Structure and Alignment

[Wastelander]

Haisai, everyone,

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of videos on social media from various different martial arts schools from around the world where intermediate (and even some advanced) students lack basic structure and alignment. Obviously, different styles will do things differently, but there are still some fundamentals that are pretty much universal, since there are only so many ways to use the human body to effectively combat another human body. For example, when punching, I very often see these students with their wrists cocked back in the natural gripping position, rather than having their knuckles aligned with their forearm. When in front stances, I often see front knees buckling inward instead of being positioned above the foot. I also notice that many end up with their torso leaning backward in a variety of different stances.

I had to correct all of these fundamenals within the first 3 belt ranks, and would never have been allowed to progress beyond those beginner ranks with the form I have been seeing. Within Okinawan karate, the concept of chinkuchi (muscle/sinew and bone) is a very important structural focus, and while I realize that not all karate styles know what chinkuchi is, I would think that the idea of proper structure and alignment would be something all instructors understood the importance of. I am curious as to your experiences with this sort of thing. Did you have to learn these fundamentals early on, or were you allowed to progress into intermediate or advanced ranks without them being corrected. If you were allowed to progress without them, do you know why?

[bushido_man96]

I learned about structure very early on, and preach it often when I teach classes, especially in stances.  When striking, I teach that power comes from the ground, up through the body, and without proper structure, strikes are moot.  In Aikido I find structure to be just as important, and am learning it in a different manner, and I see that when my techniques don't seem to be working quite right, I can trace the root of the problem back to structure.

I wonder if these schools that you are seeing this problem from stems from the possibility that they don't hit anything?  Hitting a makiwara is one thing; hit that with bad structure and you'll soon realize it.  But even striking heavy bags, kicking shields, and focus mitts can help to see the leaks in a weak structure.  That kind of immediate feedback should help students with these issues to realize their issues.

[Wado Heretic]

Elements of this were touched upon in the Hikite Topic. There are some peculiar ideas about how to generate power with the human body which are in fact at best poorly informed, and at worst, entirely disconnected from actual ergonomic and sport science. Thus, I would hypothesise some of what is being seen as poor structure are attempts to achieve a communicated idea which has not been properly transmitted or was misinformed in the first place. The worst example I personally notice is the idea of the back being straight, and what happens is people tend to push their chest and hips forward, rather than straightening the spine by raising the head through the crown. The prior causes the leaning back affect as mentioned in the opening post.

My inclination would be to blame the instructors in most instances. They either do not care to make the corrections (Whether they are more lax at junior levels, or they do not consider them essential), or and I fear this to be just as likely, they do not know how to make these corrections. Once you know the benefits of good structure in fighting arts it is impossible not to care. Especially, if the fighting arts are a passion to you.

Another factor at play is what I call middle of the road karate. Where the training has not settled on a paradigm: Sport, Budo, Practical, or Neo-Classical. By those terms I mean the following –

Sport: Training to compete in one of the various models of competition available, with a focus on game theory, sport specific conditioning, and competition preparation.

Budo: What emerged in Japanese Karate in the 1930s and reached its final form in the 50s/60s. May better be called Traditional or Three K Karate. Training through repetition of Kihon, Kata and Yakusoku Kumite (Pre-Arranged kumite which may or may not be based on Kata movements). With the results of training tested through Jiyu Kumite.

Practical: Self-Defence orientated with an emphasis on conditioning for physical self-defence through pad-work, resistance-based drills, and Jissen Kumite. Can be bunkai led but if there is kata analysis it is focused on whether the fighting skills being practiced are effective for modern concerns.  Congruence with the original context of the kata, or being informed by investigating traditional and historical methods, is secondary (Or possibly unimportant) to whether the techniques work under resistance when tested.  

Neo-Classical: Shares much in common with the practical paradigm. It is bunkai and kata led, informed by investigation and experimentation with traditional and historical methods, and seeks to be congruent with both the realities of physical violence (The human body has not changed significantly in hundreds of thousands of years) and with the historical context of Kata and Karate Principles. Kobudo practice is also important in this paradigm as the weapons of Okinawan Martial arts ultimately inform the assumptions, conceits, and ideas that historically shaped Okinawa Te and Ryukyu Kempo.

Middle of the Road Karate is when people have taken some things from an emerging paradigm but have not fundamentally altered their practice. I have seen a lot of Budo or Traditional karate systems, which were the mainstream until the 90s, adopt elements from practical karate but only the framework with none of the substance. For example, doing Bunkai but it is essentially Yakusoku Kumite. It is pre-arranged, one step sparring where the defence comes a kata movement but without contextualisation through other drills that consider the kata sequentially.  Another would be incorporating striking pads, but in a manner similar to boxercise where it is striking for the sake of fitness, and not as a coaching tool to get better to striking.

The result of this Middle of the Road approach is that rather than improving on what was already there it is just fed even further into the “trying to get good at several sports under one umbrella” dilemma of the Three K Approach. What I mean by this is that the Three K approach often has significant disconnection between the three. Kihon waza are practiced in a way that differs from how they are used during Jiyu Kumite, and Yakusoku kumite is done at a miai which is again different from that of Jiyu Kumite. Thus, practice is built around trying to get better at three different things. By adding pad work and bunkai without adding what makes padwork and bunkai valuable it is just trying to do more with the same amount of time and getting poorer results.

Confused training will produce confused results. I suspect this may be the root cause of these slipping standards.

In regard to my own experience each of my instructors has somewhat had different foci when it comes to structure. However, all of them did consider structure important, and it was usually where I would find myself pulled up on during gradings and directed on where to improve. My first instructors were very much focused on hand and foot alignment. Aragaki Sensei could tear anyone’s posture apart and find ways to make it better. I honestly thought I had wasted my teenage and young adult years when I first underwent his corrections. My current instructor is very much about principles and structure following on from Aragaki Sensei’s example.

As I have got older (I am 36 so still young by average life expectancy but passed my prime athletically) the only thing that I have found I am able to consistently improve are:

1.      Structure through postural training

2.      Sensitivity – Proprioception of my own body to improve the timing of my techniques, and my ability perceive my opponent’s intent through touch

As such, I would say I spend most of my time coaching giving feedback on structure over anything else. It is what I am always considering when grading people. My system of advancement is not knowledge based but competency based. Which is to say I do not rank people on if they know XYZ kata, but rather when they perform the kata are they displaying the quality of karate I expect