Contact in Kumite

If you’ve ever been hit with a really solid punch to the face, you know exactly what I mean when I say that it’s an eye-opening experience.  The world gets all shaky for a second or two, and if you’re unlucky enough to have been hit on the nose your eyes will start getting watery, and you’ll be slightly blinded for a few seconds.  To put it shortly, you’re a sitting duck, just waiting to be killed.

Most self-defense situations begin with surprise attacks, not with two people squared off, facing each other and waiting for the other person to make the first move.  Karate is typically trained, and taught, as a dueling art and then touted up as a viable source of self-defense tactics and maneuvers.  This is a dangerous claim to make.  I’m not trying to denounce the capabilities of a well-trained karate-ka, but the caveat in that statement is that one must be well-trained.

Sadly, one important factor of training tends to be overlooked in the typical Shotokan dojo; and that is the concept of taking a hit.  While we all train to punch the air, and perform beautiful kata, it’s the rare dojo that engages in a sufficient level of impact training.  For all of those dojo that utilize punching bags, and other impact training equipment, there are a select few that engage in effective and useful kumite.  By useful kumite I’m, of course, referring to semi- to hard-contact sparring that occurs within a realistic maai, or fighting distance.

Among these few, solid dojo, it’s very rare where contact to the head is allowed or espoused.  The general paradigm is the idea that if one is able to stop one’s punch a millimeter from skin surface, then one will have the ability to follow through when needed.  I can’t help but disagree.

If you train to stop a millimeter away, then that’s what your body and your brain will remember to do if you need to punch somebody for real.  You play the way you practice; you fight the way you train.  If you train to limit contact to such a great extent, then you will fight in the same manner.  The point of training is to practice what you will put into use when the time comes.  There’s a huge difference between using less power in kumite and pulling one’s punches short of contact.

Utilizing the feeling of getting hit, I believe, will greatly increase one’s chances of surviving a surprise attack.  Not many attackers will step out into the open, and threaten the victim, they attack by surprise, and either grab or hit the victim.  Knowing how to deal with getting hit can take one a long way to surviving and getting away.