incremental kobo drills for jissen
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i recently wrote an article about how to use kobo as a method of gradually building our capacities for dealing with the psycho-physiological stress of combat. i didn’t go into detail in that article on specific practices, because i mainly wanted to get the concepts across that 1) incremental progression is indeed important, and that 2) kobo is a great opportunity to implement incremental progression in practice. in this article, i will demonstrate the second point with examples of incremental drill progressions for jissen.
hang on to the idea that these are only examples of the infinite possible drills you could create to meet your specific practice needs. though they are in a sort of order, it would be silly to attempt to start at the beginning of this list and work through to the last drill presented with a single type of movement. while this would allow you to develop great skill in dealing with that particular type of movement, it would be better to reiterate this process many times with various combinations at different levels of progression. maybe that’s not the best way to word it, but just remember that this article is not about a process for learning jissen. it’s an example of how to build drills around your current weaknesses.
don’t look at this list as a map to jissen mastery. rather, try to see in these drills an outline of one possible skill continuum - you will need to make your own alterations to get the best results. like a quick sketch you may make on a napkin to give your friend directions to the liquor store, this will only show one goal in relation to where you currently are. it doesn’t tell you where to stop for gas along the way, and it doesn’t even mention the cash machine.
however, wherever you are in your practice, you can benefit by taking a couple of steps back and building some drills that may seem a little too easy for you at first glance. make sure you can perform them without excessive arousal. then, gradually build back up to your level and push gradually beyond. this style of practice is a great way to plateaux-hop in your jissen.
the following examples should give you plenty of ideas of how you can identify and correct holes in your jissen skill and strategy.
listening games
before we actually get to kobo, we need to start by practicing how to respond appropriately to an outside stimulus. though we tend to take this aspect of practice for granted, communications science has demonstrated that many of the most challenging problems in any multi-person situation arise out of the inability to read signals accurately. (incidentally, if you don’t believe that fighting is a form of communication, you especially need to practice these next drills.) sometimes the problem is a lack of sensitivity; sometimes it is difficulty in distinguishing noise from information.
we will address both capacities with the following developmental drills, some of which you may recognize from childhood games.
standing push drill
both partners stand, facing each other and try to push the other off-balance. the only contact allowed is with the hands, and whichever partner first moves his feet or falls down is the loser.
standing pull drill
you can also have the partners grasp each others’ hands and attempt to pull their opponent from his position.
back-to-back push drill
partners stand with their shoulders and hips touching and link arms at the elbows. pushing against each other, they attempt to force each other out of a predefined area.
seated back-to-back push
same as above, but the drill begins with the partners sitting on the floor.
linked sumo drill
in this variation the partners stand, facing and grab each others’ belts. they can push, lift, or reap their partner’s legs. this is very similar to sumo, with the exception that both partners remain linked for the duration of the drill. if either partner steps out of bounds or touches any body part other than the feet to the floor, the match is over.
linked tag
partners grasp one hand and attempt to tag the other partner with their free hands. the target can be specified (knee and shoulder work very well) or free. be sure to practice using both sides.
linked step tag
similar to the above drill, except partners attempt to step on each others’ feet. steps and jumps can be used to avoid “attack”, and players can use their hands to help control their opponent’s balance. make sure to practice both sides.
linked step sumo
players link hands as above and attempt to force their opponents to the floor or out of bounds. contact is allowed with the feet, up to knee-height for tripping, and players can use their liked hands to pull.
free step sumo
the object of the drill is as above, but only foot-to-leg and hip-to-hip contact is allowed.
have fun
any of the above drills can also be played with more than two partners, within a wider or narrower area, using blindfolds, on uneven terrain (use kicks mitts, punch bags, crash mats, people, etc. for obstacles), with time limits, while carrying a load (such as a partner), on one leg, on both knees, wet, naked… - whatever floats your boat, paddles your canoe, or sinks your battleship (though in all seriousness, topless variations could be very beneficial for the guys).
just remember to hold the concept that these are games being played to improve your jissen. don’t get too excited and get injured with this kind of practice. in a safe and friendly environment, the drills listed above and their variations can be extremely fun ways to build our abilities to “communicate” with our partners in jissen.
these drills are also great for warming up to practice kobo and jissen. since they work skills that we don’t practice in hokei or kihongi, it’s important to return to them periodically. they can’t be mastered, so if you approach them with a fun attitude, they never get stale.
moving in unsoku/unshin
having primed our communicative receptivity with the above drills, we can begin to expand our motion in a wider area and into further dimensions. in taido, this is accomplished with unsoku and unshin movements. i have written articles on the specific movements, and am working on another article that will detail their utility as a strategic factor. for the time being, we simply want to build our abilities to use these types of locomotion while responding to an outside stimulus (of which an opponent could be one example).
first, i want to mention that, though these drills may look very basic and beginnerish, they can also be extremely powerful practices for advanced students. i don’t want to get ahead of myself, but especially the slow free-moving drills will reveal layers of subtle control potential in even the slightest turn of the foot - that is, for very advanced taidoka. whatever your current skill level, you will get as much out of these fundamental unsoku drills as you allow for yourself. i don’t have to tell the top students to take every movement as an opportunity to improve their skills, but the not-bad-but-not-yet-great students should really pay attention at this level as these “fundamental” competencies are often the weakest links in our skill sets.
partnered pre-set unsoku
this is the most basic of basic partnered unsoku drills. in the most common version, both partners face in opposite sides of kamae and move across the court using a boxy ko-soku and ten-soku combination. the goal is to build speed and sidestep distance while matching your partner’s timing and position. of course, other unsoku patterns can be used as well.
free unsoku within area
in this drill, both partners are free to move as they like, with two stipulations. they cannot touch, and they cannot leaved a bounded area. the are can be made in various shapes, and more partners can be added. the goal is to move quickly without violating either of the two rules.
you can also create variations in which partners attempt to force each other out of bounds by their unsoku.
free unshin within area
many students never get comfortable using unshin in jissen, and i believe this is because we usually practice unshin in even lines with plenty of space for “safety”. after a while, it’s important to teach students to perform unshin movements near obstacles and people so they can gain the awareness of their surroundings as they move. spatial awareness in four dimensions is a vital skill in mastering jissen, so i came up with this “confined unshin” drill. there are tons of possible variations, but here’s the most basic practice we often employed at georgia tech:
mark off an area and get everyone to stand inside. for whatever period of time, everyone has to move continuously using whatever unshin they like. they must not stop moving, touch other players, or leave the marked area. you can specify which unshin students are to use or allow them the freedom to adapt as they wish. ironically, the first option often becomes the more-difficult.
slow free unsoku/unshin in full court
in this drill, the idea is to get used to using unsoku and unshin together while facing a partner. speed, complexity, etc. can build gradually.
slow tag jissen
in this variation, both partners are free to move as they like and attempt to tag their opponents. it’s usually best to specify a particular target area, but either hand may be used. of course, this drill should begin slowly and build in speed as the players gain confidence. the game can also be played in a confined area, and i’ve even had students form teams with various player “positions”.
free unsoku/unshin - attack on signal
in this drill, one partner delivers signals to which the other must respond appropriately. the signals can be anything: words, handclaps, whistles, gestures, etc. the responding partner moves freely in unsoku while the signaling partner delivers cues. at the cue, the first partner must deploy some predetermined attacking movement.
eventually, several signals may denote several attack responses. there are plenty of options for building up the complexity of this drill.
avoidance on signal
this drill has the same set-up as the previous one, but this time, the responding partner has to defend rather than attacking.
to begin, the responding partner has to distinguish between only two cues, one for inside fukuteki, and one for outside fukuteki. after a while, other types of fukuteki can be added, as can jumps, unsoku patterns, or even attack techniques. complexity and speed build gradually.
slow avoidance of prop
at tech, we call this game “don’t get hit by the guy with the stick”, and it’s always a lot of fun for at least one partner. bryan and i learned this game from john okochi, back when it was still ok to hit students with a shinai. now, it’s apparently abusive and dangerous, but our students don’t seem to mind. if you think swinging shinai at each other is too “hardcore” for you, by all means, use something else. the american honbu has padded sticks, and in japan, we swing our belts. it doesn’t matter what the prop is, so long as you build the game properly.
we begin this game with the “stickman” kneeling. this precludes much reaching and seems to make defenders a little more comfortable starting out. defenders make kamae and practice responding to three signals on each side. the signals and responses (from left chudan) are: jump over low swing, fukuteki away from left-top swing, fukuteki away from right-low swing.
after building basic competency, we start to mix up the “attacks” and gradually increase speed. then we start moving around a bit…
free unsoku with avoidance of prop
this is the moving version of the stick game. stickman chases the defender around the court, deploying low swings, high-to-low swings, and low-to-high swings at will. the defender’s job is to use unsoku to move and “don’t get hit by the guy with the stick” using jumps and/or fukuteki. speed, frequency, and variety are your attack multipliers here, and they have to be carefully controlled to ensure gradual escalation.
when students get good at this game, we add two more “signals”: a straight thrust and an overhead down-smash. the correct response to either was best summed up by mr. miyagi, when he said “best defense for punch - no be there.”
free unsoku with avoidance of prop and counter
in this version, the defender is encouraged to counter any attack with a punch.
all of the preceding drills should be considered preparatory for kobo/jissen practice. the allow students to learn to make decisions quickly and move accordingly using various types of stimulus and movement. importantly, they are all sans-technique, which makes them less stressful than jissen. having the preknowledge that their partners will not just punch or kick them, students are free to play and explore and learn at a comfortable pace.
only after students have gained this basic confidence/competence, should we beging them practicing kobo and jissen.
basic kobo
now that you are confident in your ability to move your body, we can work on specific weapon deployment. at all points in the following drills, you should be aware that you are building on your previously developed abilities to implement unsoku and unshin in relation to your partner. you will refine these abilities as you integrate them into your kobo practice.
tangent: before getting to the practices, i want to provide a working definition of kobo. in japan, kobo are called “yakusoku sotai” which could mean “combative-engagement under agreement”. yakusoku literally means a promise, and the promise is that both partners are working together to help each other improve. when you practice kobo (which translates as “offense/defense”), you must make a new promise at each working of a particular drill to keep your partner’s best interests in mind. if your partner is injured, or even if he just doesn’t improve, you are both responsible.
this promise is real, and it’s one of the things that allows us to keep the emotional stress levels very low. knowing that our partners are working with us and keeping our interests in mind allows us to relax into the process of developing our skills. make sure that your partner knows that the promise is real to you. keeping the mood of kobo practice supportive and friendly will allow you both to get the most out of each practice, even though this is not easily quantifiable.
another important point in kobo practice is the level of speed, power, complexity, etc that you challenge your partner with. keep in mind that you are practicing for his benefit, and then let him worry about your improvement - mutuality makes for much more effective practice. this requires a very subtle mind-shift for most people.
and please, if your partner does not move, hit him. you do no favors to your partner if you only allow him to practice defending against half-assed attacks. i’m not saying “don’t be careful”; i’m saying “don’t be a pushover”.
your partner will not learn unless he is uncomfortable. comfort precludes adaptation; discomfort necessitates adjustment. you must make your partner a little uncomfortable in the drill, but at ease in the training environment. the key is to work to your partner’s level of discomfort. push your partner to the point of slight discomfort, as measured by their feedback to you. communication is vital to safe and effective kobo practice.
- end tangent.
now that i’ve mentioned the proper attitude for kobo practice, let’s get to the drill progression:
slow, in-place kobo
partners face off. one executes a predetermined attack, and the other executes and predetermined defense. they repeat this many times, gradually getting faster and stronger. later on, we add some footwork. in theory (not my theory, mind you), this effectively teaches the defending partner to become almost immune to the practiced attack. yeah, right.
most kobo practice begins and ends with this drill style. pretty lame if you ask me. while it may be ok practice on some levels, it is going to condition habits that may not always be productive unless we exercise a little creativity in our approach. huh?
we learn from all practice, whether we want to, or not. we all know that those who do half-assed practice for hokei end up with half-assed performance of hokei, even when they try to move cleanly. the standard style of uninspired kobo practice makes us hyper-suggestible to the attacks practiced. the result is that good players know how to make their opponents jump by pretending to do shajo, while they are actually setting up a second attack. this is just the most basic example of the counterproductive conditioning that can occur with poorly conceived practice methods.
so, about that creative approach…
slow, in-place kobo - again
remember that kobo are not answers. if there are 50 ways to leave your lover, then there are at least 100 ways to respond to sengi (especially, if the person attacking does happen to be your lover). this time through, we need to come up with some of those other ways. think of this as exploratory kobo, and you’ll be right on the money.
let’s take the speed back down and drop the footwork for now. we’ll start over from the beginning, with the provision that the “defender” needs to be creative and come up with a personal favorite few methods of dealing with the “attacker’s” movement. repeat this process as many times as possible, working slowly and with an open mind - you will never exhaust your options, but any one you discover may save your ass someday in jissen. for each application, build speed gradually, working to the defender’s slight discomfort.
slow again with variable
now that you have options, you can practice choosing the right one on the fly. this is difficult to simulate, but every attack, however similar is going to be a little unique. try and base your defense choice on the specific instinct you have in the moment. instead of deciding beforehand what you plan to do (since reality will always deviate from your plans), react in realtime with one or other of your options. at the very minimum, spend some time cycling through your various options in various orders and speeds. we want to be very careful of building set patterns, and this is where that happens, so be aware.
as before, build speed and power gradually. when you can avoid full-speed, full-power attacks by at least three or four different responses, you are ready to move on to the next drill.
slow again with pre-set unsoku
now take the speed back down, and do the same movements after some pre-determined unsoku combination, for example ko-soku or hensoku-ka/gen. build your speed up, and work through each of your variable responses individually. change the unsoku pattern and do it all again.
you will find that, as attacks from various unsoku patterns are slightly different, certain defense variations will lend themselves better to some than others. work with advancing and retreating footwork and both kamae sides. get a feel for what works with each of these subtle variations and you will start to see the utility in the previous drill.
unsoku and variable
slow down again, and do the same thing, this time using a free selection of unsoku movements and the variations you have practiced. then, build your speed back up gradually.
when you are comfortable with all of your variations at full-speed, the attacker can begin to vary the speed at will, moving from fast to slow to fast. while the attack timing gets trickier here, the attack is still the same, so the defender can choose the appropriate response. this step is excellent practice for matching the speed of your defense to the attack as it happens.
unsoku/unshin and variable
this is basically the same s the above drill, but both partners are now free to use both unsoku and unshin as they see fit.
with all of the above drills, speed, and then power, are the primary variables for incremental increase. most other factors are going to be fairly constant (for example, which movements are being practiced). this allows low-stress graduation to higher levels. if you try to get cute and change too many things at one time, you are going to defeat the purpose of these drills. sure, you may overcome and look as if you are getting better and better at various motions, but that’s all you’ll be learning - how to go through the motions.
you will actually be conditioning yourself to react in certain patterns as a panic response if you don’t progress slowly enough. instead of flinching, you condition yourself to jump. this seems like an improvement, but the jump is actually just a different manner of flinching, and you are no better off in the long run. you may feel that you have gone from beginner to intermediate rather quickly, but you will find yourself having a hell of a time moving from intermediate to advanced.
go slowly on these lower-level kobo drills. really take the time and explore the possibilities they offer. it doesn’t matter how “advanced” a student you are; you can get a lot out of the above practices. allowing your ego to seduce you into attempting practices that are above your level leads to injury in sports training. kobo is no exception.
advanced kobo
if you have taken several movement patterns through all of the variations above, you are ready to work with some advanced alternatives. these variations build off of the previous drills, but offer choices to one or both partners in how to respond to the other.
stationary with attack variable
now we’ll drop the footwork again and give the attacker an option for a change. up to now, the attacker’s prerogative has been limited to speed and timing. now that we’ve worked on defending against various attack movements, we can give the attacking partner the option of more than one option.
start with just two possibilities. both partners agree on which two attacks are to be considered fair-game, then the offense side chooses. of course, the defender still has access to any options previously discovered, as well as improvised solutions to newly arising situations. after building comfort with two options, we can add a third or fourth. add multipliers such as attack options and speed gradually.
attack variable with pre-set unsoku
as above, chose an unsoku pattern. at the completion of the unsoku movement, the attacker can choose which option to deploy. experiment with various unsoku patterns and add multipliers gradually.
attack variable with free unsoku
this drill pattern works as above, except the unsoku is not predetermined. with both partners freely moving, the attacker can choose his moment to attack with whatever options are decided upon. begin with two options, then add more as speed and comfort increase.
attack variable with unsoku/unshin
by now, this should be self explanitory.
as with the above drills, you can come up with your own variations to these patterns. just take it slow and build gradually.
kobo jissen
the next drill set straddles the line between kobo and jissen, and i would suggest you practice them with both attitudes. in kobo, you are trying help your partner improve his skills; in jissen, you want to defeat your partner’s attempts to use his skills. both are valuable practices, so decide with your partner beforehand whether you are working with or against each other.
repeat previous progressions with alternating roles
starting with a single attack and single defense option, move back through each of the previous drill from free unsoku. allow each partner to be offense and defense. then, add speed and options as gradual multipliers of drill complexity.
there are two basic ways to alternate roles. in the common method, one partner is on offense for the first arbitrary time period, then the roles switch at the timekeeper’s command. in the version i prefer, the switch takes place after each exchange, such that after initiating one attack, the partner is now on defense. this method is usually faster-paced and allows both partners to work both roles before fatigue sets in.
remember that this is not yet jissen. you will be working on the same option-multiplying progression as before. the difference is that, this time through, the roles are changing more dynamically.
repeat previous progressions with open roles
and they are even more dynamic now. in fact, the roles are gone here. this progression too begins very slowly, and with very few options. for example, both partners move freely and either one can decide to attack at with sentai at any time. then later, with sentai or ebigeri. even though i’m not spelling out each step anymore, remember to only add one variable at a time, and add them gradually.
incremental jissen drills
ok. i’m getting tired of typing it, and you’re getting tired of reading it, so here’s a blanket rule for the following drills: start slowly and simply. whatever the particular multipliers for the particular drill, increase them gradually and only one at a time. ok?
i know these look more and more like jissen, and by extension, they look more like the drills you typically use for jissen practice. they are not. if you do them the way i am suggesting, you will get much more out of them than if you allow your drilling to degenerate into “jissen practice”. take my word for this and do it gradually. remember the gross drinks sherri made? don’t let that happen to your jissen because you’re too lazy to drill properly. i’m warning you…
limited jissen
instructors naturally play this game when teaching beginners how to do jissen. they limit the kinds off attacks they will execute and dispense with any “tricks”. you can do this even with similarly skilled partners to allow them to practice one or other aspect of their jissen skill sets. placing limits makes the game slightly more predictable, which gives both partners a lot of room to experiment.
some limit examples: no more than two techniques in combination, no jamming, no counter-punches, no (insert notorious favorite technique here), no whatever. in fact, almost all of the actual jissen rules are simply limiting factors that allow us to play the game in a manner that leads to better utilization of taido technique and strategy.
one of the best examples of this is the addition of the genkaku rule, which all of us in america thought was the most pointless, stupid thing we had ever seen when it was initially introduced. genkaku has some strong points as a side-game within jissen. for one, it forces players to give up the advantage they may gain by cornering their opponents, which leads to fairer play between players of different sizes. it also forces players to develop their skills in using unshin and rengi. not least significant is the opportunity genkaku gives judges to break stalemates in less-than-active matches.
so, how could genkaku practice be a candidate for limited jissen practice? incrementally.
sotai face-offs
ever done team jissen? this is the same concept. each player chooses a technique set he wants to work on and tries to focus on those movements. conversely, we can ask our partners to attack us with movements against which we have found ourselves to be weak at defending.
free vs punch-only
in this variation, one partner is relegated to punch-only, while the other is free to do whatever. this can resemble the next drill pretty closely, but it is more limited in terms of movement. keep in mind though, that punches can be used offensively too.
free offense/defense
this is similar to the “alternating” and role progression above. the difference now is that anything is fair-game for the attacker or the defender, so long as they both maintain their decided roles. to differentiate from punch-only, the defending partner is more than free to use kicks and other movements too.
slow free jissen
this is one of my favorite drills. it looks so simple, and it sounds like such a pointless exercise, but this drill alone is easily powerful enough to justify the time you’ve taken to read this article. try it and find out.
the most important thing you must do is agree that both partners will adhere to the same timing. things usually escalate after a few seconds, so i suggest having a metronome ticking away somewhere to keep everyone synced. in addition to keeping the same timing, partners also have to agree not to do things they can’t do at full speed, such as changing the direction of a kick once it is set, etc. this is important in order to retain some amount of realism.
of course, you can’t really do flips and such slowly, and falls and slips will be disproportionate to the overall timing, but try to keep the general “flavor” of actual jissen, while moving at a much slower speed.
like i said above, this doesn’t seem like much, until you try it and see how much sensory input you miss in full jissen. by slowing it down, you can teach yourself to tune-in to subtle factors of which you would normally be unaware. having done so, you can speed up gradually and learn to take in much more information during matches than do your opponents. with practice, this adds up to a terrific advantage.
single-exchange free jissen
as the name suggests, this is jissen that lasts for one single exchange, regardless of whether there is a “score”. partners move freely until one decided to attack. either the attack is successful, or the other partner will defend. that’s all. this drill is good for cycling many partners in a short span of time.
short-match jissen
can you figure out what this one is? building on the single-exchange model, this drill uses a time limit. the time limit can be gradually extended as players build stamina and skill.
the drills above can do amazing things for your jissen skills if you let them. remember the golden rule of incremental progression. if you try to build too quickly, you’ll end up short-circuiting your potential progress.
take your time. there are enough people now who have been doing taido for over twenty years, and we don’t mind the company. we and taido will be around for a while yet to come, so there’s no need to “rush to the finish”. helping each other work gradually to build our skills over a longer timeline equals having more people who are very good, rather than a bunch of mediocrity and five geniuses. it also starts to look like the fabled “fighting force of extra-ordinary magnitude” after a while.
advanced jissen
every dojo i’ve ever visited has some version of the “ironman” challenge, where they make one poor bastard face off against two or three of their black belts simultaneously. being the visitor, that poor bastard often ends up being me.
in all fairness, this kind of practice can be really great for advanced students because it develops a lot of interesting skills: economy of motion, awareness in multiple directions, simultaneous attack and defense, to mention just a few. however, being thrown into this sort of thing is not necessarily comfortable, especially if you’ve never seen one or more of your partners spar before.
here are some drills that can help build your multiple-opponent jissen skiils.
slow jissen against two or more opponents
self-explanitory.
slow three-way jissen
in this variation, it’s every man for himself. good luck.
short match against two or more opponents
begin with single-exchange, and then build duration.
so those are my drills
well, not all of them of course. i’m pretty good at coming up with ideas, so it would be pretty difficult to list all of the drills i’ve practiced and taught, but these are some of the better ones. more importantly, these are some of the most illustrative of the incremental increase idea, which is actually the whole point of this article.
so go ahead and steal my ideas and drills - i’ll come up with others and still manage not to get my ass totally handed to me in tournaments, though i’ll probably still never be a “champ”. i’ll just be slowly and steadily getting just a little better year after year, watching others flash up and fizzle out all around me…
a note on partnering for drills
the vast majority of the above drills require moving with a partner, and since we are practicing for jissen, this is certainly to be expected. when doing such drills, it is difficult to understate the importance of working with a wide variety of partners. though this is common sense, not doing it is also a common mistake. i’m reminding you here of something you should already know, because i know how easy it is to forget.
it’s of course always a good idea to try and get as much practice as possible doing jissen drills against partners who are more skilled than yourself. this gives you challenge and access to good advice. however, don’t forget that, in tournaments or in a self-defense kind of situation, you may not always be facing off against a skilled fighter. this point became painfully obvious to me in the recent kanagawa meet when i lost to a mediocre player.
everyone kept telling me how surprised they were that he beat me. they told me how good my attacks were and how “lucky” he was that the judges seemed to be “seeing” his techniques more than they saw mine. that’s all fine and good, but the fact is that i lost, and even during the match, i felt confused and frustrated, despite knowing that i should have had no problem beating my opponent.
in fact, i was pretty confident before the match, because i had seen this guy fight several times, and i knew that i am easily better than he is at taido. so what was the problem? i never practice sparring with anyone who isn’t pretty damn good. when i spar less-experienced students, i’m usually trying to help them improve their skills in a practice environment - not beat them. my four or five “real jissen” practices a month are against the three guys in my dojo who are as good or better than i am at jissen - chiba, oe, and daikuhara. now i see that i’ve been setting myself up to lose to less-skilled players.
of course, i would also have thought that, if i can beat daikuhara, i should be able to beat the guy who lost to him in the next round. not so. people on different levels of the skill-experience continuums fight very differently. i’ve only been practicing with guys who have excellent distance and are good at changing directions in combinations. the guy i lost to in kanagawa isn’t at that level. when i would attack in one direction, instead of flowing out of the way, he would suck air and root the the ground. i was getting jammed by a wimp.
which isn’t to say that jamming isn’t a viable strategy. guys like chris healy make it an art form, but they do it intentionally. even chiba has started doing it recently, after seeing chris and i push everyone around all year. when i jam someone’s attack, i’m thinking of how to use it to my advantage. the guy i fought at the kanagawa meet was just bracing. anyway, lesson learned: i need to practice against people who haven’t built up the taido-instincts of changing level, axis, and orientation on the fly.
so take this anecdote as a reminder that you, too, need to practice playing against partners who are better and worse than you are at any particular skill. keep in mind that everyone is good at some things and not-so-good at other things. try every partner you can for every drill you work. and don’t just base your choices on skill levels; there is a lot to learn from practicing with people who are bigger, smaller, faster, slower, nicer, meaner, etc than you are. also practice against both men and women, as they have very different styles of doing jissen for the most part.
bottom line: practice is specific, but life is unpredictable. working a variety of drills with a variety of partners is the best way to adequately prepare yourself for the possibilities you may face.
be specific
the key with all of this is to troubleshoot your own skills accurately, and then design drills that will address your weaknesses. remember the specific adaptation to imposed demands principle, and make your drill conditions as close to the performance conditions as is possible. if you do both of these two things, you will find that kobo creation can be an incredibly powerful means of customizing your personal development of jissen skills.
if you are hoping to practice self-defence scenarios, your drill choices and progression will look quite a bit different than the above. the same thing goes for developing a grappling game. even limiting the discussion to jissen, there are many possible strategies we may choose to adopt that may require a lot of “remedial” work in order to instinctualize the responses we hope to groove. using the drills above as examples, there should be no problem coming up with progressions that fit your own specific needs.
and hey! guess what - you can even apply the “see, think, try, practice, think, apply” practice heuristic to each of these drills. isn’t that exciting? well, maybe not exciting, but it should be interesting to anyone who is trying to figure out better ways to teach jissen.
and so anyway, if you’ve read this long article, you should have at least learned one or two practice methods you haven’t thought of before. even if you totally disagree with my logic (or my humor), try these drills out and take from them whatever you can. good luck.
i would also love to hear about any drills you create or ideas you have. so please, enjoy and feel free to comment below.
Content of this page created by Andy Fossett exclusively for Taido/Blog.Tags: methods
i think this is way too much. drills are very important, and slow movement sparring can be eye-opening, but it looks like by your method you would never get to the actual sparring. i think people’s time could be better spent actually sparring. Drills should be general in my opinion. A prime example would be focus mit training in boxing. Here are your weapons, ok, lets go through some combo’s. Ok, go apply them. Or, for jissen: Here is a simple setup to make someone chase you, ok go try it. People are creative, give them some basic ideas, solid techniques, and make them try it out. They will come up with their own style and ideas. Allthe ineffective martial arts in the world all have one thing in common. They work off FAITH. “My teacher says this will work, and he says that he is a bad ass, and my friend says he saw teacher do some crazy shit.” They drill compliantly, they at best point spar, they talk theory, and they say they are too deadly to actually use their techniques. Problem is they never test all their nice conceptions of how fighting should be. Now, I know that i’m off-topic but its going to connect here shortly. You talked about getting beaten by a lower level guy because he acted differently from what you expected and were used to. Hey, that is what taido is supposed to do to other martial arts. The problem I see is that a lot of taido people i’ve met from around the world look at jissen as a game. Fine, i understand and agree with the friendly nature of it. However, i see it as a place to evolve and experiment with your taido-specidic fighting. When people get too attached to jissen, and try to become the best at jissen the lose the benefits of it. As you stated, their are heavy limitations in jissen, which i whole heartedly agree with. I’ll stick with boxing as an example (not because i like it, actually i quite hate many things about it, but let’s move on). Boxing has lots of rules too. But, as a result of these rules, lots of great techniques have been created because there are not as many things a fighter has to worry about (that is, you need only worry about developing your hand techniques, and need only worry about defending against hand techniques). Now, many of these techniques have been seen and integrated by other arts. So, yes, heavy rule sets can be beneficial. But, you must keep in mind the broader picture. People get focused on jissen and forget that there are a lot of things in a real fight that are missing from it. As a result, they lose the benefits that are gained by taido-style fighting. What happens is exactly what happened to you, but amplified 10 fold. People who have only fought other taido people are mistified by a kyokushinka or boxer or judoka or brazilian ju-jitsu practitioner’s way of fighting. The more i fight, the more i realize how right Uchida sensei has been. Here in the US (i dont know about other places) training starts with basic punches and kicks(nothing uniquely taido really). Its a base from which taido grows out of. The same is true for taido fighting. The base should be simple fighting more inline with the way most people fight. That means hands up closer range, lots of punching(especially to the head), a few maegeri’s and mawashigeri’s tosed in, basic takedowns, basic ground striking and position holding. Once they can grasp this basic style of fighting, you add in taido foot work and the most basic taido techniques. My favorites are untai no tsuki/keritsuki, and sentai no tsuki/maegeri/kaijogeri. Have them work with this. Let them attack the head and legs (oh, this is you getting hit by the way, not with one another yet). Once they can stay out of punching range and deliver basic taido techniques in conjunction with standard fighting tactics decently well, then you start jissen. Now they have a concept of what they are developing techniques for. They definitely dont need to go into an “anything goes” situation throwing shajo-geri without first developing a since of speed and timing inside of jissen. Anyways, what occurs, is as a taido practitioner you are comfortable with whomever you are fighting, but they are mistified by how you fight. So, in trying to make a descent arguement out of this jumble of words i give this progressive training method:
-drill basic techniques
-make people apply them in sparring against another person who is also trying to hurt them
-drill footwork and basic taido techniques
-make people apply them against people not using any taido
-make people do jissen
-make people apply techniques from jissen against non-taido fighter
-give advice on the transfer of techniques between jissen and fighting
-rinse and repeat (everyone must be a taido and non-taido fighter regularly)
im leaving for japan may 17th, i’ll be in fukuoka for a month, then im in tokyo until july 5th. coming back just in time for summer camp.
corey:
as always, thanks for the insightful comments. however, i would like to point out that, if you read the beginning and ending sections of this article again, you’ll see that i’m not advocating a specific drill process for learning jissen. the drills presented here are examples of progressive sets, portions of which could be used to troubleshoot and correct weaknesses in students’ jissen skill sets. phrased another way, this is a protocol - not a curriculum.
“i think this is way too much.” well, it would be if you were supposed to do all of it as written.
specifically, i wrote “remember that this article is not about a process for learning jissen. it’s an example of how to build drills around your current weaknesses”. in other words, these drills are not prescriptive. i know the ordering and the “having done the preceding, we can now move on to…” business makes it seem that way, but i couldn’t think of a better narrative device to convey the importance of using a progressive drill series (as opposed to a single drill).
one liability one has when writing lists of practice ideas is that readers will tend to “collect” the techniques and exercises while ignoring the macro-methodology that describes their application. martial artists are notorious technique collectors, just as gym rats are notorious for collecting exercise methodologies. we see this all too often in the arm-chair trainers who never seem to add weight to the bar, as well as in the too-deadly “masters” you mention. this article isn’t about drills; it’s about using them better.
of course, doing jissen is the best way to learn jissen. this is correct, but the best way to get better at jissen isn’t necessarily to simply do more jissen. it can be immensely helpful to periodically take a step back and design a drill series that takes us, in baby steps, back up to, and then beyond, our current level. in such a manner, we can correct problems that we may even have difficulty in diagnosing.
when a person is fatigued and feels ill, we don’t tell them to work harder. we say “take it easy. rest a bit, and see if you can figure out what might make you feel better.” then we can try to determine whether the person has eaten something odd, been in emotional distress, had difficulty sleeping, or perhaps has a cold. stepping back allows us to troubleshoot, and only then can we decide the best method for helping that person become effective.
why do i have so many specific drills? to show that minute changes can be made to practice around weaknesses. i’m not saying that everyone should do all of them, or even that any one is requisite for any other. they can each be very useful to students at any level, but nobody will require all of them. my point is that, when a student seems to require one of these drills, that student could also benefit from some of the other drills that form whatever portion of the progression.
of course, if students can take a general drill suggestion, progress organically through variations, and increase sophistication without making conscious stepwise divisions, that’s great. that’s the way many of the best students learn anyway. but if we look deeper, we will see that there is an incremental progression inherent in the process. it may not be explicitly decided upon, but skill development passes through stages, and these stages cannot be skipped. the transitions are often so smooth that we don’t see them, but all transitions are progressive, not spontaneous, events. some students will seem to glide effortlessly to higher skill levels, while others will seem to grow in spurts. still, they will all pass through the same stages.
let’s make a personal example: when you started practicing at tech, bryan told me how surprised he was at your skills. he hadn’t seen you practice but a handful of times since you were maybe a green belt and and still couldn’t drive a car. of course, mitsuaki would not have been similarly surprised by your abilities, because he witnessed your simultaneous transitions from green belt to (then) shodan and from cute kid to athletic young man. nonetheless, both bryan and mitsuaki would agree that you did make such transitions. improvement in jissen skills works the same way (and if you use good training protocols, in much less time).
now, i also want to be certain that i don’t seem to suggest that kobo is the ultimate training method for jissen. it isn’t. too much practice of poorly designed kobo results in hypersuggestibility. it also takes away the “reality” of sparring. i share your concerns over viewing jissen too much as a game (though i do feel the word accurately describes most of the jissen i see lately). however, we can’t take it too far the opposite direction and confuse jissen with something that even remotely resembles a fight. i totally agree that attachment to jissen defeats the purpose of even practicing it.
this all begs the question of exactly how “real” we need jissen to be. lately, i’m tending to work under the assumption that quite many taido students look at their taido experience as sport play (recreation) with some benefits to their personal evolution and growth. of course, martial arts also draw plenty of folks who are attempting to secure the bottom few levels of malsow’s needs hierarchy. these are just two very broad hypothetical classes of students. of the two, only the second group craves “reality”. the first hypothetical group doesn’t care about fighting.
with regards to fight training, the everyone-knows-how-to-punch-and-kick method you describe is sound. building on those reflexes is much easier than attempting to reprogram them. gradually integrating taido techniques into this schoolyard framework (with a brief pit stop in kickboxing) will get students good at fighting and ok at jissen really quickly. with regards to taido, i worry that this method may leave them in a protracted mediocrity, unless there are some skillful interventions along the way. how much of a problem you perceive this to be depends on to of which of the two above-mentioned hypothetical groups you happen to belong.
of course, none of this is to say that a similar protocol couldn’t be used to train for fighting. so long as the implementation is corrective, and not prescriptive, the notion of building incremental drill progressions around existing strengths and weaknesses is sound. though, the specific drills used would look very different from those mentioned above - in particular, they would have to account for a vastly different set of rules (which would realistically have to be expanded to include social/legal rules as well - there is no such thing as “no rules”).
i think fight training can be very enlightening, but ultimately, i practice it for my own development, and in that respect, i also value the greater sophistication of jissen. in some ways, i almost wish i had been trained in the manner you suggest (i certainly prefer it to the japanese method). however, it’s easier to add something simple to a sophisticated framework than vice versa. so i’m ok with the years i spent sucking at jissen until i finally figured it out, because i now know that i can integrate some old-fashioned scrapping into that metasystem (having also confronted my own pain threshold and fear of conflict doesn’t hurt either).
i do have one issue with your “progressive training method”, and this is only a personal thing. you mention drilling basics. that’s a standard method that i happen to be against. i’m not going to go into much depth here (i’ll work on a full article explaining my ideas later), but i feel that kihon are outdated as a useful method of education (and this comes as much from my interest in pedagogy as it does my taido experience). i prefer the notion of improvised response from an intelligently designed platform to any curriculum based on a predetermined canon on techniques. it’s beyond the scope of this discussion, but in short, i feel that the martial arts (and taido, in particular) are in need of a paradigm shift away from any reliance on kihon.
that said, i really like this bit: “make people apply techniques from jissen against non-taido fighter” for the serious students, but don’t believe that this: “everyone must be a taido and non-taido fighter regularly” is feasible for most students. in either event, this: “give advice on the transfer of techniques between jissen and fighting” is a really important point all-too-often neglected by instructors. thanks for bringing it up.
my one objection (to kihon, not really to what you wrote) aside, your method is probably a good curriculum for learning to become a “taido fighter”. i do not disagree with that. just understand that the purpose of this article was to present a protocol for troubleshooting and correcting weaknesses in the game/sport of taido sparring. i don’t believe we are at odds so far as we recognize that distinction in purpose.
so, just for the sake of conclusion, i’ll emphasize once more that the protocol exemplified above is not intended to constitute a curriculum for learning to fight, or even to play jissen. it’s just a way to spot-fix problems as they arise.
“im leaving for japan may 17th, i’ll be in fukuoka for a month, then im in tokyo until july 5th. coming back just in time for summer camp.”
that’s awesome news, and soon! when you’re in tokyo, you’ll have to visit negishi and i in yokohama. on june 25th, you can come watch me “play” in the tokyo tama-area tournament too. i’ll mail you my “local” contact info. i’d love to make summer camp - maybe you can arrange to bring an extra-large suitcase we could fit me into…
ok, i have a better idea of what you were saying. Probably, there would have been less confusion had i read the whole article, but i got about 1/3 of the way in and gave up.
Drills for fixing, improving, and re-learning. I give that a thumbs up. As for people just beginning to do taido, well….
I await your article on kihon.
and i also think that after a short time of jissen or whatever sparring they do, they need to be thoroughly thrashed to keep their ego in check and make them understand the stresses involved in fighting.
How to deal with students who have different goals. Well, this to me is actually more a question of what am I willing to teach. Personally, I cannot conceive of teaching things that are not going to work, or be beneficial in the process of becoming working techniques. I’m slowly realizing that people are very trusting and gullible, and many would rather live in a fantasy world where flying 540 kicks work than in a world where fighting isn’t so pretty. That being the case, you can teach utter crap (and ask bryan about it at tech, its ridiculous the crap that is taught here), and pretend that it works and people will wholeheartedly buy into it. I’m also realizing that if you explain things logically, and support it with biomechanics, etc. people start thinging logically. So, for me personally, I can only teach techniques and tactics that will work. Some people don’t want that type of training. Fine, I don’t make anyone do something they don’t want to. Case in point, whenever we do drills that are inherently dangerous i allert people of the danger and ask if anyone wants to sit it out. Some people drop the class and go do wing-chun so they can pretend like they are a deadly chi-sao master. Hey, i dont want that kind of thinker poisoning my class anyways. Bottom line for me is that i rather have rational thinking students (whether or not they can kick ass) than a collection of people dancing around thinking that they are the end-all be-all of martial arts.
you only read about a third of it? yeah well, that would appear to have hindered your ability to adequately comprehend the point of the article before responding. ok, enough about that.
“Drills for fixing, improving, and re-learning. I give that a thumbs up. As for people just beginning to do taido, well…”
that’s really cool. i hope you can use some of these or similar drills with good results. fixing and improving are important because we have yet to create the perfect one-size-fits-most curriculum that will give students what they need without gaps or redundancy. of course, i’d love to hear any ideas that bring us closer to that goal. having taught as many students as i have, i’ve come to anticipate that i will make many mistakes with many students. as a result, i value corrective practices very highly.
yeah, i, too, await my article on kihon…
uh… there are better ways to keep egos in check than thrashing students. by making clear the limiting factors of practice that keep them safe (and periodically altering, or even temporarily removing, certain of them), we can convey to our students the differences between practice and “fighting”. with skillful instruction, we can prevent ego problems before they begin.
as taido instructors our expertise begins and ends with teaching our students how to perform taido. sort of. in any case, the highest level of stress arousal we should be addressing is going to be quite a bit lower than what would occur in an actual ill-intended physical altercation. if you wish to work at a higher level of stress, you should be doing so as a representative of a law-enforcement/personal-protection institution, possibly teaching a “self-defense” course. doing too much of that sort of thing in a “martial arts class” could be considered negligent.
i’m glad you want to teach things that work. taido is designed to be rational and practicable for combat (and other stuff). the general level of sophistication of taido’s techniques is more than simply “tricky” - it’s fucking genius. the better you understand it, the better it works. i guess i could say something about various kinds of tools here - like wrecking balls versus modern blasting techniques - as an analogy to how taido works in fighting. taido (like imploding a building) is much more complicated and difficult-to-learn than simple punching and kicking. it’s worth it.
you say that people are gullible. yes. we all are. too often we tend to make such statements about others without remembering how true they are of ourselves. i was going to call your response to my only-partially-read article ignorant until i remembered that i am exposing my own ignorance a little more thoroughly with each article i write.
ha. you don’t have to tell me about crap being taught at tech… i signed up for all but two of the martial arts classes at tech when i was a freshman. bryan and i were talking about starting a club, so i did my field research. ask bryan about the “kung-fu boy” who used to try and crowd the mats when we were having classes. yeah, there’s a lot of crap, and judging by the listings on the crc website, it’s only gotten worse. i can’t wait to meet the self-defense ninjas in person when i return.
i totally agree with what you say about explaining things rationally to students. this is what we’ve always tried to do at tech, and it’s a big part of our club, i think. by treating students as intelligent adults (rather than peons, inferiors, or retarded children) we can create a culture of rationality that shapes every aspect of our practice. this rational culture gives us a lot of strength to resist the factors that cause problems in lesser clubs. rationality is integral to my vision of future taido practice. it’s one of my excuses for creating this website.
i’m glad you give students the option to make choices for themselves. that’s important, because that’s the only way they can learn the reality of their choices. john okochi once told me that any practice he told me to do was useless - it would only help me improve if i told myself to do it. some students cannot accept the responsibility for their own development. you are correct in saying that we do not need such students.
however, it still seems as if you are creating a false dichotomy between your version of “taido fighting” and “things that don’t work”. taido (as described by its creator) is an art of systematic creativity that strives for harmonious coexistence. granted, many of the practices common in taido do not result directly in improved fighting ability. that’s ok because they don’t need too - there are other goals. things that don’t work for fighting may work for other things, such as improving health or teaching a thought process that may help us to avoid unnecessary fights.
it’s also true that many methods with high efficacy in fighting application are absent from taido practice (though taido is a complete meta-system capable of addressing any method). this is also ok, because taido was never intended to be limited to the sphere of personal combat. rather than worrying as you do about teaching things that don’t work (for fighting), my concern is teaching fighting tactics at the exclusion of things that will be everyday useful to students over the course of their lives.
for example: we breathe constantly, and though we also breathe while fighting, it would be silly to assume that combat-specific breath techniques are adequate or healthy for use while eating, driving, and dealing with our bosses at work. taido has methods for each of these and more. if we focus exclusively on breathing for energy accumulation and force delivery, we are going to end up with a lot of excess tension and inappropriate neuro-transmitting chemicals stored in our tissues, leading to disease (at least in the etymological sense) and premature aging.
there is more to taido than combat, and there is more to combat than taido. i want to reduce the truth of the second part of the preceding statement without reducing the truth of the first part. sound fair enough?
hey dude, my intention is not to cut out things that aren’t combat applicable from taido. Far from it. There was a good 4 years of my life that were very formative in that i was under huge stresses continually. (i wont go into much detail but it was mom had breast cancer, dad got sever staff infection that he was supposed to die from, dad got into severly bad biking accident) And had it not been for those other aspects of taido I know I wouldn’t have dealt with it as well or made as good decisions as I did. So I am definitely for the side aspects of taido. I am against those being more important than the basic elf-defense aspect. If they are for you, fine. Just don’t call it a martial art if you can’t defend yourself from another person. And understand self-defense goes beyong simple combat, it goes into proper diet, wearing your seatbelt, etc., etc. But, these are aspects of PSA’s as well. I’m saying once again, that you can not lose the fighting aspect and call it a martial art.
Then, why would I teach backflip or hangetsuate to someone I know is never going to be able to implement it? I geuss what I meant was that I refuse to teach untai-no-tsuki to someone who can’t even punch properly. By that rationale, i refuse to teach ebi-geri to someone who can’t punch well(and ebi-geri is my favorite technique). I refuse to teach you sentai kaijou if you can’t do mawashi geri. Personally, i agree with you on your analogy of just blowing a building up with a bunch of explosives, versus placing them intelligently. However, you still need the explosives. That is, I see taido’s movement into a technique/set-up to a technique as unique, intricate, and fucking genius. But the final piece is the same as most other martial arts. Example, untai____(insert technique) is only taido until just before the technique, then it’s just another punch or elbow or grip ( etc.,etc.). Another example, ebi geri is unique in its movement and final position, but the kick itself is essentially a back kick (i’m sure you can appreciate this, i’m saying the muscle groups firing and the order they are firing in and the basic geometry they are in are the same). So, I teach people the basic, make sure they can do it, then i teach them the more sophisticated.
As for thrashing students. Think of it as this, I make them understand their current limits. Let them work something, get pretty descent at it, but don’t let them think they are the hottest thing since sliced bread. It was done to me periodically throughout (and still) through my training. It was never violent, never unwanted, always humbling. So maybe your imagination of what i’m talking about is worse than reality. Its really just giving a student a peak at the next level or two up from where they are.
I will say though, that not giving your students a taste of real combat is just as negligent if not more so than over-doing it. False confidence, and imagined understanding of what a fight is like is very dangerous to develope in someone. Case in point: every tae kwon do student at tech. I’ll bet 100:1 you put any one of those people in against a similiarly sized aggressive frat boy and they are going to get hurt badly. And that’s not an arbitrary number, i thought about it.
As for gullibility, i tend not to just believe things that i’m told. And when it comes to fighting, i would say i am not gullible. I have tested my ideas about fighting in the past, and had them proven wrong. So, yes I could be gullible in the future too. However, i find that my emphasis on practicallity, testing, and retesting of fighting techniques/tactics and so on makes me very astute as to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to fighting.
once again my lack of time has constrained my ability to give you a coherent piece of literature. So, i will try to summarize.
-Yes, there are many things to taido. Don’t let the side issues corrupt the ability to fight.
-Make sure students understand fighting is not pretty or nice, do it at the correct pace for the student, the best way is to give them a taste of real fighting that they are ready for.
-Make sure you contantly test yourself outside of your comfort zone and test your ideas so that you don’t becomeabsorbed in minor tasks.(hey, the whole kitchen is dirty, don’t worry about arranging the spices in alphabetical order)
damn, you’re fast. ok, so here’s what i think:
well… good! i’m glad you don’t want to cut out the “side benefits”. of course, i would argue that self-defense ability is actually a side benefit of such things as mobility, awareness, creativity, and the others of taido’s five principles. i say that developing these five valued-attributes is the real goal of practice. being able to apply them to fighting and other things is the benefit. we all get to choose how we use our tools. i’ve also used taido concepts to become one hell of a badass bass player and a great lover. i value these abilities just as highly as my ability to receive and deliver impact.
i hear what you say about fighting being a vital component of martial arts. however, i feel that “martial art” is a terrible translation of budo, which, like all “do”, is a practice for reconciling your internal opponents - we could just as easily call it “yoga” since all these words are really getting at the same idea. fighting proves to be only a very small (though i agree, necessary) part of the greater overall work. you and i disagree on this point, and as you say, that’s fine, but for the record, i only use the phrase “martial art” because it is the standard, accepted idiom in american english. perhaps the alchemists’ “great work” is a better description of how i perceive taido’s utility.
and since you mention it, i can, in fact, defend myself. my last “physical encounter” was during my dark period (which i also won’t describe in detail), at which time i pissed off a date’s large and angry methed-up ex. about an hour after jumping me from behind in the bathroom, he paid my bar tab. i’d say i came out ahead (considering that i only drank tanq10 during that period…). the bloody stuff on similar nights before that wasn’t defense because i used to go looking for it.
since then, self defense means the PSA stuff you mentioned. i haven’t been sick since early 2003. i’m almost out of non-education debt. i manage not to get hit by all the terrible drivers over here. i negotiated through a recent town-merger with less work to do and more disposable income. i hope to keep things going this well. staying alive and healthy is a daily process, and training for it requires awareness and adaptability as much as it does intelligence or skill.
so now that i’ve defended against what seemed like the implication that i can’t, i’ll move on to more interesting matters.
learning to backflip offers many benefits to the student, whether they would use it in a fight or not (i won’t say i never would, because anything is possible, but i have really great flips, and i rarely even use them in jissen). backflips are one of the most fear-transcendent physical movements one can perform (and gainers push it even further). the fears of being upside-down, moving backward, falling, and of having little control over your relationship with gravity must be overcome to perform a backflip. it’s also a a wonderful demonstration of good biomechanical synergy making incredibly easy something that appears very difficult. i love teaching backflips to students. a student who can do backflips believes s/he can learn to do anything.
i like your point about taido techniques being unique primarily in their delivery of the same weapons as any other art. shukumine’s claim to uniqueness in taido was specifically in the strategic use of the unsoku and sotai to translate between the kamae and the strike. it can really make all the difference. it’s also liberating in that we can freely add more weapons to our existing delivery framework without requiring a theoretical upheaval (though taido actually does need one for different reasons).
a few years ago, a student at tech asked bryan why we broke the techniques into five categories; he thought it seemed arbitrary. i can’t remember the exact words he used, but bryan explained that the five sotai are simply different modes of transportation for the actual kicks or punches, which are just like any other punch or kick. of course, given the anatomical limits of human physiology, there are only so many potential bodily weapons. as eric clapton told us, “it’s in the way that you use it”. i’ll also be expanding on this in another article currently on the back burner.
i must say, i think that you and i are going about this whole thing from opposite ends. what you say about teaching a punch before an untai punch is responsible. that’s a solid way to do things. and yes, you still need the explosives, but if you set them correctly, you need quite a bit less explosives than it might first look like. lately, i haven’t been thinking of the punch so much. i’m focussing on the untai and letting whatever happens after that just happen. there are dozens of ways to punch, so i try not to worry so much about which one to choose until i get there.
and i think that’s also indicative of the approach to curriculum-building i hope to articulate in yet another future article. some background can be found here. if the student is the hardware platform, we will do well to build that platform to a minimum performance level before even installing the taido software. simpler software may run on a crappy machine, but taido demands certain levels of mobility. most machines can be upgraded to run taido successfully. when we do this installation, we should work from gross to subtle movements, and from micro to macro applications.
in my current concept, we would start with general physical preparedness (basic mobility, strength, and breathing skills), then specific physical preparedness (sen, un, hen, nen, ten, unsoku, unshin), then we can move on to sport-specific training (punches, kicks, throws, submissions), and finally mental training (kobo, jissen, fighting). this is only a very general gloss of a complex progression that also owes a lot to ken wilber’s AQAL model. the actual curriculum i hope to build works through several “spirals” of development simultaneously.
i recognize that this approach won’t meet anyone’s immediate self-defense needs, but i honestly don’t believe that’s a very big deal for most of industrialized society, certainly not for the segment of society that has the free time to spend on such hobbies as martial arts practice. this is just my opinion though, and defense contractors would rather you support the patriot act. we will all perceive what we believe to be out there waiting for us.
anyway, it’s not going to be easy for me to explain without a little more organizing and possibly a few graphics. i promise i’ll get on it, somewhere in my backlog of twenty-something half-finished articles and even more ideas in my notebooks.
and i’m glad your definition of thrashing isn’t what it initially sounded like (insert sound effect: “sigh of relief”). i agree with most of what you say about that, especially the tech tae kwon do club (all 100-or-so members). i’m also relieved to hear that you aren’t gullible when it comes to fighting. remaining so is a process - not a condition.
and in closing, i’ve always liked that thing about arranging the spices in a dirty kitchen. it’s pointless, yes. i prefer the idea of remodeling to create a neater workflow and furnishing with stainless and other easy-clean surfaces. remove the spices altogether and use flavorful ingredients from your own organic garden. be sure that whatever meal you prepare, you make it with love.
i do teach backflips and hangetsuate. It was an example of techniques with side benefits that are really important. Important enough to teach the technique, even if the person is never going to be able to use it in sparring, much less fighting.
i see the benefits you speak of in paragraph 1 of your latest post as coming from the training itself. Like you say, with proper teaching we can develope these things. So why not develope them in an atmosphere where they are also learning to apply their techniques.
as for martial art. yes, i think its a horrible translation. And, re-reading my posts I realize its mainly rant directed towards wushu people walking around like badasses, jiukido-jiujitsu people saying i shouldn’t head kick(literally 7 seconds later i knock out someone with a head kick), and so on and so forth. often i use a hypothetical “you”, applying to anybody. so don’t take it personally. apologies.
i dont understand this about your latest post though. You say you are more worried about the untai than the actual punch or kick. Then you go to say that we need to build a base before we go to more complex things. I agree, I contend the base is simple striking and grappling ability. That stuff is very simple compared to taido, but its also very important. Its great if you can set-up someone for a elbow using your unsoku, but if your elbow is weak then all that work to get there was wasted. Its like trying to demolish a building with perfectly placed firecrackers. Ain’t gonna happen. So develope some plastic explosives and then you dont have to use all of your power, but you aren’t limited by it.
finally, its not that i think terrorists are hiding behind every corner and rapists are waiting in yur closet. Its that i see what has happened to arts that put fighting on the back-burner, and its makes them crap. Show me an art today that doesn’t spar relistically yet its practitioners can fight. Show me an art today that puts emphasis on meditation or whatever other aspect yet still has a realistic grasp on fighting. If realistic sparring is not a part of the art it goes down hill. Come on, there are a million examples. Jujutsu and Judo, classic example. I dont want taido to be that way.
thanks for clearing up the first part. i’m glad you see the benefit of teaching advanced movements, even when students may not “use” them. teaching them with an “effective attitude” is part of taido - it’s just not always easy.
i think we both find ourselves saying “you” when we really mean “some people out there whom i have seen”. now i understand what you were saying.
returning to the untai analogy… i see the movement as the base and the strike as the more sophisitcated portion. the reason is that the movement initiates from an internal event. the motion spreads outwards from the body. the strike occurs farthest from the center and contacts a target. i view techniques as occuring from the center, radiating outward to the target, so i think to worry about the weapon before the movement puts the cart before the horse. i’ll try to expand on this some other time.
i agree that arts that down play the importance of combat practice are doing a lot of crap now. but you only have to look the other direction to see scared military-looking guys in weightlifter pants teaching people how to be “street-tough” and sucking just as badly in a different way. i want to avoid both traps. so while i applaud your desire to keep things realistic, i don’t like the thought of developing fight-myopia.
it’s just a matter of which one bugs you the most i guess.
“returning to the untai analogy… i see the movement as the base and the strike as the more sophisitcated portion. the reason is that the movement initiates from an internal event. the motion spreads outwards from the body. the strike occurs farthest from the center and contacts a target. i view techniques as occuring from the center, radiating outward to the target, so i think to worry about the weapon before the movement puts the cart before the horse. i’ll try to expand on this some other time.”
look, i think we are talking past one another here. At least…i hope so. I am not saying punching is simple, I know how complex a punch is, how hard it is to get really good at a punch. But, in the order of difficulty a jab or a cross or any punch is going to be simplier than untai movement plus that punch. The movement is the unique part to taido. You don’t find untai or sentai movement taught elsewhere(although its starting to pop up in mma interestingly enough). But the movement is just a way to set up a punch (or whatever strike we are talking about). The untai movement was a waste if your punch doesn’t do any damage. However, a good punch without the untai movement is still going to cause damage. This is why you learn how to punch or elbow or knee or kick by itself, in its simpliest form to develope a solid technique. Then you add in extra stuff to help you get your punch to land. Whether it be footwork and combo’s in boxing or untai and sentai in taido, its all the same. Different tactics to get the same punch to land. That is unless you are doing silly wing chun type chain punching, in which case you are working off silly tactics to try to land silly “punches”.
ah, corey. you’re calling me out on some things i wasn’t planning on writing about yet, but i’ll try to give a digestible preview here without totally blowing my conceptual wad. if some of this doesn’t quite connect in its current form, all i can really say is “wait”. i’ll get to conveying this better a little later on.
“look, i think we are talking past one another here.” i disagree. at least, i know that i’m writing this directly at you. if it’s going past you, i can only assume that to be a consequence of some preconception you have.
you say that a punch is simpler than untaizuki, and you are correct. however, you neglect that the actual ascent/descent of the hips is a far simpler thing than even the most basic punch. you say untai is a waste if the punch is ineffective, and you are correct (in an isolated system - in other words, only if you stop there). however, you neglect that the punch is also a waste if the movement that precedes it is ineffective.
if the untai (or other sotai/movement) sucks, the punch will have no base. the movement is a mechanical precondition for the strike. the delivery and the weapon are not like legos; they are fused together like a chemical bond, and both are altered in the integration. the strike works specifically because of the motion that makes it happen. this no chicken/egg argument; one must precede the other.
i’m suggesting that our practice emphasis should follow the naturally occurring order of movement before weapon. practicing static punches teaches you how to do static punches. you can see this clearly when you teach untaizuki to students who have good punches from fudodachi. their punches fall apart, and they have to learn them again form the new movement (as opposed to the prior position). i’m saying “save yourself a step and teach movement first”. then, all your weapons will have a base for effectiveness.
notice that nowhere am i saying we shouldn’t teach punches.
movement is foundational to technique. sen, un, hen, nen, and ten are simply body movements. they require no more “technique” to perform than walking. we can create techniques around the movements that allow us to deploy certain weapons (which are also techniques in themselves), but only if we have the movement base to do so.
“This is why you learn how to punch or elbow or knee or kick by itself, in its simplest form to develope a solid technique. Then you add in the extra stuff to help you get your punch to land. Whether it be footwork and combo’s in boxing or untai and sentai in taido, it’s all the same. Different tactics to get the same punch to land.”
the above is simply incorrect. i can’t say it any more nicely than that.
an unzuki and a senzuki are most certainly NOT the same punch. some people perform them the same, but these people have shitty punches in both techniques. punches and kicks are like different shells you can load into an untai shotgun. the shell is useless without the gun and many factors about the gun will affect the way the shell fires. put the same type of shell in a sentai gun, and you will see a different spray pattern on the target. the “extra stuff” you mention initiates - creates - the weapon.
unless you view the human body as an erector set, you have to see that each part of our physiology effects and is effected by every other part. thus, thinking in terms of parts is silly. we have to be holistic. a quarterback with a sprained ankle cannot throw well. by the same token, a “solid technique” that is disconnected from its base will fold like a wet towel. understanding how biotensegrity works allows us to craft more effective techniques from movement to weapon deployment - from the inside, outward.
by placing your premium on the strike, you set up a fixation. not good. we need to be adaptable. you can’t adapt a punch that you’ve drilled a thousand times, but you can easily change movements you’ve developed. how do you change a movement? keep moving. how do you change a punch? you have to start over and try again.
i’ll give you a real example from jissen: i notice where the guy is and how he’s moving; based on that information, i choose to approach with sentai; as i spin, i watch his reaction and position and see that he’s too far to punch or grab; so i begin to bring my rear leg around for a kick, which he notices and begins to jump; still watching, i adjust and kick with the other leg. unsoku, sotai, seiho, kimegi. the movement creates the technique.
in this example, the connecting kick resembles hangetsuate. a really good hangetsuate, but the funny thing is this: my hangetsuate sucks. my hangetsu form sucks, but lately, i am hitting everyone with it. why? because i have stopped thinking about the the punches and kicks. i simply move. above, i started in sentai, transitioned to hentai, and finally scored with nengi. my thought process was simple: “he’s there, so i want to be here”, but the external result was a complex combination that my opponent did not expect.
thinking in terms of movement is not what you are used to, so i can see why you resist it. it’s not the way we taught you. i was a contributor in the design of the current teaching methods employed in american taido, and here’s a flash: these methods were originally chosen for teaching children. we started using them for adults when mitsuaki and brendan (who originally only taught children) grew up and started teaching adults. i used to teach adults differently, but some of them would get confused when their taido didn’t look the same as their kids’ taido.
when teaching kids, we always broke everything down to components so it would be easier for them to understand the form: “start with the basics and build to harder techniques”. then we would home in on details as they progressed. the problem is that we have all these techniques, and the student has to learn each one from scratch. kids are good at this, but it takes a long time for adults (though it’s still faster than the methods by which i was taught).
the technique fixation is not helping us be creative and adaptable in our taido. to move beyond this obstacle, i suggest that we focus on the movements rather than the individual techniques and strikes. work form general to specific concept, gross to fine movement, and internal to external focus.
if we take the things that all techniques have in common (the sotai) and practice that, then we are actually practicing all of our techniques at one time. then it’s an easy transition to change details like the choice of weapon. it goes without saying that foundation comes first. what i’m doing is simply redefining what constitutes foundation.
this is an idea that many people will find uncomfortable and counterintuitive, but it’s the only way to teach the values in the 5jokun, which is what actually defines taido. if we can teach students the right values, they will never have difficulty discovering the correct technique for their specific applications. this way, in addition to simply showing them how we fish (to pervert a popular analogy), we will be giving them the basic principles of ecology and food cultivation. then they can find suitable nourishment in any environment.
anyway, as i said above, i’m aware that this explanation isn’t totally satisfying, but i trust you are clever enough to look past the surface strangeness and see the principles for what they are: useful. if not, then perhaps the series of articles i’m planning on technique will clear things up. however, i also still have (i think) two more kobo articles in the works before i get to that point. be patient, and i promise to construct a cohesive argument around these ideas soon.
i’m going to wait as you ask to respong fully. however, ill give you this to chew on as you make your articles.
I look to develope the understanding and then natural ability to create power in techniques. i do this through the most basic version of techniques. The punch at the end of untai no tsuki is a combination of the drop-step punch and a lead straight. DUH, sentai is not the same punch. Come on, you think more of me than that, right? What i mean is the the ways to make power in punches already exist in basic boxing ability. yes, there are differences leading up to the punch, but as you have stated, there are only so many ways to move.
anyways, illl wait.
“Come on, you think more of me than that, right?”
well, yeah. otherwise i would just delete your comments and continue trying to sound important in the absence of any contrasting opinions/methods. knowing that you teach at my club gives me more motivation to respond as fully and convincingly as possible. i’m confident that you’ll all be able to feel the “magic” upon my return later this year, but in the meantime, i like knowing that you’re thinking about this stuff.
of course, you know that senzuki and unzuki are different, but i think the difference goes deeper than the “duh”-level. i think a reconceptualization of movement, “technique”, and method in taido can give us some sturdy levers for shifting these heavy ideas around in more useful ways.
and on that note, i’ll also wait before saying anything more on the subject. your comments here will certainly shape the development of my next(?) series of articles as they have helped me get a better look at how i’ll have to go about explaining ideas.