self defense Archives

Karate Doesn’t Work!

“Karate Doesn’t Work!”

Heard it before?

How about “Tae Kwon Do doesn’t work”? “Wing Chun doesn’t work”? “Tai Chi doesn’t work”? “Aikido doesn’t work”? “BJJ doesn’t work?” “Traditional Martial Arts don’t work”?

You get the idea.

To me it’s akin to saying “Cars don’t work”. It’s a statement so broad that it’s nonsensical. Occasionally people might narrow it down, “BMWs are rubbish!” – okay… all BMWs? Rubbish for what? Is that what that particular model is designed for? Is it the car of the type of driver it attracts?

Returning to martial arts, the two biggest critiques that frame such broad condemnations tend to be the contexts of either use in MMA or Self Defence or both. Dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes obvious that in some respects these arguments are built on sand.

As many exponents of traditional martial arts are quick to point out, it’s very difficult to find any move in an MMA competition that isn’t visible in the forms or drills of a traditional martial art. It’s also easy to find people with solid TMA backgrounds successfully competing in MMA. I doubt anyone has ever been bored enough (sorry, dedicated enough), to draw up a spreadsheet of every move used in any decade of any particular multi-discipline combat sport competition against the syllabi and/or forms of a broad range of martial arts, but I believe that if they did they would find that most traditional systems include somewhere between 60-90% of what has been utilised. Not 100%? Well if you study any particular competitor you’ll find they don’t use 100% of the compiled list. In similar vein there are a number of things you’ll see in some TMA syllabi that you won’t see used in a competition format, but you might see on video in effective use by Law Enforcement groups that invest in Ju Jitsu or Aikido training.

The elephant in the room here is of course the word ‘include’. The kata of karate are a comprehensive catalogue of physical movements that can be interpreted into techniques and combinations. It’s therefore easy for someone to read one of my books, watch one of my videos, train internationally with me, or with any number of the excellent seminar instructors from the thriving British Karate scene, and look at something in MMA and say “Oh we have that too in Karate”.

But do you?

You’ve only ‘got it’ if you train it regularly with partners and you can use it in live practice. I can see lots of sequences in Karate forms that can be interpreted as hip throws, but I don’t personally teach hip throws. My training journey has led me to prefer distal unbalancing, leg reaping and unbalancing over the leg to hip throws – so those are the unbalancing methods I teach, all of which I can relate directly to sequences in traditional kata. When it comes to my students, we don’t ‘have’ hip throws even if some of the kata they practice do.

But efficacy is not just about techniques though, it’s the training methods employed that build the mindset and the ability to effectively use physical skills appropriately. The technical differences between martial arts are minimal because we’re all working with the same problem of human body against human body – that’s a broad canvas that can be viewed from multiple angles, but we’re still painting on the same canvas. It’s less a case of “Art X doesn’t work!” and more a case of “Training method Y is less efficient!”. It’s not just the car but whether you’ve been taught how to drive it in different conditions.

But can we separate pedagogy from ‘style’? If we’re all doing pretty much the same motions with our arms and legs, isn’t how something is taught the only way to determine differences and apply ‘style’ labels?

Well yes. And no. I don’t think it’s that simple.

I’ve been around the block a bit over the years. In my core original art I trained regularly in seven clubs across six associations before I gained my Shodan and in the decades since then I’ve not only taught multiple people from multiple styles and associations, I’ve trained with, learned from and talked with instructors and students from a huge range of arts and professions all across the world. One of the things I’ve learned from this is that ‘styles’ tend to be illusory branding because once you really scratch the surface you’ll find more commonalities than differences. While some teaching practices are more common in some arts than others, or with some age groups than others, you are always doing a significant number of practitioners a disservice any time you attempt to pigeon hole any martial art by pedagogy.

Another thing about having ‘trained around’ for a long time is that whenever I see “ X doesn’t work!” I study the list of ‘reasons why X is bad’ and then the list of ‘why Y is better’ and strangely enough I’ve experienced multiple examples of clubs in Y doing what X is condemned for, and multiple clubs of X doing what Y is praised for.

Thus rather than write about ‘why Art X doesn’t work’ I think it’s more productive to write about techniques and training methodologies and the contexts in which they excel and why. That way we can avoid the obfuscation of stereotyping and pigeon holing and focus on ways to help each other improve.

Perceptions of Karate?

“Hi, I’m calling about a karate class for self defence, the Leisure Centre gave me this number, it’s for my nephew.”

“Can I ask how old your nephew is? The youngest I teach are thirteen years old.”

“Oh, he’s four.”

Sigh.

Despite my websites giving my minimum ages in several places, and having no photos of any pre-school children on any of my media, this type of enquiry regarding 4-6 year olds is the most common I get. If they are pre-school I tell them that I’m sorry but there is nobody I can recommend. If they are of primary school age I refer them to the local Judo group where I think the games and the contact will be good for the children (and I know they run a good youth programme).

Often my suggestion of Judo is rejected. They want their barely-shoe-tying offspring to learn self defence (or so they claim), or maybe have someone else instil discipline, self-control, and respect for elders, but they don’t like the idea that there might be contact or rough play. No, Karate or TKD (I also get asked if I know of any TKD clubs) are much safer options. No contact but happy smiling children marching obediently in silence to the command of an adult, or so the pictures seem to show. Every tired parent’s dream?

I should let this go. I should not get annoyed about the fact that karate is predominantly perceived as a crèche activity for children, or a safe no-contact form of exercise for parents and children to do side by side, because that probably does reflect the vast majority of karate available. Because I’m wearing the same uniform and using the same name I will naturally be placed in the same category.

With so much choice these days, advertising and the perception of keyboard warriors rule. Those who want to ‘fight’ or physically compete against others are drawn to Mixed Martial Arts, Muay Thai or Brazilian Ju Jitsu gyms or perhaps Boxing. All of which are disciplines visibly proven in their competitive arena. Others (especially those enrolled by their parents) might go towards Judo if they like competition and rough and tumble element but with perhaps more of the discipline aesthetic. Krav Maga tends to dominate the self defence market because of the gung-ho nature of its advertising.

White Dogi styles like Karate, Ju Jitsu and TKD don’t always train in their uniforms.

The intake of your average karate class now, whatever the type of karate (sport, classical, traditional, practical, children’s, crèche, functional, applied, modern, combat…), is now subtly different to that perhaps of the first forty years of karate in the west. Now we seem to have a higher proportion of people that either come purely for the stimulation of a different form of exercise, or who like the idea of studying self defence but are put off by actual violence (although some people do choose based on proximity or recommendations as people do arrive ‘up for it’). Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. From my perspective I feel that the people who come to me are the ones I can help the most if they were too timid to try more overtly aggressive combat sports, but then they could just as easily have gone to a karate club that is, from my perspective, simply teaching them children’s exercises, and not learned there anything that might have helped them avoid, de-escalate or escape from real aggression and violence.

The majority of self defence isn’t physical training.

But how is that different from any of the other disciplines that they could have chosen? I’m not going to point a finger at any single art other than my own because I think all martial arts, in differing ways, suffer from the same issue of a huge diversity in club quality, approach and understanding.

I’ve seen a lot of different systems. I’ve seen a lot of different clubs. The good, the bad and the ugly; the deluded, the fantasists and the charlatans; the cults, the cocks and the c**ts. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. It’s no wonder Master Ken’s spoof of the martial arts community is so popular.

There is something for everyone out there, but if you want to find something that’s right for your needs you need to ask a lot of questions about what you really want to achieve, and be prepared to search for people who give you comprehensible explanations for what they are offering. There is nothing wrong with martial arts as a form of exercise, or as a crèche, so long as the instructor delivers that. When it boils down to it that’s how simple it is. Look past the style labels, look at clubs, talk to instructors, watch a class, talk to the students, talk to the parents, ask to see credentials and insurance, and then make an informed choice – you’re more likely to get what you want.

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.

self defense

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