Off the Couch

After a class this past Saturday, I sat talking with a yudansha peer who trains with us.  We were talking about all sorts of topics as we typically do after class and I was talking about my practice regimen during my first 6 years, 9 months of Ryukyu Kempo/RyuTe® Ren Mei.  I was saying that I didn’t consider myself naturally adept or anything, but I did train exceedingly.  As the quiet, shy and single guy I was, I spent my free time training.  I didn’t go out to bars much, and facebook wasn’t created yet.  Al Gore certainly hadn’t spent much time in developing his internet tubes yet.  So what was a growing boy to do?

Now it occurred to me during this discussion that my diligence has slacked over the last couple of years.  I would say that a lot of it has to do with grieving.  In addition to Taika, I lost eight other friends and family members during the evil year of 2012.  But some of it is just me juggling so many other things that are not that important.  Some things are, of course (family) but there is fat that I can trim.

So for my students’ enjoyment, here is what I did back in the day (knowing well that most of you are not the single shy geeks I used to be). 

After learning all my techniques for my next test, I would make a spreadsheet in the now defunct First Choice DOS program.  (Ouch, dated myself a bit).  I would then go down to the basement, where I had 50 pennies in a jar.  I would then dump them out and work on individual things, putting the pennies back in the jar after one repetition, sometimes in multiples.  So I’d do 10 outside blocks and use 1 penny and 1 penny for each time I did Naihanchi Shodan or Exercise 1.  I kept a log book and put the dates on the top and worked hard and making sure I did X amount of reps between classes.  Classes were only Tuesday and Thursday at my first Ryukyu Kempo school. 

	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
9th Kyu
Naihanchi Shodan
Exercise 1
Outside Block
Inside Block
Upper Block
Down Block
Double Block
Front Kick
Front Snap Kick
Straight Kick

There really wasn’t anything too magical about this approach, but what it was for me was a motivator.  If there was an empty box on any day (that I wasn’t running a 100+ fever) then I felt ashamed.  You can pretty much blame this tenacity and ‘work ethic’ on my dad who drilled this kind of thing into my head as a child.

As new ranks were reached, I didn’t just make a new sheet with the new requirements, throwing the old one away.  I added them to the list.  I’d break them into categories so I’d have all the kata together, exercises together, hand techniques then leg techniques.  As my list of items grew, it became harder and harder to squeeze in the time.  I’d focus on high reps for the new stuff but still make sure I got some reps in on the older items.  Then came the weapons.  After the first Summer Camp at Tall Oaks I added a weapon, then another here and there.  The list grew. 

This tactic along with other training tools went well on into my early yudansha years.  Then I got sidetracked.  I got married (instant 4 kids).  Got divorced.  Began teaching.  Life got complicated.  I lost track of my list.  I also, have found it difficult to keep up to date on my weapons kata over the years because of my lack of diligence.  I have at least 21 weapons forms that I should know, and a few of them are ‘spotty’.  You know what spotty is, when you start doing the kata and it isn’t second nature.  You stop and go, UH. 

Another tactic I used frequently was when I got home from class, repeating my lessons (kata) just before going to bed.  Then when the alarm went off (setting it for just a mere 5 minutes earlier than normal) I would do that new kata or other item at least once.  To SET the knowledge in my head.

Still more crazy thoughts were previously covered in an earlier blog:

http://tuite-kyusho.blogspot.com/2012/06/subtle-art-of-practice.html

So I find myself once again, typing up a list like I started more than a quarter century ago.  Time to get my mind back in gear, stop grieving, and carry the torch.  Please carry it with me.

Time Machine Not Needed

A Quarter of a Century.  That is a long time for most of us.  For Taika it was just a small portion of his training time.  As we approach the 2 year mark of Taika's death, I hear more and more people talking about returning to the old ways.  There are varying definitions I hear of 'old ways' and I'm not quite sure why people are heading down this path.  I know, some things are 'comfortable' as you grew proficient in them years ago.  I believe that is one reason many people quit Taika's art over the years.  It never got easy because Taika kept evolving. Some things Taika disposed of as he got older were Bogu Kumite and Makiwara.  I've ranted, er blogged, about these in the past so I won't re-rant on those.  I will address other things Taika got away from.  High kicks.  He never, in the last fifteen or more years kicked above his belt and didn't allow us to do so in class.  He felt that the highest point you should be kicking is the hip.  Yes, your opponent may be a lot taller than you, but in that case you should be kicking just above his knee on the inside (Femoral Nerve), the outside (Common Peroneal Nerve), the tendon just below the knee, or the calf (Tibial Nerve).  There are other targets below the waist he commonly struck but never above with the foot and he didn't let us.  He also began taking these out of the kata.  I know his kicks were high back when he was on Okinawa and when he first came here but keep in mind he was teaching mainly Bogu crazed G.I.'s.  The popular part of the art on the island for the servicemen as well as those in the states was the tournament fighting, which had rules about kicking below the belt.  AND remember, that was the 1950's to 1960's.  That is TWO decades or more.  That was not where Taika left his art.  Towards the very end of Kusanku is a spot where many styles, and even us 25 or more years ago, did a double jump kick.  Taika would say, in recent years, "This stupid training!"  In the years before his death he would have us slide the back leg up to meet the front leg, then kick with the right.  He said, this back leg was a hidden step.  It had much better real world value than trying to jump up high in the air.  I for one, will not be returning to the world of nostalgia and jumping up high in the air to kick someone at head height.  Taika always said he would kick a person in the head, only after dropping them to the ground with another technique.  These high kicks he considered stupid and dangerous to the kicker. Videos:  Taika's first known film was a 1968 video filmed during his very short Kansas visit.  A 16mm camera filmed him going through the 12 basic kata and a version of what most of us call Exercise 1.  The last production series of videos was the 14 tape series known as Classic Okinawan Arts, filmed between 1990-1991.  These tapes are now 23 or more years old.  THAT IS THE QUARTER CENTURY I SPEAK OF.  Prior to Tasshi Jim Logue's death, Jim   attempted to get Taika's permission to release the 1968 video on DVD.  Taika didn't want this released while he was alive.  He felt that the 42 year old video was NOT something he wanted people emulating.  Further, he didn't want the then 23 year old Classic Okinawan Arts videos digitized and sold.  Many things had changed in the basic kata forms shown in these videos, and the 'advanced' kata in these videos were nothing like what he was showing as 'timing'.  He did not want people using these videos as his standard as he had evolved past these.  His fear was that people would de-evolve.  His art, unlike many others, was constantly changing.  He constantly evolved and got better.  Though the 23 year old videos and the 45 year old videos are wonderful historical snapshots in time, they are NOT what Taika left us with. A small smattering of things in these videos Taika no longer believed in; ·       Stances o   Horse Stance §  Heels are out, unlike in any of these videos. §  Not as wide now as it was then.  o   Forward Stance §  Heels are out now, unlike in any of the videos. §  Back leg was almost straight, now more flex o   Crossover - The crossover of the feet was with ankle high, now with ankle almost flat on the ground. ·       Head Position o   In Naihanchi Kata, for example, the head turns used to be as far left or right   as possible.  Now, they are just a 1/2-1" in either direction.  Just enough to pick up the extra peripheral view. ·       Chambered Hand o   The hand chambered before a punch does not come completely to your side because it makes the shoulder tight and moves the fist more into the opponent's visual range. ·       Kicks o   No high kicks That was just a few things off the top of my head.  Taika moved on, shouldn't we? When I hear people say things like, "We've got to return to this" or "We need to standardize that" I get nervous.  Taika was always moving forward.  We should not be returning back.  Though the thousands of videos out there are great historical references, we must not go backwards in our training.  We must continue to move forward.  Taika would not want us to go back in time nor stagnate in this one.  If I want to go back in time, I can go back to those that left the association 10, 20, 30 years ago and train with them.  That's not what he wanted.  That's not what I want.  Move along, and stop the stupid training, as Taika would say.

Rank

Rank
[rangk] 
adjective, rank·er, rank·est.
1. having an offensively strong smell or taste: a rank cigar.
2. offensively strong, as a smell or taste.

This is not the rank you're looking for......or is it.  Ok, probably not what you were expecting when you saw the topic heading of RANK on a Life Protection related blog.  This is a homonym for what you were probably thinking, but I believe, the two identically spelled and sounding words are linked when it comes to Life Protection.  I'm going to sound like Yoda here, but rank leads to ego, ego leads to jealousy, and the only important thing left is that no paths from there are good.

One of the things I admired about Taika in the 80's, when he left Ryukyu Kempo behind and forged ahead with his new art, RyuTe® Ren Mei, was that of the belts.  Previously in the style, he'd had the standard kyu rank belts which are a help to large dojo when trying to remember who is supposed to know what techniques.  But at the time he also also had a set of colored belts for yudansha (black belts).  They started out black with various thicknesses of silver stripes, then gold stripes, then the belts turned red with gold stripes.  Taika grew to believe that these belts led to people strutting around at seminars saying, 'Look at me!  I'm more important than you.'  Ego, my theme for the day.  So when he started making his Okinawan hakama, the colored belts went away and then when he made his official RyuTe® uniforms, all black belts wore an integrated belt the same color as the uniform.  The uniforms were white half the year and black the other half.  Tasshi Logue used to joke that he was only a black belt half the year, the other half, white.  I truly believe this was a wonderful first step to get rid of or at least minimize ego.  Also, around this time he began treating everyone as equals.  If you were a true beginner student or a long time black belt, he treated you as equals at a seminar.  This is why he banished these colored belts, and why I find it so interesting that all the banished people have chosen to take up their egos, woops, I mean colored belts, and don them once again. 

When I stated belt removal was a 'First Step' earlier, you may be wondering what would of been the next step.  In my opinion, rank and title deletion would be next. 

By that, I mean that once you get your black belt, you are just a yudansha from then on out.  You don't get a first, second, third, fourth degree black belt.  To maintain your status in an organization you participate.  No participation, no certified status.  This is how most American professions handle things, with continuing education credits.  School teachers, Police Officers, Attorney's and many other professionals have to get continuing credit and participate or they are no longer able to sell themselves in that industry.  So many people spend their time chasing the next belt that they lose site of the real goals; To continually grow, get better, and research with their peers.  Why didn't Taika make that step, well, it was his source of income.  Not that he was greedy, by no means was he.  I am absolutely in no way criticizing him for this, he had to make money in his industry.  He often loaned out money to friends, family, students, and even the homeless.  But running an organization was indeed his job and belts is where you make your money.

Titles:  I have always, even in my current occupation hated titles.  A peeve of mine is people saying, my name is Sergeant so and so.  Well, that is your RANK and then your NAME.  I always answer the phone at work as, "This is Lee, how may I help you."  People will often then ask to talk to the Sergeant.  I say, "That's me."  They seemed shocked that I don't answer the phone as "Sergeant Lee Richards".  I ask my staff to call me by my name.  They seem to respect me and my rank, and just because I don't have them call me Sergeant doesn't mean they have forgotten that I am their boss.  There are people in the arts that demand you call them Renshi, Hanshi or something else.  Most of these don't even understand that a title is a separate document, and not just inherited by their rank certificate.  Most don't have any paperwork to back up their title.  When we were tasked with doing a demo to help convert another dojo to RyuTe® many years ago, the instructor there asked how to introduce us to the his class.  After we told him Lee and Tony, he asked again, what title.  We again said Lee and Tony.  This went round and round for at least five minutes before he gave up. 

Titles do not necessarily warrant respect and respect shouldn't necessarily bring titles.

Loose the Ego.

Makiwara

Makiwara

What it was:

There are so many people out there that that love to talk about 'The Old Ways' of training and two of these ways that drive me nuts are Bogu and Makiwara.  First, for any of my students that might be bored enough to read one of my rants, I guess I should define what a Makiwara is.  In the early years of Karate training, you couldn't just go down to the local sporting goods store and buy a punching bag.  You could however shove a stick or board down into the ground and wrap some rice rope around it.  The board would give or flex as you struck it and the rice rope would be softer than the board.  So this was essentially what they would use to practice punches and kics.

In Taika's early years, he trained on one and actually had some pretty big calluses on his knuckles.  After the war, when servicemen were training over in Okinawa, they still didn't have much in the way of training equipment, and this was cheap.  Years later, when Taika came to the United States, he would have his students train on one.  He would also make them bring a metal coffee can to class filled with their own urine.  Yes, the old remedy of urine being an antiseptic was in play in the dojo and people would make their knuckles bloody then soak them in urine.  Again, old training tips from ancient times.

As Taika got into his 50's, and gained in wisdom, he never trained on Makiwara.  Several discussions in class would come up over the years and he would say that this was, 'Stupid Training'.  He said that the makiwara was a great tool for weeding out the undisciplined, as well as taming those with attitudes.  Much like Punching Bags and Neosporin, there were much better ways in the past few decades to train.  He would talk about how his hands didn't need to be tough to enact any of his Kyusho techniques.  After decades of not hitting makiwara, he was still able to knock any of us unconscious with his fingers, and not a callus on his knuckles.   

  

What it has become: 

In the world of Karate, Martial Arts or whatever name you brand it with, the Makiwara has become a tough guy badge, a rite of passage.  People think that it is cool.  "Hey look at me, I was able to damage myself repeatedly until calluses built up over an already hard and bony surface."  If the two, typical striking knuckles of my fist strike your neck at the correct angle, do you really think they need to be ANY harder than bone?  I suppose if you are breaking boards and cement blocks, then you might enjoy the added protection of thicker skin.  But since boards and blocks don't usually attack innocent karateka, I don't think I'll waste my time training in this nonsense.  So if hardening the surface of a bone (still makes no sense to me no matter how I type it) isn't useful, then the only reason left is ego.  Ego, needs to be left out of the dojo and life in general.  We don't need it in Te and this is just one example of where it rears its ugly head.  Taika had more wisdom and experience in Te than anyone I have ever met, and I think I'll follow his lead, letting the Makiwara go the way of the DoDo.  

Upper Block Training

I actually cringed (Experience an inward shiver of embarrassment or disgust) a little as I typed the title however knew if I typed Upper Forearm Strike 99% of the Protection Art World would have no idea what the heck I was ranting about.  

People know this technique by many names; face, face cover, head, head cover, upper block, high block, et cetra.  All of these tend to make the end use feel that this is a block or a cover and that is not really how Taika used it.  We call them forearm STRIKES to make the student envision them as a little more aggressive rather than the passive 'defense only' image that pops into the head of someone when they hear the word 'block'.  Taika used these in many places over the years, in anything from a defense against a bear hug to a simple forearm strike to the neck.  He showed repeatedly in various exercises which included "single, double, head", that the 'head' motion was just rolling the opponent's arm around to reposition yourself inside or outside of their body. 

ALL of Taika's forearm strikes (single, double, head) have a rotation element of the forearm.  What I mean by the rotation element can best be visualized without pictures by doing the following;

• Place your arm out in front of you palm down

• Rotate your arm until it is palm up

You have just completed the rotation element I was talking about.  So the forearm rotates as the arm in its entirety moves towards its target.  This is a striking multiplier of sorts as you have the normal kinetic energy of the entire arm coming towards its target, plus the forearm is spinning on its axis adding yet more kinetic energy.    All of his forearm related strikes (blocks) have this.  So let me describe what many people call an upper block, once again without the aid of pictures and only focusing on the single arm (though in reality there is a whole lot going on with the other arm).

• Arm comes out at about a 45 degree angle out past your belly button, mostly palm up (almost parallel to the floor), but slanted just a little towards your body because 100% flat would feel all tight and awkward.

• Arm begins rising, and in the last part of its upward rise, rotates out - palm out.

So in that description, the beginning motion is pinky side towards you, and it ends pinky side up and out.  OUT.  Did I mention out.  The forearm, ulnar bone, is rotating forward and up.  

Where my rant comes in two play now are two things I've noticed lately in personal accounts as well as on various facebook postings.  I keep seeing people who are either a) not rotating their forearms to get the extra kinetic bonus points, b) not going forward with the strike, or c) all of the above.

a) Please try this for yourself and you will see just how important it is.  If you do the age old, stereotyped karate chop where you align your ulnar bone to point down (pinky down thumb up for the bone nomenclature impaired), and chop exactly straight down with no twist on the partner of your choice, you probably can get a decent reaction depending on far too many variables to detail here.  BUT, if do the same motion and let the forearm rotate, you will get a significant amount of extra bonus points a kinetic energy arriving into and through your target.  So as you have your hand up before you chop down, have it palm up and then as it is dropping and impacting something fun like your buddy's forearm, it rotates to the point of impact and beyond.  And that is how little people get the great strikes.  Taika I believe was 5'4".  He used every little trick possible to get these strikes to be as effective as possible.

 

b) Abe Lincoln could not do backward Upper Blocks and look cool, so why should you?  Ok, what the heck is Lee talking about now?  Well, I see people doing these strikes and instead of going forward, it is like their arm is frozen at every single joint except the shoulder.  So they let their arm lock into place, and just pivot it on the ball socket type joint of the shoulder, letting it raise up with a forward and then backward arc, that would knock their pretty little top hat off if they were wearing one.  This is a forward moving strike, not a knock my hat off rearward one.

I recently had the misfortune to watch an instructor teaching a series of moves containing the upper block.  Each time he did it, he neither rotated his forearm and just knocked his imaginary hat off.  The really sad part was his original instructor was there as well doing the same patterns and was performing the upper block correctly; out, rotating and forward.

So now the question; How are we getting students in these bad habits?

 Banana Attacks

I think the main thing we are doing is bad formation training and paired dances at their early stage of development.  I have been guilty of the first one myself.  In the past I would have the beginning warm up in class with students in horse stance doing requirements.  Warming up by doing hundreds of blocks, punches, et cetra.  When they would do their Upper Blocks, I would sometimes have a foam stick and to illustrate that they were not high enough, I would drive the foam stick down towards their head.  I've seen people in other styles doing this as well as three step sparing (which we have thankfully have never done) in which the uke steps forward three times with various banana style downward attacks and the tori retreats doing Upper Blocks.  Well, an upper block is a horrible response to a downward move with a knife, bat, banana, rodent, or anything else.  I won't get into proper responses at this point but I think instructors create that problem.

Solution?

First, be a good target.  For the formation upper blocks, I may still walk around with my padded stick now, but what I NOW do is I hold it out in front of the student like it is the opponents neck.  Now when I call off the count they are having to strike forward to hit the neck, pencil neck that it is.  So my students begin visualizing forward motion.  I put it just enough in front of them that they have to go forward with it.  Then when I start to do movement drills, it is forward motion, not retreat that I'm doing.  So I have the stick out of range and they have to shuffle into it.

Second, stop calling them blocks.  If the whole damn world jumped off a cliff would you?  No Mom!  It is a purely mental thing but block has the connotation of, "Oh crap, get me out of here, retreat!!!!!!"   Or maybe just, "Run away, run away!"  Taika would do single, double head or the turtle exercise and that upper block was actually navigating the opponent's arm out and around to switch him from being inside to outside.  He would do a neck strike with it.  He would use it for a bear hug defense.  Yes, these are defensive motions but none of them are running away.  They were motions that exploded forward.  I really believe that changing the name puts a more forceful spin on it and makes the students push harder to defeat rather than retreat.

Of course, you probably have other good ideas so feel free to share them.

Lee