The Way of Least Resistance

Here are some videos I shot in May regarding the two basic forms of nukite (knife hand) used in karate: The standard chudan (chest level) nukite The standard age (rising) nukite A video discussing the nukite in shisochin kata Copyright © 2014 Dejan Djurdjevic

I saw this video the other day: The defender is attacked by a fellow who runs at him from a distance with bat or pole. The defender responds by stepping off line inside the circle and moving his hand upward to deflect. In doing so he contacts the shoulder first, jamming the attack at its source. This is known as " cutting the supply lines ". This instantly takes the bulk of the force out of the attack.  This is the favoured tactic of arts like arnis/escrima/kali when defending against weapons: jam the slow moving parts of the body. In aikido terms the approach would be an " irimi " - ie. "entering" - however there is no "turning" ("tenkan") or other "blending" as is typically seen in aikido. The defender also manages to deflect the attack by sliding up the attacker's arm, " slicing " aside the remaining downward action  (probably a high hiki/kake uke or a kind of " steeple block ") (note -...

The "C" back is one of the internal arts most important functional, practical features yet it remains largely unknown. I plan to write an article in the near future in which I highlight its potency by reference to specific techniques. [Edit: now see " Left single whip: taijiquan's hidden power ".] For the time being, here is a video:

A video in which I discuss the impact and function of stance width. Copyright © 2014 Dejan Djurdjevic

Many readers will have noticed that I have been unusually quiet since the start of the year.  I assure you that this is not for any reduced interest, or will to engage in, martial writing, but rather due to the presence of a creative side-project that will take up significant resources in the next few months.  Given that this has involved about 45,000 words in 1 1/2 months, and given that I have written about the same in my day job, you can see that my time is somewhat limited. But I'm finally ready to take a break from my side project to come back to martial writing - thanks largely to my friend Noah Legel and his fascinating posts on Facebook concerning "Fight Night 36" - a UFC sanctioned tournament. Noah correctly noticed that two interesting techniques executed by Erik Silva against Takenori Sato are really "old school" karate techniques and not the "newly invented techniques" that people were talking about. This gif posted by Noah below...

Introduction I've had two main "contrary" responses to my " Karate ni sente nashi? " article: "That's all very interesting, but I prefer this article..." (which goes on to detail exactly why and how karate is compatible with pre-emptive striking). "I don't have time for your theories - I hit first and hard and that works for me." I thought I'd address both of these as succinctly as I can. The first objection It never ceases to amaze me how many people read "karate ni sente nashi" as some sort of rigid "rule" - then proceed to run through all the reasons why the "rule" can't work. You'll note that in my article I didn't spend any time trying to describe the sorts of situations where one can and should "attack first".  Why?  Because it's obvious that myriad such potential situations exist!  Why waste the time discussing this? I think the reason people i...

Introduction There is an old debate that has been raging in karate for years.  As my friend Ryan Parker says, it really has its genesis in the philosophical (among other) disputes between the two karate masters who first brought karate to Japan: Gichin Funakoshi and Choki Motobu. Almost every karateka knows Funakoshi's famous "golden rule": "Karate ni sente nashi" - there is no first "attack" in karate ("sente" literally means "initiative" - in this case "aggressive initiative"). Many karateka also know Choki Motobu's response: "Karate is  sente" - in other words karate is  about (aggressive) initiative. So who was right?  My answer is: both of them!   If this seems weird, stay with me. A little bit of background Motobu was a practical fighting man.  Funakoshi manifestly was not.  If you haven't, read this article by (the always fabulous) Jesse Enkamp and you'll get a feeling for what kin...