Bunkai Training - Pointless or Pointful?

The level of incorrectness of the word "pointful" notwithstanding, there is a serious problem with bunkai training, and what it represents the entire karate community becoming.  Many self-ascribed self-defense "experts" teach bunkai as the be-all-end-all of self-defense, but I can't help but feel that this is more than just simply wrong.  It is my opinion that the current paradigm for teaching self-defense is, in fact, detrimental to the students and will do a fair job of putting the student into greater danger.

The current method for teaching bunkai is similar to the method for teaching ippon kumite: single attack and pause while the defender performs a multi-technique defensive maneuver on a static opponent.  How is this realistic in any way?  Not to say that there aren't any exceptions to this rule.  There are men like Andre Bertel Sensei in New Zealand who utilizes kata bunkai to teach oyo-kumite and Iain Abernathay Sensei in England that does a similar thing and uses more alive drills through bunkai application to teach effective self-defense.

What is the point of teaching bunkai then?  For most, as I said, it is a tool for teaching self-defense technique; which is to say, it's meant to teach technique in a situational method (ie. if the attacker does A, defender will do X).  By teaching in a situational manner, by deciding that each individual has a specific part to play makes this methodology a type of role playing, which I believe has its place, but it is not the penultimate step in self-defense.  Situational self-defense prepares students for specific situations, and not for violence, in general.  Self-defense is about teaching a person to deal with violence in a proper and effective manner.  The only way to do this effectively is through regular, hard-contact sparring and drilling.

I am of the opinion that bunkai, as currently taught, is largely useless.  It can be an exciting and fun mental and academic process and study into the history of the style, but for real use it has no utility.  I love Shotokan, and I believe the style has a lot to offer a student with regards to striking and dealing with an attacker that comes out swinging, but teaching a student to only defend that kind of attack in a bunkai setting can be dangerous.  By and large, it will be rare to see an aggressor attack with a perfect oi-zuki or mae-geri, or any other typical martial arts technique.

At the end of the day, the only effective method for teaching bunkai would be to incorporate it into free or semi-free sparring.  Have each side have the goal of utilizing specific chunks of kata within a sparring environment as opposed to within the contexts of a controlled one attack-one defense situation.

Those are my thoughts on bunkai as a whole, do you have a differing opinion?  Please comment!

3/3/13 - Training Update

I have been extremely remiss of late, and I haven't written any posts regarding my training for Ippon Cup in September (and potentially USANKF Nationals in July).  So far so good!  Due to my time constraints with work and school, I've been forced to cut back on the number of days per week that I'm training karate.  Originally, and ideally, I was training karate 3-4 days per week, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 3-4 days per week and lifting weights 3 days per week.  Lately, my karate training has dropped down to 2 days only every week, with an occasional 3rd day if something changes in my schedule.  At first I was concerned that by less karate, I would be becoming worse and less capable on the mat.  Turns out the opposite is occurring; my performance during classes and training sessions is a hundred times better.

I think I have to give a lot of credit to my time spent in the gym and in BJJ.  My level of fitness has skyrocketed from before, my strength is increasing daily and I'm becoming more flexible and relaxed while performing every activity during classes.  Coach pointed out something to me that made a lot of sense, everything is karate training, whether you're punching and kicking, or working through life's daily problems.  Everything you do is karate training, and everything makes your karate better as long as you're pushing the pace and working through things.

Anyway, so karate-wise I'm doing much better, performed spectacularly at America's Cup last month, gold in kata and silver in kumite.  There was a tournament today, but unfortunately had to skip it.  It was a big one too, so it really was unfortunate.

One big issue I'm having while working through kihon and kata is that the heel of my base leg during transitions keeps popping off the ground.  I'm not sure if this is an issue of ankle flexibility, or just a lack of attention to that detail, but it's destroying the rhythm of some of my kata, specifically Unsu and Kanku Sho.  The other thing I've been focusing on since the Shotokan Symposium is the pressure in my hips during stances, forward pressure for front stance, backward for back stance, etc.

By tightening my glutes into the front stance, I'm finding it much easier for me to keep my body upright and hips underneath my center of gravity, thus making all techniques much nicer to look it and more effective.

So anyway, that's it for now, hopefully I'll be more attentive over the next several weeks and continue to post updates as we go forward.

Benefits of Shiai Kumite

I have written previously about the problems I see in the ways that kumite is taught in most traditional karate schools; gohon, sanbon, ippon, jiyu-ippon, jiyu-kumite.  This trend may vary somewhat depending on the school, or there might be more steps included, but by and large this is the template used by practically every JKA-style Shotokan dojo.  One big criticism that I've been hearing though is how effective jiyu-kumite training actually is.  If you read the interview with KUGB legend, Elwyn Hall, on The Shotokan Way; Hall says that jiyu-kumite is where karate-ka can pressure test all kihon-based techniques in a semi-controlled environment against a resisting opponent.  I couldn't agree more, and this is absolutely true.  However, many schools today focus less on realistic sparring, or jissen-kumite, and more on competition-style, shiai kumite.  There is nothing inherently wrong with shiai style of sparring, sport is sport, but the issue that arises is that many instructors pass this along as teaching a karate-ka how to truly handle himself and fight.

I will be the first person to say that this is absolute garbage.  If you're familiar with Mr. Rob Redmond of 24 Fighting Chickens, you know that he refers to karate, Shotokan in particular, as a dueling art.  Mr. Redmond has written numerous articles regarding the lack of realism within Shotokan kumite and how it is lacking in true self-defense efficacy.  I highly recommend perusing his blog (www.24fightingchickens.com), he has a wealth of knowledge and first-hand experience.  Now that's enough criticism of shiai-kumite, I could spend an entire post talking about the down sides.  My purpose here is to discuss the benefits.
So what are the benefits?  Looking at any competition scenario and it might be hard to visualize anything as being useful, but in my opinion there are three primary benefits of this type of sparring; distancing, footwork and timing.

Distancing
The distance at which most competitors fight is highly unrealistic, watch the video below of both WKF-style and JKA-style championships and you'll notice that the competitors maintain a very long range between them for the majority of the match.  What is the point of this exaggerated range?  This teaches you where you are in danger, and where you are not.  In self-defense, the quarter of an inch can have a significant effect on whether you walk away uninjured or not.  So, while the distance in which we operate during a competition is very artificial, it does teach us our safety zones compared to the danger zone.  The third video you will see shows Sensei Edmond Otis discussing distancing in competition.

Footwork
If you watch the training for football and basketball players you will often see them using tools like agility ladders to improve their foot speed and overall agility.  This is what makes running backs and receivers in football so dangerous - not only do they have tremendous speed, but they also have the ability to change directions with tremendous speed and power.  It is this ability that makes their faking from side to side so effective in confusing their covering man.  Footwork in karate is similar in concept, if not in training, but by training for shiai kumite a karate-ka is forced to decrease the time in contact with the floor and increasing speed.  This gives the fighter the ability to cover the great distances that we start at during a match.  From a self-defense stand point, the ability to change directions is highly beneficial as it allows one to dodge attacks with only the slightest pause.

Timing
I would think that this is obvious by watching the typical tournament match, but everybody is a counter-fighter, or at least everybody wants to be.  It's more impressive to allow the other guy to start and beat him anyway.  Wayne Otto has been known to say, "When I attack, I score; when my opponent attacks, I score."  This is pretty typical of everybody's mindset in fighting, but some live on counter fighting.  Timing is critical for this and in self-defense, or in real fighting, timing is even more important.  Timing helps us to attack pre-emptively, timing helps us to catch our opponent off balance and vulnerable, timing helps to win more than anything else.  You can have incredible footwork and a supernatural sense of distance, but if you can't time your attacks you will never catch your opponent's rhythm.

So long story short, is shiai kumite overly flashy and demonstrative to a fault?  Yes, without the shadow of a doubt, but is it completely useless as some purists would like to tell us?  Not at all.  Many people who lose in competition complain by saying things like, "If it had been a real fight I would have done..." or "I would have never tried that in a real fight."  You've all heard these complaints, but in many ways if you have to realize, if your opponent is faster than you in a tournament match, then a real fight your opponent will still be faster!  Don't let your ego be bruised when you lose, shit happens, but keep being realistic about what happened.