A matter of perspective
Perspective in martial arts, karate, self protection and self defence. Picture a standard six-sided dice. No doubt you have handled or seen one before. You know that it will be numbered with Arabic or Roman numerals or dots, a different number on each face. If you are particularly familiar with dice you might know that 1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4 are on opposite faces. Has it ever occurred to you that you know this because you have viewed or handled the dice from multiple perspectives? If you place a six-sided dice on a surface, without moving either it or yourself, the most you can see at any one time is the top and two sides: three faces, only a half of the whole. The nearer you get to the dice the more detail you can see, but when really looking closely you inevitably end up seeing…
Hikite for Power? Pull the other one!
Discussions on hikite are like discredited political philosophies. You think that empirical evidence has consigned them to history and then they flare up again, fuelled by the ‘true believers’ devotion to outdated treatises or the misguided analyses of the long-dead. 2020 saw another such flare up with many prominent and respectable individuals in the practical karate spectrum voicing opinions. I chose to steer clear, not seeing the need to express an opinion on what I felt was obvious. I suspected that ‘Covid Boredom’ and mischief rather than ignorance may have been responsible for the topic crawling from the grave once more. At the request of Les Bubka (author of the thought provoking Anxious Black Belt) I’ve finally been coaxed into stating my views in time for Halloween. Retracting one arm does not increase the speed and therefore the power of extending the other arm. Whether the (non-striking) arm is pulled…
