Sparring Injuries

Most people join a martial arts club to either avoid or dish out some serious punishment. In kumite (sparring) the idea is to apply what you've supposedly learned combined with the spontaneity one could expect during an actual street fight. In the dojo, sparring partners are expected to work with one another; it is not about annihilating the other guy, even if your sensei tells you to turn up the heat. Still, accidents do happen. A nice woman and mother of four (all of whom trained at our school) snapped her pencil-thin forearm one night when she attempted to down-block a front kick. Not one to be easily discouraged, she showed up the following week for class with her arm in a cast. On another occasion a pair of black belts were mixing it up when one of them dropped to the mat. Apparently, a rather low spin-around-back kick was able to exploit the fact that someone wasn't wearing their groin protector. Ambulance trips to the hospital aren't much fun for young karate enthusiasts. He needed emergency surgery, and it was about a month before he was able to resume training. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

Sparring gear such as hand-guards are implemented to protect the user, not necessarily with the opponent's safety in mind. Most head-gear manufacturers include a label that reads For Light or No-Contact Sparring Only. That probably does about as much good as the warnings listed on cigarette cartons. The mouth-piece is designed to keep your jaw from breaking, but may not keep your teeth intact as I found out years ago at a tournament. I fear my dentist more than any opponent I've had to face.

Starting in April 2007, the World Martial Art Games Committee (WMAGC) is going to revise its rule book to exclude words like "fight" and "fighter" to counteract what it sees as aggressive and violent tendencies in the martial arts. In its statement the WMAGC claims that by omitting words and references associated with fighting and replacing them with mitigated terms (e.g. sparring contest, match, etc.) will lead to less injuries related to sportive martial arts. What all this implies is that "fighting words" send a negative subliminal message to the mind of the combatant (another dirty word?) causing her/him to become overzealous during a match. Of course reducing a karate contest to a glorified game of tag does it no justice either. There needs to be balance. I'm all for promoting the martial arts in a positive way, but perhaps this form of political correctness has gone too far.

Different Ways, Same Path

The martial arts. There are few areas of interest available that offer such rich and diverse subject matter. This is one of the reasons I love writing about them, but ironically, this can become a pitfall. It's easy to delve into related areas such as psychology, ethics, and even esoterica and get so far removed from the original topic of the martial arts that they are no longer being addressed. A case in point is the problem of accurately defining what the martial arts are. The soaring popularity of tai chi and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting contests, for example, make it clear that certain disciplines that are given the generic label of "martial arts" are neither martial nor artistic. Internal styles such as tai chi tend to draw a pacifistic following that want nothing to do with combative fighting methods or racking up a collection of tournament trophies. Equally, an MMA fighter has little or no interest in meditation, chi, or adopting a canon of philosophical tenets in accordance with bushido. The modern martial arts, as I see it, have as much to do with the ways of fighting as they do with certain concepts unrelated to fighting. Bujutsu (martial arts) and budo (the martial path) are two sides of the same coin. The problem arises when exponents from these camps see as what they do as being exclusive, and lines are drawn.

A similar schism that exists in the martial arts concerns the time-honored traditional ways versus the eclectic schools of mixed-martial arts. An Isshinryu karate school I once visited had a sign up that read "We Teach Traditional Karate". Isshinryu was systemized in the 1950s. Can something that's been around for just half a century be categorized as "traditional"? Actually, its founder, Shimabuku, wanted to do away with the stagnation of tradition in creating a progressive style of karate. The advent of mixed-martial arts were influenced by Asian combative systems and are seen as something new. Yet the ancient Greeks had developed a combative sport called pankration that documents training methods and techniques that bear a striking similarity to the current mixed-martial arts methods that are in vogue today.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Handy Weapons

Most karate styles, especially of Okinawan origin, include kobudo (weapons nee farming tools) as part of their curriculum. While your hand-to-hand combative skills are taken with you wherever you go, walking around town with your prized nunchaku draped over your shoulders to ward off the bad guys is ill-advised. Some of these traditional weapons (such as the nunchaku) are illegal to carry in some US states and abroad. So to assuage the attention that one would normally get from traipsing about looking like a feudal warrior, a line of nifty hand-held devices have been created that are both concealable and effective for self defense.

In the 70s, Tak Kubota of gosoku-ryu karate introduced the Kubotan, a five-inch plastic mini-baton that attaches to a keyring. Kubota originally intended his creation to be used by female police officers and offered an array of convincing pressure-point techniques that could be used to subdue a violent, non-compliant suspect.



Since its appearance, a number of variant knockoffs have been made available to the public that have been modified with spikes or prongs, but the legality of these newfangled doodads are questionable. In the United Kingdom, the Kubotan has been classified as an offensive weapon, but for the most part remains unregulated in the US. An Isshinryu karate instructor from my area teaches one version of the Kubotan called the shu-chu as part of a self-defense course in her school. The techniques are simple and prove to work quickly, as it takes about a second to make uke tap out or drop to the mat.

Some of these items have been influenced by Asian martial arts, but others just hawk the martial arts moniker for hype. Keep that in mind the next time you want to purchase a "ninja" keychain.

Internal Styles

Winning by yielding. Maximum efficiency with minimum effort. This is the distilled essence of internal martial arts. Interestingly, internal styles (which include tai chi, some schools of Chinese boxing, and aikido) are not always presented with combat effectiveness in mind, although their progenitors were bona fide warriors in a league with the early soke of karate and jiu-jitsu. The development of chi or ki (subtle yet highly potent bio-energy connected with breathing) and the ability to blend with an attacker's force are topics that are taught within all martial-art systems, but receive a special emphasis in the internal martial arts. Indeed, internal styles seen as a separate category of martial arts didn't even appear until the late nineteenth century, although its principles date back to antiquity.

Tai chi is quite possibly the world's oldest martial art. It is so old that its origins are lost. The practice of forms is the predominant method of training. The slow, connected movements of tai chi forms give them an aesthetic quality that make them beautiful to watch. In contrast to the typical two-minute kata of karate, the famous Long Form of tai chi can take more than half an hour to complete! Although serenity of mind and fitness are the modern goals for the practitioner of this ancient system, self defense applications do exist and enormous power can be generated through its movements via the summoning of chi/energy.

Like judo, aikido is a modern style developed from jiu-jitsu. Its founder, Morihei Ueshiba, rejected what he saw as the harmful warrior philosophy of his day in creating his "art of peace". The O'Sensei wanted to create a style that was strictly defensive in nature. Circular movements without breaks are used, and focuses on those techniques that keep one from close contact with an assailant. A deeply spiritual art, there is no competition in traditional aikido.

If you do karate and you're a kobudo enthusiast, it may interest you to know that internal styles feature an interesting array of weapons. Sword forms are taught in tai chi. In bagua, specialized weapons include the saber, the spear, and deer horn knives, which have two crescent-shaped blades that are crossed.

Most of the people that I know who have been involved in teaching karate for many years hold the internal martial arts in high regard. The nature and methods of these styles seem to lessen the frequency and severity of training related injuries typically seen in karate, especially as one ages. Pursuing an internal style later in life might not be a bad idea. We're not getting older, we're just getting better.