The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction When I was in my instructor's dojo back in the '80s, we trained annually with the head of our parent organisation at his geiko and gashuku (intensive training courses and camps).  During these our "headmaster" would often speak about the need to "transcend the physical" at some point in our martial journey.  But he never really explained exactly what he meant by this. After a few years, and a few more gashuku, it became clear that he was speaking of some kind of "metaphysics": ie. something "supernatural" or "beyond our current scientific understanding". Yet whenever I observed our headmaster during training, there seemed nothing remotely "transcendent" about him: he did the same stuff we did, namely basics, kata, applications, weapons - just with the odd parlour trick thrown in (like the " unbendable arm "). It's now quite clear to me that many, many other schools' headmasters s...

Choson Ninja and the question of "conditioned" knuckles The other day one of my colleagues at the Traditional Fighting Arts Forums alerted me to a fellow who calls himself Choson Ninja. He has a series of videos on Youtube and in this particular one he tells you about the dangers of getting "ugly" knuckles from hand conditioning. The general thrust of his argument is correct: conditioning can lead to deformed and ugly knuckles - especially so if you are doing it incorrectly. Certainly, even moderate makiwara practice will cause you to develop callouses. How "unsightly" these are will depend on how much and how "hard" you do your conditioning. However I disagree with Mr Choson about much of what he says in his video. To begin with, his knuckles are not really that conditioned . Rather, they appear to be damaged from breaks. Mr Choson certainly doesn't have anywhere near the kind of callousing one gets from regular conditioning such as st...