Street Fighting and Martial Arts

Whenever a person finds out that you do a martial art their immediate response is to joke about you as a trained killer. Fair play, if you have no interest in such things, it's a difficult conversation to engage with. It is however, quite untrue. Actually, I would raise an argument to say that martial arts training can reduce your ability to defend yourself for the following reasons:

1. You may believe that the sparring in some way resembles fighting - it does not
2. You will be used to a fixed pattern of responses from your opponent 
3. You will be used to producing fixed responses yourself - not eye gauging, joint breaking etc
4. You will be used to one opponent
5. You will be used to using protective mitts which make you hands bigger and protect them from the inevitable injury that comes from hitting hard things
6. You have probably never been frightened to the point of incapacity during a training session
7. You will be used to a timely warning prior to engaging your opponent
8. You don't spar with weapons - even if you do they are probably not live or sharp or used with serious intent
9. Most dangerous of all, you may have the self confidence to expose yourself to risk because of your limited training

I could go on, but you get the idea. Street violence is fast, unfair, unpredictable and nasty from the little I've seen of it. Use your training to avoid it at all costs. If you can't, do the best you can and remember - there are no rules anymore.

Sacroiliac Joint Related Back Pain and Martial Arts

After the initial shock of starting exercise at the end of 2012 for the first time in a decade, I developed some lower back pain. This settled when I developed the muscles needed to support my back and overall if you can avoid injury, karate is a great activity for improving musculoskeletal back problems. This is providing you do the techniques correctly - horse stance especially, knees over ankles and keep your bum tucked in. Done incorrectly, it's bad for your back and you look silly (gaijin arse).

Unfortunately, every now and then the pain returns. It comes from my sacroiliac joints (SIJ). These are the relatively immobile joints towards the back of your pelvis.

A variety of causes can trigger inflammation of the joint which results in pain (sometimes severe), slightly laterally in your lower back. The pain may radiate down into your buttock and thigh but never below the knee. Sitting forward or lying on the affected side sometimes worsen the pain. It is not clear what predisposes to this - laxity of the ligaments may be important. Certainly this is a common problem in pregnancy when hormones ensure greater joint mobility to allow birth. Some believe it is reduced movement, lack of muscular support or wear on the articular surface. However it remains a clinical diagnosis - no X-ray, blood test or even MRI will detect a change (however much pain you're in). By and large, apart from the pain, its harmless.

Superficial stimulation, be it massage, acupuncture, heat etc. will all help to disrupt the pain pathway and relieve pain. Rest and anti-inflammatories will reduce the inflammation and then it's back to building up your back muscles again.

Developing good protective back muscles requires the extensor muscles to be activated and this is something we don't often do in sport as much as we should. I suspect my latest bout was brought on by neglecting these exercises, so I'm back to doing Yoga before bed and paying careful attention to my karate stances!

Ticky Donovan - Lessons From The Past

Again the power of YouTube - watch Ticky Donovan giving an excellent run down of some classic techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2He-0tGuA

Annan

I keep returning to Annan because it is a really beautiful kata. Do look at this Youtube clip of Sensei Hasegawa Yukimitsu teaching on this kata.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mKSfJjJL3w

Happy 2014! An individual journey continues

It's now over a year since I started to develop an interest in martial arts. The honeymoon is over. It is a shame, but true to say that in the West, martial arts remain a domain inhabited largely by weird men and kids. There are gems however. People along the way who influence you and set you off on the next stage of your journey. One of the reasons why there are so many factions within martial arts, so much in-fighting and animosity between clubs is that there is no one way. We are each on our own journey. Martial arts are not religions, but share many of the faults of religious organizations. None of this is easy to change, nor can it be. Develop your own path and move on regardless.

Holding Back Information

There are some in martial arts who will not teach you everything they know and not just because you're not good enough to understand or because you can't be trusted not to misuse the knowledge, but rather to keep knowledge to themselves. This would have been common practice in the days of Samurai or early competitive dojos, when trade secrets had to be guarded. But knowledge is still power. Again, the same reason is probably behind it - fear of loosing competitive advantage. The fact that karate is made up of many slightly different factions who split apart to form more groups, each holding tightly to their particular variations, does not help. It was refreshing to hear Jonathan Mottram saying that he would teach anyone everything he knew, but didn't fear this because he would still practice harder than them and be better! More like Jonathan please.

Martial Arts - Frozen In Time

At some point in the future, I would like to visit Japan. Firstly because it would be fascinating and I hope, fun, but also because I want to see for myself how karate is really done by Japanese in Japan. Why? Simply because karate is a Japanese invention and includes practices based on Japanese culture and tradition. Unfortunately, not all teachers do this. As in any other subject, in addition to being an expert in their subject, a good teacher should be a nice human being with a certain standard of moral behavior and awareness of current practice.   To find a teacher will all 3 things - talent, personality and up to date skills is rare. Talent and personality are very much down to the individuals hard work and nature, however keeping up to date can be done by anyone. Many believe that regular travel to Japan is essential for anyone serious about karate. This is not just to get close to the original teachings, but rather to be aware of the directions it is taking and the way it is currently practiced in a day to day manner. If a person visits in the distant past, then their practice is essentially frozen in that time. An analogy would be British Colonies behaving in a more British was than the Brits - except they are not practicing current British behavior, but rather that of a previous era. Well it can be like that in karate, with poorer instructors adhering rigidly to disciplines that have long died out in Japan or practicing them without ever really understanding the real purpose. To overcome this it is better to visit Japan regularly and develop contacts there and not to rely on second-hand, outdated information.