Journal Martial Arts Energies in Practice

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The Problem with Purity - Part 3: Capoeira

The seductive quality of ‚pure‘ martial arts energy is not seen as problematical in capoeira, on the contrary: flawless techniques only serve to heighten the appeal of a game. Since there are no blocks in capoeira, you can be sure that the wide arcs of all your beautiful spinning crescent kicks (armadas) won’t ever be rudely disrupted by another guy’s meddlesome hands. Utility of application is not a consideration - aesthetics is, giving capoeiristas the freedom to create and experiment irrespective of the practicality of their moves and tricks.

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The trouble with such crescent kicks is that compared to the trunk, the head is a small and very mobile target, and leaning sideways a bit while raising your shoulder to let them glance off or taking a small step back is often enough to thwart them, without having to risk your blocking getting injured. Crescent kicks like the armada can only ever hit you if you hold perfectly still which no capoerista will ever do, not even a beginner. Just imagine a wrestler or a football player cannoning into you as soon as your leg reaches its highest elevation and bringing you down with a tackle… ugh. Being far more pragmatic, karate doesn’t even teach such risky kicks.

For the avoidance of doubt, what I mean by ‚seductive quality of pure martial arts energy‘ is that styles which only ever practice basic techniques, kata/forms, and pre-arranged partner exercises tend to lull their practitioners into believing that they’re these incredible warriors without ever confronting them with non-cooperating opponents. In some ways, capoeiristas with all their fancy kicks are superior martial artists because they know how to improvise freely and spot sudden opportunities they will be able to exploit. Doing nothing but formal drills, however, tends to ossify your patterns of offense and defense, and the harder you train, the more fossilized and set in your ways you will become.

As in the case of capoeira angola, I’m forced to make a culling here and exclude slow games from my investigation. I hate doing that because I’ve always enjoyed them more than the fast ones but like capoeira angola, they lack this intensity I’ve made one of the criteria for true MA energy. It isn’t just a question of speed - the

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(musical bows) of the bateria will switch from a very laid-back São Bento Pequeno or Benguela to the syncopated, driving São Bento Grande rhythm played at least twice as fast, and the adrenaline levels of both players in the circle will soar despite of themselves. There’s still cooperation, of course, but also urgency, and if you dodge or evade kicks too slowly, you may get hit since pulling techniques at such a pace is difficult or next to impossible in the case of jump kicks. You can opt out of such fast games if you’re still a beginner or too exhausted from a class but if you decide to play, don’t complain if the going gets too rough for you. As

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goes:

Quem não quer melar o dedo, não come do vatapá
Quem não tem o couro grosso nessa roda vai sobrar
O lê lêo, o jogo arrepiou

If you don't want to get your fingers sticky, don't eat

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Who does not have a thick skin will be left out of this

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O lê lêo, the game got scary

Or in other words: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It is in those fast games where the intent, focus & intensity of capoeira energies are most clearly felt. Nobody will actually try to hit you with malice aforethought but what it will boil down to is a string of very near misses - deliberate misses but sometimes a little bit too close for comfort, and if you manage to escape your partner’s kicks, you may get taken down, and break-falling isn’t taught in capoeira as far as I know. What additionally makes fast games so dangerous is your own cardio, or lack thereof - if you can last for more than 90 seconds of uninterrupted kicking, dodging, and acrobatics, you’re quite good but usually you’ll fade before that, and those kicks will become harder and harder to spot, your reflexes slower, and the overall risks of getting banged around the ears will increase.

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Laypeople may discount capoeira games as ‚show fighting‘ or ‚movie fighting‘ but that’s precisely what they aren’t - as opposed to action movie scenes, there’s no fight choreography and protective padding ensuring that nobody will ever get seriously hit, and it’s the capoeiristas themselves who are responsible for keeping the MA energy flowing, not some film director and editors making clever cuts. Prior to the game in the circle, kicks, dodges, sweeps, acrobatics, etc. will be practiced and standard situations rehearsed during a capoeira class, either alone or with a partner, but come roda time, you’ll have to react spontaneously but never predictably, or the other player may guess your next move (unless your maneuver was intentionally predictable, in which case… you get the drift). It’s this spontaneity formal MA styles lack, the ability to think fast on your feet, no matter what the situation may be; ‚think‘ perhaps isn’t the right word, you develop reflexes, instincts, a feeling for which technique will be an adequate response to a given challenge. Practicing set-pieces is all well and good but there comes a time in your martial arts career when you have to let go of them and soar…

 

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Sparring is Jarring (Part 1)

In the 1930s, Zhejiang police officer Liu Jinsheng noted a decline in the aliveness of Chinese martial arts practice:

...the practitioners of Shaolin and Wudang styles only pay attention to the beauty of their forms— they lack practical method and spirit... When the ancients practiced any type of martial art, sparring and drilling techniques were one and the same. Once a fight started, techniques flowed in sequence, six or seven at a time, never giving the opponent a chance to win.

(„Chin Na Fa: Traditional Chinese Submission Grappling Techniques“ by Jinsheng Liu & Jiang Zhao as quoted in Wikipedia, „

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“)

I’ll take that bit about the ‚ancients‘ with a grain of salt since I’ve noticed that Chinese authors love to invoke an idealized past that most likely never existed. As far as I know, traditional karate didn’t include free sparring either; as the (apocryphal) story goes, one of Gichin Funakoshi’s masters had him practice nothing but one and the same kata for a whole year. The idea is that katas/forms will prepare you for real fights by teaching you effective patterns of defense and offense which may be subsequently applied in possible emergencies. In actual practice, this is where the seductive purity of MA energies as generated by elegant katas/forms will come into play, and it seems that in interwar China too, there were practitioners who preferred to keep their MA energies pure and rather ‚fought‘ in the abstract only.

In answer to the usual accusations of their impracticality, it should be remembered that katas/forms weren’t meant as a way of preparing for fights against other martial artists but as a means of self-defense against ruffians who had no martial arts training themselves. In this connection, an Asian proverb is sometimes quoted: „When two tigers fight, one will be dead and the other mortally wounded“, i.e. two skilled martial artists fighting in earnest can only result in fatalities and is thus unthinkable. Provided their practitioners weren’t totally seduced by the deceptive ‚purity‘ of their MA energies arising from katas/forms, various pre-arranged partner exercises were developed to convey the immediacy of real combat without risking serious injury. You need to feel that sloppy blocking can have (sometimes painful) consequences. You need to feel how it is when another person is physically trying to impose his or her will on you, feel his or her arm pressing down hard against your rising blocks, feel him or her trying to disrupt your balance, and you need to feel an opponent’s resistance to your attacks, otherwise your subconscious and your instincts won’t take seriously what you’re doing because they won’t grasp that your physical integrity could be at stake.

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A Shaolin kung fu step into the right direction. It’s a drill you could also observe in a karate dojo, and I guess even officer Liu Jinsheng would be a bit mollified. My only gripe is that the two guys are standing a little bit too far apart - you need to feel your opponent pressuring you and striving to overcome your defenses since practicing all techniques from a safe distance can lull you into a false sense of security.

Learning a martial art is a bit like learning a foreign language. First it’s words, then sentences, and after a while you’ll be ready to hold your own in a conversation or discussion. Sparring is such a discussion (whereas competitive or street-fighting would be like an argument ), and one day you'll have to take the plunge, let go of all your list of vocabularies and course books, and actually talk to a native speaker instead of simply parroting your teacher’s set phrases, no matter how incompetent, nervous and embarrassed you may feel.

On the face of it, karate sparring (sometimes called

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) is no big deal. As point-fighting rules apply, there’s only a limited number of offensive techniques your opponent is allowed to use, and you will be accustomed to defending against them from previous pre-arranged drills anyway. Only… as opposed to these drills, you won’t know which ones and when as well as in which combination he or she is going to use them.

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Despite its techniques being right there in our katas, one of modern shotokan karate’s major weakness is lack of infighting practice. Our Okinawan gojuy-ryu cousins seem to have the right idea though…

It’s only during sparring that you'll realize what works and what doesn’t, what can only work in specific circumstances or against which type of opponent (fleet-footed dancer, immobile colossus, taller, shorter, stronger, weaker, etc.), which technique is only useful as part of a combination or might require a feint to get through, and finally, what techniques and combination you yourself are comfortable with; all karatekas have their favorite four or five combos which they will hone during each sparring session and then use in point-fighting competitions. Not all will work against specific opponents, or they may get botched due to bad timing on your part. This practical knowledge can only come from experience and can never be acquired by reading books alone; it’s practical know-how which has to become instinctive to be of any use, since you won’t have time to mentally scroll through „The Book of Five Rings“ or „The Art of War“ when facing an opponent who’s intent on whooping your ass (as considerately as dojo etiquette commands, of course ).

I don’t have any idea yet as to how MA energies behave in sparring. You could claim that those ‚pure‘ MA energies generated by basic techniques and katas/form will become disturbed in sparring, so to speak, but like I mentioned before, I don’t think it’s one fighter’s energies against the other’s. In a capoeira roda, the energies of the two players will flow together create something new that is greater than the sum of its parts; this synergistic phenomenon is boosted even further by the bateria, the band of capoeiristas playing various instruments, and the other players in the circle singing and clapping, and I’ve often seen quite shy or reserved beginners suddenly go wild with excitement and enthusiasm once they entered this witch’s cauldron of energies.

No such uniform spatial arrangement is in evidence in karate. Point-fighting competition areas are 8 x 8 m square, open to all sides and will also include a referee and four corner judges with their red and blue flags, with the audience sitting somewhere far off. Forming a circle to watch a fight go down is a natural response - building a special mat floor first is not. During karate sparring, there will not usually be any spectators present, no cheering will be heard, and you’ll have to make do with whatever space is available, always taking care not to bump into other pairs of karatekas, and the dojo floor can get quite cramped sometimes.

All this goes to say that the MA energies produced by karate sparring aren’t strictly contained or confined to a dedicated space. Partners are switched every few minute, and you may spar in one dojo corner and then with a new partner in the opposite one. In a capoeira roda, all eyes will be on you; in karate sparring, your and your partner will be just two faces in a crowd.

Hm… I wouldn’t have thought that spatial settings played such a major in MA energies. I’ll need to explore such external circumstances some more here, I think.

 

[HoldAll]

Sparring is Jarring (Part 2)

When practicing basic techniques or katas, everything is under perfect control, with no room for surprises whatsoever. Your instructor will count „ichi, ni, san“, etc., and a punch, kick, block or whatever’s on the menu at the moment will occur. Basic techniques are routinely performed by tromping up and down the dojo, katas will always follow a certain stepping diagram (

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‚ground plan’), technique A will be followed by techniques B and C, and you will always move in the prescribed direction and execute the prescribed kata turns. In pre-arranged partner exercises, your opponent will always remain within range, and you will attack with techniques you have to announce beforehand, no nasty tricks allowed, so everything is always nicely predictable and up front.

Sparring and competition matches, on the other hand, are chaotic and messy, and I think this is where practitioners of traditional styles who know nothing but formal exercises would be easily overwhelmed if they ever dared to venture into free-form combat territory. Developing a feel for the right distance (

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) alone will require many hours of practice because after all, your opponent won’t just stand there and patiently wait for your attack like in pre-arranged partner exercises. Closing the distance is one of the most challenging maneuvers in striking and MMA - all you can ever see is an opponent too far to hit, thus having all the time in the world to react, and what’s more, he or she is hiding behind a raised guard, leaving no unprotected spots for you to attack and presenting no obvious weaknesses for you to exploit (the good news of course is that you will appear to him or her as difficult a situational nut to crack as well!).

There’s various ways of overcoming this forbidding gap between you and your opponent (feinting, using several techniques in combination on the approach, etc.), and it’s always a good idea to practice positioning alone without any kicking or punching, both solo and with a partner, but you really have to learn how to make optimum use of the space available to you spontaneously instead of simply moving to and fro in a straight line all the time. Acquire some nifty footwork because as the saying goes: "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance" (Confucius, „The Analects“). Boxers know why they skip rope, and do I need to mention capoeira? Here’s what I mean:

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Karate point-fighting legend Rafael Aghayev (and others) dancing at an Azerbaijani wedding as well as on the competition mat.

Intent, focus, and intensity are all there in sparring and competitions while the ‚purity‘ of traditional techniques apparently gets lost. Or does it? A correct (and thus ‚pure‘) basic technique is an effective one and will cause maximum damage, it’s just that usually a few attempts will be necessary for a sparring partner or competitor to finally score; in competitions, points will only ever be awarded for correct technique, so you could say that ‚purity‘ of MA energy will be preserved even in the chaos of unscripted fighting. According to the Word Karate Federation (WKF) Rules, Section 8 „Scoring“:

8.2 Points are scored by a traditional karate technique with the hand or foot executed with control to the scoring area.
[…]
8.5 In order to be considered a score the technique must have the potential to be effective if it had not been controlled, and must also fill the criteria of:
1) Good form (Properly executed technique).
2) Sporting attitude (Delivered without intent to cause injury).
3) Vigorous application (Delivery with speed and power).
4) Maintaining awareness of the opponent both during and after execution of the technique (Not turning away or falling down after completing a technique – unless the fall is caused by a foul by the opponent).
5) Good timing (Delivery of the technique at the correct moment).
6) Correct distance (Delivery at a distance where the technique would be effective).

These officially sanctioned criteria also imply that old-school karate virtues will maintained even in such sporting contests disdained by ultra-orthodox martial artists; the conceit of point-fighting is that every scoring technique is theoretically a fight finisher (

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). Even zanshin (see item 8.5.4) about which I wrote an entire post is included in the rules.

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Nonetheless, it should not be forgotten that the WKF’s point-fighting system is only one possible competition format among many others which are just as valid but have different philosophies and limitations. In contrast to full-contact bouts, point-fighting is relatively safe and allows for big tournaments where champions will have to win several matches in order to reach the top, something that would not be possible if they still suffered from injuries from previous full-contact bouts.

What I’m trying to say here is that making across-the-board ‚purity‘ a distinguishing characteristic of MA energies is short-sighted and superficial, and the same goes for any notions of ‚harmony‘, ‚balance‘, or some such NewAge waffle. You can have your precious ying-yang equilibrium in pre-arranged exercises where partners take turns in assuming both the parts of the attacker and defender but that’s not the whole martial arts story, and imagining MA energies to be an even flow of basically uniform forces is positively one-dimensional. Sparring and MA competition energies are more like jarring, dissonant experimental music with a haphazard beat, admittedly interspersed with pockets of ‚purity‘ where scoring will ensue but otherwise completely erratic.

I’ve written before that many occultists secretly wish that all energies were easily controllable and exploitable, free resources to be harnessed and ‚tapped into‘ at will. However, I still maintain that there is also a type of energy that can only be observed (and even enjoyed!) instead of simply being used and utilized for one’s personal purposes, and I’m afraid that MA energies fall under this category as well IMHO. Or maybe I should rather say that martial artists can in fact benefit from these energies, just not in the way a layperson would expect. Hm. Food for thought. And for another ten posts or so.

 

[HoldAll]

The Martial Arts Universe is NOT Mental

For me, martial arts is not primarily about developing the mind, building character, or heaven help us, about cultivating qi, it’s first and foremost about training your ass off. Martial artists are frigging athletes first, fighters second, and maybe some kinda sorta artists last, if at all. ‚Kung fu’, for example, literally translates into ‚hard work‘, and for good reason. Laypersons will rarely appreciate the extent their bodies will need to be transformed when taking up karate, and the chiselled ‚capoeira body‘ has almost become proverbial among fitness nuts. From what I’ve seen in locker rooms, some older judokas may sport a paunch but will still have pronounced pecs just like the younger guys. However, big muscles are not a requirement for success in the martial arts - functional strength and good cardio are, and it will be a long, hard slog to acquire them.

At a summer camp in a small town in the mountains about ten years ago, I woke up early and couldn’t get to sleep again, so I grabbed a coffee from the vending machine and sat down all bleary-eyed and muscle-sore on the terrace of my hotel where the camp’s karate classes were held. The scenery was surreal - there were two discos nearby that had apparently just closed, and young people in various stages of inebriation were standing around in sullen little groups in the harsh morning light when suddenly a bevy of joggers appeared, all dressed in the same colourful tracksuits, smiling, looking all chipper, and clearly enjoying themselves and the cool crisp air. It was the entire national karate team, and the contrast between them and those weary revellers couldn’t have been greater… when the day’s classes were over, all these athletes would hit the hotel’s small gym to do some weightlifting while I getting was ready for dinner, maybe have a beer or two afterwards, and then collapse into bed, dead tired with exhaustion. And that’s precisely the difference between professionals, a lone amateur athlete, and ‚civilians‘ in one take.

As with any kind of performance, the audience of a sporting event will routinely enjoy the spectacle without giving much thought to how much preparation and effort on the part of the athletes and the organisers have gone into it. I, on the other hand, can’t even write about karate without thinking of the chronic soreness in my quads caused by shotokan’s uncomfortably low stances, of drowsily waiting for the bus, the subway and then another bus to take me home after classes, happy and satisfied but also worn out and ravenous, of the two awful cramped basement dojos at the beginning of my karate career, the long car drives to various workshops, the exhilarating summer camps where I would usually take far too many classes (so much interesting stuff on offer here!), and as a result, walked like I had just crapped my pants after the third day (ok, I’m exaggerating a bit).

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Now you’ll hopefully understand why I find it downright offensive whenever laypeople act claim that it was only the mental aspect that really mattered most in the martial arts, if not outright fantasising about some mystical superpowers attainable through meditation and other allegedly more ‘spiritual’ procedures supposedly far superior to the patient, slow grind of regular physical exercise. You see, I don’t believe that martial arts virtues like constancy or courage can ever be developed in the abstract - they rather emerge as a by-product of actual practice. In martial arts, everything proceeds from the body, and it is only after the fact that its performance may be analysed by the intellect and any beneficial mental habits boasted about. “I only earned my black belt / won this championship thanks to my attitude, my work ethic, my… “. No, that’s what you claim in hindsight, but all the while it was your body which practised all these moves again and again and led to your success, not your precious mind, and odds are it was your emotions which drove your body and NOT cold and calculating reason.

MA energies arise from the body, and they’re cultivated through exercising the body. In this, they may become amplified or hampered by emotions but the thinking portion of the mind will only play a minor part here, e.g. when learning a new kata or trying to follow the explanations of an instructor; in all other respects, however, it’s best to shut it off completely and let your body, your reflexes and instincts take over. It’s difficult for me to imagine a better way of grounding myself than focussing exclusively on my own body, feeling how it moves, marvelling at the feats it’s capable of, while also being humbled by the challenges brought about by actual physical confrontations. The mind is totally inept at creating such hands-on experiences, and unless you’re a martial artist yourself, all your mind can ever do is rehash movie scenes, book knowledge, or romantic fantasies in which it is king and the body just a blindly obedient subordinate with boundless strength and stamina.

When it comes to generating martial arts energies, the intellectual mind cuts a pretty pathetic figure.