This is an add on to my writer’s guide for fight scenes. I decided to do Karate separately, because there’s HUGE misunderstandings about Karate – even among it’s adherents.
What is Karate? I gave a brief history of it in my guide to fight scenes.
Karate in essence is Kung Fu that was brought from China to Okinawa, then from Okinawa to Japan. Several Ryu, or styles, are adapted specifically from White Crane Kung Fu. What’s extremely bizarre to me is that the most popular style of Karate on earth (Shotokan) has strong elements of a very secret form of Kung Fu that involves the Tiger, instead of the crane.
Here’s a kill joy, but it’s true – you can’t take someone with no knowledge of Karate and hypnotize them, and turn them into a black belt. Karate requires endless training, in many cases a hundred thousand hours in order to train the body.
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I can show you the choku tsuki, the basic punch. You can leave after ten minutes of class and know how to do it. It will take you over a thousand hours of practice to be able to generate the power with that punch it is capable of. I know it took 30 years of practice for me to hit the special point that only the very highest practitioners of Karate experience, the sudden transformation of your punches and kicks into generating drastic power.
Someone who has practiced Karate for a year can hurt you seriously. Two years, can kill if you hit specific targets. At 20-30 years, the Karateka suddenly transforms, and a single punch or kick generates the same impact force of being hit by a car. A glancing blow from someone at the highest levels can drop you to the ground, or have lethal consequences.
I’ve stood by Teryuki Okazaki when he did the side kick. I’m not kidding, it generated a shock wave in the air. He was so close I could have touched him, and he did a quick Yoko Geri Keage, a side snap kick. I was aware if I’d fallen forward and that foot had hit my head, I’d have been killed. If it had hit my chest, I’d have gotten broken ribs for sure, and possibly still killed.
He was in his seventies.
You learn to stretch out in Karate. The straddle stretch is key. Get into a split, and lower your body weight as much as possible. Many karateka will buy stretching machines to help them get reluctant leg and groin muscles to slowly get elastic.
Karateka also learn to stretch their knees. Flexible knees prevent injury.
Then one learns Kihon, or basic techniques. My first entry into a dojo featured an impatient woman who insisted every student learn all the basic techniques in Karate the very first class. Overkill? no way. I remember every last one of them to this day.
After kihon, you learn dachi, or stances. The funny thing is, the command to take a dachi, a stance, is kamae te, or “assume position”, not “Assume stance”. There are dozens of stances, but three major ones – Kiba Dachi (horse), Zenkutsu Dachi (forward) and kokutsu dachi (back). Neko dachi (cat stance) is often grabbed on by beginners, because it’s the fastest stance to manuever in.
Movement training is next. Karate is done by stepping in a crescent step from one stance to another – although in a good dojo, the beginner will be drilled in shifting from one stance to another to another for a week. One style I learned strongly emphasized Fudo Dachi, which is a slightly diagonal stance. Uechi Ryu Karate emphasizes Sanchin Dachi, an hourglass shaped stance with bent knees and tension throughout the body. Punching one of them must be like punching a brick wall.
Finally, the Karateka will learn a kata, a pre-arranged form. Kata is tricky, because it has an embusen (a shape on the floor) you have to memorize, and the kihon that comprise the kata. The Heian kata for instance is I shaped. Important to know? Yes, because it reveals its roots in Hung Gar Kung Fu, or Tiger Crane.
Kata is the single most misunderstood part of Karate. Yes, I know – no fight goes exactly like that. But I know from Heian Shodan how to release my wrist from a wrist grab. I know from Bassai Dai what to do if someone tries to body check me. I know from Gankaku what to do if someone tries to do a MMA “shoot” or a tackle.
Oh, don’t look surprised! You think the MMA shoot is something new? It was present in Greek Pankraetion a thousand years ago. And karateka have learned a response to it, if they were properly trained in kata. If you dismiss the kata as useless, you lose. You’ve learned nothing.
Usually around the 20 year mark, Karateka come to the realization that Kata is Karate. By practicing Kata, I’ve learned combat sequences. I can defend a wrist grab, a punch, a full nelson, a bear hug, a MMA shoot, attacks with clubs and knives, responses to wrist locks, a head butt, a knee strike – anything you can think of, the answers are there. And one enterprising MMA fighter is seriously looking at traditional Karate Kata, and has concluded they are self contained fighting systems if you know what you’re looking at.
Most styles have a dozen. Uechi Ryu has 8. Shotokan has 26. Shito Ryu has over 90. Learning the advanced kata takes a couple of years to learn them all, and a lifetime to master. Anyone who says they’ve mastered Sanchin Kata will be congratulated heartily by masters such as Morei Higaonna, who will tell you he’s been practicing that kata for 40 years, and STILL hasn’t mastered it!
A word on Sanchin – my style of Karate doesn’t do it. But I decided to learn the Uechi Ryu version of it, and it has improved my karate – and my health – tremendously. The styles that perform Sanchin all declare that if you don’t know Sanchin, you don’t know karate. Just a note – everyone says there is no fight applications to Sanchin. I don’t know – I’ve learned a lot of Kung Fu, and I can tell you that there’s a move in Sanchin that if you don’t do it right will disfigure your opponent and blind them. If you do it right it’s fatal. What is it? You need to get with a good Sensei to learn it. I’m not telling. Some things are best kept in house until you demonstrate trustworthiness.
There’s been a change in Karate over the last 10 years. The traditional Japanese styles are beginning to look at incorporating traditional Okinawan weapons again into the style. Staff, Samurai Sword, Sai, tonfa, kama sickles and Nunchaku were considered essential to learning Karate in Okinawa. The Japanese styles are beginning to add them, or in discussion.
They’ve also been looking into incorporating the traditional Okinawan training methods again. I know that by learning the Hojo Undo training tools and methods, my Karate has improved light years. Techniques I dismissed in my youth as being useless I’ve actually learned to be VERY careful with.
The first is Makiwara. One hits a flexible wooden post over and over again. The post snaps back and hits your fist. Years of using this generates exceptionally tough knuckles. A Karateka could easily punch through a windshield and not be injured if they’re wearing gloves and a leather jacket to protect from the glass.
Next is the Chi Ishi. It’s like a barbell, with a cement weight on one end. Working out with this strengthens the wrists, and generates massive snapping power – essential in some techniques. The backfist is struck like a whip, not a club – and the chi ishi strengthens that power.
The Tan is like barbells, but western styles of lifting, benching, pressing and curling are mostly unknown in Karate. The Karateka rolls it up into the bend of the elbow, then uses the bending of the arms to roll the Tan back and forth, toughening the bones and the muscles. The Karateka then POPS their upper arms slightly, hurling the Tan back onto the forearms.
Ishi Sashi or Tetsu Sashi (depending on what it’s made from) is a metal or concrete block with a hole in it. It’s meant as gate locks, but karateka carry them, swing them, practice punches and blocks with them, and even slide them onto their feet and practice explosive knee lifts.
Nigiri Game are gripping jars filled with small rocks. You grab them with clawed hands and practice walking in the crescent step into karate stances. The idea is to develop upper body strength.
There are also pots filled with gravel which the Karateka practices jabbing his hands into.
Uechi Ryu utilizes a flat stone that you slap your forearms on – it literally is the exact workout that Kung Fu artists do in the iron palm bags. Uechi Ryu Karateka literally could get into a debate about “Are we Karate, or Kung Fu?” The answer to their question is “Yes.”
I do Iron palm bags every day. Those are Kung Fu, not karate, but this kind of cross training is common in martial arts.
A word on competitions. Karate is not a sport, unlike Tae Kwan Do. Karate is dangerous. Karate is exceptionally dangerous. Trying to compete in Karate is like dueling with sharpened swords. Sooner or later, someone’s going to slip, and someone will die at a tournament.
After you’ve trained for 30 years, the impact of being hit or kicked by someone who knows Karate is like being hit by a car. I remember seeing someone kicked by a yellow belt (that’s three months of training) and having three ribs broken.
By a beginner.
Imagine what someone who’s practiced that kick over and over again for 30 years, muscles and tendons learning to work together, nerves learning to fire the impulse to move those muscle groups that have done this same motion over and over again.
When writing your protagonist to being a Karateka, head to a Shotokan dojo and get three months of lessons first. It’s the single best way to investigate it. Understand that it’s normal for a beginner to reach first degree in 3-5 years. I did it in 18 months, and that was through 12 hour workouts every day – I was motivated! 18 months to 24 months is extremely unusual. A person who claims to have made black belt in less than 18 months went through a diploma mill. Plan on your protagonist having spent 48-60 months earing their first degree, and an average of 2-3 years for every degree after that. Anyone claiming at 27 years old to be an 8th degree black belt is lying or deceived.
