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Present and past perspectives on my training

858713_10200827269943797_607907227_o — Don’t get me started on all the critiques I could make of my karate in this picture.

The other day while reviewing some light personal training I’d just done, I found myself wondering what a younger version of me would have made of both my current ability and direction, and my current approaches to training. I tried to see if I could look back at his methods and intent at a crux point in his training where moving away from his first training group to University made him have to make harder choices about how he spent his time.

I suspect the younger me would be surprised and perhaps disappointed at how little time I spend training.

That version of me would be up at 0600 to knock out a light two-mile run, some stretching and some kata before breakfast. He would be asleep by 11 at night to get as much rest as possible. He did weights three times a week, and he would make seventeen hours of karate classes a week in addition to personal training.

4737_1184681016923_3206972_n — Last day at school.

That version of me was enjoying his last full year of good health before anaemia, organ failure, dialysis, transplantation, medication side effects and multiple surgeries took a toll.

Hospital time is never fun but at least these days (in the UK) you can often get small rooms, a personal TV, internet access and even ensuite facilities. I’ve been lucky and even in the days when we didn’t have such luxuries I still had great care from military and NHS staff.

These days I get up to ninety minutes of light personal solo training a day. That has not changed since I started karate and is something I consider incredibly important for my health. That time includes any weightlifting or supplementary aerobic training I do and it may be spread throughout the day. I don’t run for training purposes any more. I’ll use a rowing machine or battle ropes if I want to take my heart rate up. Instead of training as a student in seventeen hours of classes a week, I teach six hours of classes over four days of the week (unless I’m teaching seminars or private classes).

I’m very aware of the weekly physical training deficit created over the last twenty-four years, especially because I recognise the difference between training and teaching. I don’t teach line work, so I’m not at the front of the class unless I’m leading students through a form; rather I’m spending the lesson moving from group to group, correcting and demonstrating. That has its advantages in terms of refining and ingraining good movement, but it’s not the same as training. With that said I think I make more of my solo training time now than I did then: I train more efficiently and choose my exercises with greater care. I also now get to spend at least two hours a day reading or observing subject matter related to karate, the martial arts and personal safety.

I’m certain that the younger version of me would say I’ve got soft and need to train more. I’m experienced enough now to appreciate the value of quality training time and cumulative training rather than just quantity, but I would agree with him that the majority of my excuses are simply excuses. If I need more rest, then I could go to bed earlier. I could get up earlier to get in some important training first thing in the morning. I could easily get another thirty minutes to an hour a day that would make a positive impact on my karate technique, my physical health and my state of mind. Alternatively I could lift more, stretch more, or add in more high intensity interval training to my slow practice.

I have access to free weights, a bench, a rowing machine, battle rope, mats, kick bag and the Great British countryside. Not to use them would be inexcusable.

Two weeks have passed since I wrote the paragraphs above and I decided to take up the imaginary gauntlet laid down by the memory of my younger self.

It’s been interesting.

So far I have managed to get up earlier, engage in more regular stretching, and squeeze in a little more physical training every day. I’ve not yet fully mastered the knack of going to sleep earlier. The results? Well, the most noticeable thing was that for the initial two weeks I definitely ached a lot more in the morning (until training for that day began), but after that fortnight my body adapted and I don’t ache any more than I did before I upped my training.

That’s a clear sign that in gentle increments I can increase what I am doing further, a signal that the real barriers to greater improvement were more mental than physical. Just because I am over twice the age of that young man, doesn’t mean that I can’t do what he did.

I’m smart enough to realise that the fact that I have had two transplants and have to take a lot of daily medication does place some restrictions on what I can do, and how far I should stretch my comfort zone each session, but that doesn’t stop me training and it won’t stop me improving.

All the best

John

Have you had to rebuild yourself or get back into your training after a serious illness or operation? Is it something you’re doing right now? Feel free to comment and share your thoughts and experience.

The sobering reality of a fake abduction

On Saturday, under my supervision, four teenage boys (aged 13-14) experienced a fake abduction. This was a single scenario in a multi faceted training day for both adults and teenagers. While this is a very rare event, it is perhaps one feared the most by parents, and so we wanted to see what we could learn from replicating an example.

Like all training, we had to make compromises for safety. The most glaringly obvious compromise was that the boys knew they were going to experience an abduction attempt. They also knew which vehicle the attacker(s) would use. What they didn’t know was how many people would be involved or how we would set them up.

That wasn’t the only compromise:

– due to a scheduling clash we had to stage our scenario outside a venue filled with young children with open doors for ventilation, so the teenagers couldn’t shout for help or bang on the vehicle,

– the vehicle wasn’t scrapped so we couldn’t kick it or hit people into its bodywork.

– for safety all shots to the head were pulled; the attackers wore headgear in case of backward uncontrolled strikes,

– the teenagers were bare-headed and we decided to proceed on the basis that the attackers would use body shots to subdue them so as to preserve their looks.

Each teenager entered the scenario ‘blind’, not having seen the ones that went before or having had opportunity to get any information from the previous participants. They were asked to walk down a particular passageway as if on their way home from school or visiting a friend. An aggressor would run up behind like a jogger, and then grab the boy to lift him into the van where a second person could assist in controlling them. A third man was behind the wheel.

This obviously represented a possible attack. More people could have been involved. We could have used a fake weapon for intimidation. The aim of the exercise was for all of us to see how difficult it was to escape once the attack had begun, and how quickly it could be done.

The results were chilling as you can see here.

Of the four participants, three were taken with the van ready to drive away within 12 seconds from first contact. The longest resistance lasted 35 seconds, and had he not been pulling his shots (for safety) that young man might have escaped or caused his attackers to abandon their attempt for fear of being caught. As it was we did attract some outside attention.

One of the most obvious things to take away from the exercise is that awareness of your environment is everything. Anyone listening to music on headphones would be easy prey. Hoodies would reduce peripheral vision and reaction time. Choice of routes, walking in company, wide corners and how you react to people around you in terms of innocuous hand positions (scratching the back of your neck for example) would make a difference in reducing the odds of being a victim and in being in a better position to resist.

These abductions featured bear hugs in what is their most likely use. These particular scenarios reinforced that unless you act before it is fully on, you are not going to get out very easily, and you probably won’t have a stable ground platform to work on. I teach bear hug defences to illustrate principles of movement, and to try and ingrain the reaction to move before it is on, but I recognise that the attack is both rare (because there are very few scenarios in which someone would do it) and that once it is on then most defences I’ve seen demonstrated (including my own) are ineffective until the person starts to release you.

If you want to theorise about bracing against a van, or pushing off from a van, or a car boot… try it. Come up with ideas, but then try them until you have some high percentage solutions.

This was nothing more than a training exercise, but it has given all those participating something to think about.

I find your lack of bunkai disturbing

bunkai t shirt — I find your lack of bunkai disturbing

It’s not that you don’t do it. I’m sure that if you are a form practitioner interested in bringing a functional purpose beyond postural exercise to your forms then you do. It’s just that some people seem to pay no more than lip service to actual analysis when arriving at their applications. For me bunkai is about methodology and criteria. I’m very strict about what I teach, for what purpose I teach it, the context of each tactic, and why I choose to drill some applications and not others.

In my Pinan Flow System series of books I discussed many of the criteria I use when assessing potential applications as to whether I deem them worthy of inclusion in my teaching and training repertoire. To borrow an analogy from recent popular culture, my bunkai process sits like Thor’s hammer Mjolnir in the Avengers’ Headquarters, and impressive characters like Captain America, Iron Man and Hulk attempt and fail to lift it. Robert Downey Jnr’s Tony Stark remarks “The handle is imprinted, right? Like a security code. “Whoever is carrying Thor’s fingerprints,” I think, is the literal translation.” and some might think that in similar vein my bunkai process only chooses applications that I have formed myself, but as Thor observes “Yes, well, that’s a very interesting theory. However, I have a simpler one. You’re all not worthy.” Thor’s honesty (and that Mjolnir does accept other worthy people) is demonstrated later in the film by the character Vision also lifting the hammer. In similar vein I will obviously use good material from other people that meets my analysis criteria. I’m always looking for it when I cross train, and I have referenced in books and videos other instructors such as Rick Clark or Waldo Zapata when I have taken or adapted a drill that I’ve seen them do that lifts my Mjolnir.

So what do I look for through my bunkai? I’m certainly not trying to retrospectively work out the purpose someone in the past saw in a single movement or sequence. Past use or historical accuracy does not guarantee effectiveness or appropriateness in our environment. I have seen in one demonstration of another art an application which I think is such a good fit for a kata sequence that it is highly likely to be the ‘original’ envisioned use; unfortunately it is only appropriate for one on one encounters on soft ground and so I will not drill it – it fails the criteria of my bunkai. If I was teaching seminars in kata application for MMA matches I’d probably train and demonstrate it.

My analysis criteria to find applications looks for movements and tactics meeting as many as possible of a number of combative principles. Here are mine with brief explanatory notes. This is the Mjolnir used to forge my applications.

HAOV Relevant – focusing on habitual acts of violence, whether for pre-emptive use in pre fight posturing, or recovering the initiative from the most likely forms of initial attack, delivering an effective follow through in the event of tactic failure, or dealing with likely secondary or tertiary attacks from failures are important to me because that is the environment for which I am training my students. The physical acts of violence within HAOV may include defending against ‘professional’ or skilled tactics, but I do distinguish between habitual and historical. Purely focusing on the physical techniques is martial arts training not self defence, teaching them alongside patterns of crime, avoidance, deterrence, negation/de-escalation, legal underpinning, aftermath etc. is where more accurately you are teaching self defence as part of personal safety/self protection.

Legally Underpinned – this is not the weak option. This is not about increasing your risks in a situation, it is about decreasing your risks afterwards. This is about understanding force and how to use it effectively within the law. It’s about having a training methodology that results in drills that lessen the risk to practitioners should they have to engage in non-consensual violence. This is an important aspect of self protection. You’re not in an action flick; violence has consequences.

Effective, Efficient and Easy

Minimising Risk of Harm (defender) – I don’t often stress this because I think it is obvious. Protect your head! Don’t rely purely on your technique working. I shudder every time I see someone hit or enter while demonstrating a kata application without doing this. I slap myself if I get so distracted by teaching that I don’t do it in demonstration. If both hands are engaged then not doing this makes sense, but both hands should not be engaged if your head is in or going through a potential striking line.

Technique Multiplicity with Transferable Skills – You don’t want a huge repertoire. You want a small repertoire that can effectively be used to do a lot of different things. You also want the training efficiency that comes from transferable skills.

Utilising Predictable Response – This isn’t simply about how people are likely to attack you if you stand one way rather than another, it’s more about understanding how people really move when things work and when things don’t. You need to hit people and grapple with people to find this out.

Taking and maintaining the Initiative

Inherent Redundancy – Things go wrong, things fail. It might be due to size, strength, angle, or intoxication. You have to have back ups.

Vital Points Targeting – I’m not really talking about Kyusho here, although there are overlaps. Go for weak points. Maximise the efficiency of your movements. This is the secret ingredient in the icing on the cake – the ingredients and cooking of the cake is more important overall.

Adrenaline Tolerant – It’s got to work under pressure. Raising your heart rate can simulate some aspects of this but it’s not the same. While I’d like to see it with bigger group samples to draw firm conclusions, I’ve seen similar increases in combination lock opening times between 5 minutes of hard aerobic exercise and 1 minute of verbal argument followed by 3 second fight simulations in scenario training.

Low Maintenance – It should be simple. That doesn’t mean it can’t have several stages and turns. A lot of things look or feel complex until you’ve done them a few times (watch beginners trying to turn their hips or coordinate arms and legs), but it should be easy to keep at a high skill level.

Stable Posture – Your techniques should not compromise your balance.

Unbalancing – We should always be looking to reduce the other person’s ability to unbalance us, hit us, or brace against a hit.

Multiple Person Awareness – you can only effectively fight one person at a time, but doing so should hinder the ability of others to join in rather than make you an easy target. Some favour close range for this, others favour long range. I certainly favour movement, changing angles and head protection with any free arm.

Holistic Integrity – A technique can be great, but if it doesn’t fit with everything else you do it’s near useless to you. Techniques and tactics need to fit together and be able to flow into each other (see redundancy). An application may look cool, but does it force you to make a completely different initial response to normal?

Talking bollocks

*Master Ken* about to stomp my groin at KNX15.

One of the most prevalent myths I’ve noticed over the years in the martial arts community is efficacy of hitting men in the groin as a one-stop solution to the problem of physical violence.

There is no doubt that strikes to that area can be effective. But a number of people teaching them as part of a self defence curriculum seem rely on them far too much. Like any target on the body, depending on numerous factors, they can range from being fight stoppers to unnoticed insignificant body shots.
In terms of targets, with regard to men, these are the groin itself and the testicles.

Frontal groin impact can cause severe pain if the muscles there are relaxed or weak and the bladder is full (and might perhaps cause rupturing of the bladder), but this is by no means certain. Of more use perhaps is the unbalancing effect that groin shots can have on the angle of the subject’s pelvis, creating opportunities for escape or further strikes. While I cannot speak from personal experience (and it isn’t a question I ask or get asked regularly), the same impact on women may well traumatise the female reproductive system and cause pain.
While most men have probably experienced pain in the testicles at some point in time due to impact, compression or movement, none of these can be guaranteed by a direct hit at any angle.

To a large degree the effectiveness of groin strikes relies on pain compliance. Factors involved here are the angle and force of impact in terms of whether it affects the target to elicit a normal pain response, and whether the chemistry of the body at the time is such that it recognises and responds in a useful fashion to that stimulus.

There is no doubt that are lots of possible ways to attack the groin. The Enter the Dojo show regularly parodies the over reliance of some on this target and Master Ken has demonstrated 100 ways to attack the groin.

Hitting the groin effectively outside of prearranged combinations is not always easy. If people are actively resisting each other and are hands-on, often the angle of the body is such that the groin is further back than the rest of the torso making it less accessible. Overly tight or loose cut clothing can often impede upward strikes towards the testicles. A further factor is that you get good at what you train for: obviously it may seem to be a ‘natural’ target, but you’ll tend to be better at hitting the things you practice targeting. That’s not to say that groin/testicle shots can’t happen. I have seen numerous accidental ‘hard’ groin shots in training to people without cups and effects have ranged from them being unnoticed, unbalancing knock backs (creating an opportunity for follow ups) or fight stoppers.

nuts — Catching the testicles in medium intensity training…

A large factor in this has often been how intense the training was – the less intense, the more mentally and physically relaxed the recipient, the more effective the strike. Those who were fully committed to attacking the striker often did not notice they had been hit. It is the unexpected nature of the impact as much as the impact itself that can frame the response. On a number of occasions I have been unaware of being caught until an hour or so after training when I have literally doubled over while sitting at a table as if I had just been hit; the body had been sending pain signals but adrenaline related chemical factors had inhibited their recognition.

Groinshot — Looks painful… but he didn’t feel a thing.

A sack shot isn’t guaranteed to have men reaching for the morphine.

Do groin strikes have their place in a self defence curriculum?

Of course they do.

As with every other strike we should be prepared for failure and have a redundancy trained in place for when they do not work. We do not expect every hit to the head to result in a knockout (although such strikes can be devastating and should always be context appropriate), nor do we expect every knock to the leg to cause a person to fall to the ground desisting in attack or pursuit. Groin strikes can be part of a repertoire, they can be effective, but they are not a guaranteed escape plan and to paint them as such is simply bollocks.

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:

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

Malta Pinan Flow System Seminars

The Malta Karate Federation (MKF) recently invited Dr. John Titchen, Chief Instructor of the Practical Karate Association , to conduct a weekend seminar on Applied Karate. This seminar forms part of the MKF’s strategy to promote and improve training in all aspects of Karate amongst its members.

160221Godan1 — One of the throwing possibilities in Heian Godan.

Sensei John delivered a remarkable seminar, leaving us with a deeper understanding of the 5 Shotokan Heian Kata. His knowledge on the subject is staggering, spanning some 25 years of training. His teaching method was structured and pleasant and kept all of us involved and interested throughout. It was a fantastic experience for all who took part.

160221Shodan2 — When is a step not a step? When it’s a kick (if necessary).

The seminar was based on Sensei John’s trademark Heian/Pinan Flow System, which examines the practical, combative application of the 5 Heian Kata against common acts of violence from a close combat point of view, integrating traditional ballistic impact techniques with locks, throws and holds and combining these into numerous seamless flow drills to simulate real time unpredictable fights.

160221Nidan3 — When is a step not a step? When it’s a knee.

Interestingly, the Heian Flow Drills trained were not the traditional back and forth flow drills that go along fully predictable lines, but rather the seamless transition between ranges, and ballistic and grappling techniques, spinning in and out of different parts of the 5 Heian Kata “mesh”, depending on uke’s response. The emphasis in this kind of training is on “shutting down” the opponent as quickly as possible.

This Heian Perspective of Practical Karate compliments nicely the Tekki/Naihanchi Perspective being developed by the MKF in collaboration with Sensei Chris Denwood, of E.S.K.K® Martial Arts & Fitness , who also visits Malta from time to time as a guest instructor of the MKF. This area of training also ties nicely with the other valuable technical work delivered to us by Maestro Santo Torre and Maestro Giuseppe Bartolo , offering the MKF members a truly unique, complete karate package.

160221Godan2 — If you can lift your leg that high…

The seminar truly delivered what it claimed: “Dynamic and alive training drills that take kata practice and self defense skills to another level”.

The enthusiastic Maltese practitioners were left with a huge reservoir of practical and useful training material, which will be developed further over the coming months to help reinforce further the foundation laid for this area of practice within the MKF.

“Truly an amazing experience for us all by a gentleman Sensei who not only shared with us openly an integrated system of Heian applications to make our Karate more complete, but also taught us invaluable life lessons with his example, attitude and indomitable spirit. Thank You Sensei John.

Thank You also to the Executive Committee of the Malta Karate Federation for continuously supporting this aspect of training, in particular the President, Kenneth Abela, and Jesmond Schembri and Damian Vella Lenicker. Thanks also to my assistants in this venture Frank Vella, Charles Axiaq and Anthony Gauci.

Thanks also to all participants and their families for making this event a huge success.”

Sensei James Galea

Technical Director MKF

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