The Way of Least Resistance

An example of a karate arm bar: Note how Rob is kept just out of grappling range - and off-balance to prevent him entering grappling range. There is a tendency among many karateka today to find grappling applications (bunkai) in their kata.  That is fine.  Yes,  karate is (undeniably) a "stand up" fighting art, first and foremost, but it also has grappling applications . My only problem with grappling interpretations of kata arises when the bunkai strays into "kata has comprehensive, built-in BJJ applications!'" territory. Let's make this simple, shall we? It doesn't. Karate and other traditional civilian defence arts are not, and never have been, grappling arts  - at least not in the same sense as judo, jujutsu or Greco-Roman wrestling.  If they were, they wouldn't involve quite so many solo "kata", so many obvious punches, kicks, strikes and " blocks ".  They would mostly revolve around... grappling !  With a partn...

Lately I have become intrigued by the term "traditional". It is frequently used to distinguish martial arts such as karate or taijiquan from modern combat sports such as MMA. At this point it seems profitable to distinguish "traditional" from what many call "classical". My esteemed colleague Victor Smith defines the latter (for the purposes of karate) as pre-1920s, the "traditional" era as dating from the '20s to the '50s and the "modern" era as dating from then onwards. 1 While this is quite a useful "potted account", in this discussion I am not particularly interested in the "classical" era; there are few people who maintain that they are studying something that they know with reasonable certainty has a high fidelity to what was taught more than 80 years ago. Those who study such "classical" arts (eg. Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu - the oldest existent samurai arts school) are few and far...

l The Tang Shou Dao (ie. "karatedo") system of the late Hong Yi Xiang in Taibei, Taiwan was reknowned in its day for producing full-contact fighting champions including such luminaries as Luo De Xiu and Su Dong Chen. Hong himself was a formidable street fighter and friends with the equally legendary Wang Shujin. Hong's school taught the 3 internal arts of xingyiquan, baguazhang and taijiquan; strictly in that order. It taught them as "no-holds barred" fighting methods rather than for health or meditation. While many people are aware of Hong Yi Xiang's internal arts systems, very few are aware that Hong taught a series of forms that were "half external and half internal". These served as a vital "bridge" to the internal arts, introducing techniques and a form of movement based on an entirely different set of principles in a paradigm that a senior external student could readily understand and apply. These forms were the creation of Hon...