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But
What Supports the Iceberg?
At a recent Goju-Ryu training seminar
here in the USA, our visiting head instructor sized up the group and announced
that we probably would not get past Gekkisai Dai Ni kata over the next three
days. I remember thinking “Huh?” But then I looked around
at my fellow practitioners and I believe I understood his reasoning. It
was obvious that many of the group were lacking basic skills. Even an
inordinate number of Yudansha seemed to have trouble with proper stances.
Our Sensei understood that teaching advanced katas and applications to
practitioners with un-advanced basics was pointless. Without a foundation,
blocking, striking, and kicking techniques are ineffectual and therefore useless
in self-defense applications. Improper stances make hip rotational power,
proper distancing, and balance nearly impossible, or worse, leave the karateka
more vulnerable to the attack. So...it was back to the drawing board.
But static repetition of basics is not
enough to ingrain the ability to properly hit changing stances under duress,
when the karateka must quickly reposition the body into, out of, or at angles to
the attacker and simultaneously deliver techniques capable of stopping a
determined opponent. To be effective, repetition drills must be
partner based, dynamic, and worked slowly at first, with speed of attack and
response gradually increased over hundreds of repetitions, until they approach
real speed. Additionally, the drills should be repeated with a variety of
partners in order to teach proper maai (distancing) on an internal level.
I would also submit that these dynamic
exercises be developed from kata bunkai oyo for several reasons:
1) If drawn from kata
applications, we are working within a framework that is already imprinted on
the practitioner on an internal level.
2) Understanding bunkai oyo
imparts the true “flavor” of our martial style. What makes Goju-Ryu
unique? What are the strengths that were distilled out over hundreds of
years of reality testing – self defense Darwinism, if you will – and were
deemed important and effective enough to pass on within the experiential
textbooks we call kata?
3) Understanding bunkai oyo
and being able to effectively apply the techniques in real time dismantles the
argument by some that kata is nothing more than dance.
4) Drawing our repetitive
drills from the kata creates karateka strong in both kumite and in kata.
So long as they are practiced slowly at
first and demonstrated correctly for modeling purposes, students do not have to
be versed in a kata in order to work the kata applications in drills. The
benefit is that when the time comes to learn a more advanced kata, the student
is ahead of the learning curve because he or she has already been applying the
kata moves. Cause catches up with effect. The light bulb comes on:
“Oh, I already know this movement from our application-based drills.”
Kata is then performed as it was originally intended when the karateka already
has a memory imprint of how the techniques are effectively applied. The
cart can come before the horse.
Teruo Chinen Sensei refers to this as
concentrating on the ninety percent of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the
water, not the ten percent that is visible. “It is the stronger part that no
one sees that can sink a ship,” he would say. Somewhere along the way,
we started to focus on the visible tip of the iceberg, and are missing the
hidden mass that holds the tip afloat. Chinen said in the "old
days" they were usually taught the applications before they learned the
kata.
Training in this manner impacts depth of
understanding and application of effective karate. Through dynamic drills
based upon kata bunkai oyo, powerful stances and correct distancing are
developed, which enhance hip power, resulting in stronger transfer of kinetic
energy. The Goju-Ryu practitioner learns to automatically close distance,
imbalance an opponent, and deliver knock-down power.
Yours in the martial Arts,
James Pounds
Austin, Texas, USA
01/12/12
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