Kakushiite

Try this one. First, let's remember where we are going to be in the kata. You are in a horse stance, the left hand will do a downward block to the left, and the right strikes across the chest, then the right foot steps across the left. The attacker steps in with his left foot, and with his left hand grabs your left wrist, and then punches a right reverse punch towards your head. Let's make it a hooking strike as would probably be found in a non-dojo attack. Let's say the left arm is pulling you close, and he is a lot bigger so your range of easy motion is limited. Think of your option of movement. You don't want to go to your left, as that is where the strike is looping in, and back is difficult because this big guy is pulling you towards him and he is stronger than you. I think everyone would argue that going forward and to the right is a good place to move as it gets you off the line, and uses the opponent's energy of pulling you in, to an advantage. So to get in the position to start the movement. Take your right thigh, and move it straight forward so the inside of your thigh is touching the outside of the left thigh of the opponent. (Remember we said the attacker stepped in with the left. Without the step, this technique will not work as described.) Once there, you will rotate counterclockwise into a horse stance. Your left leg can swing back a half foot or so to your right, bring it to the front, or slightly outside the attacker's forward left foot. Make sure you drop your center of gravity as you get into your initial horse stance. Don't do the deepest, widest horsestance as that is for training. More upright with bent legs is best. This movement is not part of the kata, but gets you to the point where you can begin the application which is pretty much identical to the kata. Your block-strike combination will be slightly different. Instead of a one-then two movement, they go together. The right hand strikes up under the elbow with the ulna, as the strike comes straight out from, but net yet across your body. Perhaps the most critical part of the whole technique is that you do not rely the arm strength of your right arm. You use the body mechanics of your counterclockwise rotation. Remember you stepped forward, and then ROTATED into horse stance. Meanwhile, the left hand is reversing the grab by circling outside the grab (pinky to pinky). The grab reversal can be done for four reasons. 1. the weight is dropped in horse stance enabling you to get under the arm. 2. You use your natural strength from your counterclockwise turn, as you step forward to get into horse stance to encircle the wrist. 3. Your right arm is beginning an arm bar on the opponent's left arm by striking hard and circular, one inch above the elbow. 4. prior to beginning the whole technique, your grabbed hand pushes straight down to the left (Slightly) with a palm heel. This separates the attackers palm from your wrist slightly and you exploit that space (and weakness) with your circular reversal of the grab. When you are done with the arm bar, you should look EXACTLY as you do in the kata after the strike. The motion of the left arm in the arm bar is exactly the same as the downward block, except that it goes straight to chamber. The right strike is identical. Both are done together, not separate. When done fast, the attacker's strike never makes it near your head. Now your right foot is pushed under the opponent's left thigh and behind his left foot. (Remember to drive your leg in hard on the first step.) When you lift it, and start shifting your weight to your left to make your step, it naturally finds the inside bend of the knee. When you find it, you shift all your weight to your right foot stepping down, driving the knee to the ground. In practice, please be careful with the knee stomp. You need to do it in SLOW MOTION and the attacker should NEVER, NEVER be surprised by it. If he is in a strong stance, and doesn't know his knee is about to be on the floor, you can do real damage. The only SAFE way to practice is for the attacker to voluntarily turn and kneel as soon as he feels contact. It is not a good idea to do this on the hardwood floor, as the kneecap can hit pretty hard. Best to do it on mats. Please, if you teach this to your students, or show it to anybody, make sure they understand the safety issues and the need to communicate them as they pass it on. This knee stomp does not exploit the natural bending motion of the knee. When your weight starts to come down, it is driving the knee in a direction that IT WAS NOT MEANT TO BEND IN. If you do this fast and hard, it means SURGERY for your partner. So please be careful. I would be grateful if anyone would give me feed back on this. Especially the ability to evade that strike. Please note that this would not be an optimal technique for someone who's strike is simultaneous with the grab. There needs to be the slightest delay. Grab, then strike. But no significant pause is required to make this work.

I am a serious student of kata. I try to practice and teach them as I think they were practiced 100 years ago. That means, few kata, tons of repetition in the air, and lots of bag work of the techniques (they used to use makiwara) and a heavy emphasis on partner work. After training in many styles of fighting I have come to the following conclusion. The techniques in kata work well against an untrained fighter. But against a trained fighter, especially one in Muay Thai, the techniques break down, and tend to be far less effective. In Muay Thai, you overwhelm your attacker with a non-stop barrage of strikes and kicks. And the Thai boxer is conditioned to take a great deal of punishing counterstrikes. This is also the case, to some extent, with those very skilled in boxing. I choose to continue my kata focus for many reasons. Regarding self-defense, I am just not that worried about someone with serious Muay Thai training attacking me on the street. For the kinds of attacks I anticipate, kata works great. But it is my experience after nearly 30 years in the art, that the vast majority of people have little idea of how to apply the movements in kata. For all those that say practice in the air makes no sense, they are both right and wrong. By itself, practice in the air is very limiting. As part of a threepart training routine (air to develop speed, bag to develop power, partner to master the grappling), practicing in the air is great. You don't need a partner, and you can keep getting faster and faster, learning to apply good body mechanics to your techniques. -Kakushite

Azure, For Pinan Sandan. I have really good interpretations (out of the ordinary) for movements in Pinan Shodan, Yondan and Godan. My concepts for Pinan Sandan are okay, not great. And they all have takedowns, so they are complicated, especially to explain. The opponent is directly in front, and your feet are as the appear in the kata, equidistant from the attacker. The attacker steps in left foot, left Chudan (center area) Tsuki. Turn 90 degrees to your left, sitting back on your right foot, and block with your left. (Center block) You may have to step out 6 inches or so with your right foot to get off the line of attack. Make sure you use the rotation of your body to add power to the block. Don't turn and then block. It all goes together. Stepping right foot forward to the left foot (into an upright stance), the left downward block merely pushes down on the inside of the left forearm, trapping it, as the right center block strikes the left triceps tendon(1/2-to-1 inch above the elbow joint) with your ulna (bone on the pinky side of your forearm). Make sure the ulna rakes the triceps tendon, sliding broadly across it. This vital point is sensitive to friction and the sliding of the ulna across it provides that. The right hand does not move circularly, just straight out to the outside block position. The arm bar should lower the attacker's left shoulder a foot or so and lock the arm. With the left hand, grap the opponent's wrist and circle it back towards you so you can lift it up over your right arm (another trap). You may have to do a big circle to first bend the arm, and use the right ulna to rake the elbow to help. Once the arm is hooked, release the hand but continue the circular movement without stopping, and strike the opponent in the head with your left hand in a backfist. This is the outside or center block. The 180 degree turn to the right can be used as a takedown. With your right hand, keep the trap and grab the shoulder/upper arm on the gi. With your left, strike up and back (pulling towards you and to your right) on the side of the neck furthest away. As you pivot clockwise, the left hand will stay put relative to your body and the rotation will provide power to drive the neck to your right. (The body follows.) Now for the part that puts it all together. As you shift weight to your left leg in cat stance and turn to the right, the right leg is freed up. Use it to squeeze opponent's left knee. (From the outside-in). This weakens the stance and allows the takedown to occur. In fact, you will have great trouble doing this technique on a bigger person unless you squeeze the knee with the inside of your leg. Please try it and let me know 1. If you have any problems (it is hard to describe this in text, maybe I can do better) 2. If it works for you, how well? Kakushiite.

Before I begin my long post, a criticism of the way many karate systems today approach self-defense, I have two disclaimers. First, I teach a traditional system and believe that the way karate was taught in Okinawa 100 years ago was about as effective a fighting system as there ever has been. Second, I recognize that not all karate systems are the same and many produce great fighters. (Bag/makiwara training, full contact sparring, grappling, and intensive training can compensate for the unrealistic approach many traditional karate systems take towards fighting.) I think practitioners in "non-karate" MAs have some very legitimate points regarding the way karate is taught in all too many dojos. In the striking arts of Muay Thai, Philippino MA and boxing, it is assumed that there needs to be a number of counters to overcome a larger opponent. Combinations with several kicks/strikes is the norm. So too in many Chinese arts. More important, the primary target is not the body. The head, neck, groin and knees are preferred candidates. And in the grappling arts it is assumed it is best to put the big attacker on the ground to neutralize his advantage in size. MMA combine the striking and grappling approaches. In contrast, in many karate schools, a surprising number of self-defense combinations emphasize single counter strikes to the solar plexus. Sport karate is built around this principle. A little history is needed. Prior to the 1950s, there was no notion of sport karate. In Japan however, several martial arts were modified for sport, so we should not be surprised that karate was as well. Kano incorporated many "safer" JuJitsu movements into his Judo, an art intended to be done competitively. Kendo is a sport version of the sword arts. Sumo, like Judo is a sport with some movements from traditional Japanese grappling arts. In the sword arts there has always been the notion of ikken hisatsu or one strike, certain death. I think we can all recognize that if the blade swiftly strikes your neck, the fight is over. In Kendo, there is a point scored for a touch of the bokken to the head, hand/forearm or the lower leg. (If you receive a swift strike on the forearm or leg, you either can't effectively hold the sword with two hands or stand on two legs. Either way, the odds shift overwhelmingly against you.) The concept of Ikken hisatsu was borrowed from Kendo for use in sport karate. The solar plexus was chosen as the target of choice. There is not much documentation as to why, but my guess is that a target on the torso was picked over the head because it is far safer. To recap, we began with an incredibly effective Okinawan fighting art, and in Japan it was converted it to sport with scoring based on a single strike to the abdomen. One can argue that this is fine, as sport and self-defense can be treated separately. That is not the real issue. The problem is that the Japanese then took this concept of ikken hisatsu and applied it to self-defense applications. Here it is very hard to make the case that this is an effective approach to fighting, especially against a larger attacker, which is probably the norm. For those that doubt that many dojos teach one-strike combinations for defense, I recommend you go to https://www.usankf.org. Select training, videowerks, and kata. Then select Basai Dai (Shito Ryu), Kanku Dai (Shotokan) or Chinto (Wado Ryu). When the kata comes up, three options come up on the right. Select the third picture on the right called video analysis. In virtually all of these "applications" the attack is a single lunge punch to the abdomen, usually the solar plexus. (There are a few kicks, some grabs, and some multiple punches to the abdomen.) I think most of us who have thought long and hard about attacks recognize that these attacks are highly unlikely. Jabs and hooks to the head are far more common. That's the first problem, the emphasis on training against unrealistic attacks. How about the defenses. If you haven't been exposed to the "traditional" Japanese approach, these videos will be informative. In the vast majority there is a single counter punch to the solar plexus or ribs. There are a few kick/punch or kick elbow techniques. I think Kanku Dai is most illustrative of the disconnect between "traditional" Japanese karate and true fighting. Take, for example, "Applications" 3, 4 and 12. In none of these does the attack come close to reaching the opponent. "Application" 16 appears to be a very, very risky application. Here the defender lets a front kick strike the the lower abdomen. (This kick actually lands below the belt.) Once landed, it is "trapped" there with one hand underneath the heel, while the second hand strikes the shin bone. Bad enough so far. But what is really risky is the stance, kiba dachi which leaves the groin wide open. One can just imagine the effectiveness of this defense against a groin kick targeted just inches lower. There is much else to take issue with in all three of these videos from these three mainline Japanese systems. Several of these applications end with a block, as if suddenly the attacker loses interest. Takedowns are few. Rarely is there a sidestep or "tai sabaki" to get off the line of attack. The counterstrikes found in the "applications" are rarely found in the kata. They are added. Those are general themes. If you look at many of these "defenses" individually there is plenty more to take issue with. I think that everyone who wants to learn karate for self-defense should rightly ask how these "applications" in any way approximate what might happen in a fight. And if they don't, students should then feel free to question a Sensei why they are taught and why they should be practiced. Unfortunately, this question can be uncomfortable to the many Senseis that teach them. There are many arts where students train to deal with a real attack by practicing useful combinations against realistic attacks. Unfortunately, many "traditional karate" dojos teach techniques similar to those found on the USANKF website. Is there any wonder why karate is viewed so poorly by those in more "fighting" oriented systems.

Some people want to practice karate as an art, and for them, the kata are an important element, regardless of whether they see any self-defense utility in the kata. Some want to practice karate for self-defense, but they practice in a system that does not teach useful applications. They rightly question whether the practice of kata is worthwhile. Some want to practice karate for self-defense, but practice in a system that does teach useful applications. Kata for these students can have great value. I think the real problem is that many, many schools that do teach kata do not teach applications that students find useful. I practice and teach a kata-focused system. I have been fortunate to have learned extraordinarly good self-defense applications for the kata I practice. I do recognize that I am likely in a small minority.