to get a brown belt in, never mind a black belt. The second that they say that I call BS!

My hands are so deadly that they have to be registered with the local police/federal government!
Probably as a chronic groper (self or other)…but not because you could hurt someone physically with them. First off you don’t need to register your hands with anyone…its BS and an old stack of it at that. Secondly, no police force in Canada (my home country) has any paper work to fill out to say that someone, anyone is a black belt never mind a deadly one at that!

My art form is Ten thousand years old!
Reality is that anyone that says this has never cracked open the history books of Karate or martial arts…or anything for that matter. Read some basic history and stop exaggerating a bit for a second and you will make not that most Karate styles are basically a little more than a hundred years old and not a thousand…and kung fu styles can probably reach back a few hundred years more than that. Ten thousand years ago man had just started practicing sedentary agriculture and stopped wandering about picking berries and hunting small game for the most part.

The fact is that if you say “my Karate is five hundred years old” you basically show how little you care about researching your art and what a moron you are!

I teach a form of Ninjitsu…..
Oh, you do do you! Well, then you may be interested to know that Ninjitsu, as a traditional art form DIED out about the 1500’s and were never really “honorable” arts, they were seen as dishonorable and not some farmers that reved up against the Samurai, but “guns for hire” that went against Bushido!

The Ninja crap that you see today is pure marketing by men that refuse to grow up and live in “adult” pants! They follow self help gurus gone mad and wear black PJ’s with hoods and train in weak Karate/TKD and then say they are the mystic warriors of old…when the “mystic” warriors of old..were nothing more than assassins and soldiers of fortune. Reality…that guy in the black Pj’s is just having issues growing up.

If you don’t (add “tow the line” comment) I will strip you of your black belt!
So, you put your time and effort into training under a instructor and at first they seem nice enough, but then you start to see them demand more and more of your time and effort and…more than likely…your money. You put in as much time as you can and you get your Shodan. You are now a black belt….or are you. Did you earn a black belt or are you being loaned one by the instructor/organization?

I have seen instructors try and punish people by saying “if you (add horrible offence) I will strip you of your black belt, and I even saw a letter that a local guy sent to a student stripping them of their black belt because they were doing other arts and not spending all their time and effort fawning over the instructor and making them more money. Basically the letter said that the black belt in question, who had been teaching at a club set up by ME years ago was “Stripped” of her Shodan for doing Kyokushin on the side. It was very disappointing to say the least!

Here is the way I see it, and the way that Dingman Sensei taught me, and the way that the head instructors have told it…right back to Funakoshi….You as a student work hard at Karate, you train and you test yourself. We grade you and we hand out rank, and once you are ready we announce that you are now Yudansha (fancy word for black belt). For your part you are now at a beginning level of black belt, once you progress and ask to be ranked you test again. We don’t turn around and strip you of a rank we have witnessed you make. What we can do is no longer recognize your rank…different?... You betcha!

An organization or instructor can always say “you ticked me/us off, we don’t recognize your rank anymore” and leave it at that. But they don’t take away your black belt. They would in essence be saying “oops we made a mistake giving you that, you don’t really meet our requirements”, and that would be silly. So, hard work and training will earn you a black belt and you get to keep it for life, but those that recognize it may say they suddenly do recognize you as a Yodansha….but that does not take away from you being one.

I once trained with Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris/add any famous martial arts name here!
Normally followed by “and I beat them up a lot” or “and I am the only one certified to teach his style of fighting, his true style of fighting”. And both are COMPLETE LIES for about 99.9999% of those that use these tag lines to get you in the door.

First off Mr. Norris is still alive and kicking and he has a solid set of black belts that can drive his organization. As small as it is in the states, it’s a Korean art and not some MMA game that others make it out to be.

Secondly, Lee died with a small amount of students, every one of them in a magazine or TEN and easy to verify. I have personally met one, Taki Kimura and he told me that true Bruce Lee students are as rare as it comes. Maybe a handful and we are losing them fast too!

If someone says they are studying Lee’s style…well that means they are reading a book! Anyone can read a book, so don’t put to much water in that one!

Karate came from peasants needing to defend themselves against Samurai!
Horse PUcky! Karate was created by Nobility in Okinawa that learned it from China and other sources and created a way of fighting that was more Chinese than modern Karate looks. It then went through major changes along the way and became what we see today.

I am still trying to track down the creation of that story and find out who made it up, and if at all possible slap them! The truth is far richer than some poor farmer figuring out how to fend off an armed samurai! Now you can argue that the Samurai of the time may have treated the Okinawan royalty as poor back woods gentry, but that is a stretch, they were wealthy government people that had benefited from generations of trading with the Chinese and Japanese and being on a major trade route, they were the wealthy of their time and they needed to protect themselves!

Karate has nothing to do with the poor Japanese farmers, it was created by wealthy nobility in Okinawa.

My Master………
Hold on! Put the Breaks RIGHT on that one…..I have a Sensei, I have a Instructor…I have a chief instructor…but I do NOT have a master (in Karate….my wife does not count here). The fact that some 20 something year old martial arts instructor now wants me to call them master…well that makes me laugh!

I walked into a Kickboxing school that was taught by a TKD black belt, no that is not the funny part of the story, and was visiting and figured I would get a work out in. my friend was training with the guy and he allowed walk ins so I figured why not! The work out was “Okay” and not really to my standards for a conditioning work out but it was enough to get me warmed up and having a bit of fun.

The class was fine but when my friend introduced me to the instructor, he said “Master Joe, this is James”. I said “good to meet you Joe..” to which he said “that’s master Joe” ….to which I said “ you can then call me Sir James”. I have never been knighted…and no one is my master!

I don’t recognize your black belt level, you will have to retest!
This one is legit, but I have to explain the situation! See a Black belt rank is a license in a way and a level in a way. When you test and grade you are assigned or recognized by an instructor as having met the requirements to earn your belt level that you are given. You are presented as a black belt under that instructor and you have his “stamp of approval” for that student.

Once you have earned a Dan Rank under an instructor that’s it, you have met the standard they set out for you and you earned your Dan rank…but that does not mean that everyone is going to see it the same way and or accept your ranking at face value! I have seen plenty of times were people are asked to retest for a rank they earned under a different instructor/organization and while it seems like a formality it is legit.

I have also seen some higher level instructor have to qualify that they have a Shodan under X organization and a Nidan from Y organization and then Z and A gave them a Sandan, but when they go back to X they are still seen as a shodan and need to retest. Also, I have seen people who were a Yondan from the JKA and leave the JKA. They don’t forfeit their rank from the JKA, but any new ranks that are given to them…well they are not recognized by the JKA. That’s not earth shattering as many of them will never return however.

I know of one instructor that graded to sandan under the JKA and left. He then trained with a different Shotokan group and earned not just a Yondan but a Rokudan, but in the JKA he is seen as a Sandan that left…and then he came back. The ensuing political dust storm settled and he accepted his Sandan with a test for Yondan scheduled three months later. Now its important to point out he did not pass his Yondan and left again…

I belong to an international organization that recognizes my every rank from white to 10th Dan!
And! If you are under 90 years old and claiming a 10th dan…you are a bit of a JOKE! The higher ranks are supposed to be about maturity in the arts…how is a 30 year old…training since he/she was 15 supposed to be mature in the arts…that’s only 15 years of training in total. I could see a nidan or even Sandan but really…a Judan!

There are several international belt factories that one can join and get ranking from. They call it recognized time in…but to be frank they are all a joke! I would rather be a lifer at Sandan than a joke at Rokudan.

This is just the first bit of insight I am going to provide, in the next two segments I will go through specific crap…er stuff a instructor can say, and what it really means and what your fellow students say and what it really means.

The most important thing that one should take away from this is that martial arts, like everything else, is filled with people that say and do silly things. The most important thing is to shut up, throw on your gi and obi and get your sorry butt out on the floor and train. Everything else is a distraction and something that you should avoid!

Hip use in Karate

Koshi Kaiten, Gyaku Kaiten, Jun Kaiten, Shindo Kaiten, Tsukidasu Kaiten! Some of these we hear a lot in class, others we hear nothing about and some we only hear in English (regional language) and never are they really all explained! They are all ways to use the hip to generate power!

Koshi Kaiten means Hip Rotation and it’s a very important and basic part of generating power in karate for both kicking and striking. With proper hip rotation (Jun Kaiten) and reverse rotation (Gyaku Kaiten) you will generate more snap and more power. Jun Kaiten means to rotate with the techniques, this would be similar to rotating the hip into the techniques and Gyaku Kaiten away from a technique. It actually has little to do with position (hanmi, Shomen and Gyaku hanmi).
Jun Kaiten is when your hip rotates with the movement. So when you are performing Gyaku zuki or reverse punch you will rotate your hip into the movement by rotating the back hip along with the arm into the target. This generates a great deal of power as you rotate and also use the back leg to push with off the floor. This power full technique will generate a huge amount of power as you move from position to position.

Some JKA groups suggest that Gyaku zuki will move from Hanmi to Shomen as you punch some groups barely move into Hanmi when they start the punch and others stay Shomen when moving and punching. I advocate a full range of motion from Hanmi to Shomen and finishing in Gyaku Hanmi. This serves multiple purposes from martial power improvement to a more natural movement process and also strengthening and creating flexibility in the hips. This is a great example of un Kaiten, the hip is going the same direction as the technical movement.

Gyaku Kaiten is the opposite of Jun Kaiten in that the movement of the “power hip” goes the opposite direction as the technique being applied. A good example is a Gedan Barai or Uraken with the lead hand while standing still. The rear hip moves away from the front line so your hip/body goes from Shomen to Hanmi position to give snap and power to the front hand. In this case a Hidari Gedan braai Zenkutsu dachi is done ( left side down block in left front stance) the rear power hip rotates away from the down block powerfully and the front hip thrusts into the movement.

Some JKA groups again don’t use a Hanmi position for the Gedan Barai, but most advocate this movement to that position. I also feel that leaving the hips Shomen as long as possible will add rotational power to your techniques and you should remember that this is a thrusting in movement with the hip.

A similar movement is the Uraken done with the left hand when in Left side Zenkutsu Dachi. As your arm extends out you will quickly rotate your back hip away, thus making Gyaku Kaiten, and then as the technique is being whipped back you will rotate the hip back to assist with drawing back the hand.

Shindo Kaiten is the vibration that is used by the hip when executing a technique. Again, many trains of though when doing this power generation and many ways to do it exist. Some will do the “vibration” similar in motion to Gyaku Kaiten or Jun Kaiten, others will wiggle, some move the hand the opposite way from the hip movement then try to catch up to the arm movement with the hip and “piston” the technique.

My thoughts on Shindo Kaiten are that you should launch the arm movement with a hip vibration. This means if you are standing in natural position and punching with your right hand, your right hip will start the small vibration by moving forwards into the target then move back to the Shomen position before impact. Because the movement of the hip is literally a inch or two your arm will not lose any momentum from the reset of the hip to Shomen, or it shouldn’t unless you rotate and don’t vibrate.

Shindo Kaiten also has one other factor that some groups do not focus on. The vibration is not just with the hips, the support leg also pushes into the ground to generate drive, and the arm must punch out fast and focus the whole body on impact.

Tsukidasu Kaiten means Hip Thrust or push forwards and it is actually done with the rear leg pushing in and the pelvis forced forwards so you do not lean in. Some groups do not focus on this at all and you see students leaning when they move forwards or back and you find that its normally the least flexible students that have the biggest issue with this.

Tsukidasu Kaiten is also used in conjunction with shindo Kaiten in Mae Geri, as the back leg transitions into a front leg for the mae geri the rear leg forces into the floor and the hip rotates forwards hard thrusting in. This kind of movement in combination with Atoashi Suiryoku or rear leg thrust will generate a great deal of power. Kicking and striking can benefit from this technique when working for more power.

Shisei or Kata Dachi means general posture. It can mean how your feet set in stance, knees bent or straight, alignment of your spine, shoulders, the way you hold your arms, were your head is tilted or straight ext and so on. For my purposes in this I will be focusing more on the stance itself and spine! Generally I suggest that the ear, shoulder and hip should always be aligned. This way you know your posture is good, some people lean to much front or back when moving and it will throw off your balance as well as your power.

When you are off balance your body will react in a strange way, you lose the ability to direct power away from your body. A good punch or front kick will lose power and will be ineffective if your balance is off. In Judo the use of off balancing or Kuzushi is used to assist in a throw, in karate it is important to have great balance, but when you note that the aggressor is off balance you should be focusing on attacking at that moment.

Kata Dachi includes aligning the body so that the hip is ready for use and the use of the rotations or vibration will be at its maximum efficiency, the use of bad Kata dachi will throw your body off and you can actually harm yourself if you execute a rotation with bad body alignment.

Bushido, the warriors code and modern Karate training

In the west we use terms like Martial Arts, Martial Spirit and concepts like Warriors way…oh, I mean Budo, Bushido and Bujutsu….and to be frank….most of us are giving lip service to old ideals that we don’t follow, don’t understand and most of us don’t benefit from other than using a fancy term that amazes students and makes them think we are some kind of Samurai…which we also only understand from 1950’s movies and movies like the last Samurai!

 

First off….Samurai is the modern version of “Saburai” the correct way to say “one who serves” A samurai was actually a servant to the royal family or nobility…but they were an upper class member of Japanese society! The better term for them perhaps was Bushi or Buke, which means warrior. If you called someone a Samurai, it only meant they were serving their Daimyo or lord, and perhaps they were Bushi or they could have been a rice counting accountant that happened to belong to the upper crust of the serving staff of a noble Daimyo.

 

Anyways the term Bushido comes from the Bushi or warriors and it meant warrior way, or way of the warrior! The code of the warrior included several codified tenents or subjects that the Bushi had to understand. The code was actually an unwritten work prior to this and passed down from one Bushi to another over hundreds of years.

 

During the 17th to 19th Century the island of Japan stopped warring with itself long enough to actually write stuff down. This included the passing on of the code of Bushido in many books such as the Go Rin No Sho by Miyomato Musashi, Budoshoshinshu by Taira Shigesuke and Hagukure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. All these books kind of skirt the code but outline the way they think and act and how a warrior was expected to act…which by the way is very much different than what we think of these days.

 

Samurai were human just like you and me, they had good ones and they had bad ones. But they also had higher cast Samurai (who were allowed to ride horses) and lower cast (who had to walk). They had Samurai that adhered to the unwritten code…and others that cut down innocent people in the street and got away with it. Like 007 they had a license to kill, but the difference was those that killed just because they could…well their career path was kind of set as warriors and not true Samruai of the higher level.

 

So, in the 19th to 20th century the code was further codified but actually hijacked by the new militant regime that actually did away with the samurai cast. The old third class of people, the rich merchants, took over Japan and cast out the samurai way. But during world war II they grabbed ahold of the code of Bushido and basterized it into a nationalism that met their needs and basically used the code to push their people into fighting a losing battle saying the spirit of Samurai would prevail….the fact is that Samurai in Japan were never more than 8-9% of the population at any given time, even times of war when they recruited rice farmers and gave them titles to bring them up from a lower cast to fight for the royalty or warlord in the area.

 

At that point many “Creative” families suddenly started saying they had ties to famous Samurai or simply said they were descendants of Samurai…so who could tell if they were or were not!

 

 

 

The Code of Bushido boils down to seven virtues of the Bushi and three associated virtues. All of which you can find in the code known as the Dojo Kun and or Niju Kun written by Okinawan warriors on a island run by those that the samurai ruled…its not a far reach to say that the code of the warrior in Japan influenced the code of the warrior of the Ryukyu islands.

Rectitude (gi)- Rectitude means being Righteous or having Righteousness as your theological concept in life. It is a term that has been used to belittle others like saying “Why do you act so self -Righteous”! Rectitude means to act in a justified manor and live a life that would please the gods (God) depending on your belief system. Basically this means to me that you will act in a way that your conscience can live with. Don’t do things that you will feel sorry for later and you are aces!

Courage (Yuki)- Courage means different things to different people. The ability to confront pain, fear, danger and or intimidation and not back away is one definition. Sometimes courage can by physical like confronting an aggressor or going and getting surgery you know is going to hurt. Or it can be mental, like facing depression, loss of loved ones or other psychological pain and challenges. For me the most courageous people are those that face their own death with dignity and sobriety! I also know of a lot of people who face their life this way as well. Physical courage to me is fleeting…you face down the bully and you step up! Its done and its over. Facing a loss or facing your own issues goes on for a long time and those that face these day to day or end of day events…well they are the truly courageous Samurai in my mind!

 

 

 

Benevolence (Jin)- Benevolence is also a very misunderstood concept. Basically it means the practice of charity and voluntary giving of your self to others. In Karate we see seniors that give their time away from family to help teach, promote a club and run the organization. They don’t ask for any consideration other than to see the club grow and be stronger. The instructors work hard to run the club but the seniors often work harder. Its part of Filial Piety, but to be honest their offering of time and work is Jin! A true sine of Bushi is that they offer something of themselves and they don’t ask for anything in return.

 

Samurai used to do lots of work for the Daimyo, but they also fed the poor and injured and took care of war veterans with “jobs” that amounted to them showing up for their pay day! They used to organize food delivery to the poor and help run the country. Our Samurai, or our seniors run fund raisers and often help by giving time they could use with their family or doing other work to help run the organization.

 

The Niju Kun says “Karate wa, gi no tasuke" or Karate stands on the side of Justice!

Respect (rei)- Karate-do wa rei ni hajimari rei ni owaru koto o wasuru na! Or for those that don’t know what this means…..Karate begins and ends with Respect! This goes FAR beyond bowing to each other and placating our fantasy about living in feudal Japan with top knots, Swords and Japanese pajamas! Respect is something that you earn by treating people correctly, not something you ORDER others to give you! You have to give respect to get respect and todays world of Karate do we see far to many people just scare people into fearing them, then feel that its respect they are getting!

 

One way to give respect is the bow, but it also includes the way you treat others, the way you act towards them, address them and treat them in general. Use of Shogu and other titles is secondary. I have seen plenty of people who were incredibly disrespectful of others never miss a beat when using a Shogu for a person and slapping out a sharp bow!

 

For me Karate is ALL about respect and how you earn it, maintain it and encourage others to cultivate it in their daily lives. After all “dojo nomino karate to omou na” or Karate goes beyond the Dojo! (another line from the Niju kun)…..ever try working with someone that does not respect others, has a bad attitude and basically treats everyone like a stepping stone….well I have and its hard to try and respect someone that trys to rule by intimidation and then calls the fear they get back respect! Managers with this issue are horror shows and need to be asking “ would you like fries with that” and not “ would you like your next pay check”.

 

Respect in Karate dojos is one of the most important aspects of a healthy dojo. If you end up with someone that has an ego, has issues with people not BOWING down to them or has a big head…well it’s a cancer that will rip apart a Dojo fast! Respect is earned by your actions, not by your requesting it or ordering others to give it to you!

 

Honesty(Makoto)- Makoto no michi wo mamoru koto! Many people think that this simply means “be faithful” but that is the English version and it only tells part of the story. Makoto means Honesty! A Better interpretation would be to honestly guard the way of loyalty and truth!

 

The term Honesty was important to a bushi that was going into battle. They had to be honest with themselves and also with their Daimyo about their ability and many stories exist about samurai stepping aside for those more skilled at strategy and the war being won, or those that thought better of themselves than was true and or lying to their Daimyo and the war being lost because of them.

 

Makoto in Karate is more a personal thing. I mean its important to be honest with others, but even more so with yourself. Know yourself well and don’t lie to yourself about your ability or your goals and you will go far in Karate. Being honest also allows us to set new goals and to push ourselves to reach them…if we lie and say Black belt is a sign of perfection….I am a black belt…ergo I am perfect…well you will dwindle and die on the vine when you could bloom into a much better Yudansha if you only were honest with yourself!

Honor (Meiyo)- Honor is hard one to grab a hold of, it probably means different things to different people and the concept of honor or Honour is very transient! Honor is accepted as meaning a quality of worthiness and respectability of an individual. A specific “code of honor” needs to be established, or an understanding of what someone feels is honorable before Honor can be understood by an individual.

 

Honor is a hard modern concept as we have endeavored to do away with lots of the old medieval ideals of chivalry and often think of Chivalry and its code as a dated and sexist ideal; however Honor is a big part of that code! The simplest way to conceptualize Honor as an ideal is to throw it against its opposite, Shame! Essentially if you live a life filled with honor then you will never cause Shame to yourself. Again, its not perfect but seeing as we have kicked our medieval ideal of chivalry to the curb generations ago to create a feeling of equality…it’s a good start!

 

The Code of Bushido and the code of Chivalry have a common and important concept in honor! One should live life in such a way as they know they have never done something to shame themselves and they must view all actions with others in this light. Have you shown your instructor and seniors the proper respect? Are you a good parent and child to your parents? Are you a hard worker at work? Do you honor you work by not just working hard but representing the employer who gives you your wages in a justified and positive way? Are you a good friend, are you honest, are you a good person? All of these outline what Honor is in the modern times to me…and I probably missed a bunch!

 

 

 

Loyalty (Chugi)- The Encyclopedia Britannica defines loyalty as “personal devotion and reverence to a sovereign and royal family”. A more specific idea is that a Bushi in the employ of a Daimyo would fight to the death for the lord and would not give up or change sides, they would not turn tail and run unless ordered to do so and many failing campaigns saw huge numbers of dead because the samurai would not leave the battle field unless a Daimyo told them to…and the Daimyo had left a long time ago!

 

In modern Karate terms the ideal of Loyalty is that of a student joining a club and training for a long time, they now owe the club and instructor their loyalty. Once you join a club and rank to Yudansha level you have learned for four or five years from an instructor and shown your dedication to the art, your now given the opportunity to grade for Dan level. Once you pass you now represent that instructor and or organization, your loyalty is fit with them. If you choose to leave, you are leaving your rank at the door and you may join another club, but you should start from scratch or at least with a white belt worn till that instructor offers you a dan level under them.

 

Now a days we see students leave instructors or chase them out of organizations, accept higher rank than they were given to leave, or set up shop for themselves and not show any loyalty to the instructor or the seniors that they once learned from. This kind of ego move shows more than just a lack of loyalty but it really illustrates a sad character in people.

 

We also see instructors showing no loyalty to students. They have a student that works hard in class and helps the organization grow, and the first “champion” that comes along userps the attention of the instructor and they forget about the other students because a specific student will bring them attention. They charge more money than they need to, move clubs 10,000 times and don’t care about students other than as a revenue stream!

 

Myself and several other seniors stuck with our Sensei when he was forced to leave a large organization, we worked hard to maintain our now smaller group and eventually worked our way back to a larger group. We stay with him because he is our Sensei! We treat the students fair and we all train as a family. When someone shows lack of loyalty to that group I get upset and when former students that left my instructor show up with fancy titles, higher ranks they got by prostituting their membership to others, well it reinforces my feeling of loyalty to my instructor!

Filial piety (Ko)- respect for ones parents and ancestors. In Samurai times the respect one paid to the ancestors of the family would bring luck and would show loyalty to ones roots. The act of honoring the parents and grandparents served many purposes. Not only had they been around for some time and offered up knowledge and wisdom to a samurai, they also often retired from active life and raised your children! The saying it takes a village to raise a child, well the Samurai truly believed this…actually this is a very Japanese thing.

 

Filial Piety in society is lacking, we see kids disrespecting parents, elder abuse, grave sites defaced and the youth running around abusing older members of society and the lessons of “take care of those that came before” are lost on most of society. The term “those that came before”….in Japanese…is Sensei!

 

Filial Piety for me means that you will be loyal and treat those that came before you with the respect they deserve! One day, if you are lucky enough…you too will earn that status and I would hope you want the youth (juniors) to treat you well!

Wisdom (Chi)- “the Judicious study and application of knowledge” So, how did they gain Wisdom and Knowledge? Well they trained with martial arts instructors! Sword masters and other martial arts specialists would have schools or clubs and would teach Bushi their trade…then the Bushi would seek out other masters, like Buddhist teachers, Shinto instructors and others that were thought of as knowledgeable and they would study…..and after years and years of training, if they lived through wars and bloody battles, they eventually may become masters themselves and start teaching others.

 

Modern ways to develop knowledge is the same. You find someone that has something to teach you in martial arts and you train with them, grow with them and try to become as knowledgeable at the arts as them, then you move to other training to reinforce or augment your training.

 

I am a big believer that your Karate training should be strictly Karate till you reach about shodan then you can branch out to study, part time, a complementary art. You should also look for things to study that help your Karate. I studied sports med and massage so I could understand the human body as much as I can and I still research and read about things that will help my Karate training!

 

The most unwise thing you can do is take up an art, study it blindly and just keep repeating what you have done year in and year out. Seek out other ideas, while respecting your roots and your Sensei, look to other instructors for their ideas…but look to grow as a individual and eventually you will also get to that level in martial arts that you are now able to be seen as having knowledge and wisdom in your art.

Care of the aged (tei)- Tei is similar to Filial Piety but in this case its more intimate. It means taking care of those who are aging and helping them move to the next life. We should not be good to those that have had a long life, learn from them and respect them. We should also make their last years as easy as we can, and pray that our kindness is repaid in turn if we reach their age.

 

In Japan those that reach an elevated age are respected and treated with revere! Here in the west, well….often not so much! When Funakoshi was an elder statesman of Karate his students bestowed the greatest respect for him and would carry him up stairs, pay his rental on his home, showed respect at every pass and made sure he had new clothing and was fed well. Here in the modern west we house our elders in retirement homes and watch as they decay and die.

 

Bushido stipulates that we have a responsibility to those that paved the way to where we are today and we need to take care of them.

 

 

 

Someone at some point in the scheme of things created an English “Dojo kun” for Bushido that goes like this:

• Loyalty is the essential duty of the soldier!
• Courage is essential since the trait of the fighting man is his spirit to win.
• Valor is a trait to be admired and encouraged in the modern warrior
• Faithfulness in keeping ones word
• Simplicity is a Samurai Virtue.

 

 

 

This is fine, but the meaning of Bushido is to act in a specific and Noble way, to bring back Chivalry and to not embarrass yourself by reaching for to much and not earning your way, you must show respect and remember that the only reason you are where you are in life is that those that came before you gave you a helping hand and now not only do you owe them…you have to do the same for the next generation!

Reply to a comment

“I want to know why there are so many versions of Karate and so many different fancy looking uniforms and if any of your techniques pre date WW2. Are your Kata forms really going to do anything to help me defend myself? Because I took Karate for 4 years and found it useless there was no purpose to throwing a kick for 20 min just to make it faster. Do you do mat crawls? I used to do all those silly push up and sit ups.”




I look through my comments section usually once a week or so, most of the time I see spam like posts and ignore and delete them as quick as I realize they are for buying new flooring or a new kitchen…kind of funny because they forget that we have an international community here and I don’t think I am sending away to England for my new kitchen…I mean really what a waste of time!

On occasion I get challenged…sometimes I laugh them off as they are the kind of challenge that is not mental, they actually want me to fly some place to fight…morons. Yah, you got something to prove and an issue with a blog post or post on a web site and want me to foot the bill to fly to some back woods town in the South to fight with you to prove I am wrong…give your head a shake Bub.

Once and a while I get a email or comment from someone that actually has a few questions, like the one above. I love these, I get to think a bit, write a good reply and hopefully present a solid argument against the persons bias against Karate. But more importantly, he is not asking me to fly some place to do the argument with him. And they are rather polite.! Massive bonus!



So, my answer to your questions about the different kinds of uniforms and the techniques….well all techniques predate WW2, I mean we got our stuff from Okinawa, who got their stuff form China! And lets face it…like Bruce Lee said, “we all have two arms and two legs” so the types of movements we can make are kind of set in stone! As for the Gis, well I could venture a guess about the Gi colors of some groups with 1000000 patches on the damn thing, but really, they just kind of look silly to us. We wear traditional white with one patch or embroidery on the chest and that’s all. Different instructors probably thought that the Black Gis and multi-color gis looked cool or something. To me it more a matter of someone wanting to look a specific way and not caring about techniques over looks.



The next two questions are more about application. First off Kata does teach techniques and how to apply them. You learn different movement sets and hardwire in movement and technical ability by repeating the movements over and over. It helps build up strength and is a great work out to say the least. By repeating Kata not only do you get a great work out but you are also learning proper form and functionality in the kata. A massive benefit which I will get to.



Not only is repeating a kick 20-10,000,000,000 times a great benefit physically but it also helps you keep good form…why is form important. Well here is a perfect example. A friend of mine who trains regularly but has some form issue threw a kick at a partner and broke his toe because he did not pull it back and show good form and technique. Now, you could say that if he had practiced that kick a few million times properly he might have been able to do this without “killing his toe”. Further if he had to use the PROPER form in a self-defense situation he would have been able to execute it and not hurt himself.



Repetition of a technique with form in mind is much better than just sparring with no attention to details like form and functionality in movement. And who could NOT benefit from a faster kick and quicker reaction time? I get such a kick out of the MMA guys, not the real mma guys but the guys that play at mma and how they put down Kata and repetitions and try to tell me that putting on sparring gear and then going at it for a bit is better than learning form and functionality of a technique….then I watch them with their instructors doing drills and working a single technique or series of techniques on a bag or pads…..Dont they realize that is Kata and repetition???



I was also told by a MMA guy that they never do drills or Reps and they just like to fight…they learned Jitsu from an instructor and one day I went and saw the class, the instructor….yah teaching drills that looked a lot like mini Kata to me, and without a partner for the most part.



Kata is essentially a way of memorizing, internalizing and focusing on specific types of movements and skills. Drills do the same thing and they are the only way to go out and learn a movement pattern. If you don’t learn a technique properly it will never be as strong as you need it to be for sport or self-defense it will be awkward and unnatural and when the chips are down you will have to think far to much about what you are doing to be successful in saving your ass.



As for Silly exercises, one of the first thing you learn in Karate is that a certain amount of conditioning is needed to use the skills that you are training in. You have to push to be able to kick higher than your own knee and strength and conditioning will make you more able to train harder and use the skills you have. I often forget this point so I must thank you for reminding me for the silly exercises that we need to do.



An old saying is a skilled fighter vs a moderately skilled fighter comes down to conditioning and mental ability over functional tools. In other words you can be the best fighter in the room technically but if you run out of gas, are slower or have lost flexibility you will lose! Those silly push ups…may save your life some day!

The Anatomy of pain!

The Anatomy of pain!

                When I went to massage school I was nick named “the King of Pain” and when I was in University my interest in Neurology and Pathology as well as Biology and physiology really were centered on stimuli and the causes and sensation of pain and not just how to cause it, but how to use it and finally how to cure it.

                I noted that it has a very important roll in our evolution and can be used to really learn how to protect yourself.  My thought was that if I learned how to create pain in others greater than they could create it in me…I win!

Introduction

                In Karate we often avoid specific “non-PC” terms and subjects in the Dojo. The reason is that its not considered “Mainstream” to talk about Karate in terms of protecting yourself. Oh, we say stuff like “Karate can be used to protect yourself” For sure, but we often omit things like teaching the damage that a thumb in the eye socket can do to an aggressor or how a strike to the larynx can kill a rapist.  Why, well its because we want to be the kinder more gentle….Zen like group of people that everyone seems to want to be.  Not me….I want to know how to kill someone that wants to kill me or how to stop someone from hurting my family or even myself!

                Now, like anyone else the thought of taking someone’s life troubles me….granted I have to say probably less than it does someone else as I would without question take the life of anyone that hurt my daughter with intent to cause her any form of damage from a physical assault and I even yell at old ladies that accidentally bump her with a shopping cart…but I think that is “Daddy bear” mentality in my already “violent experienced” mind.

                I would much rather apply a hold or joint lock as it were or grab a nerve bundle and squeeze to inflict the kind of pain that will cause someone to pass out or wince and think about the pain more than me…than take their life.  Actually, I really don’t want to have to deal with the paper work and court issues if I had a choice….so I would probably defer to really hurting someone than “Taking them out” as it were.  So, I started thinking about advanced Karate and how it works, and how even basic self-protection is based on impact training, joint locks and most importantly….Pain creation in your attacker.  

                What is pain?  I mean we all know what pain is, its that very Unpleasant and very attention getting feeling we have when we hurt ourselves or when something is wrong with us physically.  I am not talking about the pain you get when someone close to you dies or when you see your girlfriend/ boyfriend/ spouse kissing someone else…no that is mental pain lasts a lot longer and is not easily healed. 

Physical pain is actually a stimuli that is created when C nerve fibers are unpleasantly stimulated.  Strangely Pain is one of the most studied subjects in medicine and we know its ins and outs and how to cause it and create it very well….thank the American military for that one boys and girls! Studies in Pain and Pain creation stretch back to before the ground breaking French researcher Dr. Albert Schwietzer wrote “pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself” which he penned in 1931.  Ancient civilizations drew pictures and associated pain with witchcraft, sorcery and the devil…..yah, they did not know much about C nerve bundles back then.

When I went to university over 15 years ago I was acutely interested in biology and physiology and especially in things that could help me explain Karate. At one point I got very interested in Massage therapy as a modality for crating improvements in performance with Karate Athletes, which is a whole other blog entry.  But I also found information and answers to my personal interest in Pain and use of Pain to control subjects, why some people fold like a card table when you do a wrist control and others, like my friend Rob, can resist and make it look like you are doing something wrong…and you know its partially ego…but is their a physiological reason for Pain not to affect some more than others?

I started researching what is pain and how it is caused, classified and can be used in a self-protection kind of way and delved deep into many a Cadaver and experimented on different people to see if it was true that ladies have a higher pain threshold than men…Nope by the way….and I also wanted to know how to be more effective and efficient at using pain to save myself in a dangerous situation and more importantly to research it and make it more acceptable to talk about Pain and inflicting pain in the Dojo without looking like some kind of mean and abusive guy…or less like one!

What is pain

                So, what is pain then, Well pain defined as a unpleasant feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli, such as a forced hyperextension of a joint (wrist grab or falling on your arm and forcing it to over straighten), Impact (getting punched in a “soft spot”, or stubbing a toe), a burn, laceration of the skin, or hitting a nerve on a solid object (Striking a nerve with your fist, or hitting your funny bone).  There are other types of pain stimuli but I am going to specifically try and focus on things you can affect with Karate.

                Pain can be as brief as an acute injury (think stubbing your toe or getting a needle) and can spike quickly or it can be a dull, long lasting pain such as a torn ligament or deep bruise/broken bone. But the acute pain that you can create in an opponent is the useful kind of pain.  The kind of pain that will stop someone from focusing on taking your money, your life or raping you and putting them in a situation were they are ONLY thinking of the pain and how to get away from that pain. 

                Pain causes a set of unique physical and psychological reactions that are uncontrollable by your on a conscious level, it causes the fight or flight reaction that fear causes and it also causes your body to recoil from the stimuli without your control. This stimuli and reaction can be controlled if you are ready for it but if you are not then you have no cognitive choice in the matter, you jerk away from pain and move physically further away.

Classifying pain

                Pain is classified into different categories based on the duration and source of the pain. In 1994 the International Association for the Study of Pain or IASP (no I am not a member or the founder) classified pain after finding a need for a more useful system of describing chronic pain.  They came up with Pain based categorization such as Duration pain (Chronic pain caused by long lasting stimuli like Cancers or arthritic pain), Nociceptive ( Acute and instant pain like a burn or cut), Neuropathic pain ( Caused by damage or disease affecting part of the nervous system involved in feeling and sensation), Psychogenic pain (that which the mind has created and is very real to the person experiencing it), Incident pain (Cause by specific activities…think arthritic joint issues or stretching out wounded tissue) and a few others. 

                The classification helped the specialists dealing with the specific injuries and or illnesses to work on standard practices when dealing with these different kinds of pain. For instance Cancer patients on pain medication often experience break through pain, a type of pain that is caused when the body becomes accustomed to the pain medication and will “ignore” the drug and feel the pain regardless of the dosage of pain medication that is given.  This is often treated by changing the type of drug given to cover the pain so the body cannot adjust to the medication.

                For Karate and self-protection however the classification of pain simply gave us a better way to focus on several forms of Pain and how to use it to our advantage when dealing with the attackers and how we are generating pain. It gave us a better understanding of the one tool that most clubs do not provide, how to deal with pain from both a stand point of the defender being attacked…and the defender using pain to defend themselves.

Effect on function

                Why is pain important for our survival?  Will it gets us to stop doing what is hurting us! Most pain is caused when you are doing something that will damage your structure, such as holding your hand over a stove element or fire.  This will damage the skin and can cause permanent damage and or even be life threatening.  So, when we were designed, or evolved special mechanisms for self-protection from these things (Depending on your theoretical back ground) we developed pain to help save us from doing silly things like burning ourselves to death!

                It is also a tool to stop us from re-damaging ourselves while we heal!  How often have you hurt an ankle and not been able to walk on it after….that is your body using pain to let the structure heal!

                But from a self-protection point of view, it is important to note that pain impairs attention control, working memory and mental flexibility, problem solving and information processing speed.  When we are attacked the aggressor is focused on one thing, his goal…be it rape, robbery or murder the attacker is focused, thinking only of the single goal and this is the most dangerous kind of aggressor.  But Pain will cause him to lose that single focus and purpose and bring all of his once focused attention to the source of the pain and away from his single goal. You can use pain to redirect his thinking for a time to the source of the pain. 

                Now that you have impaired his attention and are using pain his ability to process anything other than the pain is gone. His short term memory of why he was attacking you is gone!  He has no flexibility in his thought process to change thinking, problem solve and redirect his resources to finding solutions for tasks…like taking your wallet or choking you. His world and his focus is now on that point of pain…not even on what is causing it! This is as primal and basic a form of thinking mental process and coping as we have as animals/human and it will stop an aggressor for a brief second and redirect his thinking, giving you a moment or two to react and protect yourself.

Pain Thresholds

                In Pain studies a threshold is measured by gradually increasing intensity of a stimulus applied to the body.  The pain perception threshold is the point in which the stimulus begins to “hurt” and pain tolerance threshold is reached when the subject acts on the pain and cannot sustain “taking the pain” as it were.

                So how is this important to your preservation of being?  Well, different people have different gaps in the difference between perception of pain and tolerance of pain and its important to know that! We are all governed by our basic instincts and no one has ever proven, in the hundreds of years of pain study, to ignore pain and allow for permanent damage, not truly!  Some people will force themselves to undergo known pain causing activities for the sake of ego or science…or both. But they can not ignore or stop the other reactions (focus on the pain, short term memory issues ext and so on).

                Different pain perceptions and tolerance thresholds are associated with, among other factors, sex, race, ethnicity, genetics and history of pain.  For instance Italian women tolerate less intense electric “shock” pain than Jewish or Native American women….No idea how they cleared that study past the ethics board but it is what it is! Contrary to popular belief all studies ever done show that women have a lower pain perception and tolerance than men….and age does not matter.  New born boys have a higher pain threshold than new born girls.

                So, what can we take from this….if you are attacked by a man…Hit harder, do a deeper joint lock and do it suddenly so as to not alert the attacker to it and give him time to mentally guard against it!

Anticipation of pain

                Have you ever seen something coming that you just knew was going to hurt, and you started feeling the effects of it before it even happened. Or you watched a movie and saw a actor about to get hurt in a really gruesome way, and you felt that Focus on the pain, the short term complete and queasy focus on the pain that SOMEONE else is about to feel? That’s pain anticipation and you need to know two things about it to use it for yourself and counter it if it’s going to happen to you.

                First thing you need to know is it has the same first affect as the actual pain! You forget what you are doing if you truly believe that the pain is about to happen to you, you focus completely on that pain and in this case potential pain! Your mind is not free or elastic to think about grocery shopping, or taking your dog for a walk….mugging someone, taking their money or worse!

                As an experiment I have done this in a class, I brought a bag full of hammers…yes hammers!....and paired up students.  One student squatting with the hammer in hand and the target…the top of the partner’s foot! I tell the whole class to listen carefully and ONLY react when I tell them clearly what to do. I tell the standing partner that they are to count to 100 by twos…so 2,4,6,8… and not stop. They cannot look at the hammer, and have to continue to count by two’s till they reach 100. In fact they have to have their eyes closed!

  I then instruct the partners to pick up the hammer and get “ready to hit the person in the top of the foot” when I say “GO”. I signal for all of them to put the hammer away and not use it at all, but none of the “counters” Can see this. The “hammer holders” need to slap the top of the other person’s foot with their hand or hit the floor next to the “counter”.

                I then take a second and use a bit of psychology to back up my rouse by saying no matter how much it hurts, even if a bone is broken accidentally to keep counting. Some lose it right there and back out…the others will count and when I finally say “GO” 100% of people will react…differently mind you, some pull their foot away instinctively and others will react as if a hammer just dropped on their foot! They wince and pull away from pain…even when the floor next to the foot is slapped and not the foot at all…and in one case I had someone actually pass out!

                Anticipation of pain is often as useful as actual pain!

The second thing you need to know about this is that it does not work on psychotic people.  Not one bit! Its not that they have more control of themselves, actually they kind of have less, its that they are wired differently and some will even embrace the thrill of he anticipation and wont move. Not that all people that are brave enough to do the experiment are psychotic….but it makes you wonder right!

Causes: Neurology of pain

                To know what the actual mechanism of pain in our body is I am going to get a bit wordy here for a minute…don’t worry I will go back to how to cause pain in a second. First off not all nerves are created equal or have the same duties in our body. We have different kinds of nerves that run around our body like wires, and often run right beside other nerve that do different jobs.

                You have essentially three kinds of nerves; A, B and C neves.  And yes, I am going really basic here!  The C nerves are the ones we are looking at..and no I don’t know who named them or why!  The C fibers however are very unique. They lack the same kind of “Insulation” or Myelination as the other nerves have and this causes a slower conduction velocity…or to put it simpler, the message they send goes slower and it kind of bleeds off its message along the way, which is why acute pain often feels like its coming from a bigger area till you “feel around” for it a bit. Think of it as a situation like a needle being given to you. At first you feel the sharp prick of the needle, then the pain seems to be coming from your whole arm (or butt if that’s where you prefer to get them).

                Anyways, C neves are not as efficient at sending messages to and from the brain, but because of the higher conductive velocity (they feel things quicker) they are responsible for sensations of quick and shallow pain and respond to a different stimuli than A and B fibers, making them perfect for pain sensation. They are also unique in that they can react to multiple stimuli and again makes them perfect as a source for basic information and reactive stimuli. They are also responsible for reactions to things like Hypoxia, hypoglacemia, Hypo-osmolarity and light or touch sensation.  

                Because they are the “bottom feeder” nerve cells in our body and will pick up just about any stimuli and use it they are easy to distract from, so for instance if you stimulate your Delta or A nerve fibers (which are sensory fibers) you can cause your brain to ignore the C nerve fiber message and react instead to the A nerve message.  You can do this with Ice, pressure or even heat, which is why some people react to a pulled muscle with heat and not the proper way with ice!

                To round out the “Nerve fiber” education, the third Kind of Nerve fiber is B nerve fiber or Somatic nerves. They are in charge of things like blood pressure, heart rate and rhythm and other automatic things that you don’t want to have to concentrate on to have happen naturally.

How to truly cause pain and use body mechanics against an attacker

                Pain can be a very useful took in defending yourself and it can be as intricate and artistic as a wrist and elbow control or as basic as striking the face in a specific way as to not just cause damage, but cause pain in a very basic way.  The level of damage will vary depending on your ability when it comes to just a basic strike, depending on skill level, power, ability to set up a punch and a multitude of other factors. This is why its important to understand pain and how to use it, when to use it and the effects and follow up you must have to take the most advantage of the pain.

                First off catastrophic pan has a unique effect on your nervous system. It goes from trying to protect you by causing you to move away to a more focused reaction on catastrophic pain of trying to mentally protect you from the pain.  Your mind shuts out the excessive information and cuts off the pain response knowing that it is now psychologically more important to protect you from the pain than it is getting you away from it…basically your body shuts down and says that it’s a complete wash and you cannot do anything about it…so why bother feeling the pain!  This defeats the purpose of using pain, the effects we are looking for are totally a wash and you have now just basically damaged and attacker and have to hope that your attack has incapacitated them and not just infuriated them.

                So, as a tool for self-preservation, Pain must be administered at the right level and used properly for the situation at hand. In martial arts we often call the use of pain a “Pain Compliance hold” or a “Joint compliance technique” or my favorite “Pain control”.  The use of a “Pain control” is used by applying pressure or torsion to a nerve sensitive area of the body to cause the pain response you want without causing an excessive amount of damage. If the hold is not working as effectively as you want, adjust your grip, pressure or location of the pressure and you should be able to find a “good” spot for the affect to be what you want.

                Police often use pain compliance techniques when they are trying to affect the motion of a suspect or arrest someone to ensure that they are complying with the officers orders. The use of these techniques are on the low end of violence reactions from a peace officer and will escalate to a more aggravated reaction and possibly use of a fire arm to force a aggressor to comply, we however are starting in the middle with less attention to just getting someone to comply, we want them to stop doing what they are doing and force them to rethink the attack completely.

                Pain compliance techniques and body mechanics techniques are similar. Both involved either manipulating a person’s joints or activating the C nerve fibers with a strike or pressure on them, to create sufficient pain to control the person. However, just causing pain may not work against some attackers.  They may be intoxicated, drugged up or just nut jobs that need to be put down and locked up as well as using pain to control them. That is where Mechanical techniques come in handy.

                Mechanical techniques are those that take advantage of both pain and the natural mechanical systems of the body. The techniques do cause pain but rather focus on the natural use of leverage and momentum to guide an aggressor and control their body. (examples such as the fold over, shoulder wrap, head twist, wrist/arm twist and other Aikido like controls) 

Pain is not always as damaging as other forms of self-protection

                When you use Pain compliance and Mechanical control techniques you do not often have to do as much damage as other self-protection techniques. You can address specific situations with the right level of response.  However if you simply learn to kick and punch you are left with just one tool that you have to use….striking.

                Lets put this to the test.  Two situations that may occur and how the proper response may not be a striking response. First situation….you are walking home late at night and you are accosted by a drunk….the guy kind of catches you off guard and is chest to chest with you asking for money, and your back is against a wall!  While he has invaded your space and is actually assaulting you by doing so…it A) may be difficult to generate enough power to actually get away from him and B) it probably will escalate the issue a lot and cause you more hassle than it’s worth.  Set up number two….you are at home/work and your family member/coworker/ student/customer starts to get very upset with something and is not rational. They have taken drugs/lost control of their emotional state or just plain lost it! You can hit them in the face hoping to knock them out but A) you will probably lose your job/freedom (get arrested for domestic violence) and B) you may harm them more than need be.

                Mechanical compliance and pain controls will help you out in these situations by creating a tool to control and disarm the aggressor and control them until you can get assistance or decide if you now have to escalate the reactions you are using to match their level of physical pressure they are putting on you.        

                Mechanical compliance and pain control techniques have been used by police, military and civilians for many years and prove to be very effective.  But the understanding of pain and biomechanics is essential to properly apply these techniques and have them be successful.

               

End notes

Pain and mechanical techniques are often seen as a less damaging alternative in situations where the lethality of a technique is not required. In training for self-preservation you should widen your training to include any techniques that get the job done for you and will bring you out breathing and whole from a violent situation.

As a martial artist you should be training in Atemi waza (Striking), Nage waza (Throwing), Shime Waza (Chokes), Ne waza (groundwork or grappling) and Kansetsu waza (Joint locks) to ensure that you are well rounded and able to handle any attack and any situations.

The understanding of pain and how it can affect an attacker and yourself is a vital component of any training program and should be used to help build your skill levels along with the well rounded approach to training.