Karate

Karate and Self Protection from John Titchen

martial artist

kicking in self defence

To kick or not to kick, that is the question.

This debate comes up regularly on martial arts forums and such discussions tend to produce variations on a number of regular characters:

  1. The person who is convinced that whatever he or she does in class will work.
  2. The person who sees kicking as a low percentage strategy but advocates low kicks if kicks are used at all.
  3. The person who has used kicks ‘in real fights’ and therefore believes that they are a high percentage effective strategy, especially high kicks.
  4. The person who has used kicks in competitive fighting and therefore believes they can do so in self defence.
  5. The person who has no opinion but just wants information.
  6. The troll.

 

So who’s right?

When it comes to applying martial arts techniques in self defence, context and training methods determine the results. We get good at what we train for.

If you don’t train kicks regularly then the likelihood of being able to use them in a self defence situation decreases considerably.

Whether you can use kicks bears no relation to what someone else has reputedly done in self defence or in the ring, it depends not only on how much you train them, but how you train them.

If the opportunity to kick comes in the form of relative positioning and pressure that is familiar to you, then you are likely to be able to employ that skillset. Everything comes down to how you train and to a large extent how many of the six things you should do in physical training for self defence are present in your approach.

A few years ago I put together a video showing all the kicks and attempted kicks used by participants from a range of different martial disciplines in my Sim Day scenario training. The clips came from hundreds of simulations, but featured very few kicks indeed (although knees were very successfully employed).

This was in part due to the enclosed environment, but primarily because most people had no experience in trying to kick at that range or under those conditions. Although we don’t kick in many of our regular drills, of the participants my personal karate students (and a very experienced LEO who is also a Ju Jutsu instructor) kicked the most because the environment and range was familiar.

Since then I have seen more kicks employed successfully because the kickers are returnees to the Sim Days and are not only more comfortable with the environment and range but have also made little tweaks to their own training based on the lessons from previous sessions.

So can you kick in self defence?

Maybe.

Only you and your training can decide that.

 

 

 

 

Don’t share our secrets!

Don’t share our secrets!

I’ve come across this refrain in the Traditional Karate Community a number of times.

It usually crops up when a person posts a video online where they demonstrate a drill they’ve been taught or a new thing they’ve worked out. Sooner or later somebody pops up and berates them for sharing a technique only taught to ‘advanced black belts’ in their system.

“Sharing trade secrets isn’t cool.”

“Have some respect.”

“Lots of people have had to work hard for years to gain access to that knowledge.”

The secret is: there aren’t any secrets.

Not really.

Depending on the emphasis and technique weighting of different systems, one style’s basics is another’s ‘advanced technique’. Something you might only cover as a black belt is something another student learns from Day One.

I’ll admit that there are nuances to movements and applications that are often not taught right away, but these are not secrets – they are there in plain sight and feel for those paying attention. Beyond that because they are often core to the approach of another art there are already numerous instructional videos and books out there in which they are set out.

Is this a bad thing? Are we putting dangerous knowledge in the hands of the irresponsible? Isn’t it best only to share these things with people we know and never publish books or videos?

My answer to this is no. I can show you a drill in a book in eight pictures and eight sentences. I can talk for twenty five minutes on video on the same drill and still not have covered every nuance or the underpinning rationale that explains what it is, how it works, and how to make it your own. Books and the videos are there to give you knowledge, ideas, and a framework for training; but only study and hours of practice will give you understanding and ability. The book or video, like the teacher, only shows or opens doors – it is the student that has to put in the effort to go through them.

There is only one secret, and it isn’t well kept. That secret is the arduous task of good observation, practice, analysis and repetition. That is what gives people ‘secrets’ and they don’t come easily.

 

 

Six things you should do in your training

1. Train against attacks to the head

The head is an obvious target.  Not only can we be knocked unconscious through strikes to the head, our ability to hear, see, shout and even our balance can be damaged. We do have natural reflexes to protect the head which will be activated should our eyes receive a stimulus once it is too late to access and execute a trained protective action, but these reflexes are not always effective.  The best way to become skilled at protecting the head is to have to defend against attacks to that target on a regular basis.  It does not matter whether those attacks are intended to make contact or not, all that is required is the incentive to continuously protect our head from impact and to learn carry the arms in such a way that we can do so speedily with ease.

2. Train against HAOV

Pushes, shoves, grabs, wild haymakers, head butts, headlocks, shoulder barges, tackles, clinches, stomps… the use of habitual acts of violence in training can be controversial.  From a self defence perspective they are essential training tools, for in a violent situation you are far more likely to be attacked using haov than any more precise form of attack, even if your attacker is themselves a skilled martial artist.  The downside of training against haov is that it means that a proportion of the training time is spent delivering a skillset in which you do not want or need to become proficient at employing.  How much time you spend on training against haov should be weighted according to your primary skill development aims.

3. Train at Close range

By close range I’m referring to tactile contact and working at a distance where you are generally within at most ¾ of the arm reach of your training partner.  Most violent confrontations quickly close to this distance no matter how skilled a ‘long distance’ fighter one participant may be, and this infighting range is one at which it is important to be comfortable.

4. Make Contact (actually hit people and pads)

Contact in training is tremendously important.  I’ve written about it in Volume Three of the Pinan Flow System.  Both making and receiving contact is important.  Experiencing contact in training so that real shoves or knocks don’t faze you or affect your will to continue is invaluable, and it doesn’t have to be knockdown or dangerous/damaging to do so under the supervision of a good teacher.

5. Use verbal abuse and distraction

Verbal abuse, whether by one person or a group, can freeze a person unused to personally experiencing it more effectively than the shock of contact.  Exposure to bad language at a distance, or on the screen is not the same. There is a big difference between facing a silent focused training partner, enduring the kiai of a confident partner, and having one or more people swearing and shouting directly in your face.

6. Train against multiple opponents

Dealing with multiple opponents isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty.  There are lots of different ways that this can be done: some that genuinely put the trainee under gradually increasing pressure, others that are frankly ridiculous either because they are always so intense that they offer no chance for progression or learning outcomes, or because they are so spaced apart that there is no added pressure or learning gained. There’s no guarantee that training against multiple opponents is going to enable you to fight more than one person (and you should try to avoid even fighting just one person), but this form of training will make you aware of the difficulty, give you indications as to things that definitely don’t work, and possibly provide a more appropriate focus for your one on one strategies.

I haven’t picked these six training paradigms at random.  From the experience of observing many trained and untrained people from a range of backgrounds in hundreds of simulated aggressive and violent confrontations, these are the six factors that determine how easily a person is able to access their combative skill set.  The more of these a person deals with in regular training the easier it will be to access their skill set, the fewer of these they work regularly or have experienced the harder it will be to access that skill set.  This model helps explain why personality, upbringing, martial arts styles and training regimes all have an effect on how successfully people can physically defend themselves.

Not everyone is able to meet all six of these criteria in their regular training, but that doesn’t matter.  I have seen people who meet only three criteria in their martial arts class (attacks to the head, contact and close range) do exceptionally well because in their work as LEO (Law Enforcement Officers) they have encountered verbal abuse, haov, and dealing with multiple opponents.  The more you meet the easier it will be. If you identify a gap in your class, and if you are not in a position to fill it (or your instructor doesn’t want to) then it is usually easy to gain experience and have fun by cross training at a seminar, or inviting an instructor to teach at your club or workplace.

Have fun and train safely!