When your reach exceeds your grasp

  

              I am a big advocate of SLOWING Down the progress of students up the ranks and introducing skills that are rank level appropriate and then working them till they are near perfect. I don’t think students should work outside their skill levels much, even if they train 6 days a week we often see them try and do Kata they just are not ready to learn or jump into free sparring way to early and then they forget or ignore the Heian Katas and they think only about senior Kata and Kumite. This leads to a loss of basic skills and they never have that base to work off of, so they end up with sloppy basics. However lately the trend is to throw senior level or advanced forms and skills at people who don’t have the knowledge and training to handle the new advanced skills, it’s called Sport Karate.

 

 I was watching a few of my students the other day warming up doing Heian Yondan, I stopped them and corrected them and they went and worked on the Kata for a bit then started on Heian Godan, that was as far as they got…Heian Shodan to Godan. I was super proud of them…they were Black belts after all and knew that they needed solid foundations and training to move up to more advanced Kata. They were doing Jion and Jutte as Tokui kata but they did not ignore the lower Kata, in fact they gave them even more training than their training Katas. Once they get the skills polished up a bit and we start class we always start class with Sonobu and Ido Kihon waza to remind people that basics and basic skills are what propel you into senior level training and allow you to do these skills properly.

 

                Karate skills are like the progress between crawling and sprinting; first you crawl, then stand, then walk, then run, then sprint! You cannot really jump a skill set and successfully progress without missing key components of the skills. I never teach Mawashi Geri before I teach Mae geri, Mae Geri being the key primary kicking skill that you should be taught. Actually I am very focused on reworking, working then working some more, and finally reworking base skills before I ever think about moving to a more advanced skill. It’s the basis for a solid Kihon-centric system.  This is why the rank system was set up after all. I don’t dispute that some people want to jump into more advanced training and even enjoy it, even if they cannot do them very well or end up with sloppy Kihon, but it’s not proper to train a junior in senior level skills.

 

I have also seen the opposite thought process however and it illustrated to me that I was DEAD RIGHT. I was watching a class of mostly junior brown belts and Black belts warm up at a Dojo I was asked to teach at a bit ago and saw they were all working on Kanku Sho. All of them! The problem was that the Black belts did not have a solid foundation in Kihon and had not put in their time in the junior Kata, never mind the intermediate Kanku Dai and others, and they jumped right into the advanced form. It was horrible! I had to do everything in my power to not stop them and tell them to not do that Kata and work on their weak points in the foundation. The issue was obvious, they were exceeding their grasp because they did not give themselves time to focus on the junior Katas and work their way up the TECHNICAL SCALE to be able to actually perform a Kata like this and do it any justice!     

 

I remember in the 90’s going to a kickboxing class with a buddy of mine, I was already a 1^st Kyu and was looking for some fun training to do. The class warmed up jumping rope then some light stretching. I stuck out because I was very flexible and kind of had the basic drills down because of hours of Karate training, I knew a round house kick and a side kick from a front kick, even if they did them all a bit different. What struck me however was how 90% of the class had no basic training and at the end of the first ½ hour we “gloved up” and started hitting each other…..no basic sparring or gentle elevation from basics to drills…nope, right to hitting each other in a free sparring system of training. In a ½ hour class I saw about 3 bad injuries and probably 7 future bruises that were mostly self-inflicted. The instructor kind of shrugged it off like “Its kickboxing what did you expect”. Back then we used to make fun of the kick boxers for having little skills other than hitting each other with bad form, my Sempais went as far as entering the first “all styles” Kumite events and winning each division then saying it was not fair….we had actual training. Now we are trading in the mind set of basics first for flash first.  It’s hurting our art a great deal!

 

Like I said, we have a ranking system for a reason, we progress from white belt to Black belt and from 10^th Kyu to Dan level for a reason, and we don’t let people jump ranks for any reason. You can be super athletic and still have to learn basics and polish the fundamentals before you get your next belt. When I teach I see members as fitting into one of three categories; Basic, Intermediate and advanced. I also train each level a bit different and focus on different skill sets for each level. It’s not just about time in and it’s not just about what color belt you have, it’s about how well you have progressed.

 

                10^th to 6^th Kyu level belts should be focused on the VERY Basic levels of Kihon and Kata and having fun with some 5 step sparring to work the basics.  This is what I call the basic level student. They need the time to develop movement patterns that will create the foundation or fundamentals of their Karate but instructors are scared to lose members to kick boxing classes who will get them hitting pads and bags and pile on foam protection so they can pound on each other! Let them, if the student does not understand that Karate is not about instant gratification…they should not be students.

 

                5^th to 1^st Kyu level students are intermediate students in my books. That’s normally purple to Brown belt levels. They should be working on skills that will help them become solid black belts. Focus on katas that will help build up stronger movement skills, develop Kumite reflexes with 1 step and then semi free sparring and work on more advanced Kihon, but the addition of a few extra more advanced things to play with is fine. But you should be keeping them working hard on skills and training that are in the realm of skill development, when you drop them into Kanku Sho or free sparring you are dropping them into a skill training program that is set up for people WHO ALREADY HAVE SKILLS TO HANDLE THIS. It’s not “Fun” to do these advanced skills if they SUCK at them and they lose skill because of it. It’s a detriment to their training!

 

                1^st Dan and 2^nd Dan are about development of advanced skills like Kumite and the rest of the 15 Kata. This is the level you can have some fun with advanced training once people have the physical ability and the mental ability to train coming together at this skill level. However I must say that these ranks are ranks I am pointing out those who are TRULY at this rank, not those that did sport Karate and are doing advanced training as a purple belt. Honestly there are far too many black belts training who don’t have the proper skill sets because their foundation is CRAP!

 

When you are training, as a rule, there is a “pyramid” of progressive importance that each club has in their training. Sometimes its discussed and well thought out and other times it’s just something you note and you can observe based on the classes set up. In my club the pyramid starts with a wide base of Kihon. We do Kihon every class and we focus on improved movement skills but the focus is on the basic mechanism of execution of the movement. We drill on proper mechanics, impact site on the weapon, targeting, proper body alignment and balance and other aspects of the movements, but we do them A LOT and drills in basics can take up an entire class.

 

Next in our pyramid is Kata. Kata is always done in class to end the class, if not as a focus. We do our ranking Kata and sometimes will address a senior level Kata. Honestly it takes a great deal of time to work on grading Kata so even if we are “focusing on Empi this month” we probably will work 1 week end out of 4 on it, and the week day training we will work on grading Kata only. Kata is the application of Kihon, but you start to see the breakdown of form and functionality from Kihon to Kata at this point and it needs to be focused on.  This is also were I normally see students beginning to reach farther than they can grasp. They begin going away from the basics training of Kihon and doing advanced Kata that they don’t understand as they are not mentally their yet. And the spiral begins to grow.

 

The Second from top part of our training pyramid at the Nintai club is Kumite. We try and have fun with it as often as possible but I can recall weeks that we did not do any Kumite and longer stints in which we did no free style, granted as of late we have really focused on this as a training component but mostly we see it as the end result of hard work, not a goal. Our students should be learning the basics and working up the Kumite skill ladder working with 3/5 step then 1 step then semi free and finally playing with free style a bit….not jumping into free style and dropping all the skills they worked so hard to acquire.

 

The top of our pyramid is conditioning, which I am a bit embarrassed about, we should be doing more stretching and conditioning but honestly I tend to leave that to the students. Its something I am trying to correct.

 

The point being is that working a class structure that omits the key components of the solid pyramid system does not make sense for longevity of a student, nor for the success of a student. It’s a given fact that you require solid Kihon to be able to perform Kata, and you have to train in Kata to understand the essence and structure of a form as well as internalizing the form itself to perform the form with any kind of success. Also, if you want to be good at Kumite you must first be good at the tools you are using to engage in Kumite, then you work on skills like distance and timing and work on explosiveness ext. You cannot skip the Kihon to get to the tasty bits that Kumite offer or you will look like a flopping fish when it comes time to engage in actual Kumite.

 

Students today almost reflexively reach beyond their grasp and want things that they should be made to wait for. They need to be pushed to train the details and build solid Kihon so that it’s a reflex to throw a good technique, the goal being that if they are attacked they don’t think, they react to the situation based on good form and experience using the waza. 

You want further proof of this ideology and its effect on training. Look at the champions of WKF Karate, watch them do their Katas with poor Kokutsu dachi and a focus on splashy, fancy moves, loud screaming and a shock factor that they try and put into their training, they push to excite with athletics with little actual substance. Then go watch Osaka sensei, his perfect form and execution is awe inspiring. Why is there such a vast difference, well Osaka Sensei trained with Nakayama Sensei who drilled Kihon over and over again so the students understood Kata, and he studied the Heian Katas till he had them down! He was there to shock you with perfect form and not just athletic ability.  The difference is often striking, when you consider that you are looking at two different world champions and both are said to be “the best”.  For my money, I want my students to be as good as Osaka Sensei, not fancy and dramatic like the new age Kata champs.

 

As instructors we are tasked with teaching good Karate, I for one will always work my students Kihon and think long term for them, not immediate gratification that helps them participate in sport. I want to be clear that Traditional Karate has a sporting component with tournament participation, however the outcome and ideals of the training. The focus is on good form and the Kumite focuses on the ideal of one punch one kill. This means you don’t compete for “points” but perfection of form and application of the functionality of the waza…..or if you used it for real…would you “finish” the fight. This is completely different from the current sport ideal of tag for points.

 

Students should be focused on building up solid basics, they should not be in a rush to jump into sport style training. When they do the results is the WKF style sport karate that is fancy, quick paced and explosive…but very sloppy and an activity that becomes something other than true Karate. We need to teach students to keep the course, not reach further than they can grasp and to focus on what is important….Training to learn and grow, not to show off and get ranks that don’t reflect their true understanding of Karate.