Karate: Impact with maximum force and efficiency (1999)

At the age of 10, I was already drawn to the fascinating world of martial arts being first introduced to the Kung-Fu of the Shaolin monks on a TV series. At that time it was just a deep sense of attraction with no possibility of joining any class because there were none and because my family would not take me seriously. Although subsequently I did join Judo classes at the age of 12, and later Kung-Fu lessons, I tried very hard to read anything available about the martial arts. The thing which mystified me the most is the fact that whereas in most physical activities there is always some form of peak which deteriorates with the age of the practitioner, in the martial arts you find elderly people still becoming better and more efficient than when they were younger. At first I could not find any logical explanation to this especially in a culture wherein it is common to start aiming to rest as one gets older. I remember my folks taking me very lightly when I brought up the subject. They thought that I will eventually mature to understand that the martial arts may be a way of life for young people, like most sports. I know they even probably hoped that added responsibilities in my life will gradually extinguish my passion. Well this has never happened and my quest has remained that to understand what should keep me going in my life, and which studies will compensate for the weaknesses inherent in older age. The following text is an attempt to convey my present school of thought on the fascinating art of Dento Karate and why I think that following this school will build in oneself, the will to live karate to its fullest without ever thinking of anything else or of quitting. Karate for me is like breathing or waking up in the morning - You do not think about them.

Confidence

I think that the key to studying seriously Karate is the quest to becoming always more confident. However, one must be careful that the confidence one has, is not just a state of make-believe. I think confidence should come through dedicated studying of one's maximum potential in Karate, and not just because one is doing karate. Confidence has to build up by itself as a result of understanding what your achievements are, what you are actually capable of doing and where your limitations stand. I normally think of the confidence a common person feels when he has a weapon in his hand, even if it just a stick of wood. Why does that person feel more confident? Should a Karateka feel more confident if he had say hardened and conditioned hands as weapons?

Conditioned and hardened weapons

In this day and age I think that many Karate practitioners ignore this side of training for various reasons. In the past there were accounts of the extent of hand and feet conditioning Karateka(s) of the time used to go through. Limbs were said to become deformed and in the medical profession there was even a name given to this condition, namely Karate Disease. From the little history there is available of those eras, Karateka(s) went to this extreme because they had to defend themselves against potentially armoured assailants. Furthermore I think that conditioning of the hands and feet substituted weapons which were at the time banned.

I think that even today a serious Karateka should harden his or her limbs to attain the sense of always being prepared. It is like always carrying a weapon around. Even beginners to the discipline will immediately feel they have that little bit more than the common person in the street if they train diligently to gradually condition their limbs. This is confidence as well.

From times past, a device called a makiwara was developed in karate. This is a springy board normally fixed to the floor in vertical position. At the top end, a pad normally made of rice straw but nowadays normally made of rubber foam, is affixed. The karateka then pounds his fist into the pad for as many times as possible up till the point just before breaking the skin. This system of training strengthens the fist and other striking parts of the body. I think that the makiwara should be used by both beginners under expert supervision, and by advanced karateka(s). The pad can be modified according to the level of conditioning attained. However I believe that makiwara training should be consistent. The feeling that gradually comes should increase the level of confidence in the practitioner while instilling a greater desire to maximise efficiency through technique.

Maximise efficiency through technique

One of the most recurring faults I had in karate was stiffness. This is a common comment in gradings and I must say that it took me quite a while to understand why I should be relaxed not stiff in karate. Today, with beginners I try to use the example of a person holding a ruler or stick. I ask which strike would have the greatest effect, that which comes from holding the ruler very tightly in one's hand or that which comes from holding it in a relaxed hand with a relaxed wrist. The obvious reply is that which comes from a relaxed wrist. In fact in times past when little farming equipment was available we know that to separate the stalk from the grain, farmers used a tool which is the ancestor of the nunchaku, or two staffs joined with a cord. One staff was held in relaxed hands and swung round to beat the wheat, hitting with the second staff. One can imagine the momentum relayed to the second staff by the body swinging the first staff. This simple tool gave a lot of efficiency to the workers who quickly learned that the more relaxed they are the more efficient they become in their work.

The same concept has been evolved further in batting sports like baseball or cricket. If one watches closely the person holding the bat, then one can easily understand that the awesome power which comes from the bat is actually the product of the weight of the bat coupled with the swinging motion of the body of the person. Top athletes are in constant search of maximising this swinging motion and they all come to the point that to maximise their action they have to use their full body weight.

Full body weight

The pitcher in baseball has always fascinated me with his smooth focused movement displacing his pelvis forward while keeping back his upper body until the same upper body and arm are catapulted into action, hurling the ball with tremendous speed. The beauty I see in this movement is the completely relaxed shifting of the pelvic region to the furthest point beyond the supporting back leg forcing the upper body to sway naturally and gradually picking up tremendous speed. This idea has helped me a lot in adding that little bit more in karate percussion techniques. This idea leads us to the search for the hara.

Hara

I understand the hara to be that region of the belly which houses the centre of gravity of a person. I feel it is that part within the pelvic region a few inches below the navel. It is that part of the belly which has to be sought to be found. One way which gave me a feeling of awareness of the hara as I understand it, was meditation. Doing this I just thought of belly breathing, bloating the lower belly when inhaling instead of raising the chest. Through practice I gradually started to feel and control better the lower belly. In my mind I saw myself compacting more internal organs lower into the pelvis making the lower abdomen feel the biggest and the heaviest part of the body. I could feel that by belly breathing I was expanding my lungs down pushing the stomach towards the navel. Awareness of the hara opened up new studies in shifting the body to relay movement efficiently.

Shifting

Awareness of the centre of gravity helped me understand a bit better the smooth movement of the baseball pitcher explained above. In karate, when facing the makiwara, I normally start punching slowly and relaxed. As I gradually get warmed up and more tired, I try to relax more and think just of the hara. My endeavour is always addressed to connecting the hara with the target slightly before the fist arrives. From a relaxed stance I try to drop the hara forwards and down followed inevitably by a rotating and swaying response of the upper body. This movement should hurl the arm towards the target and if the elbow is also kept relaxed, the forearm, wrist and tight fist pick up even more speed in the direction of the target. As I explained above the nunchaku is a simple weapon which hits its target with certain heaviness depending on the displacement of the body holding the weapon. As in baseball, the better the shifting of the centre of gravity forward before the upper body and the more relaxed the body is, then the bigger the movement and the momentum of the technique. In karate I think that all these principles contribute to the heavy impact generated by its techniques.

Impact

Impact of percussion techniques in karate, being a punch, block, strike, smash or kick, is the product of the weight or mass of the limb used and the velocity it picks up just before hitting the target. As explained above the mass of the limb may be altered through conditioning exercises. The velocity may be improved through the study of body movement which can be either muscle dependent or dynamic. I have tried to explain above, the dynamic movement of leverage, using the hara to maximise efficiency in hurling any type of body structure in any direction. Coupled with all this, the free-moving joints up to just before the limb used as a weapon enhance the relay action of the various segments of the body resulting in a thrown weapon. The impact is heavy. However there is another dimension which augments further velocity. I experimented with the whiplash.

Whiplash

Allow me please to use again the example of the nunchaku. If this weapon is used as explained above, that is by shifting violently the pelvic region of the body towards the opponent, thus catapulting the upper body and the hand-held part of the nunchaku towards the target, then all this would relay yet greater speed in the free moving part of the nunchaku. This would generate certain heaviness at the moment of percussion. If the movement stops here, what we have will probably be the heaviest strike we can generate with the nunchaku of a specific weight. However, I think that we can enhance further the rate of displacement, or acceleration of the free moving part of the nunchaku by jerking back in the opposite direction just before contact, the hand-held part of the weapon. The sudden change in direction at the right time and distance will create whiplash which will result in a much augmented velocity at the moment of impact. All this holds true even for karate. If the pelvic region which houses the centre of gravity is shifted before you in the direction you want to go, followed by the relayed swaying of the body and subsequently by the relaxed limb, and centimetres before the fist hits its target in the case of a punch, the pelvis is jerked back with the support of the legs, then a whiplash in the relaxed arm will be created. When studying this I think that what is of utmost importance is that the whiplash is created by total body movement and not just the arm itself. If only the arm is used, then I think this would result in just a snap-back and the effect is not the same. So I reiterate that the most important part of this is shifting of the pelvic region in the direction of the target and the sudden rotation in the opposite direction just before the limb was about to hit the target. As I said, if the joints of the limb are relaxed then the whiplash that will result will maximise the impact of the karate technique. In studying this, form should be kept at its best.

Conclusion

To recap, I first of all emphasise that the above is an attempt to convey my current feeling of impact maximisation in karate. Once I was told that when one is young, technique is on a very low level whilst strength is on a high level. As time goes by, strength diminishes but is compensated for by technique. Whilst I do agree with this, I have still met karateka(s) who have invested heavily on strength in karate and even though they are ageing, they just continue to strive hard to keep up their juvenile strength. I myself, not having a big strong build, whilst I do try to retain muscle tone and general health, I have always been impressed by the not-as-young masters of the art whose relaxed technique generates awesome shock on impact far more forceful than that which a normal human being can withstand. The time I invest in the study of karate is put into this school of thought. Karate is for everyone including the weak and small. I am given some comfort by the fact that a child can throw a punch and if he or she gets you in the eye or groin or in any vulnerable point, at the time you were least expecting him or her, then you are bound to get hurt. This same principle applies to grown-ups. My above study does not go into the timing of the technique or the state of mind of the opponent, which I think merit a study of their own. The above study revolves around the technique of using our own state of mind and the architecture of our own human body to the best advantage of creating impact with maximum force and efficiency in the noble art of karate.

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