The Way of Least Resistance

Before I leave the subject of Ed Parker behind completely, I'm going to delve into something I touched on very briefly in my last article - his hand postures.  I'm doing so because the issue was raised recently on the Kenpotalk forum . A friend of mine, MarkC, posted that he felt the postures were "fake".  Another replied to him as follows: "So tell me again why posing with the extended fingers is some kind of fake.  In fact tell that to Ed Parker and his followers.  This is the form of the Crane and there is a specific application for it." So I replied with the more or less what follows below: There are two types of "postures" seen in photos of quan fa practitioners: poses of strikes; and  poses of "guard positions". The poses of "strikes" are usually what quan fa people adopt for photos. Here's me posing with others at a temple during training in Taiwan: The strike is used in action in the tiger crane ...

Recently a fellow sent me an email concerning my article " The karate "kamae" or guard ". My original video relating to the karate kamae in which I discuss the "Clayton's gap" In that article I discuss how the old bareknuckle guard and the karate kamae (guard) are basically the same, and for good reason: if you are fighting ungloved, it makes little sense to hold your clenched fists close to your face as having them rammed into can be almost as bad as taking a punch full-on. Rather, with the fists held out at a distance you can not only avoid this problem, but you are also in a position to use what are called " blocks " (better termed "deflections") to intercept an attack closer to its source (rather than when it has almost reached full extension and is travelling at its full speed). I also described how one of the benefits of the bareknuckle guard is that it incorporates a subtle gem I call the "Clayton's gap". For ...

In my considered view the best guard posture (kamae) for karate is one where you hold one hand in the same position as the lead hand in chudan uke (the standard karate chest level block), but at face height . The other hand is about in line with the elbow. There are variations on the heights of the arms, but not in the distance from the body. The fists should be turned - not fully over (palms up) but slightly angled in. The first thing you’ll notice about this guard is that it is substantially the same as the guard adopted by bare-knuckle boxers of old. If there is any difference in my particular version , it is that my shoulders are more rounded (this being an influence from my study of the internal arts). The standard karate kamae is otherwise more or less identical to the old bare-knuckle guard and nothing like the boxing, kickboxing, MMA guards or Muay Thai guards. Why is this? In short, karate is a bare-knuckle discipline where the others I have referred to are either glo...