Japanton – Chronicles of Anton in Japan!

When you find yourself in a confrontation often you become your own worst enemy.  You hesitate and have movements full of fear.  This is deadly to a martial artist.  If your heart is filled with fear, you can’t use the techniques that you have leaned.

Trust me when I say, if you hesitate things get worse.  I won’t bore you with details online, but if you ask me over a pint or two I will let you know.  When a fight breaks out lives are on the line, there is no time for you to doubt yourself.  This leads us to fudoshin…

Fudo shin or the immovable heart is an important skill to learn.  In the martial arts it is essential, but it will serve you well in life.  Having a heart which can stay calm despite adversity will make you a much better martial artist, able to defend themselves and not lose your head.  When you loose yourself to anger you loose track of your goals.

So in class as teachers and students, train fudoshin so that you will be ready for all sorts of situations in life.  I may post some more on this when I am a bit more motivated.

I am not going to make this a post where you have to follow along with complex mathematics.  I just need to explain a few things which I believe will help you understand a bit about generating power for strikes.

Lets first look at the quoted equation.

K = 1/2 mv²

or

Energy = 1/2 x mass x velocity squared

I will not get into momentum (which we all know is an integration of the previous formula right? 😛 ).  I will take time to explain why speed is not important.  Well maybe that’s going to far, I will explain why speed is no more important than technique.

In the simple equation that I have above, if you have a certain mass behind your punch, (let’s say half your body weight) and a certain speed (the velocity does not matter) you will create a strike with a certain amount of energy.  Now if you double the mass behind your strike and the speed stays the same you double the energy.  If you double the speed behind your strike you get four times the energy.  Thus speed is the answer right?  WRONG!

Do you understand how hard it is to increase your speed?  You will hit a wall and it will diminish with age.  Have you ever tried to move a car?  By changing your technique you can add a considerable amount of force behind you.  I would go as far as to say that increasing the mass behind your strike is 8 times easier than increasing your speed, and 13.42 times easier to maintain in old age (by my arbitrary but seemingly accurate predictions).

But wait there’s more!  You don’t always want to strike quickly.  You might want to change up the speed to throw your opponent off their game.  In this case having the correct weight behind your strikes using proper technique to anchor some of the mass from the ground is even more important.

In conclution, don’t believe the you need speed nonsense.  It is a misunderstanding of the classical mechanics when applied to the Human Body.  I am willing to debate anyone on this, it can be quickly articulated and demonstrated in person.  So if you have people who doubt send them my way I welcome the peer review.

It has finally happened.  I have students who are asking me for the information.  What do I need to know, what do I have to work on at home.  If my tear glands had not atrophied years ago I would be crying with joy.

There is something to be said about self motivation.  I have said before that I need to provide the information, but it must also be retained.  Ask me what you want to know, I will tell you.  If you need something before that to grasp the concept, I will let you know.  If you want the one concept that you need to work on (as far as I am concerned) I will give it to you.  I want to make you better than I am faster than I got there.

Nothing would make me happier than attending classes taught by a former student.

That’s right, I am guilty.  My admission to the charges however allows a certain leniency from my peers.  Let me explain how this all came about.

Because I have been teaching classes consistently over the past few years, I have been in my comfort zone.  When you teach something you know, you make new discoveries but you are not learning anything new.  You may be improving your current skills but you are not expanding your skills.

I am lucky in that I have a chance to travel to Japan and attend seminars which push my current understanding.  But at home when I am teaching I refine current knowledge while those attending the classes make real improvement.  That is until now.

He goes be a few names, “The Booj”, “The Shidoshi Killer”, “one who knows”.  He has taken up Thursday night classes.  This allows me to train, not to think about how to improve other people, but to ingrain movements in myself.  To go through repetitive practise, these are the things which improve taijutsu.

If I fall into the trap of only training when I teach, I am a coach not a practitioner.  The Bujinkan does not need coaches.  The Bujinkan does not need teachers, we have Hatsumi Sensei.  Budo is not an academic exercise like teaching a subject in school.  If I go over some problems in Math I will improve as I show you how to do the math.  If I am teaching you to play the piano, I can show you a scale, you practising the scale does not make me a better pianist, it makes you a better pianist.  Disciplines that take physical skills do not improve but through training.

I invite all of my friends and students (which are usually one in the same) to engage me on Thrusdays as a fellow student and equal.  I’ll say it again, the Bujinkan does not need teachers it needs us to train.

OK, this is one of the hardest concepts which I have encountered to explain in words.

The more powerful the attacks the less of them you can string together without reseting yourself.  Take a side kick vs wing chung chain punches for example.  The same person doing the techniques, obviously one side kick is much stronger than any one of those punches.

This creates an interesting situation when fighting, you might argue that through experience wait for your opponent to reset then respond.  But this is not true.  If you were analyzing an opponent that you were fighting in a sport then you might have that time.  If you had hours of tape to review might be able to scope him out and know  what his skills are.  In a self defence situation you don’t have a lot of time to do this.

So how does this knowledge help then if you can’t use it against your opponent?  But you can, it’s just you must do some self examination.  Know your attacks, know how they can be put together.  Understand how you can switch from attack to defence.

When you are outside fighting, it’s not like a kung fu film and it’s not like a UFC event there is no time.  No long fights where you finally overcome your opponent by personal growth while you are fighting.  No rounds and referees which guarantee you will be fighting one opponent at a time with no surprises.

You need to know what your limits are, if you bring out your game breaker punch realize it will take you a while to recover from it, that attack better land.  If someone is throwing jabs and you are doing a huge uke nagashi, your timing better be good.

I am still thinking about this so I will leave you at that.  Next post will probably be on facing jabs, a fitting end to the month of striking.  This is also a question which Bujinkan members ask far too much because we train it far too infrequently.

A friend and sempai of mine in Japan had been studying this concept recently.  He mentioned it in passing and was kind enough to offer me an explanation.  Sei chu sen translates as True Centre Line.  It is the centre line of the body or in the case of a kamae the line from the lead hand (weapon) to the centre of the spine.

I mention this just as a concept to research, I really have nothing much to say regarding this.  I won’t repeat the explanation I received without permission, especially seeing as how my sempai is new to this concept (at least in words) himself.  I am just happy that I have friends in Japan to pass this information to me while I am away.  So if he is reading, thanks.

If anyone has more information let me know.

Personal thefts are up as high as 31 percent this year.

First off let me be clear I have no idea of what that stat means.  As high as 31 percent?  What are we breaking it down into regions.

Aside from that I would like to say that I do not teach the idea of safety enough.  It’s one thing to learn how to fight, another thing entirely to avoid danger in the first place.  Not wearing headsets in isolated places.  Not keeping lots of money or valuables in site.  Being aware of what’s going on around you.  Things like that, simple things which make you a harder target.

I think I will have to start teaching classes about avoiding danger, not just kicking ass and taking names.

This was a phrase told to me by a friend and teacher of Budo.

He said that those with no control are dangerous nobodies.  This is a true statement.  When you are training with a beginner, they are unaware of how techniques work.  Because of that you help them by not resisting which may just put you in a dangerous position.  This is when the problems start.  If the beginner (or person without control) feels that they have the technique, then put on the speed and power.  If you do not have good ukemi you can get seriously hurt.

Even when you are training with a beginner don’t let your guard down.  This is training for you as well.

Thanks for reminding me.  Ghetto Budo.

OK, first make all of Hatsumi Sensei’s jokes about thrusts.  Let’s move on.

Recently it has been driving me nuts how people were surrendering their power doing punches.  When your fist makes contact with the opponent/punching bag, your arm should be in the final punching position with only your legs and hip left to do the work.

My club has a method to hold the arm i.e. what angle the elbow should be and what angle the fist should be at.  This varies often from person to person.  But regardless your arm should be in that final position.  If it is not you are using your triceps to punch.  This is OK but it is not the Bujinkan tsuki.

I just had to get it out of my system.  If there are any questions/rebuttles let me know.

Yes I know that’s not how Sir Winston Churchill said it.  But that’s the goal for the next three months.  A true understanding of material leading up to 5th kyu.

The first month will be spent against different styles of punches and kicks.  We don’t want to get caught in our own little world.  In the techniques of the Bujinkan, it does not say what type of punch.  So we need to work against retracting punches, hooks, uppercuts etc.  We need to work against kicks, snap kicks, roundhouse kicks, knees etc.

Second month throws, how do you deal with people trying to throw you?  What if they are using wrist locks?  If you are at the point where you need to take ukemi, you are in a bad place.  How can you position yourself so it doesn’t happen?

Third month ground, dealing with ukemi, taihen jutsu, kihon happo etc.  Can you do everything you can standing up on the ground?  Do you know how your movement works on the ground or are you going to just do what you see on PPV events?

So that’s basically what is going on February through April.  In May we look forward to doing considerable work on the top few kyus leading to Shodan.