The Functional Karate Revolution

There is a revolution going on right now in the karate world. More and more karate nerds such as yourself are getting increasingly interested in how to apply their techniques in a functional setting. It's not just enough to kick and punch in thin air or to use karate as a sport to score points. They want to know the true functionality hidden beneath the surface of the moves to make karate practical like it was supposed to be. And the reason this revolution is happening right now is because of two things. Number one is the internet which changed everything. In the old day you could practice your karate in your corner of the world and not have any clue about what other people did. But right now that's impossible because everything is transparent online. You can see what people are doing and compare that to what you're doing. And if you don't like what you're doing well you're gonna do something else. The second factor is MMA. Mixed Martial Arts. And I know because my brother is a professional fighter. And whenever we practice I discover at least 20 new practical applications of the karate moves I've been doing since I was a kid. Because I never had that pressure testing that is so prevalent in modern combat sports like MMA. And it is the world's fastest growing martial art. It's everywhere. Even your grandma probably knows a double leg takedown and some ground and pound. And the revolution is a fact. So the question is should we now practice for exposure or should we use the internet and MMA to expose our practice and to see if we can dig deeper and find what really works. Well I contacted somebody who really knows. Somebody who saw this coming before everybody else and did it before we could even see it. That person is Sensei Patrick McCarthy. And today he's gonna reveal a pathway so that you can learn how to make your karate functional again. Check it out. Would you want me to focus on a particular area or you know a kata. There's this huge wave of people who want to make their karate more practical. As you know it's more popular than ever. But there's a lot of misinformation or just ignorance out there. So I thought why not go to a pioneer such as yourself to get to the bottom of this. So that people can actually learn this. I'll be recording that. I was just wondering. You're like impeccable right now. I realized the recording lights off. Well I haven't. Okay hang on hang on sir. Let me do an introduction all right. Okay okay sir. What's up karate nerds. Today I'm joined by the one and only Sensei Patrick McCarthy. Thank you so much for being here Sensei. It's really it's always a pleasure to be here and great to see you. Please wish your mom a happy Mother's Day today. Don't forget now. I hope you've given her some flowers. Now most people know you as the western world's number one karate historian, researcher and author. And your most famous piece of work I assume is the Bubishi, the bible of karate. But what I would like to discuss today is something known as the habitual acts of physical violence. A concept that you've discovered and popularized throughout your work but a lot of people don't know about. However I think it is the most important concept in all of karate. If you want to make your art functional, why are we always defending against karate attacks and not street fighting attacks? Think about a bicycle wheel for a minute. There's a lot of spokes right? Yeah. And if you could think of the wheel as say Gudo, you know martial ways of Japan. And then all the different spokes in it could be representative of the fighting arts. Kendo, Judo, Aikido, things like that. So we'll think that karate became one of those in December 1933. And it was based largely upon very embryonic practices that were brought up from Okinawa. So the idea of grappling with somebody was not needed by the Japanese from the Okinawans at that time because the Judo and Jujutsu, sorry the modern interpretation of Jujutsu by Kameji Goro was much more prevalent on the internet as was Kendo. So they didn't need weapons. But this idea clenched fists and this was a good idea. And they'd never seen kata. I mean if you think in terms of the value of karate kata, especially during that time, I mean you know with Kendo you need two people to make it work. Now with Judo you need two people to make it work. But you know with karate you could do it by yourself. It kind of all makes sense. Kata wasn't used for its application purposes in the way that you and I are going to talk about today. It was used as an adjunct through which to follow physical fitness and social conformity. So it's not surprising that it would catch on. It was a couple of students of Funaboshi Ichin who with already an extensive background in Jujutsu and Kendo who decided that they needed to create something that was more indicative of what had already existed that would help with the current mindset in the manner of learning. So they developed something called Kihon. And that was so Kihon is not hundreds of years old. It was really just developed in the 20s and 30s. And that was those two specific people I'm talking about was Otsuka Hironori and Konishi Yasuhiro. Interestingly enough these two guys who came from different backgrounds were just born one year apart from each other and died 19 years later one year apart from each other. And when somebody say you know in Kendo I go like this I will do you know Hasso or Jodan and I and I come with the attack you know. And it's a beautiful template back and forth. And hopefully that template leads to functionality. And the same thing in Judo. You know I learned Geki and I learned about Ukemi Waza and I learned about the footwork and I practiced a million Uchikomis to you know enter into the situation. And then, bang, Randori is there. But where is that in Karate? There wasn't. You know there wasn't any when it came up to the So guys like Konishi and Otsuka they are seen as the pioneers of this movement from which Kihon led to well let's get how do you apply the Kihon. Well if I attack you with a reverse punch so let's make a one-step attack. Now let's make a two-step attack. And ultimately the breadcrumbs led to freestyle sparring. So why can't you just question and say that's not wrong let's do something else. Here's why. Modern Japanese culture is built upon a millennium of extremely discriminatory male-dominated culture of conformity that rests quite nicely into a Confucian-based mindset. And the first tenet of Confucianism is filial piety or ancestral worship. What we take from that is the no questioning of authority. So what is the mechanism that keeps it all together? Thanks for asking. It's the Senpai and of course in a perfect world what that means is mentorship. The juniors imitate the ways seniors and imitative behavior through the trickle-down effect perpetuates the practice or the mindset or so on. Well think about this if there's no questioning of authority. So here's a tradition that's been handed down taught a certain way there in this structured mechanism exists the reason why the reverse punch or front kick or whatever happens to be has never been questioned. And then you get you know I was I learned very early on in Japan you've lived in Japan you know please help other people understand it is don't rock the boat you know if this is the way it's being taught that's the way it's being taught and who are you you're just a gaijin you don't know anything about our culture our language because everything fits into a box in Japanese culture because it's been done for a thousand years except for and I think your many of your subscribers or members oh sorry nerds I'm the old nerd they'll laugh the ones who've lived in Japan because they'll know what I mean when I say you gaijin we Japanese you know there's always a distinction made and I'd make sure that you know that you are you know good or bad it's irrelevant it's just that's the mindset so understanding that makes it a little easier to understand why yeah so we get back to the point you know we're here I've made the big circle get back to the point if you're looking at self-defense you better hope that if you ever do need to defend yourself that you have experienced that which is probably going to happen and the number one thing that's going to happen is is a lot of hell's going to break loose and and the brutality that is associated with this behavior is very unpredictable and so and it wasn't like oh hey pat what are you doing oh hey Bob I'm just warming up a little bit because I'm getting in a fight at four o'clock down on the corner I'm just warming up you know that's not the way it works you know I in my teaching I draw on a a dear old Irish friend of mine sensei Murphy what can go wrong will go wrong and the more aggressive resistance there is the more it's likely to happen in the learning process for the for all the parents out there by the time your son or daughter got to a certain age where they wanted to get on a bike or something so what did you do it's not the 50s anymore you know okay Bob put them on thing and shoot them down the hill and come back back be home before dark that used to happen by the way the reason why you don't teach your children that way is because they could be harmed or they could be hurt and the because they're your children and you love them so let me just switch that scenario around if you're a sensei you you should be more concerned with the direction of your students than you are with yourself you don't want to harm your student you want to teach them how to learn not necessarily what to learn you want to give them the the seeds from which to grow and understand what you and I already know to be true and so you say to the child on the bicycle we're going to put your elbow pads on your little helmet maybe even a mouthpiece I don't know when you take the training wheels off you know and we're going to put you in training wheels first and we're going to go around and there's this little pathway process you can follow before your child can take the training wheels off and drive around the house and it's that process that I'm talking about so so the person who's going to attack you they're going to use passive resistance they're going to be they're going to comply they're going to be compliant with you and that doesn't mean that you're going to take their head off you know I see that all the time at seminars I teach somebody I say please take it easy to you know already somebody's gonna it doesn't work so so the the idea is to you you the mechanism in the path of the process is to use passive resistance passive resistance adding resistance adding resistance and not just on this side not just the attacker but also the defender because here's something again people don't talk very much about if the attack the attacker is bent upon as I reach down grabbing you and pounding you okay but let's say he reached out grab you and as he did that I was able to protect myself maybe overhook the arm or something like that slam an elbow in before he hit me that that doesn't mean he's going to stop pounding so now we have this process that's played out and through the process through the pathway process that I call it the aggressive resistance reveals my friend sensei murphy and sensei murphy as I mentioned earlier is the guy who what can go wrong will go wrong and that really my friend becomes the learning process itself because it's adversity that gives you the best lesson so that process becomes the art itself you know uh they're going to karate dojo you learn you know kihon and then after the kihon you start to uh assemble the kihon into uh drills and ultimately you've got a kata you know and I call that this kind of pyramid structure of learning you know and and I I my own opinion is detrimental to progress unless you're in a rule-bound cultural recreation where you never have to test the veracity of what you're doing because everybody's complying with you that's wonderful you know but that's not the perspective that I'm I'm taking so the the two persons associated drill becomes the art itself he's grabbed me I I push my hand on his face I elbow him as he turns around I wrap my arm around his neck I got a semi guillotine I start to use my other hand to push my you know this is a regular one across the carotid artery from here oh but he escaped from how did he do that well he was able to plant his feet solid on the ground get his hands on my hip and shove so they so they created a big distance like this in my body and he used that to escape back to the drawing board again ah I got it now this time in the bear hug when he grabs me I start shoving his face and he knocks my hand out to the side and I put the elbow in and I guillotine him in the space that I've created in that heartbeat of moment of time as he's still I get my hand around I start cranking up like this and knowing that he might try to use his feet to stabilize his balance I take my right foot I grapevine his left leg I I adopt my legs together tightly so he can't separate his legs to get that balance and he's getting he's getting strangled little stars are starting to come in there like that as I'm putting a squeeze on him and then as he's trying to get the balance he goes to sleep and the funny part about that is is there's your first movement for example you see and so I'm able to reenact that temporarily as a mnemonic mechanism and it serves to remind me what to do in that set of circumstances you see and then you can take the solo representation and glue them together in any in any geometrical configure configuration that you choose as an artist science and art coming together this is the magic of what a dojo should represent in my own and you are able to create something greater than the sum total of its individual parts and there is the process by which kata evolved and so the end result is to arrive at functionality for you and by the way the learning is separate that adds a whole separate thing by the way it's like it's like teaching and doing there's two different sets of outcomes so so you've learned you've practiced and now let's jump ahead now you're ready to train we had a look at the solo representation let's look at the act of violence it's it's a simple double lapel grab and for that I could be headbutt I could be need I could be thrown to the ground I could be choked so the moment it happens you need to create a distraction just a really quick and a flick to the testicles for the fingertips it's perfect I told you earlier your hands can only ever be in three positions unless you're seizing on top underneath or one over one under six and one half a dozen of another in this case I want the left hand to come over his right hand that's his power hand I want the other hand to come up underneath him from here and watch what happens as I hold him in this position I compromise the integrity of his balance by stepping backwards through here as I step backwards from here if I push the hand out I may did it I can't say for you but don't get me wrong I push out if he doesn't break up that's okay I just need a pathway to get my hand through I'm holding his strong hand down now so all I do is I reach out and grab it I stick my thumb in his and when he comes back to grab a hold of that I turn his head sideways like this and then as I pull his head around I bicep bump I bicep bump the face at the jaw I want to get that brain stem twist affecting the sympathetic nervous system and and effectively putting this guy out of business but but that's that's one thing let's look at the solo reenactment of that if we can in a template form I'm standing here like this I put one hand over I would have I went like this I turned the hand out I stepped in with the first hand to the eye socket I then turned the neck and then I bicep I put some form to that and becomes this so what I mean to say then about the kata is there a collection of conceptual practices against habitual acts of physical violence which when linked together not only culminate the lessons you should have already learned in a two-person practice they create something greater than the sum total of their individual parts and therein lies the essence of kata are we good let's get back to work