Technique 3: Hikite

I was sparring with a green belt yesterday.  I had a good kumite kamae and was protecting my centerline vigourously.  My jabs were penetrating effortlessly and I wondered why.  I wasn’t so good that nothing he did could stop me.  After studying him for a while, something thrilling occurred to me…

His hikite was awful.

He’d punch and leave his hands out there.  Sometimes it would be to maintain the distance, sometimes to push me away.  But those extended arms made throwing, deflecting, immobilizing and countering a breeze.  Those arms made everything easier.

And now I understand Hikite.

Hikite is not a destination.  It is not a goal.  It is a means.  It is a process and it has a purpose.

In Karate we spend a lot of time with our arms extended.  Step punch, step punch.  It is important to get full extension on the punching arm, to strengthen the shoulders, to turn the wrist over and penetrate into the target.

Most people see hikite as pulling your hand back to your hip.  Hikite is simply pulling your hand back.  Nothing more or nothing less.

If extension is Kyo, then hikite is Jutsu.  Because though we may not realize, all that time we spend with arms extended in karate is teaching us a very bad habit.  The habit of keeping our hands away from our body.  The habit of breaking our kamae.  The further the hand is from the core, the less useful and powerful it is.

How do we counteract this?  How do we ensure that we get good penetration on our punch but don’t compromise our guard?  Hikite.  Hikite, the withdrawing hand.  Or perhaps better put, withdrawing the hand. People will describe hikite sometimes as a grab to turn the opponent as you strike with the opposite hand.  They will describe it as a rear elbow.  They will say it accelerates the opposite side of the body to pull the arm in.  And it can be all of those things.  But Hikite’s three main purposes are 1) simply pulling your hand away from where the opponent can manipulate it and 2) returning to kamae where you can again defend centerline and 3) chambering your arm so you can strike again.  Whether the destination of the pulling hand is your hip, your rib or chin, the idea is simple: don’t leave your fist out there.  Pull it back so it can defend your seichusen and launch another attack.

In this interpretation, the act of pulling the fist back to the hip is an exaggerated movement.  It is a reminder that as the fist goes out, one should return, ready for what comes next, ready to defend.  But we should not think of hikite only for the fist that is not punching.  Arguably, hikite is most important for the fist that is punching, the one that is nearest the opponent, the one that is greatest threat to being manipulated.   Hikite then, on top of rotational acceleration, on top of rear elbows, on top of protecting centerline, also prevents the opponent from immobilizing the hand as in HIA as hikiashi does from LIA.

Boxers have excellent hikite.  With each jab, the hand withdraws right back to where it started.  With each cross, the fist returns as if tied to an elastic band, sewn to the chin.  Hikite exists so that we can find the proper balance between penetration and withdrawal – between attacking and defending.  Explore what your fists do and where they are and ask yourself if Hikite is something you can afford to ignore.

Technique 2: The SMALL stuff

I can't remember who said it.  It might be Ushiro, or Musashi or Lao Tzu.  It goes: Consider trivial things deeply and significant things lightly.  I understand that now.  By understand, I don't mean that I know what it conveys.  I mean I've lived what it conveys.

I understood the words the first time I read them.  People have inclinations, predilictions, habits.  One of them is to dismiss small things and worry over large, far off things.  Like death.  Or being embarrassed.  When if you put some of that concern into small, everyday matters like eating right and speaking humbly, big matters would matter even less than they do.  Balance.

But those are all just words...

I like packing my gym bag.  I like ironing my gi.  I like taking pride in it and telling myself that just as I iron the folds out of the fabric so do I try to iron the kinks out of my karate - smooth out the flaws, the bumps, the creases.  I like paying attention to the details and packing the fabric, my books, my gloves, my towel, my water bottle.  And on the bus ride to work, I was proud that I didn't leave it to the last moment.  That I was responsible and diligent and disciplined...

Until I realized that I'd completely forgotten to pack my belt.

The irony was not lost on me.  That I could be so absorbed in the ritual of packing my bag and overlook the obvious.  Such a small thing, my belt.  But without it, everything else in my bag is just weight that I'm lugging around.  All the enormous things in my head that I was going to do in class today disappeared.   It all dissolved into nothingness...for I had forgotten the simple small detail of packing my belt.

On the contrary, for all the pride and respect that I showed Karate and my gi, I would do it even greater honor if I was mindful enough to remember my belt so that I could actually train.  The small things are what make big things possible.

I have a hole in my hand from today.  It was given to me by Peter Giffen.  He was doing the bunkai for NiSeiShi to me and to fully compromise me, he attacked a nerve in my hand as he pulled me down.  The target must have been half a centermetre squared between my thumb and index finger.  But the pain in my hand gave him more than enough time to break my posture downward.  That small extra motion made the big work of taking a person to the ground that much easier.

I'm beginning to see that the heart of karate is in these small details; every technique has at its heart a small window of opportunity to fill with these small details that compromise another person.  Once you've internalized the Stillpoint - the nugget of a technique, the key aspect, the Moment where you'll win or lose - it's just a matter of waiting for the opportunity and applying the details.

But to wait for the moment takes courage and patience.  To apply the details in the moment takes much practice.

And confidence that I'll find that Stillpoint when it counts demands total Commitment.

Small stuff.

Technique 1: Ju Go Waza

Shane Higashi drives me nuts sometimes.  He's divided the class up into young people and old people.  Which would be fine if the person running the young class was good.  But instead they're doing all this nonsense that has very little to do with karate and it's getting me upset.

There is a pernicious, kumite-centric thread in the class that leaves me feeling really frustrated.  These younglings don't know anything.  Kumite is exciting and fun, sure.  But they've structured the class entirely around it and I find it ironic.  I find it ironic that Sensei should indulge them in this kumite focus when he knows what we all should be working on.  More on that in a moment.

They're doing plyometrics and circuit training and my legs are killing me with DOMS.  It's all this athletic karate, sport karate.  It isn't even fitness karate anymore.  Situps are token, stretching is cursory, pushups optional.  It's just jump, step, bounce.  You know, the way that samurai used to move, bouncing around like idiots.  The way judoka move, raising their center of balance.  The way boxers move.  Where did all this bouncing in karate come from, anyways?

Are they really going to bounce around at a bus station or a schoolyard?  Bouncing around makes it easier to grab a leg, sweep a foot, lift someone?  Do we bounce around in kata?  It's just crap.  Crap codified by tournament karate, where you aren't allowed to grab a leg, lift someone, or throw someone.  I try to imagine what a judoka would do to the people in our class if our sparring was combined with their randori.

So my ankle, feet, calves, quads, hams, and hips are killing me and I say to myself: I can do plyo at home, I come here to do karate.  So I excuse myself from the young class and go downstairs to where Sensei is working with the fogeys.  He's taking them them through ridiculous nonsense like situps, pushups, kihon, kata, and bunkai.  You know, the silly stuff that won't ever help you in kumite.  He gets a manual out and takes us ('us' meaning me) through the black belt requirements and he's on me when I get 2 out of the 40 things he mentions wrong.  And I'm thinking to myself:  I shouldn't get them wrong, I've been taking karate longer than almost all the younglings up there put together.  But how many of them know half of these things off by heart, including that black belt?  Why does Sensei indulge them in all this sparring when the rest of their karate is so suspect?

My wonder and frustration at the man was reinforced later on, after my class, when Sensei asked me to work with another brown belt.  He isn't very good and doesn't know how to fall.  He has no clue as to Ju Go Waza, whereas I had to look some of them up.  So it wasn't as easy as it could have been.  We get to number 15, the one I could never see working in real life and Sensei does it.  It works.  It works so well and the technique is so simple and fluid that I wondered why I thought it couldn't work.  So I do it, admittedly badly, and Sensei is all over me.  Getting impatient like I should know this.  And I'm of a mind at certain points to look at the old man and say:  Why should I know this?  We never practice this.  Where else can I find someone willing to be thrown to the ground repeatedly than here?  If we don't do it here, in class, where else would we get a chance to practice it?

I realize that old people should be free to be impatient with young people - they're running out of time, and everything they know seems obvious to them.  But there's no magic to Sensei making a move work that I couldn't even imagine working. The man practiced this stuff a million times more than me.  He lived in O'Sensei's house for Christ's sake - days spent practicing for hours and hours on end.  I won't get that opportunity.  So the least we can do when we come to the dojo is actually spend this precious time working on what matters.

Maybe I should just say this to him rather than venting here.

Mind 2: Ma

I was fighting today, giving pointers.  My mokuso for today was eyes - gan - and I tried to see holistically and peripherally.  I tried to feel what was coming, but the thrill of battle - it's so easy to get swept up in it and give in to old (and bad) habits.  Watching someone's fists...it's sounds stupid to even say...but so many of us do it.  We did it when we were white belts and we do it now.  The only difference is: I know better.  Something to work on.

I was in front of this kid, a green belt, maybe 10 or 12 years old.  He should have been in the kids class.  Except for one thing.  This kid had an amazing, instinctive, preternatural sense of the combative distance.  He could sense ma-ai to within a half-step...perhaps even more precise than that.  I'd circle and shift feet, I'd shift stance and step back.  But the moment the distance shortened, even a little, he sensed it.  Even when he had no frame of reference, even when I was circling trying to sneak up on him, he'd know.  I've never seen anything like it.

You see people who can sense danger, and people who move back by instinct.  But this kid only moved back hard the moment I was entering ma-ai.  I told him how great it was and that when he feels that distance rather than move back he should strike.  I came in hard thinking I had him.  His fist came up into my jaw.  I wasn't sure if I was ashamed or proud.  It was surreal.

I could keep him off of me with range - or just overpower him in close.  But between Toma and Chikama, this little kid was owning me.  I couldn't tell him - I didn't want it to go to his head.  But he could be something.  This fat, goofy little kid.  I love it.

I have so far to go.  The only thing that gives me hope is that I'm learning from everyone.

Body 1: 45 d 8 h 33 m

My brother went to Montreal and saw Cirque du Soleil.  He was amazed by the feats of strength displayed by the men and went on and on about this one guy who was supporting his whole body with one arm.  I shook my head and smiled – it was always such a strange thing to hear Kareem offer praise, so when he did it couldn’t help but be impressive.  I had looked into bodyweight training and balance and static holds a few years back and pursued it with enthusiasm.  But distractions and injury reared their twin heads and my training on that front waned.

It strange to hear someone say something like ‘I’m working out’ or ‘I’m going to the gym’ when what they mean to say is that they’re training.  It’s important to understand that we are always learning, always in training.  We are in training sitting down and standing.  We are in training lying in bed.  Our minds and bodies are never static – it is ever-changing, always in flux.  Every moment that we are alive we are internalizing our behavior and the world around us.  People who smoke become expert smokers.  Persistent couch potatoes become world-class obese couch potatoes.  When you say you’re working out, you mean to say that you are going to exercise to become stronger.  But without commitment and dedication working out is still training, but not to be stronger.  You are just training in mediocrity.  Training in half-measures.

I was watching Kareem going on the gymnastic rings set and I showed him some of the people training in commitment and dedication on Youtube, and some of the skills their training has brought them.  Kareem was amazed.  And I was…blasé.  There was no fire in me, to push myself, to reach for excellence.  Maybe it was fear…of disappointing myself again.  Fear of giving up.

I’ve been training in letting go a long time.  Now I have to train in holding on.  I have to train in commitment and dedication, train in discipline.  And I needed an example – something, anything – that I could point to and say ‘Look, I did that!’  I put the time in and look at where I’ve gotten.

And then I was looking at my playing time on Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer.

45 d 8 h 33 m.  45 days’ worth of sitting and staring at a screen.  Of shooting and being shot.  Of killing and dying.  Of winning and losing.  Winstreaks, losestreak, deathstreaks, killstreaks – I kept coming back.  10 minute games at a time…for 45 days. A month and a half of non-stop training in Modern Warfare 2.  Wow.

And it’s not to say that I’m not good.  I can hold my own.  But imagine what my body would be capable of if I spent that time, 1088 hours, not sitting, but working out.  Would I be able to do some of those things that Kareem swears to do one day?

Modern Warfare 3 is coming out November 8th.  I’m going to match play time with gymnastic time 1 for 1 until I get back to that 1000 hour threshold.  And then I’m going to see which 1000 hours paid off the most.

Mind 1: I did a strange thing with my mind just then...

I've been injured for some time now and I thought that my recovery was nearly complete.  Then, on Father's Day, I was playing basketball and my hip nearly gave way again.  So I'm still recovering.  I think of the things that I can do in the meantime: writing, rehabilitating...and I find that my karate is actually not that bad.  It can be fluid or rigid, strength or leverage, swift or slow.  I'm starting to finally make some small progress in making it more mindless, more mushin.

I've been working on different meditation schemes with varying success but I did want to mention one breakthrough.  I was on the bus, working with opening my senses and breathing, closing and opening my focus.  I'd start at the immediate - the sensation of my body, pulses, itches, the feeling of clothes against skin.  Then I'd move outward: scent of perfume, sound of the wind outside, the traffic, a woman talking on a cell, the pages of a book being shifted, the driver ripping a transfer, the coins being dropped in the farebox.  Then I opened my eyes and tried to clear my mind enough to take in as much as I could without dwelling on any one detail - fidgeting in a chair, itching an ear, a look, an expression, the sunlight, someone checking the time, the guy next to me making the sign of the cross on his chest after looking at a girl's rear as she stood.

And then...I woke up.  I roused myself from...I'm not sure really.  Was I sleeping?  I could have sworn I was lucid...and when my eyes opened the bus was basically exactly where I remembered it being.  Time hadn't past, yet I'd lost a sense of time.

I was in that place between sleep and awake.  I hadn't just dozed off, because my mind was still aware of the things that I'd been observing in an unbroken flow.  But the feeling of just having been dreaming was unmistakable.  My lucid observations had dipped me into a dream state.

Now: can I do it again?

No Way and Empty Hand

I was reading a blog entry just now on Bruce Lee and the writer was being very verbose, and I think what they were trying to say was that studying Bruce was difficult because there is a separation of the man into separate and dissimilar fields of discourse: Bruce the actor, Bruce the philosopher and Bruce the fighter. The writer poses the interesting question:

In short, a question rarely posed by those who would discuss Bruce Lee’s ‘philosophy’ is that of whether it was a ‘philosophy’ or an ‘ideology’: a retroactive justification.

To me, this is a question that I've thought of many times. How many people actually come to a clear and internally consistent worldview? Did Bruce really have it down pat or was he just muddling through like the rest of us? Did the cohesiveness of what he thought exist when he was alive and dealing with real problems in the real world, or did it come afterwards when people looked at what he was and tried to make sense of it?

Then, if we are to consider philosophy as liberation and ideology as subjugation, the former as encouraging thought and the latter as demanding obedience, doesn't a philosophy too define itself by means of exclusion? That is, what makes a philosophy special, even though it deals in the realm of thought, is what it gets right that others get wrong? Doesn't philosophy also become too restrictive a word for a living breathing person forced to adapt to an unforgiving and unpredictable world?

To my mind, to know the philosophy of Bruce Lee, someone would have to know what he'd say to any question that was ever posed him. You'd have to know his mind perfectly to say that there was a philosophy of the man. Who'll ever know me that well? Hell, I don't even know me that well! I wouldn't imagine that I'd answer a question the same way now that I would ten years from now, or ten years ago for that matter.

The best and longest and most helpful compilations of wisdom ever written, from every discipline and every culture, are united in one quality: their capacity for self-contradiction. The Bible, the Hagakure, the Art of War - each of them at one point say one thing and then later say the exact opposite. Men are no different. We contradict ourselves all the time to roll with life's punches. To try and find some unifying cohesion afterwards can quickly lead to folly. We seek to simplify and distill, to improve our understanding, but we'd do well to remember that great saying from Einstein that things must be made as simple as possible but not simpler. Simplifying things too much - Relativity, violence, Karate, Bruce Lee - robs that thing's essence entirely, leaving you feeling like you know when you profoundly don't.

Some simplifications are helpful and some aren't. Equivocation, yes. False, no. Sign of an open mind...perhaps? One particularly unhelpful simplification with regards to Bruce, at least as far as I've read of the man, is this idea that a good martial artist dabbles. A good martial artist tastes different meals and then takes the best ingredient from each and puts it on their plate. Use what is useful and discard what is useless and make something uniquely your own.

It's a compelling argument. But even Bruce himself addressed it's main flaw. How does someone judge what is useful? How do you gain the insight and critical eye necessary to deem something worth discarding? Someone jumping from Tai Chi to Muay Thai to Judo to Brazilian Jujitsu to Kali to Karate to Wing Chun and imagining themselves becoming comprehensive in the fighting disciplines may well gain a great many insights into the methods of fighting. But how are they to judge which methods to take and which to lose?

This task is accomplished not through experience with many fighting disciplines per se, but through Experience, period. It is not acquired from a martial art or many martial arts but rather, by a martial artist. That is to say, all the techniques of many styles or one style for that matter won't give it to you. You have to get it for yourself. You teach yourself what is useful by usage. But you don't have to go to 20 different dojos to learn. So long as you leave no stone unturned and keep your mind open, a true martial artist can be made from one style or many. You just need to be honest in your preparations.

In this I feel that what Bruce was trying to say has become a simplistic appeal to superficial dabbling into different arts. "Using no way as way" has been taken to mean, "Don't stay!" Don't stay in a discipline, don't examine it, don't seek to become part of that heritage. When really what he means is, "You study Karate and know all the reasons why you shouldn't grab someone's legs...but his legs are where he's most vulnerable...Grab his legs!" Don't confuse what is right in a style with what is right in a fight. The style should reinforce your freedom to act, not restrict it.