I received an email from an Isshinryu stylist in New York. He wrote: "How does TKD compare to Isshinryu? Do you incorporate any Isshinryu into your TKD regimen? It seems to me that styles today (as taught) are more eclectic than in the past, which is a good thing." This was my response:
Taekwondo and Isshinryu are very similar and very different. TKD achieves power by dropping your weight into a technique. The adjustment from rotating my hips was difficult. Now I probably do a combination of both, and my punches are pretty strong if I do say so myself... I wouldn't say that I consciously blend Isshinryu with TKD, but it probably happens anyway. I also trained in muay Thai when I was an intern in Arizona (summer/fall 1995) and that also had a profound impact on how I punch. I don't think it's possible to train in any style for a significant amount of time (which varies from style-to-style and person-to-person) and not have your technique affected by it. It's like an intimate relationship: No matter how long it was, you're a different person because of it...
Grandmaster Choi trained under General Choi Hong Hi, the founder of Taekwondo. To call him "traditional" would be an understatement. There aren't many 72-year old grandmasters who still run their own school and teach six days per week, but Grandmaster Choi does. He has many fourth- and fifth-degree black belts, a sixth-degree and seventh-degree black belt who are his students. They don't run their own schools and show up occasionally, they're in class just like the white belts. Most of them take private lessons due to their schedules and the more advanced techniques he teaches high black belts, but he's still the teacher and they're the student.
I don't necessarily agree that teaching eclectic styles is a good thing. Too often people get a black belt and think that's it. They move on, maybe start a new style, open their own school, but never really take the time to explore the deeper aspects of the style. Eclectic styles tend to be very superficial. They supposedly take the "best" of this style and the "best" of that style, but all the instructor is doing is blending techniques they know and like. The "best" of any style is something those instructors may never have learned because they didn't stick around long enough to learn it.
I think that as a student it's not a bad thing to incorporate other styles into your "arsenal." Like I wrote earlier, my muay Thai training taught me a lot about power, how to use my knees and elbows, and how to block a low kick with my lead leg. I do those leg blocks in sparring, but when I throw a roundhouse kick in one of my TKD forms it looks like a TKD roundhouse kick, not a muay Thai roundhouse kick. Your arsenal should always have one style that is your main style, chosen through careful consideration of what works for you. If my arsenal were a bouquet of flowers, there would be a dozen red roses (because I like red roses best) with some other nice flowers in for a change of color and to complement the roses. The roses are TKD and the other flowers are the other styles in which I've trained. I wouldn't try to create a new flower that is a cross between them all because that would destroy the beauty of the individual flowers!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
Location, Location, Location
Any one who has ever purchased real estate knows the mantra of every real estate agent in the world: location, location, location. The idea is that nothing is more important to the value of a property than its location. A similar claim can be made about the value of a martial artist’s strike. If it lands in a bad location, it won’t have much value. What’s nice about your strikes, though, is that you can change the location if you practice!
What’s your location? If you’re doing a mid-section punch with your opponent facing you, you should locate your punch to strike the solar plexus. Why the solar plexus? Because striking the solar plexus will have the highest “pain ratio” in your favor. I define “pain ratio” as the pain inflicted on your opponent divided by the effort expended by you. This is an important concept! When I was training in Muay Thai, the pain ratio of those leg blocks was barely over 1.0. My instructor told me “It hurts more to kick a block than to block a kick” but in my experience, not much more.
I often see beginners either punching straight out from the shoulder or seeming to target the sternum. Why? The sternum is solid bone and anyone who reads Patricia Cromwell or Tess Garritsen novels will tell you it take a buzz saw to get through someone’s sternum during a post-mortem. When your opponent’s sternum and your meta-carpals collide, don’t expect to come out ahead! Some of you may be thinking, “No problem, I can break bricks with my hands!” Ignoring the fact that bone is a LOT stronger than your garden-variety capstone brick ($0.79 from Home Depot), why choose a target that has such a low pain ratio? That same punch to the solar plexus would be devastating! Lower your punch by four inches and increase your pain ratio ten-fold.
Now comes the hard part: practice. A good rule of thumb is to practice as if you’re striking someone your own height. If you’re really short (or just happen to be female), it might make sense to raise them a bit if you feel it’s unlikely you’ll be attacked by someone of similar stature. Martial arts techniques tend to describe the location of strikes in relative terms, meaning that a technique might be a “punch to the face” or a “kick to the ribs.” This is as opposed to absolute terms, which would be describing a kick as “five feet above the ground.” The key to good forms practice, then, is to create a mental image of your “opponent” (or opponents) and locate your strikes appropriately and consistently with respect to that imaginary opponent’s height. The idea is to train yourself to think about this sort of thing, not necessarily hard-wire a permanent location into your brain. You should be willing (and able) to vary the height of your imaginary opponent, and observers of your practice should notice the difference. Keep in mind that if you imagine yourself fighting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (as Bruce Lee did in "Game of Death"), then it may be unrealistic to think you execute an effective kick to the head.
In my opinion, instructors should be less of a stickler about the height of a punch, but instead focus on consistency. If a student consistently punches above his/her own solar plexus, ask about the height of his/her imaginary opponent. If you get a reply of “huh?” then take the time to explain the “imaginary opponent” and “pain ratio” concepts. When students get in the habit of locating their strikes to high pain ratio targets on imaginary opponents during practice, their training will be more valuable in a self-defense situation.
What’s your location? If you’re doing a mid-section punch with your opponent facing you, you should locate your punch to strike the solar plexus. Why the solar plexus? Because striking the solar plexus will have the highest “pain ratio” in your favor. I define “pain ratio” as the pain inflicted on your opponent divided by the effort expended by you. This is an important concept! When I was training in Muay Thai, the pain ratio of those leg blocks was barely over 1.0. My instructor told me “It hurts more to kick a block than to block a kick” but in my experience, not much more.
I often see beginners either punching straight out from the shoulder or seeming to target the sternum. Why? The sternum is solid bone and anyone who reads Patricia Cromwell or Tess Garritsen novels will tell you it take a buzz saw to get through someone’s sternum during a post-mortem. When your opponent’s sternum and your meta-carpals collide, don’t expect to come out ahead! Some of you may be thinking, “No problem, I can break bricks with my hands!” Ignoring the fact that bone is a LOT stronger than your garden-variety capstone brick ($0.79 from Home Depot), why choose a target that has such a low pain ratio? That same punch to the solar plexus would be devastating! Lower your punch by four inches and increase your pain ratio ten-fold.
Now comes the hard part: practice. A good rule of thumb is to practice as if you’re striking someone your own height. If you’re really short (or just happen to be female), it might make sense to raise them a bit if you feel it’s unlikely you’ll be attacked by someone of similar stature. Martial arts techniques tend to describe the location of strikes in relative terms, meaning that a technique might be a “punch to the face” or a “kick to the ribs.” This is as opposed to absolute terms, which would be describing a kick as “five feet above the ground.” The key to good forms practice, then, is to create a mental image of your “opponent” (or opponents) and locate your strikes appropriately and consistently with respect to that imaginary opponent’s height. The idea is to train yourself to think about this sort of thing, not necessarily hard-wire a permanent location into your brain. You should be willing (and able) to vary the height of your imaginary opponent, and observers of your practice should notice the difference. Keep in mind that if you imagine yourself fighting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (as Bruce Lee did in "Game of Death"), then it may be unrealistic to think you execute an effective kick to the head.
In my opinion, instructors should be less of a stickler about the height of a punch, but instead focus on consistency. If a student consistently punches above his/her own solar plexus, ask about the height of his/her imaginary opponent. If you get a reply of “huh?” then take the time to explain the “imaginary opponent” and “pain ratio” concepts. When students get in the habit of locating their strikes to high pain ratio targets on imaginary opponents during practice, their training will be more valuable in a self-defense situation.
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