The Way of Least Resistance

For most of my martial arts career I have known (and practised, on and off) the orthodox kote kitae or "ude tanren" - forearm conditioning. An example can be found here and below: Master Higaonna Morio and Sensei Falcone practising orthodox kote kitae A variant on the theme can be found here . Without wishing to go into the merits or necessity of forearm conditioning to any great extent in this article, I would like to point out that I feel some conditioning is essential for karate blocks. While I admire the conditioning of many of my goju colleagues, I prefer a slightly "softer" approach which I feel is consistent with my approach to "blocking" generally. Accordingly I have always wanted to combine ude tanren with movements that: (a) apply the same movement that karate blocks apply (which to my mind is more of a deflection than a hard "blocking" movement (see my article " Why blocks DO work "); and (b) actually condition the arm wi...