funakoshi Archives

Chatting in the (online) room

“I picture the group of us sitting cross-legged around a low table in a cozy room, sipping tea, while I answer your questions about karate.”

When I first read these words of Gichin Funakoshi as a seventeen year old dipping into Karate Do Nyumon for the first time, I found them incredibly corny. An amusing conceit. Now I am older and perhaps a little bit wiser I’ve returned to them wondering if there isn’t a pearl of wisdom in maintaining this illusion.

The online world of social media and forums can be a mad, paranoia-riven and bitter environment. The written word can be a beautiful tool for understanding subjects and each other better, but language enables us both to obfuscate and elucidate. We can convey, hide or misinterpret emotion, especially when flat text can simply hold a mirror to the reader’s mood rather than indicating the intent of the author.

I have been guilty of being overly terse in my online conversations.

Usually it has been because I have been exhausted and then emotionally tried by being asked to explain again something that I have previously outlined many times. In a manner of speaking, I have unintentionally snapped like a weary parent at the innocent provocation of a child rather than taken a breath, waited until I am in a better mood and fresh, and treated the questioner as I would a friend or student. On one occasion I can recall finally losing patience with an individual I knew online that had a reputation amongst other instructors I know, for being a bit of a dick. I decided to mirror back to them in my responses the way they behaved towards others online. Within a few hours they unfriended and blocked me. It was not a mature thing for me to do, but their response to my ‘mirror’ did indicate how unpalatable their own behaviour was.

It is easy to mistake intent online. We only experience a part of the whole. No matter how many emojis are used we can misread tone. We won’t see all the context for a demonstration. It’s easy for people to alienate others or to look a fool. We’ve all seen people react so adversely to online content that we’ve had to wonder how they even function in normal life. Many have an online knee jerk reaction and lack of tolerance to differences that they simply would not have in a face-to-face interaction.

I think Funakoshi’s illusion is a useful one. When I watch a video or read a text, I think it is helpful to imagine the author or presenter as a person in my actual presence, in my dojo or at a table, talking to me. From the start I understand that even if the subject is serious, the tone is light. I can imagine a smile on the other person’s face. Even if I think they may be poking fun at me I can choose to treat the intent as friendly. The discussion is to educate, not incriminate or belittle. The discussion isn’t personal either, I’m not so conceited to jump to the conclusion that everything I see online is about me. I deliberately don’t write about individuals or styles; I write about ideas and techniques and training methods.

So picture those online as round a table with you, some drinks to hand, some snacks available. Imagine the intent to be good. There will always be some that take things too personally or misconstrue intent, but that doesn’t have to be you or me.

Cross training

Cross training is something I strongly support. It’s also something I think I do every week, but what I consider to be cross-training may differ from what you think.

Last weekend I held a Shotokan Sandan grading. I was grading an instructor I consider to be one of ‘my’ Shotokan students (although he gained his other grades in another association) because he’s trained with me twice a week for almost 3 years (he also trains with another association each week too). To assist in the grading, I brought in two of my DART Dan grades to act as uke and two Shotokan Yondans from two different associations whom I know from their attendance at my seminars and courses.

The majority of the grading was focused on kata based HAOV related sparring with participants mainly using approaches I had taught them. The successful Sandan candidate also taught a kata-based lesson and we sparred using his approaches. When we looked at our solo kata performance however, there were definitely different flavours of Shotokan on display: no two kata were identical even though we traced very similar lineages.

I know where I’ve changed my Shotokan kata. My base template when I began training was Hirokazu Kanazawa’s kata as recorded in his 1980s videos. As time went on, I saw alternative versions in use in other groups and was able to see in books elements that had been adjusted or discarded. Over time I’ve mainly kept my ‘original’ template, but in some instances have made the conscious decision for practical reasons to tweak some elements back to Funakoshi’s recorded 1920s or 1930s versions. This means that you probably won’t find other associations that teach Shotokan kata exactly the way I teach them.

When I first began Karate, the mobility of my education and home life meant that while I would do sustained training, I would often be working with at least two different associations of the same Shotokan style throughout the year. Moving a few times meant that I might stay with one while switching another. It was immediately noticeable that everything was different wherever I went. The kata was the least changeable element, but even then, if you looked closely, each association did the kata slightly differently. What I was doing by going to more than one Shotokan association was cross training. Occasionally I would learn new material, but mainly I would experience a different perspective on the same thing: varied fundamentals combinations, distinct sparring work, alternative takes on stances and even differing ways of doing the same kata.

That is what cross training means to me. Gaining a different perspective.

As a kyu grade I learned from the different karate instructors in the various karate associations in which I concurrently trained, but I would also learn from instructors in other arts through books and magazines. I would also travel to seminars, training with Kung Fu instructors and Karate Instructors from other styles. I would often learn new material, but more importantly I gained a different perspective that enabled me to look differently at what I was already doing and gain a better understanding of it.

My over-arching purpose then was the same as now: to learn more and to have fun.

There have been times when I have been far more specific in my cross training. I studied Aikido on a regular basis for eight years with a view to improving my stand-up limb control, unbalancing and using angles of attack rather than strength to achieve my aims. I’d be a beginner now if I stepped into an Aikido class, but the perspectives that I gained from that training has been so integrated into my own practice that it’s all Karate to me now.

I am always cross training.

Going to another instructor’s club, going to a seminar, having a guest teach me and my students: these things are all cross training. Watching another instructor from a different background doing different things, whether in person or in video, I regard as cross training when I take elements of what I’ve seen and physically try it. It’s a rare week indeed when I am not working through something different from the direct influence of someone else, or that is inspired at a tangent from something that has cropped up while experimenting from cross training. I’ll do this in class, in mental rehearsal through movement and tactile imagination in my dojo, or through bag work. It may be months or even years since I had the original lesson in person or online; I work on things over long periods of time and I revisit lessons when current stimuli bring greater relevance. It ceases to be cross training when it is so ingrained in my practice and integrated into my approaches that it is part of my Karate.

For me the point of cross training is exposure to an alternative perspective to further my understanding. That can be my understanding of things I know, things that I only think I know, things that I know that I don’t know and things that I didn’t know existed. It can be with another instructor from the same ‘style’ but different background or current approaches, it can be from a separate system with a similar focus, or a discipline with a completely alternative emphasis. For me doing that is fun, and that alone is reason enough to do it.

Beyond the value of perspective and fun you may have particular goals. I chose to take up Aikido to develop a particular skillset and incorporated that into my own Karate. With far less direct coaching but for roughly the same number of years I have been drip-feeding myself cross training in two other disciplines with the express purpose of refining and expanding another part of my repertoire. That’s an ongoing process and I anticipate that that cross-training and integration project will last at least another decade. Over the last few decades, I’ve benefitted a great deal from numerous focused cross training dips into other approaches through seminars, videos and books. You do not have to stick with cross training in one thing only for years to gain insights, especially if it is closely related in form or focus to your own experience. Sometimes a single seminar or book can open the door to decades of study if you are observant.

How accurate and sustained your visual and tactile memory is will affect how much you may benefit from cross training and what form might best suit you. For those that need multiple repetitions to learn or understand or integrate an element, attending or watching regular classes may be best. For some this may mean having to attend a class every week, for others with an established relatable visual, physical or tactile memory set, observing a video or referencing a text book may serve the same purpose. Anything relatively close to my knowledge base I can see or experience once and have enough ‘memory’ to work on that for a long time (on my own or with partners) without further reference, like attending a seminar which uses the same movements as me but for a different purpose. With things that are on the fringes of my experience or completely outside my knowledge I’ll need to revisit the source again and again. That almost always means dedicated repetitions with a training partner and access to the source material (so regularly attending a class or training with a video or book with a good training partner).

For me cross training is when I am working on material from an external source or a different perspective to my current training.

I find it invaluable. Even when I make the decision not to attempt to trial what I have seen or experienced, even when I discard something after a trial rather than choosing to integrate it, I think the exposure to different approaches makes that choice to continue on my own path a more educated one.

I believe that cross training is a form of expanding your knowledge and ability that is accessible to everyone. It could be attending a seminar, having a guest instructor, visiting another class, working from concepts from a book or from an online video. It does not have to be ‘outside’ your own style: instructors vary enough within any system to give you valuable alternative perspectives. There is a wealth of material out there and the more you access it and cross train with it to your chosen purposes, the less easily will you be misled by lower quality choices.

Now go and cross train.

The Giants are Pygmies

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Isaac Newton, 1676.

Karateka across the world owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Okinawan and Japanese instructors who, in the first half of the Twentieth Century, laid the foundations for a little known minority martial art to become one of the most practised in the world today. This important role has naturally resulted in those that founded styles in that era, or who pioneered the teaching of karate outside of Japan, becoming highly revered. They are quite rightly seen as the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

We should be careful however not to be led astray. It is right to respect these karateka, we owe them a great debt of gratitude, but their words or approaches should not be blindly followed. In fact I believe that to do so is to squander their legacy. I will occasionally quote an ‘old master’, but I only do so if what they say has been borne out by my research or that of other people whose research methods and experience I can quantify and thus value.

Matsumura, Itosu, Funakoshi, Motobu, Kyan, Miyagi, Mabuni, Ohtsuka to name but a few… these names ring loudly in training halls across the world. Their thoughts on karate are still read and studied. But these men are not giants by today’s standards, in fact in the modern world they are pygmies compared to many of the teachers with whom you could study.

How can I say such a thing?

There are trainers teaching today who have

Had far greater experience of genuinely life threatening violence or who (through research) have collated a wealth of data from people (whether civilian, law enforcement or military) who have had experience and thus been able to draw important and reliable conclusions on optimum approaches to physical and mental training.
Have a far better understanding of human physiology and biomechanics (backed by decades of research that is available to all).
Have had more hands-on experience with other martial artists and have studied under greater numbers of experienced and competent teachers.
Have had access to, and instruction in, a greater number of non-karate styles (again from high quality instructors) to broaden their perspective and increase their depth of understanding in their own arts.

Whether you are looking for a trainer that specialises in Karate for self defence, Karate as a form of Physical fitness, Karate (kata) as a form of moving meditation or dance, or Karate as a competitive fighting sport, or combinations of those mediums, there are large numbers of trainers all round the world who quite simply out-class those ‘giants’ of the past. It would actually be a poor reflection on both karate and those early pioneers if that were not the case.

We should respect those that have gone before us. But do not put them on pedestals or treat everything they said or did as gospel truth. Many of them had less experience and knowledge than either you or the person you train with. Honour their memory by carrying karate forward as they did and pay them the courtesy of respecting the reality of their humanity and fallibility.

Final Pinan Flow System book released!

Foreword by Iain Abernethy.

‘So here we are with the final volume of this series of books from John Titchen! You can now see John’s full interpretation of the Pinan series! How cool is that!

Gichin Funakoshi – who is frequently referred to as “The Father of Modern Karate” – wrote the following in Karate-Do Kyohan about these kata,

“Having mastered these five forms, one can be confident that he is able to defend himself competently in most situations”.

The Pinan / Heian series were therefore always intended to be a holistic self-protection system; and I think John’s books have shown a great way in which this traditional view can be realised!

While the past masters passed on the kata and a great deal of information about how they should be viewed and understood, they did not pass on a complete picture of the applications of the kata. We traditional pragmatists therefore have to do a little analysis (“bunkai” literally translating as “analysis”) in order to understand what the kata have to teach us. This invariably leads to differing “bunkai theories”.

When science sets out to assert a theory, that theory needs to be able to explain all the existing data and, crucially, it needs to be able to make accurate predictions. For example, the theory of gravity explains everything we see on an everyday scale, and it makes accurate predictions about how future events will occur. We can dismiss gravity as “just a theory” but if you step off a high building you are going to fall and accelerate at a rate of 9.81m/s until the resistance of the atmosphere has you reach terminal velocity; or you hit the floor (whichever happens first).

Now, does this mean we know for a fact and with 100% certainty how gravity works? The answer is no, we don’t. But the theories we have explain all the data and make solid predictions. We can put satellites around distant planets with these theories! I would say a similar process needs to be applied to kata i.e. any application needs to explain all the data and make predictions (i.e. work when tested).

Any bunkai theory needs to address the following three points:

The bunkai must adequately address all parts of the kata (i.e. explain why the kata is as it is).
The bunkai must be in accordance with the historical information we have.
The bunkai must be functional in the context of civilian self-protection.

If a given set of bunkai can do that, then it is valid. In science there are sometimes competing theories, but all are valid if they can explain the data and they work.

John’s take on the Pinan / Heian kata is a very logical and well-structured bunkai theory. It is not a collection of “tricks” which happen to look like the motions of the kata, but a valid bunkai theory based on, and permeated by, sound underlying combative principles. It’s not the same as my theory, but I acknowledge its utility and the fact it meets all of my personal criteria for validity. It is very good stuff!

Now that the series is complete, you can take the information presented within and run with it “as is”, or use the information John has given you to help inform your own take on the kata series. We can then move past the “analysis stage” to use the kata in the way Funakoshi said they were originally intended: as a holistic self-protection system. This is what John has presented.

These books have made a great contribution to the collective knowledge base of the practical karate community. Well done to John for writing them! Well done you for reading them!’

Iain Abernethy

Available across the globe the fourth and final volume of the Pinan Flow System is now available as both a paperback and ebook! Use the links on my website or visit your ‘local’ amazon provider or order it at your local book store!

I can now share with you all my ‘starting points’ for training the whole Pinan / Heian set of kata. This is not an end, this is just the beginning!

What’s the rush?

I had some space cleared in my schedule today for some training at home. Not a particularly unusual thing as I train every day, but rather than grabbing a few minutes here and a few minutes there, today I had one of those nice long stretches of unbroken time. With that luxury I knew I could work on my strength with some weights and work on my balance with some kicking exercises, but what I really wanted to do was pick a few forms to use as visualization exercises for the delivery of a number of my techniques. In case anyone wonders why I haven’t mentioned that important training facet impact work, I’m currently between kick bags and I know I’ll be hitting the pads in class tonight.

While thinking about which particular forms I wanted to train I remembered something interesting regarding two books in my little martial arts library. In one of my editions of Funakoshi’s Karate Do Kyohan he gives an approximate start to finish time as if the Kata was to be completed in one go as an unbroken exercise. In another book I own, written in the 1990s, the performance times of three highly ranked UK Karateka were given for the same kata. Although they varied slightly their times were generally half to two thirds of Funakoshi’s times.

Funakoshi’s times were not those of an old man. They were the amount of time that it took, in his opinion, to go through the kata. So why is it common to see modern Karateka go through the forms at a greater speed?

Your focus determines your reality.

Unless you are deliberately moving slowly, when you practice a strike, you do it fast. When you practice blocking another person’s attack, you also have to move fast. But wrestling for control against resistance is something that slows us down, and manipulating limbs in grappling even at full speed is a slower form of movement than striking, as is throwing another person.

The modern fast pace of kata is a result of a different vision of the same movements. The shorter times are a result of more movements being executed as fast as possible, as if each was striking or deflecting a strike. The longer times given by Funakoshi are a reflection of a different emphasis.

Those of you that have watched some of my bunkai on my youtube channel, or read my first book, will know that I see most Uke receiving techniques in kata as strikes or limb manipulations, and that often I see Tsuki techniques as thrusts used to control, not necessarily punches. A number of my kata steps are viewed as leg attacks, as are some of my turns. My kata are close quarter struggles that utlise the movements effectively to escape from habitual acts of violence (haov).

So how fast will I be doing my kata?

It depends.

How fast I go through a kata will depend upon what I am visualizing. Good Karate allows for multiple applications of the same sequence and the majority of kata are made up of good karate.

There is no set speed for a kata. I’m not going to rush my practice. I’ll go through at a pace where I feel I am accurately practicing my application. That is the luxury of practicing karate at home as well as in the dojo.

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