The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction Five years ago I did a piece on countering kote gaeshi - the wrist out turn.  In the intervening time I've learned a lot more about thwarting or converting this lock, so I thought I'd share this with my readers.  Some of the techniques have already appeared in my recent series on taijiquan qin na , but I thought I'd do a kind of summary of the additional defences against this simple, but potentially devastating, small joint attack - all in the context of my last taiji qin na essay. The "cloud hands lock" In my first kote gaeshi article , two of the options involved falling out of the lock.  I don't propose to go over that ground again but I encourage readers to revisit that piece if they are interested. The third option involved a counter-lock that I have recently identified as an application of the move "cloud hands" in taijiquan.  Back in 2010 I had also identified it as an application from baguazhang. Essentially you can...

Introduction I recently canvassed a favourite issue of mine - namely the need to time your punching/striking hand at the same time (or a fraction before) your front foot lands in a step. A typical xingyi step.  Note the punch lands with the front foot.  The back leg draws up later. As you'll recall I first raised this in my article " Xingyi stepping vs. karate stepping " as a means of discussing some of the particular technical approaches used in the internal arts of China.  I principally did so as part of my drive to explain that these arts actually have some genuine, quite advanced , fighting methods that rely on simple, unadulterated physics - not " woo " (ie. "qi" or some other supernatural/paranormal phenomenon) as many people unfortunately seem to think. I followed this up with my article " Giving away the big secrets " in which I discussed one major reason why this was so important: because it uses your stepping momentum i...

Here's a video I took this morning of me doing shisochin kata. For those who are interested, you can see my notes on the possible history and origins of this form here . Copyright © 2014 Dejan Djurdjevic

In traditional martial arts the question of lineage is often seen as paramount. I remember well the debates that raged from issue to issue on the letters page of the (now defunct) Australasian Fighting Arts Magazine. Various taijiquan schools would send in letters that stated: "X does not do authentic Yang style because he only studied with Y and Z while I studied with A, B and C" etc. Eventually the editor would chime in and and say "I'm not printing any more letters on this topic". But before long another, similar, debate would fire up. The question of lineage is by no means confined to taijiquan schools. Most recently I have been made aware of a huge "lineage upset" in Okinawan goju ryu karate circles, caused by the video below: The controversial video of Alexandr Filimonov's and Kato Tomoyuki's "succession" to the late An'ichi Miyagi For those who don't know, An'ichi Miyagi was student of the legendary Chojun Miya...

Sokumen awase uke An excellent technique that I feel has "slipped under the radar" is that which I call "sokumen awase uke" (side of the head "matching" block). 1 A video showing the inside and outside sokumen awase uke What is sokumen awase uke? 2 There are 2 kinds: both utilise similar body mechanics, but result in a different deflection. Inside sokumen awase uke The first of these is the inside sokumen awase uke. It is performed by using your palm and forearm to catch an incoming punch, the guide it past your head as you move on the inside of your opponent. The "matching" occurs insofar as you go out to meet the attack, match its speed and redirect it past. The pictures to the right illustrate this technique. This inside sokumen awase uke occurs, I believe, in the kata sanseiru. However in most schools this technique now appears as a "jodan uke" (ie. an age uke or rising block). Consider for example the photograph on the left...

My good friend Zach Zinn asked the following question on the Tradtional Fighting Arts Forum : "Do you think maybe age-uke is just Goju's hiki-uke done higher than normally seen? I find myself performing it more like hiki-uke most of the time and it works fine, and since age-uke is notably absent from every koryu Goju kata, it makes me wonder what is being said by it's presence in the first kata usually taught." I think the age uke and hike uke are very different in their basic form, but they do approach each other when applied... Age uke is a basic rendering of haiwan nagashi uke - the block one sees with the simultaneous upper block and punch as is found in long fist, taiji, bagua, xingyi etc. The key difference between this block and the age uke is that the body turns (at least to some extent) to let the attacker's momentum be deflected sideways, not just directly up. This is the case even with pao quan from xingyi (where the " simultaneous " punch is...

Further to my article on the numeric names of kata : In Chinese schools (eg. ngo cho kun) the kata is called "saam chien / sanzhan" while the stance is called "chien be / zhan bu" (battle stance) . The latter is probably the more "correct" description/name of the stance. By comparison, in karate we could perhaps call sanchin dachi "chin dachi". The kata name "sanchin" means "3 battles" and my theory is that the "battles" referred to are not "mind/body/spirit" or some other elaborate philosophical concept. Rather, I think the explanation is more straightforward: The kata is named after 3 sanchin dachi steps:Given my thoughts on the pragmatic kata naming conventions in Fujian in the 1800s (again, see my article Numeric names of kata ) I think the present kata name is shortened from the full Chinese name of the kata: "san zhan bu / saam chien be" — ie. “3 battle steps”. In this regard, bear in mind t...

We have always taught the kata we call naifunchin (naihanchi shodan) along with the goju kata (we teach naifunchin just after saifa). Even so it is not an especially popular kata because it is so different. It really has nothing in common with the other kata (no goju kata uses kiba dachi - a horse stance where both feet point forward - but instead the kata use shiko dachi where the feet point outwards at 45 degrees). Some “shorin” schools practice naifunchin with shiko dachi and not kiba dachi - eg. Tomari te, however this might be due to the influence of Naha‑te, rather than reflecting its original form. Despite its somewhat "strange" feeling and uniqueness, we find that it is a very useful "conditioning" kata (heishugata) and would not consider dropping it from the syllabus. But I’ve often wondered why we, as a goju-based school, should have adopted this kata. The simple answer has always been that our instructors originally studied Kyokushinkai, then Shotokan in...

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...

Cross referring the internal arts and goju has helped me discern not only a possible historical and technical relationship, but more importantly it has helped me understand the function of "formal" training, such as kata. I think that seeing how someone else does the same thing can give you a great deal of insight into what it is you are doing and why. Ultimately we all want to effect a natural, "no-nonsense" technique. However it seems to me that many “modern” stylists have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by abandoning the "formal" aspects of traditional martial arts, not realising that these have a training purpose (not unlike the speedball might have a particular training purpose for a boxer, even though no boxer ever "hits someone like that"). I have found the Chen Pan Ling taijiquan movements generally correspond the most with minimalist, natural way of moving. Bagua and xingyi tend to have progressively greater elements of "form...