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My article originally published in Masters Magazine Winter 2011
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At the heart of Koryu Uchinadi (Ancient Style of Okinawan Empty Hand) are its two-person drills, which nurture its most important outcome … “functional spontaneity.” This is a skill that needs to be practiced in order to learn it well and to have at a moment of crisis. Although the term spontaneity elicits thoughts of impulsiveness or random acts, it is anything but.
Have you ever seen a person, whether it be in karate or any other physical activity (dance, piano, basketball, etc.), look stiff and slow like a robot when they are trying to pick up a new move? Even the most adept at something will have to repeat a new move several times before making it look fluid. It is because they have not conditioned themselves to functional spontaneity on those particular techniques. The secret of karate is not learning a white crane kata or a pressure point sequence it is simplicity itself - repetitive practice; or as my instructor calls them “continuous flow drills.” Re-enacting defensive situations or more commonly known in Koryu Uchinadi, as Habitual Acts of Physical Violence (HAPV) will give the karate practitioner the ability to react without thinking. I recently read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell which discusses how art critics, wall street brokers, food tasters and police officers all have something in common - functional spontaneity. At least the really good ones do! They are able to look at an object or situation and within seconds figure it out. Because of years of practice and following common principles (i.e., in KU we use HAPV, applied science, human anatomy & physiology). The book stated it very well about what functional spontaneity is... “How good people’s decisions are under the fast moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training and rules and rehearsal.” Let me explain more. If anyone has seen the TV show “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?”, they would have seen comedian Drew Carey and company take random topics from the audience and seemingly effortlessly go from one joke to another with functional spontaneity. The reason it worked so well is that they practiced the principles and rules of Improv. The main one being always agree with whatever is said.
We have rules of physics/motion and principles of mechanics that we follow in karate as well. This allows us to handle any attack from any direction without it being prearranged. That is why the research that Patrick McCarthy did into the karate training methods that were practiced prior to the 1900s in Okinawa is so revealing. The original practice learned from China and other parts of Southeast Asia were packed full of two-person drills, which when practiced solo evolved into kata. During the post-1900s when Japan was focused on nationalism and militarism; karate became more of a function of physical exercise to the masses and lost the true development as a civil defense art. During this time, we lost these two-person flow drills and the knowledge of what kata was truly for.
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The Human Element is a "universal style"
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You can’t learn functional spontaneity against an attack (HAPV) from a solo exercise (kata). A person needs to have a hook punch come right at them repeatedly in order to get use to such a thing. I remember when it all came to me, an epiphany I suppose. I had joined McCarthy Hanshi and one of his senior students in Japan a few years ago to celebrate Kinjo Hiroshi’s Beiju [88th birthday]. While McCarthy Sensei was in Tokyo he was scheduled to have an interview with “Gekkan Karate-do” magazine (Japan’s premiere karate periodical and originally founded by Kinjo Hiroshi). During the interview, the reporter looked puzzled when Hanshi talked about two-person drills and functional spontaneity (this reporter had interviewed all the greats in karate and probably thought he had seen everything there was in karate). Hanshi had his student throw a hook punch. The night before his student had been out late in the Roppongi district with yours truly so naturally he was a bit tired and not himself that morning. But as they were doing the drill he seemed to throw the hook punch with a rigidness and it lacked some spirit, not what Hanshi was after. He told his student in a soft but direct tone “hit me!” The student picked up speed, but again that is not what Hanshi was going for as speed itself is not functional spontaneity.
Hanshi started to increase his volume but with the same request “hit me!” The student went faster! Finally Hanshi grabbed him a little bit and said, “HIT ME!!!” With that, the student lost it and just spontaneously threw hook punches and responded to Hanshi response as well (tegumi drill #6). It was like two dogs fighting with reckless abandon, yet there was structure and rules associated with this wild scene. I looked over at the reporter and he was just sitting there with his mouth wide open in amazement. And just as cool as the other side of the pillow, Hanshi stopped and calmly went on to the next topic as if nothing had happened. The student was still juiced up and I could see he was slowly coming down from the adrenaline rush. McCarthy Hanshi was just making a point about what Koryu Uchinadi practice is all about - functional spontaneity.
You have to reenact the crime so to speak; if one wants to defend against a hook punch in a bar fight then one must practice in the dojo to defend against a drunken reckless hook punch coming at your face and by the way, you need to recognize what that looks like in an instant before it connects to your face so you can stop it. Once a person becomes proficient at tegumi or futari-geiko [two-person drills], that is just the beginning. The next step is to add two or three of them together randomly. Then further one gets rid of the drills and just flows to whatever attack comes at them. I suppose ‘push-hands‘ at its highest level is somewhat similar to this. Just like in theory there is only ONE kata that encompasses all the defensive themes to ALL of the HAPV [Habitual Acts of Physical Violence]; then there is only ONE two-person flow drill that a person would use. There are no secret techniques or advanced kata, just the function of defending oneself against an attack. Ultimately you want to be fluid in a fight, because flexible is too rigid.
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Tegumi drill #7
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“What are some of the ways to train functional spontaneity?”
That’s a great question, glad you asked! One of the most famous and cunning martial art masters of all time is the Pink Panther (a.k.a Inspector Jacques Clouseau), who had Kato test his functional spontaneity constantly (and for our amusement I might add). This is taking it to the full expression of spontaneous reaction to an unexpected attack. Now the rest of us don’t have a trusted assistant to attack us when we least expect it to test our skills. So that means we need to have drills we can use in the dojo to help us learn functional spontaneity. Here are some that I like to use:
1. Start with two tegumi (HAPV) like hook punch and straight punch. The defender has to then react to whichever attack is coming. Now there is only two so the margin of error is very low, 50/50 chance. As one becomes more comfortable you then add other tegumi exercises and ultimately all 12 Nyumon level tegumi exercises.
2. Pick a defensive theme, Crane on a Rock, or it could be as simple as a rising block or knife hand block, whatever, just pick one to start out with. Then teach several ways to use that one defensive theme to address the one HAPV, say a two hand push or lapel grab. Now have two or three people attack non-stop at random with just that attack. The defender should be using the different defensive themes you just taught to address these attacks but if they only use the same one over and over and it works no harm done either. Gradually add different HAPV but keep the one defensive posture. Later add more defensive themes and so on. Remember, eventually there is ALL in ONE, any attack with any defense.
3. Similar to #1 but the defender closes their eyes until a voice command is given. On the command, the attacker starts with their movement/HAPV/tegumi (speed increases as the person gets more comfortable), the defender opens their eyes and reacts to the attack.
4. Again, start with only one tegumi, let’s use push hands (tegumi #4) for this exercise. As you and your partner flow back and forth with push hands, one of you then does a defensive them on the other. I usually show three at a time and will start with arm bar, hand check - forearm to the neck (rising block), and kote gaeshi. Continually going back and forth where the students at any moment use one of the three aforementioned defensive themes to address the HAPV of a push. This can go on for 10 minutes or more.
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There are many other ways to learn functional spontaneity and I hope you find them in your journey of practicing the martial arts. But I hope I was able to at least give you a better understanding of how and why this is truly the secret of karate. Koryu Uchinadi is certainly not the only group that uses functional spontaneity as a learning tool as I have mentioned before. Kung fu/Tai Chi uses push hands and other two person flow drills as does goju ryu and Uechi ryu. The difference in my opinion is that most have lost the “contextual premise” of the HAPV and thus lose the effectiveness of their training. I will have to write another article someday to address contextual premise some other time, as it is a key element to functional spontaneity. Just as the ‘earth and the moon’ are connected so are ‘contextual premise and functional spontaneity’.
Koryu Uchinadi as taught by Master Instructor, Patrick McCarthy Hanshi are the rediscovered two-person practices that he researched all over the world (Egypt, Thailand, China, Korea, Japan, Okinawa and many other places) and spent most of his life developing into what we practice today. He did not invent these techniques but he is the pioneer who brought them back to the world to enjoy in a system called ‘Koryu Uchinadi’. This is reality based fighting at its best!
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