Hyoteki!!!!!!

When you are in class you have lots to keep in mind when doing Karate. You have stances, hip use, keep your shoulders down, keep your eyes forward, rotate your wrist at the last second, draw back hand, bend the front knee (Front stance), use the back leg to push, keep your head straight…don’t turn with your shoulders, warm up right, keep moving, kiai….all the moves in your kata, don’t get hit, block right and not to hard, counter right away….the list goes on and on! And Im going to add one more….Hyoteki!

You need to have good and proper Hyoteki in all of your training, Kata, Kumite and Kihon. Its is an element that brings it all together! In imparts realism, usability, real world application, proper form, and without it you are just a flailing mass of human spaz out! Like the MANY videos on line of people “Doing Kratty” if you don’t have Hyoteki then you are not doing Karate! You can build the strongest front kicks, the most powerful and fastest Reverse punch…but without Hyoteki you are just wasting your time, my time and any one that trains with you…their time!

So, what is Hyoteki? TARGETING! Like a Missile launched to save the world, if your Tsuki is off course and lands poorly you won’t save anything and chances are you may tick off your partners…..or worse your attackers! Hyoteki is the difference between a powerful/fast but flailing technique and a perfectly executed technique. Its also the difference between getting into a slug fest and applying Ikken Hitatsu or “one punch, end of fight”(Made that sound nicer).



When I teach Karate I mention target in an amongst the other things that I teach (Distance, speed, angles, proper form….) But I don’t give it much of a second thought when teaching, I brush over it and I may say “don’t miss the target” but I really don’t explain that and I don’t really push the whole Target thing beyond what you hear me saying in class. However, Hyoteki has saved my butt in real world situations and also its something that I studied a great deal while in University…..yes, they kind of teach that in university…its called Anatomy labs!

All of your training should be done with Hyoteki in mind. When you do Kihon waza, be it line work or drills you should be kicking for a specific target and punching for a specific target, that spinning back fist best land on your imaginary opponent in the right spot or you are hardwiring in a bad target! Your Kata should not look like you are engaged in a fight with a giant or a dwarf! You need proper targeting during un-partnered training to hard wire in proper form and targeting. When you do Kumite you must…..Must…..Must show proper target or you are now reinforcing the lack of target under pressure which means you will miss if you ever need to use the techniques in stressful situations…like a defensive situation.

During Kihon and Kata we say you are working with an imaginary opponent that is your same height, weight and build. You are training with a mirror image of yourself. So, when you get up to test and you punch a inch above your own head…is this wishful thinking or bad Hyoteki? You need to work with a mirror at home to make sure that the target you THINK You are aiming at is actually the target you need to be aiming at! There is nothing worse than watching the last two moves in Jion or Tekki Shodan and thinking “Do they realize they are shorter than this?” Work on targeting in Kata and Kihon and your Kumite will improve drastically.

Kumite Hyoteki is way more obvious at the junior levels. Three step sparring and one step sparring puts Hyoteki under a microscope. If you miss target during one step or three step (or the dreaded 25 step sparring) your techniques will show a miss in movements. The focus of a perfect technique, off target, is like looking at a copy of the Mona Lisa…with a.. mustache drawn on it…perfect to a point then horribly wrong. You can hide bad form a bit and horrible targeting in free style to some extent but you need to be on target and practice being on target for effective self-defense….which after all is one of the points of training!

As we begin in Karate we start with a general area for targeting (Jodan/Chudan/Gedan) but technically as we get higher in rank we should be narrowing that scope. Most practitioners are only taught the three target AREAS and we don’t narrow the scope, but we should be. Good Hyoteki comes only when you also learn Seigyo….Control of form and or techniques. If you have great targeting but bad control then you will hurt people, and I think that is what most people are scared of. You have to develop both Hyoteki and Seigyo together.

Hyoteki and Seigyo are pretty much essential for good Karate, but they are kind of mutually exclusive in some peoples minds. Some people develop great control and don’t need it because they punch off target all the time, and some people have great target but horrible control. You need both to build solid Karate, but this Blog Article is about Hyoteki not Seigyo.

So, as a junior we teach the three “Areas” for targeting, a “Rectangular set of areas that encompasses the Face, Chest and Lower stomach/Groin area that we call Jodan/Chudan/Gedan. These very general areas are meant to make Hyoteki easy for juniors…kind of like “get it in this general area and you are going to get a check for correct”.

But this generalization is important up to about Green belt to teach that there is a general area. Three simple “spots” to aim at when doing drills, sparring and doing Kata…but we also want to have perfection in targeting to some extent during testing, if you hit the “lower Chudan area” and we want “upper or middle Chudan” some instructors will get mad and fail you.

The Junior Hyoteki areas MUST be very general in teaching and in training to help build the ability to throw a good technically correct Waza and build on self-confidence as well as form and functionality. We teach students to punch UP, middle or Down…but they have so much more to learn that this is as specific as we can or should get.



Around Green or purple belt we normally start intimating that there are different targets and we narrow the scope to the tip of the chin for Jodan, Solar plexus for chudan and the groin for Gedan. The more specific targeting tightens up the points that we accept as targets and we like to see them in Kata, Kumite and Kihon. While we normally start with Solar Plexus at white belt we expect greater accuracy in Kata and Kihon at this level with all Waza.

The general area is narrowed to within a few inches to show an increased control factor as well as to assist in a real life situation. The intermediate student still will have to rely a lot on power and speed and hit the target “Area” very hard to effect proper self-defense, but you will note that the use based on better Hyoteki and an understanding of technique over just flailing and trying to get with in a two foot area. As instructors we have to teach intermediate students the form and functionality of techniques first, then we can look at hitting the “area” properly.

At Sankyu you are seen as an advanced student, not an advanced practitioner....but an advanced student. The 3rd Kyu students almost always slide back to Jodan/Chudan/Gedan because they are ramping up and getting more power, speed and explosiveness, suddenly throwing a brick at a target area is much more important than being a sniper hitting a specific target with pin point accuracy…and this is as it should be. True Brown belts are bruts and work on muscling techniques out. They are not fun to spar with because they are a tad wild and focus on explosive action over finesse!

“Bakuhatsu-Ryoku”! Explosive power does not give a lot of time to finesse and target or Seido Hyoteki! A brown belt is a slide back in this area but the power and explosiveness comes up a notch.



Now at Shodan the Jodan/Chudan/Gedan makes way for a re-commitment to the targets of Ago/ Suigetsu and Kinteki (Chin, solar plexus and groin). The targeting begins to be more and more accurate and focus is given to these three targets pretty much exclusively….to a fault. Most people in Karate end their Hyoteki training here. The advancement from practitioner to intermediate and advanced practitioner depends not on sport ability (which is a false path in Karate) but on studying deeper into Hyoteki and finding a next level of targeting!

Intermediate practitioners, Nidan students should begin to study Kata for Hyoteki to assess the different Atemi points on the body. This is the start of moving up the path to advanced students. You should focus on different areas, different weapons to hit that point with and find a way to harden your hands and go back to all the Kata and learn variations on the striking components of the Kata, only then will you make that leap to the advanced practitioner with multiple targets to select from, points that will cause pain, some that will cause unconsciousness and others that lead into even more devastating results and by now you will have the maturity to realize when to use them and when not to.



When you spar it is expected that your accuracy will step back a level. Those at black belt levels that can pin point specific Atemi points will suddenly be relegated to bigger area targets. Those that can nail a Chin/Solar plexus/ Groin area shots in One step or in drills are now working with Jodan/Chudan and Gedan targets. And those that are relegated to the broad general areas tend to now be flailing at big wide areas of the body. The key to training is to tighten this up again so that you have the one punch ability to end a fight.

You can flail and hit someone 5 times in a fight or nail them on the button once and end the fight. You can work hard or you can work smart. The point of Karate is to end a fight as quickly and as safely as possible, but also to give yourself options in a fight or a situation, Training Hyoteki in your sparring will make this possible.



With so much to worry about we tend to shove this to the back of our heads and not focus on targeting, but it will bring relevance to your karate and help you build on past training success to move to the next level.