Force Efficiency Drill

This past week I was working in our Oyata Te class (Shihan Dai) with intermediate and advanced principles of Tuite.  During this session we were all discussing the direction the chest faces in relation to the Principle of ‘X’.  This is what we refer to as Force Efficiency and is the sixth basic principle of tuite.  As we discussed how different stances point your chest in a different direction, Becky (one of my higher ranking long term students) recommended when we do our begging warm up drills in class, instead of calling out ‘Right Back Stance’, ‘Left Forward Stance’ and other combinations, I should call out a direction that I want their chest to point to.  BRILLIANT!!!  This is what I love about Oyata Te, everyone throwing out ideas and training together and Becky comes up with one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve heard in a while.  So here is the drill as it is evolving in my head since the brilliant spark of inspiration by Becky.

   

Above are just a few examples of stances and the direction of the chest.  The left one is basically what we call a Left Back Stance or Left Cat Stance position.  You see that, if the top is considered North, then the chest is aimed at North West.  In the middle you have a Ready Position but you could say other stances have this North position such as Attention, Natural Stance, Forward Stance (Seisan) and Horse Stance.  The three above are obviously not all the stances represented and obviously you can reorient any stance to face any direction.

Phase One - Orientation

Armed with this knowledge, it is time to make your students (and maybe even yourself) a little more aware of how to apply their Force Efficiency.  As an example, have all the students’ line up and for the geographically challenged, point toward the North wall.  Or you could just for the exercise name the front of the dojo as North.  Most people are rarely aware of the compass directions once inside a building so it doesn’t really matter.  Now, instead of calling out stances for them to practice their foundational drills, call out directions and explain that when you call North they must pick a stance and have them settle into any stance with their chest square to North.  As a group they may be tempted to mimic each other as typically, instructors call out a stance and everyone does the same thing in formation.  In this Force Efficiency training, every student could be slightly different, as long as all of their chests face the same direction.  Explain this and stress to them that different is fine.  You are trying to make them more aware of their chest direction.  It doesn’t matter if their neighbor is in a different stance.  No cheating off your neighbor. J  Don’t worry about hands.  You might even have them close their eyes then open after they are aligned.  That way they are not tempted to follow their peers.

Phase Two – Hands and Feet

Now that they have the idea down, start everything from the Natural Stance.  We train most of our starting conflict scenarios as starting from a Natural Stance.  The thought is that most confrontations that the average person will find themselves in doesn’t start off like a tournament bout in fighting stances, but that is a discussion for another blog (or just read four or five of Tony’s).  Everyone starts in Natural Stance facing the front of the room.  Pick a technique you are going to practice such as Upper Forearm Strike (Upper Block for those outside our school).  Tell everyone that is the technique and that they will execute the technique while moving into a stance that points their chest to the correct direction you call.  So instead of counting out Ichi, Ni, San, Shi…… I will be calling out directions.  After each call, I will review everyone’s chest position and make any corrections, then state ‘Return’, then they will return to the Natural Stance to simulate the next attack.  There is no ‘wrong answer’ of a stance as long as their chest is pointing to the correct heading.  Well, crane stance might be a wrong answer as it is really only practiced for balance. J

A little background about how ‘maybe’ we have differed for a while than most Karate type schools.  We used to do the standard hand techniques in formation like everyone else.  Everyone standing in a horse stance and doing strikes, punches, blocks and such in horse stance but one day Tony and I discussed how this deep horse stance was rarely ever a stance that you struck from, or at least not in the manner we were doing it.  So we started having the students do it only in formation until they tested for 9th Kyu.  The idea was, they learned early the deep stance and built up a little leg stamina.  Once they reached 9th Kyu, we then moved them to a natural stance, and the instructor would call out what stance we would be moving to such as a Right Back Stance.  They then would pivot back at a 45 degree angle and execute whatever hand technique or even kick we called, pause for a 2 count, then return to Natural Stance.  We’ve done that for quite a while and think it has worked quite well and is more realistic.  It has made our students a little more practiced and relaxed during combination and tuite practice.  Taika would always say, don’t waste your practice time.  So here we are not just making the students do hands only in a deep stance, they are learning from 9th Kyu on to move their body when they move their hands.

Phase Three – Conservation of Motion

At this point, they are hopefully heading in the correct direction but is it an efficient transfer of stances?  What I mean by that is, I can start in a Natural Stance facing North and get the call for North East.  What is the most efficient stance to get me to North East?  I could do my best ballerina impersonation and pirouette 270 degrees to North East or I could just drop my Right Foot back to a Right Back stance and poof, my chest is aligned.  At this point, start to look for not only correct Force Efficiency but also look for time and energy efficiency.  Conservation of Motion.    

Phase Four – Daily Integration

Now let’s start putting my blogs together. J  I’ve spoken about ‘finding time’ to train before.  Whether you are standing on an elevator or standing in the kitchen, finding time to train when you have work, honey does and just ‘me time’ to worry about is sometimes difficult.  Today, I was playing with this while putting the dishes away.  Yes, I know I’m obsessed and probably a tad bit on the crazy side, but as I put dishes away I was going to every corner of the kitchen….every drawer….every cabinet.  Each time I went to a different location, I tried to use a different stance to square my chest to that object.  After doing about every combination of that, I began trying to offset my chest at a particular angle.  So the first few times I faced the cutlery drawer I had my chest dead parallel to the face of the drawer.  Then I began turning my chest at a 45 degree angle to the face of the drawer as if using the Principle of ‘X’.  Yes I know, I’m crazy.  I won’t even tell you about the exercises I was doing to strengthen my calves while doing this…

To sum up, I see great potential in this exercise and am so proud of the spark from Becky.  You never know where inspiration is going to come from.  I truly believe that this has great potential to prepare my students and myself to better apply the Principles of Tuite and Kyusho.