An Uchideshi Experience: Chapter Ten
Martial Artists, Bare Bones, and the Big Lie
Coming from a background in classical martial arts, I found it difficult to reconcile the disparities noted in martial artists, their arts, and their ranks in those respective arts. Initially, I thought that if you had a black belt, in anything, you were a killer. A person with a black belt was not somebody you wanted to mess with. After all, if they knew karate, all they’d have to do is hit you once and it would be over. A tae kwon do stylist could kill you with his feet, and an aikido practitioner would break your wrist into a hundred irreparable shards. The ancient knowledge and anatomical secrets that had been passed on were enough to dissuade me from ever tangling with black belt martial artist. I was just happy their code of ethics restrained them in exercising those powers.
But as I spent time training, I was disappointed to realize my pre-conceived notions were far off. For the longest time I tried to force the experiential data I had gathered into an ill-fitted paradigm of what I believed martial arts should be, instead of what they actually were. Only near the end of my uchideshi commitment did I toss it all out and come up with a new model that I now believe is more accurate- though certainly not definitive.
I love martial arts. I’m an addicted martial artist through and through. Identifying myself as such, the integrity of what a martial artist is couldn’t be compromised in my mind, yet I saw things that didn’t add up everywhere I trained.
It was really difficult for me to try and make sense of it all. Beginners don’t have the kind of perspective and experience that many martial veterans take for granted. Consequently, they “buy” into an art, investing themselves physically in training, intellectually in theory, and emotionally in their loyalty to their chosen art, frequently coming to its defense with a terse dismissal of criticism.
It’s only natural this would happen, but later on, if they end up studying another art, then some reconciliation must take place. Tae kwon do and jujutsu can’t both be the “ultimate” art, just as aikido, silat, judo, karate, shootfighting, and others fail to be “the best.” Some are better than others, depending on what you’re looking for, and some may not be for you.
Before I actually began training, I thought they’d all make you equally lethal, with the more esoteric doctrines holding the most appeal, since they probably contained some of the “secrets” I wanted to get my paws on. Then after I trained a few years, I realized that effectiveness relies heavily on both the technical syllabus of a system and the method of training. Some systems have more subtle and varied techniques than others do, and some make their practitioners tougher through attribute development. This creates a stronger, faster fighter who’s more resilient to pain, and more instictive through conditioning, repetitive drills, and sparring.
That’s the easy part to reconcile. All it took was a little bit of analytical skill and an awareness of how good martial artists are developed. The next step was a little trickier.
One of the most common questions posed to me regarding martial arts would come from friends unexposed to that particular arena. They’d come in and observe a class, or maybe just hang out waiting for me. Then after we left, they’d get to the crux of the dilemma. It was always a variation on this basic question:
“So Roy, tell me something. That thin little guy in the class. You know, the one with...yah...that one. He’s a higher rank than you are? He is? So if you guys got in a fight, he’d kick your ass? You know, in a streetfight or say you’re in a bar, if you guys got into it, he’d be able to do that thing you guys practice, Jukwondo or whatever you call it. Then why is he a higher rank? Doesn’t that mean he’s better than you?”
It’s a good question. It was tough for me to answer without going into a long tirade, and most people aren’t looking for a defensive justification of an art through technical proficiency vs. real life effectiveness. All they want to know is, “Can he kick ass or not?”
Once I stepped away, removed myself from stylistic biases and was really honest with myself, I had to admit it. Most martial artists I’ve come across in my life cannot kick ass, and are delusional about their abilities.
Don’t get me wrong. There are absolute killers out there in the world of martial arts, guys you should never mess with in a million years, guys that would end the fight before you even knew what happened. But that’s not most people. That’s the tough minority. Many martial artists, unfortunately, don’t realize there are people off the street with no refined technical skill, have never stepped foot in a dojo, but will out muscle and overwhelm you with such relentless fury that you won’t even know which way is up. Unless your technique is really good, and your body has been trained to respond to that kind of intensity, as much as I hate to admit it- weight, strength, and savagery will win. Shoot a little adrenaline in a person’s system, and you’ll be amazed at how an untrained, ordinary person becomes an unorthodox nightmare of toughness and fear.
So how can people receive a black belt and not able to defend themselves against an angry construction worker? This was another paradox that struck me, trying to have it make some sense without having to conclude that martial arts were bullshit, because I knew they weren’t. They just weren’t consistent. I stewed on this for a long time, mulling over a few of the inconsistencies I’d come across.
What do you do with the elderly gentleman who generously devotes time to an art, is knowledgeable about it history, knows all the requirements for black belt, but has difficulty with the physical execution of techniques because his body is a wreck? Doesn’t he deserve a black belt? What about the young hotshot wrestler who, on the street, could decimate everyone in the dojo, including the instructors, but is stuck as a green belt? What should his rank be? What do you do with the guy who may not know karate, but he knows karazy, and would prevail in a fight on heart, intensity, and wild fury? Isn’t it all about who’s the best fighter?
I thought it was, but experience and a combination of the characters I’ve encountered over the years have forced me to categorize martial arts participants in a different way than I would’ve originally believed. Under the blanket label of “martial artists,” I have subsectioned them into three divisions: fighters, philosophers, and athletes. Of course, this kind of categorization requires that characteristics of vast numbers of individuals be generalized, but bear with me and imagine where people you’ve run across over the years drop into these divisions.
Fighters are primarily concerned with what works, regardless of how it looks or other stylistic considerations. Rank is not as much of an issue with this group, comparatively speaking. The need for a well-rounded martial education is of utmost importance in order to prepare them for whatever may come their way, since applicable street defense is always in the back of their minds. Weapons defenses, ground fighting, standup skills, control and arrest techniques- all are valued and practiced with equal fervor. Unfortunately, during exercises of lower practical value or a more esoteric nature, they often feel they’re wasting time, and are not shy in voicing complaints. They aren’t afraid to bring up “What if...” scenarios, or ask direct questions to the teacher during demonstrations, where others would wait. The desire to turn up the intensity during class, occasionally to an unexpected or inappropriate level, can give them a reputation for being rough or uncooperative. Many times they test out the techniques in real life conditions (a.k.a. bar fight), and feel good about it, since they feel that everything they’re learning is meant to be used when the time comes.
Philosophers are looking for the beauty of the movements and the integration of martial philosophy into their daily life. Rank may or may not be much of an issue, but in disseminating constructive criticism to lower ranks, they’re able to delve far deeper than the biomechanics of body positioning, and encourage the student to monitor more subtle arenas such as posture, intent, and presence on the mat. They may identify very strongly with the ethical code of warriors past. Meditation is valued. Cultivation and manipulation of internal energy is desired. They would rather wait with a question and ask after class than put the instructor in a potentially embarrassing situation. The history, tradition, and lore of their particular martial discipline is studied and cherished. Martial arts are seen as occupying a higher stratum and social function than merely sport or exercise. Aesthetics are observed with great sensitivity in all areas: dojo and uniform appearance, cleanliness, etiquette, adherence to foreign terms and traditions, et cetera. Devoted and knowledgeable, they are often excellent ambassadors of an art.
Athletes enjoy the rigors of competition and celebrate the improvement it creates within individuals. Attribute development for speed, power, endurance, flexibility and aggressiveness is encouraged and applauded. Athletes would rather test their techniques on the mat than on the street, and often have a strong bond with their team members. Strategy and innovation are appreciated, as they can give a competitor the upper hand through unpredictability and surprise within the confines of the rules governing their sport. Some athletes may not look on their discipline as being anything more than a workout, and a training session without sparring is incomplete. Athletes like to do, rather than talk about doing, or analyze the spiritual ramifications and conceptual basis of doing. They like to sweat, and can expend tremendous amounts of energy in a single training session. Because of the intensity of their training, they can eat pain and bear discomfort well. They love the game, and are concerned with what works for them in that game. The drilling of basics makes them lightning quick. If a beginner were to step into their arena, they’d feel helpless against a seasoned competitor. This kind of disparity can make it all seem effortless.
A well-rounded martial artist, in the fullest sense of the word, should be a strong combination of fighter, philosopher, and athlete. Most people are already a combination, but are unevenly weighted in one category or another. Long-term training and exposure to a variety of participants will tend to even out practitioners, but unless they’re aware that they need to become more athletic, more streetwise, or see the bigger picture of their art’s social function, they will remain lopsided.
Athletes are probably the safest group in remaining lopsided. All their attribute development pays heavy dividends in a street fight or crisis situation, as they can often overwhelm their opponents, ending the fight before it really begins. That’s why my gut belief is that you have to be a martial athlete before you can be an effective martial artist. Once you have the attributes, you can manufacture yourself into a formidable mix of fighter and philosopher, since the raw materials are already at your disposal.
Philosophers are probably the most difficult to convince that they need to become more well rounded, since many believe the work they’re doing is transcendent of violence and competition, leaving them the least safe on the street. The philosopher will project into the nether and leave the body behind, while the transcendence they’re looking for is right there in front of them, but must be achieved through the body, not ahead of it.
That’s what makes martial arts such a fantastic medium for self-empowerment. You only have one body, and you have to take full responsibility for its training and conditioning. As much as you might like to, you can’t delegate it out to another body, you can’t escape the pain, the humiliation, the exhaustion, and the effort required on a day-to-day basis. If you are able to eat bitter and dedicate yourself, you see improvement and results. It’s very simple: you get out what you put in, but there are no shortcuts. You can’t intellectualize it away- you have to actually feel it. Some things must be endured.
Fighters may be drawn to martial arts because of the techniques, but it’s not really an efficient way for them to learn to bare bones of self-defense. That’s why I’ve found that most of them don’t stick around in traditional arts. Those who do stick around are eventually evened out in the aforementioned categories, and become refreshingly open and pragmatic martial artists.
But the dissatisfied fighter who bounces from art to art, picking up techniques here and there leads to a fundamental question for all martial artists. What does it really take to protect yourself? Nothing fancy, nothing stylized, just the most necessary tools for bare bones street defense.
A longtime martial arts practitioner I know asked one of his private students what he wanted to learn. Did he want to know how to simply win a street fight, or did he want to learn some cool moves he could show to his friends that were also fun to practice? The student wanted a little of both, which which my friend happily complied, but if he’d only wanted street tactics, I asked myself, what would he have taught and how long would it have taken?
A Thai kick, jab/cross punch combination, and a rear naked choke. I think if those basic techniques were diligently practiced under proper supervision, with real time drills, you’d be better prepared for a street conflict in a few months than most traditional practitioners after years of practice. The list of techniques is almost arbitrary, and could just as easily be a sidekick, straight blast, and an osoto-gari. What really matters is the practice, getting it to the point where intelligent, scientific movements are instinctive.
A female Japanese martial artist once explained that the ultimate goal of physical training is perfection, but the definition of perfection must be clearly understood. Westerners tend to think of perfection as an unreachable goal where techniques cannot be performed any better. The Japanese view perfection as an achievable point in training where your body reacts without conscious thought. That makes a lot of sense to me, from a martial perspective. After all, in a crisis situation, you’ll never rise to your level of expectation, you only sink to your level of training. But when you get the opportunity to meet master martial artists with a lifetime of training, the instantaneous and precise nature of their techniques can seem to approximate “perfection”, in the Japanese sense of the word.
Mike Swain, arguably the greatest judoka the United States has ever produced, was a guest instructor at Seikishin Dojo, a jujutsu school founded by Senseis Rowdy and Margarita Jimenez Hall. Rowdy is a San Jose police officer, and exactly the kind of person you don’t want to pick a fight with. He’s got all the qualifications: military history, police officer, a fourth-degree blackbelt in Seibukan, and a fifth-degree black belt in Kempo Karate. Strong, fast, aggressive, and experienced, hypothetical strategies of fighting Rowdy quickly degenerate into decisions about caliber of ammunition, not hand-to-hand techniques.
On the wall of my old judo dojo was a poster of Mike Swain leaving the mat after winning the world championships. I thought that was the closest I’d ever get to meeting him, but knowing my background in judo, and realizing how much it would mean to me, Rowdy allowed me to be Mike’s uke for the seminar. It was quite an experience. Just having him get ahold of my gi was enough to let me know that this was not a normal man. It’s difficult to put it into words, but there’s something unique about physical contact with a high-level martial artist. I’m not talking about them working techniques; I’m just talking about touching them. I’ve felt it with Sensei, Claudio Franca, Mike Swain, and few others. It’s an underlying solidity or density to their physique that stems from years and years of consistent training. Perhaps it’s the same things students of Morihei Ueshiba described when they said that grabbing his arm was like touching steel wrapped in cotton. I don’t know, but it’s definitely different.
I’ve had several judo masters toss me around before, but none gave me the same feeling of effortlessness that Mike Swain did. He was like a machine. Pop, pop, pop, his body sprang into place perfectly poised and balanced, ready to explode, all done in the fraction of a second I was off-balanced by him snapping his wrists on my gi. His footsweeps were equally unbelievable. Impeccable timing and proper body alignment added up to technique so clean it made me giddy just receiving it. It must be magic, right? No. Some sort of esoteric secret he picked up training with the Japanese? Hardly.
Actually, it’s very simple. Speed x technique = power was the efficiency formula he gave us, and hearing that really hit home with me. Being in the right place at the right time, using the momentum of a properly aligned and balanced body in motion is what gives you that illusion of effortlessness, since the strain we recognize as using strength comes from segmented, partially committed attempts at techniques. The almost gymnastic, acrobatic nature of turning your body into a dynamic weapon through total commitment to a strike or throw takes faith earned through hard training.
But the Big Lie perpetrated in martial arts is that techniques are effortless, instead of feeling effortless (in the case of mastery or specific conditions), and strength isn’t necessary in order to be effective. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
In all the hours I’ve ever been on the mat, I’ve experienced the illusion of effortlessness only twice. In one of those instances, I was playing judo, my partner zigged when I happened to zag, and popping into position, I hefted him over my hip and on to the ground. The technique was so devastating he had to leave the mat. I remember having him up on my hip and thinking to myself in the middle of the throw, “Man, he’s so light.” Could I do it again? Never, at least not like that. I’d never be able to achieve the same effect with such minimal energy input. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, that’s all.
Now, training had enabled me to quickly put myself in the proper position, but even more importantly, circumstances aligned where my partner committed to a movement complimentary to mine, and voilà! I was able to execute a technique that was at an extreme of what I call the power spectrum, or strength/technique continuum.
Think of a line, with 100 percent strength on the far left, and 100 percent technique on the far right. Both ends of the spectrum are theoretical voids; neither can really exist. Every technique, no matter how clean, requires strength from the body’s musculature, and pure power is an equal impossibility because some degree of angles and leverage must be employed for one physical body to affect another. Nevertheless, work with me here…
Strength and technique work hand in hand, and are both necessary in the creation of power, which is what martial arts is all about. It sounds like heresy, but that’s really the aim of martial arts: learning how to focus your energy and cunningly overpower your opponent at their weakest point. If you’re strong enough, there’s no need to train, aside from personal enrichment. The principles of distraction, angles, and leverage are designed to magnify the power of individuals whose physical strength is inferior to that of their opponents. As far as effectiveness goes, it doesn’t matter where the power comes from. An equal amount of power can come from a disproportionate amount of brute strength or refined technique, but both are capable of doing the same amount of work.
As martial artists, all we’re doing is adjusting the ratio of strength to technique, aiming to permanently settle in at the technical side of the continuum. But when technique isn’t quite right or angles are a little off, strength can make up the difference. It is, in a sense, the lubricant of technique, smoothing out the rough spots until your body develops the speed and intuitive feel to match energy and exploit opportunities along the path of least resistance.
Ideally, very little strength is used in a properly executed technique, but this is very different from saying strength isn’t necessary. I understand, of course, that sometimes extolling the position that strength doesn’t matter or isn’t necessary is necessary to get it through the heads of dojo brutes. It’s a pleasure to tap to technique, and a terrible thing indeed to be mauled into submission, so lofting the ideal of effortlessness is an excellent strategy to jump-start students down the road toward clean, technical training.
But some people get frustrated when the words they hear (“strength doesn’t matter”) are continuously disproved in physical reality. I think frustration levels would drop and morale would rise in beginning students if a slight modification were offered: Strength matters less the better your technique is, but some amount of strength is continuously required. Whether that strength is required for speed in order to execute a throw while your opponent is off balance, generating maximum velocity of a strike, or molding your body around a limb in order to go for a submission lock, it doesn’t matter. Strength will always be necessary. The need for strength may diminish (and if you’re training properly, it should), but it will never disappear completely.
Aspiring martial artists should be warned that it takes a lot of exhaustive effort and persistence to do the hard training required to develop crisp techniques with sharp timing. It really is paradoxical: you have to be tough and strong to get to a point where you only have to use a little energy to get the job done. I sometimes wonder if instructors forget this, because all too often they execute clean techniques ingrained over years and years of experience, not realizing that if they happen to get caught in a situation where a little extra strength is needed, it’s easily summoned from reserves, since they’ve already been through the process.
It isn’t strength vs. technique; it’s strength working with technique in the creation of power, or the ability to do work. It’s all about power, it always has been. Martials arts, foreign policy, interpersonal relationships, everything in our lives revolves around power. Power gets things done, but contrary to popular belief, knowledge isn’t power, in and of itself.
Martial knowledge, alone, is nothing more than a theoretical exercise in physics and physiology. You can know how to do a thousand techniques, but unless you’re actually able to perform and apply them in a moment of crisis, all you’ve acquired will have been rendered useless. No, knowledge is power only when applied, and the power of martial techniques can only be applied through the process of training. You can only know a technique if you do the technique, and you have to practice doing, all the time, for actual proficiency. Otherwise, forget about it. True power, true effectiveness, only comes through constant application.
It’s this constant application that keeps us grounded and real. Gaining strength anchors you to reality by forcing you to push your limits through muscular exertion, and apply a maximum effort to the point of failure. While strength may not be an end in itself, distancing yourself from the dirty hands and daily toil of strength cultivation is a dangerous proposition, since it serves as a reminder of how hard it is to overcome variables that might obstruct your efforts in this imperfect world.
The “effortless” techniques displayed by masters cannot be shortcut to solely by a conceptual understanding of an art; it is arrived at over a lifetime of training, shifting the ratio of strength to technique by constantly refining sensitivity, position, and timing. Strive for technique but back it with strength. Hopefully, you’ll never need it, but it’s good to know it’s there. It’s a terrible feeling to come up short in any situation, and if your life is dependent on that debt, serious preparation is necessary. Keep a little extra in your strength account, and you’ll never have to know what it’s like to find yourself in the red, with no one to bail you out.