Journal Martial Arts Energies in Practice

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Ageing Pt. 2

In 2013, capoeira master

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cycled

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to celebrate his 70th birthday and to raise awareness and funds for

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a drug addiction rehabilitation centre. I had the good fortune of catching him once at a workshop in 2009 and still treasure a photo of him and me, and I couldn't be prouder if somebody had taken a picture of me with the Pope or the Dalai Lama.

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Mestre Acordeon at age 74.

However, I don't plan on writing about all those septuagenarian martial arts titans out there to shame everybody who's slowly beginning to feel the effects of old age creeping in into exercising more and getting fit. For each of these shining examples, there are hundreds of other ageing long-time martial artists who had to quit due to serious health problems and on doctor's orders, for important private reasons, or just because they didn't enjoy practicing anymore - after all, there are more important things in life than karate and capoeira. There also videos on youtube showing pretty decrepit Okinawan karate masters performing katas agonizingly slow, and

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, 84 at that time,

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either (although it certainly looks like he had been having fun!).

At that 2009 workshop, Mestre Acordeon explained that he wasn't able to play low games close to the ground and do the

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anymore because both his knees were shot. In spite of that, he made all the other assembled contra-mestres and mestres (who had terrorised us noobs in the roda at previous year's workshop) tumble like ninepins with his ingenious takedowns. As I said in my previous post, experience can help make up for lost youthful energy because you'll be able to anticipate your opponent's/partner's moves better; however, he wouldn't have been able to keep up in a really fast game, that's for sure.

What I'd like to plead here for is finding yourself a sport that is varied and demanding when it comes to motor skills and coordination, and which is capable of really gripping and fascinating you to the point of (mild, age-adequate) obsession instead of dragging yourself to the gym a couple of times a week and half-heartedly lifting weights, or waiting for that seemingly interminable spinning class to end. Sometimes people in the mid-forties show up at the dojo, out of shape but dead set on learning karate because it's what they had been dreaming of all their lives. Sometimes it's just a midlife-crisis flash in the pan but some will stay on and carry it through to black belt. If tennis, cycling, or running are your thing, fine, but the advantage of martial arts in general is that they'll engage your entire body in a multitude of complex combinations, and the stretching portion (something that many joggers are wont to neglect!) before every class will ensure that your body will remain supple while the rest of your peers are becoming stiffer and stiffer year by year.

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Legendary French karate champion and kickboxing pioneer

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at age 66.

Being a true martial artist is like being a professional musician - you don't stop playing just because you've hit forty or fifty; you're in it for life. It will not be even hard because after some years, your martial art will have become such a big part of your self-image and identity that quitting is as good as unimaginable. As I mentioned in previous posts, it's no good to make solemn New Years resolutions and allow your intellect to badger you into purchasing a gym membership while your emotions are beginning to protest ever more loudly and will finally go on general strike by the end of January. If you're looking for discipline and rigour, karate may be for you; if you want to remember how much fun it was to horse around as a child, capoeira can be your friend.

Just a suggestion.

 

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Uke

When you hear the expression 'martial arts energies', you usually think about spirited attacks that will crush everything in their path. However, you must also be able to use your martial arts energies defensively, which is why karate students are told right from the start to perform their blocks with the same force and decisiveness as punches and kicks. Effective blocking will also boost your confidence in self-defence situation when faced with a real-life aggressor. They may be less 'sexy' than punches, kicks, locks, or chokes but may be all that can save you when facing a stronger opponent, at the same time signalling that you won't be intimidated even when being in a weaker position.

Defending is something of an art. The initiative is with your opponent, not yours, which doesn't necessarily mean that you're at a disadvantage - after all, it's always easier to react than to act. What's difficult is refrain from beating a headlong retreat by taking one step back after the other in a straight line and instead sidestepping and taking evasive circular action since there'll be the dojo's walls, other pairs of karatekas sparring, the borders of the competition mat, the ropes of the ring, the fence of the octagon, or obstacles like parked cars in street fights. You can't run away indefinitely but you should to be able to defend yourself as long as necessary.

In contrast to pre-arranged partner exercises for beginners, katas often contain blocks that are performed while literally on the back foot or standing in impossible stances, e.g. with crossed legs, yet another example for situations that 'pure' self-defence systems don't take into account - in such classes, the defender is always prepared, perfectly balanced and standing firm while in real life you may be caught unawares and in unfavourable stances that make applying all those fancy techniques next to impossible. The irony is that those self-defence systems don't really teach you how to defend yourself, only how to successfully exploit an aggressor's amateurish attacks at the very first try, leaving no margin for mistakes or botched countermoves.

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This video is all about uke, i.e. receiving. At 0:43, the protagonist eats a backfist (uraken uchi) which is usually blocked by an inside-outside block (uchi uke) or by simply raising one hand protectively. In both cases, the opponent's blow won't be deflected but must be simply withstood as it lands on the outside of your forearm.

Most Japanese technical terms for karate blocks (uchi uke, soto uke, age uke, shuto uke, etc.) end in the word uke. Uke comes from the verb ukeru which means 'to receive'. Although there are also blocks directly acting on the force of offensive techniques, most work by deflecting which is less demanding on your strength but requires a really strong stance, otherwise these blocks will be ineffective and make you lose your balance to boot. You receive an attack, nullify it and render it harmless while still keeping your composure and refusing to be cowed. The attacker's idea, on the other hand, is to 'overload' your defensive system by throwing entire combinations of different techniques at you, and you really need to remain calm when absorbing such flurries of blows until you finally get a chance to extricate yourself from your opponent's furious offence, reposition and launching a counter-attack of your own.

If you're already practicing a martial art, you should always ask yourself: would my block be strong enough to deflect a really hard punch, and would I be able to follow it up with an equally effective one, and another, and another? In karate, this is often practiced as a preliminary exercise for free sparring when one partner will be exclusively the attacker and the other one exclusively the defender, and where you will be able to focus fully on each role, just like the Okinawan sensei in his demonstration of uke.

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With the exception of uechi-ryu, mainstream karate isn't very big on conditioning - Okinawan traditional styles are. Blocking can hurt, even when you're doing it correctly.

However, it would be completely wrong to classify uke as yin energy. Blocking feels just as aggressive as striking; you may be receiving but it's receiving on your terms. In capoeira, blocks are only used as a last resort; in karate, they're the primary means of defence since it's not always feasible to evade an attack and in such cases, you need to be confident and strong enough to stand your ground.

 

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As ye train, so shall ye fight

There's a story about this cop who was so obsessed with gun disarming that he would practice the same move thousands of times with his partner - grab gun with both hands, twist, take away gun, hand back gun to partner, grab again gun with with both hands, twist, on and on and on, until the disarming move became second nature to him. One day he was in a 7/11 when some guy tried to rob the place and held him at gunpoint. The cop reacted without thinking, grabbed the robber's gun with both hands, twisted, took away his gun - and promptly hand the gun back to him as he had done in interminable hours of practice. Luckily for him, his partner shot the amazed robber before the guy could do any damage, or so the cautionary tale goes.

Somehow related is my pet karate peeve concerning partner practice involving throws and takedowns where karateka often are often in the habit of offering a friendly outstretched hands to their downed opponents to help them up. Imagine being actually so chivalrous in real-life situations - both the defender and the aggressors would be able to exploit such a courteous gesture in any number of painful ways. When being taken down, you should roll away as quickly as possible and only get up once you've put a safe distance between you and your attacker, else you risk being hit with soccer kicks to your ribs or head. The guy left standing, on the other hand, could be dragged down and… I'd rather be hit in the face than being caught in an armlock on the ground, it's a horrible feeling, and

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are even worse, I can tell you that from personal experience. Being so courteous and helping your partner up in such situations can be tantamount to handing the gun back to the 7/11 robber in real life.

One day a friend of a dojo buddy's brought his kickboxing group over who were curious about karate they had heard about so much. It was a long time ago, but I remember being paired with a young woman who was appalled: "What, practicing with a partner without any protective gear??" I thought "Hehe, now you can't hide behind those big gloves anymore!" I stopped being so cocksure as soon as she started punching to my midsection from a high boxing guard, which meant that they kept coming from above and not from a right angle like karate punches, so my usual blocks didn't work so well all of a sudden. When it was my turn, however, it soon became apparent that her high guard was insufficient because I stood in a low karate stance and my punches hit her just underneath her raised elbows - they would have protected her from punches coming from above but not from punches coming to her midsection at a right angle.

When fooling around before classes with my capoeira buddies sometimes, I found out that they were pretty good at defending against slaps to the side of their heads, without fail dodging or blocking them as a last resort, as they were so used to the curving trajectory of those many crescent kick used in capoeira. However, they were completely helpless as soon as I tried straight slaps to their faces - after all,

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aren't used in capoeira.

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games, on the other hand, are played at a much slower pace than in 'regular' capoeira (capoeira contemporânea), so whenever angoleros tried to join a fast capoeira contemporânea game at workshop or street rodas, they didn't fare so well, ducking much too slowly and clumsily to the point of being in real danger of getting concussed; a tai chi master will be probably knocked out by the very first wheel kick (meia lua de compasso) coming his way, being even less accustomed to such fast techniques.

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World and European point-fighting champion Alexandre Biamonti as well Yul Brynner & Horst Buchholz in "The Magnificent Seven". The need for speed in the martial arts should be obvious.

Together with the jab (kizami zuki), the backfist (uraken uchi) is probably karate's fastest technique. Both are immediately retracted after delivering a short, sharp shock. Now the Almighty Google AI tells me that "

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redirects energy by blending with an opponent's attack, using circular movements to lead their force past the practitioner and unbalance them" How the hell is that supposed to work against a lighting-fast jab or backfist? All I've ever seen from aikido classes in real life were inept slow-mo attacks easily thwarted by exploiting the aggressor's overcommitting (= leaning too far forward) when punching (which is broken out of karate beginners right from the start), getting too close (likewise), or striking blows while in comically unstable stances (ditto). Judging from all the enthusiastic propaganda put out by aikido websites, it's more about trying hard to prove the philosophical principle of non-aggression than teaching students to defend themselves properly, polemically put. However, there are videos of aikido masters on youtube who do know how to block hard, fast punches thrown by real fighters very competently, it's just that for every such master, thousands of students will have quit before getting any good; I guess the philosophical principle of aikido is considered more important here than an aikidoka's actual physical integrity.

It seems that the energies of various martial arts aren't compatible with each other or at least don't mix very well, and I don't mean just the kinetic energy 'redirected' by means of aikido techniques. It's as if different martial arts energies had a unique feel and taste that sets them apart from others in the way they defend or attack. Karate energy is aggressive and straightforward; capoeira energy is playful and sneaky - I wish I could say anything from my own personal experience about the grappling arts like judo, wrestling, or Brazilian jiu-jitsu but I'm sure that each of them has its distinct energy as well.