Peeling the onion...

This week, my Intel class only had a couple people in it. Both guys are shodans and both have been in their current rank for over a year. So, I decided to put my attention on what they needed to do in order to reach the next level - nidan.

What is interesting is that both these guys are exact opposite from each other in their strengths and challenges (I hate using the work 'weaknesses'). One is a long time karate veteran who has about as much experience with his shotokan than I do with the Bujinkan! The other is a professional mountain climber with no prior martial arts experience.

The karate veteran struggles with transitioning past his motor skill habits. He has a hard time opening up his hips and legs when moving and tends to turn his feet inward in his usual karate posture. This causes him to lose the essential fluidity, balance and power needed to make our techniques work the way they do. He doesn't bend and move his knees enough and simply has a hard time 'letting go'. Karate is a very powerful art, but their power base is in their posture, rooted in a twisting action of the hips. Our power base is in our fluidity and movement, with the emphasis on using the legs. Posture is important, but the current flavor of Bujinkan techniques doesn't rely on the rigidity of posture, but more on flow, timing and position. In a nutshell, karate deals with the body of the attacker, where our art is dealing with the spaces around the attacker - if that makes sense.

The other guy is good with his movement, but lacks the structure of his posture. He tends to lean off his base, his elbows float out away from their natural line of support, and he is often off balance very easily. But, he gets flow and has excellent ukemi, even with hard, fast techniques.

So, this night I decided to dissect each of their own level of taijutsu. I chose movements which put much emphasis on knees and footwork, but also on correct posture and balance. One of our techniques is called Juji Aruki, which is basically a cross stepping motion. But, this involves specific angles of the knees and feet, where you actually 'drop' into this movement. Then, you 'uncoil' from this posture to continue moving, kicking, striking, etc. If done correctly, it is very powerful. Done incorrectly, balance becomes difficult and the uncoil weak.

I also took apart their basic back shift into a kamae called Bobi no Kamae. We did this as a response to a shoulder grab, where the pull back of the right foot, hip and shoulder either off balanced the grabbing attacker or dislodged the grab altogether. The rear hand moves to the rear hip and the lead hand forms a fist and drives up into the upper ribs under the grabbing arm.

The fun part was watching them turn this into a jerking motion where the emphasis was on the upper body yanking backwards. If the attacker held his grip tightly, the person doing the technique stumbled because they weren't strong enough to jerk themselves back.

I explained how this isn't about jerking the body backwards, because this would fuel a forward movement of the attacker and create opportunity for a follow up punch. Instead, I showed them that you have to first drop the weight down by bending both knees, then 'roll' the weight backwards using the legs. If done correctly, the person actually allowed gravity to pull them back and down. Their leg swung back in correct posture as a means to catch and support the falling weight. When done correctly, the grabbing attacker was pulled off balance or couldn't hold the grip - and the defender didn't exert any force to do it.

This was a good fix to some bad movement and both of them really understood the benefits. This same principle then was used in many other examples, where the movement initiated from a drop in weight, then 'rolling' the balance in the direction desired. Every time they did that, techniques worked with much less strength needed.

So, for my karate guy, he learned to rely more on the use of his knees and footwork and the other guy learned to keep himself more over his knees and footwork.

I continued to peel away the onion of their taijutsu, pointing out areas which needed fine tuning. This also included explaining how they needed to be aware of where their noses pointed. Both would point their noses away from their attacker, even when in kamae. This level of fine tuning is what will take them into the next level, so my hope is that this class afforded them a valuable 'prescription' of what they need to focus on in their future training.

Based on the level of satisfaction they displayed by the end of class, I assume it did.