Unfair Fights
In this podcast, Patrick Hynds and Steve Baroody will talk to different long-term practitioners of various martial arts, many of them masters, and explore the quiet part that no one usually addresses. That being that outside of sport there are no fair fights. The stated goal of almost all martial arts is to help practitioners to defend themselves, so we will explore how that goal is and is not being realized in the real world.
Patrick Hynds is a West Point graduate, decorated Gulf War veteran, Master of Uechi Ryu Karate-do, as well as a black belt in several other styles studied over the last 50 plus years. He has been hosting podcasts related to his company, Pulsar Security, on Cyber Security and Quantum Computing for years and has been a frequent guest on numerous podcasts for over 20 years.
Steve Baroody is an instructor in Modern Arnis, Isshinryu Karate, and Tomiki Aikido. A practicing chiropractor, he has been investigating the anatomy and physiology of self-defense for decades.
Unfair Fights
Episode 4: Small Surface Strikes Part 1
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In Episode 4 of Unfair Fights, Patrick and Steve discuss the intricacies of martial arts striking techniques. They uncover the anatomical truths behind effective and safe small surface strikes, drawing from their extensive experience. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding bone structure and muscle dynamics to avoid self-injury. They also explore how animals instinctively avoid damage, offering insights into efficient martial arts strategies. This episode provides a comprehensive look at the anatomy of striking, with focus on refining techniques for effective precision and safety.
Welcome to Unfair Fights.
SPEAKER_06How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01I'm good. How are you, Patrick?
SPEAKER_06Good, and uh I'm I'm happy to be here for another episode of Unfair Fights. What are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_01We are gonna talk about the clunky sounding title of small surface strikes, also known as body weapons.
SPEAKER_06So uh small so like you're talking about concentrating force into a smaller area to get a bigger effect.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but it starts with the very basic problem that it doesn't take much training for a martial artist to develop enough power that they could pretty easily hurt their own hands. Now notice I'm not saying that it takes very little training for a martial artist to become a danger to themselves.
SPEAKER_06But that's exactly what you mean. I have seen people destroy a a piece of their hand on a Makawara board trying to show off.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_06Um it is definitely a possibility. And and that that leads to a very interesting thing that I'd like to say to start this conversation. Sure. And that is that if you one of the things that I was taught from a very early age, and I've seen over and over again, is that animals, which is where the martial arts come from, the animal style is the original, you know, the OG. Um, animals don't fight to injure themselves. They don't they don't cause themselves damage in order to win a fight. They avoid damage. That's the whole idea.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_06Any animal that goes into it to damage themselves is either at a dead end or they're using drones like like insects. So when a bear or wolf or anything goes to fight you, it is their primary goal to not get hurt. So the idea of killing the the nerves in parts of your body or destroying your knuckles so that you can do certain things, um, I don't buy in any of that.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Neither do I, and I would start with the precept that for a body weapon to be a good body weapon, it needs to be relatively impervious to injury as soon as you can form it correctly.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_01So if you can't get your hand in the position, it's not gonna help you. But if you can, it should be relatively safe right away.
SPEAKER_06So that's another, I'm gonna talk about a lot of things I don't believe in, I guess, today. Uh another thing that I have a problem with is the concept that you tighten at the last minute, that you you make the fist at the last second, that the fist is loose until you hit. Because I think that's an attempt to explain things and to justify something that is most of the time a misunderstanding. So, like I've heard many times, well, you tighten your fist right at the last second, because that means you can move around fast and then you're strong at the moment of impact. Uh, what if you're fighting at night? What if somebody you know blinded you in you know in their first attack? All that goes out the window. There's no unless you have proprioception, which is the ability to like detect someone without seeing them, which we could that's another episode, I guess. Um is I I just don't buy it. You have to have the form necessary at all times because you don't know if the if the if the opponent's eventually is gonna suddenly attack and accelerate towards you and you'll hit them at a point before you are ready. And I'm air quoting here. Doesn't not conducive to a podcast.
SPEAKER_01No, but I think I think this is an extremely valid point. If you are delivering power, the opponent is gonna be moving, so you can't be certain exactly what distance you're gonna deliver that in until the very last instant.
SPEAKER_06Well, because we don't move at the speed of light. It's not we we move at a speed that we can we can generate, and they move at a speed, and and so half of that speed is is not really predictable.
SPEAKER_01So to use an example, which fits the original precept pretty well, is the classic elbow strike. Elbow strikes, it's pretty hard to injure your elbow throwing an elbow strike. You basically would have to hit something significantly harder than bone, you know, like elbowing a concrete wall.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And from the beginning of the elbow strike until it's full range of motion, it doesn't matter where you impact the guy.
SPEAKER_06Right. That's true. Yeah. And a lot of times you if you if you're I like the elbow strike as an impaler, it it's put up so that the person so the person impales themselves upon it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_06That's the way Wei Chi kind of delivers an elbow strike. We don't we don't typically deliver them. We let them we let them come and pick it up. We don't deliver.
SPEAKER_01Um so the opera of the opposite of Uber Eats.
SPEAKER_06Yes, yes. Okay, so you know, uh we all know that a fist, the standard historical fist is about two square inches of surface area.
SPEAKER_01Pretty much you're you're arguably the top two knuckles for most styles.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, the flat part of the of the longest metatarsals.
SPEAKER_01Is that the right word? Well, uh the they are the metacarpals.
SPEAKER_06Metacarpals, okay.
SPEAKER_01But they're we're we're gonna come back to this one in a little bit when we get to weiche. Uh because there's an interesting insight. But yes, those are the the main knuckles of the fist, as most people understand it, are your second and third metacarpal heads.
SPEAKER_06The boxing fist.
SPEAKER_01The boxing fist.
SPEAKER_06Right. So um, and you know, that's that's the force that we use. And people break their their their last two knuckles, the bot the boxers break, is that what it's called?
SPEAKER_01Actually, that's the bar room fracture. If they break the bottom two, the little finger knuckles. The boxer's fracture is actually those second and third metatarsals. I'm sorry, metacarpals.
SPEAKER_06The first two, you mean? The first two. Oh wow. So it's just you hit too hard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, the the classic example, I mean, if you want to talk about people who know how to punch, no less than Mike Tyson broke his hand in a street fight. Really? Yeah. I did not know that. No less. So the guy can throw a punch. I'm I'm sure the guy can throw a punch today that I'd never want to be in front of.
SPEAKER_06That's true. Uh I I didn't realize that. Um, so is that down to um just the fact that he hit harder than his his body could take, or was there a form problem because he wasn't wearing gloves, or we don't know.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you just brought up a bunch of good things there. So for one, boxers and MMA fighters wrap their hands. The so this is a piece of evidence about tightening the fist. Um, using the hand wraps to compress everything together so it can't move makes it more solid and better protected.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, boxing gloves these days I think are about 16 ounces ounces, which is a lot of padding.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um MMA gloves are two ounces, and they are designed specifically to protect the hand, not the opponent's body.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just enough padding to not shatter the the uh the bones, maybe. Right. But this gets at the underlying issue, which is that traditional fist is not a great way to hit something hard, like the human head.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so so the style that my style, Weichiru, emerges from is called Pongge Noon, which is half hard, half soft. And and I like to think about it as when you first start training, you learn the hard part. I you know, if you take hard styles, styles that I consider hard, like taekwondo, you can learn them very quickly. You can be effective very quickly. In in my old, in the old days, I used to think that somebody took taekwondo for six months, they could probably handle themselves relatively well in a street fight. Some boxing was much easy was even shorter period of time.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_06But for the and then the the softer the style, the longer it took. Tai Chi Chuan, sure. You know, you might be 10 years before you're in a point where you are competent in a fight. Um, so the hard styles are easier, quicker on the uptake, and they also support like a younger person very well. Oh, you know, just throw a lot of force in it, be really fast, sure, that kind of thing. The softer the style, the harder it is, the more nuance there is to it, the more um education it takes and wisdom it takes to actually to leverage it. So so that that tracks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And one of the issues here is that the again, the bone structure of the hand is relatively delicate, and the bone structure of the forehead is not in comparison. Um, so target choice is a lot of this. But one of the easier ways to look at this is you essentially have two choices for striking surface. You have bone, like the knuckles we've been discussing, and you have muscle. Because I think that there's one striking surface on the hand that we all use uh instinctively, which is classically called the hammer fist. And that is that padded edge, bottom edge of the fist. It's how you would pound on a door. If you if someone is angry, it's how they would pound on the table.
SPEAKER_06And we know in it's about the same amount of padding as an MNMA glove, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, I would say that's probably about accurate. Um, but we we also know you can hit something relatively hard and it's it's gonna hurt you a lot less.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_01So it's it's an illustration. Now, the classic argument within karate has always been it's too big of a striking surface. So you want something smaller. Because you're trying to access Pounds per square inch. Pounds per square inch, yeah. Um I think this very much fits in terms of if I want to create a hand structure that I can hit a lot of different parts of the body with without injury. Um, I I wanna I want to come back to this in a minute, because what I'd like to do is discuss uh bone just a little bit, and then we come back around and start talking about examples. That makes sense?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, no problem.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So the thing with bone is a target choice, as we've been discussing. Like, where are you putting it? You know, so you can punch with a regular fist to the belly, and your chances of injury are almost insignificant. I mean, you might sprain your wrist if you do it badly, but you're not going to break your hand. Um but the thing about the classic hand positions in karate is that they are designed to penetrate through the layers of muscle for what used to be called cavity strikes. Do you remember this?
SPEAKER_06The demo. The demo.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it comes out of that.
SPEAKER_06Uh death touch.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but if you think about it, the there's a lot of contours to the body, and some of them hold nerves that you might want to hit. And if you do, you have to get into that cavity. And this is not the way anatomists use the term cavity. Just to be specific. Um, because they're, for example, the there is the ventral body cavity and the dorsal body cavity. The ventral one is what we think about that holds all our organs, then the dorsal body cavity is actually where the spinal cord goes.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01So they're totally different terms. Um but some of the classic strikes uh knuckle formations don't actually make much sense because they're not well backed up uh with alignment. Now you and I have spoken in the past about the Epon Ken. And Weichi has a particular version of it. Um so with with all these, our viewers are not going to be able to see the hand positions, but I'm gonna try to use anatomic terminology so you can look it up.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah, I understand. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So the And I'll come up with analogies. That's the the index finger noogie.
SPEAKER_01The index finger noogie, yes, yes. So we are talking about what is known as the proximal interphalangeal joint of the index finger. If you crook your index finger, it's what pokes out. Now, the version that I've seen you use has the thumb straightened behind the second knuckle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that creates a really nice alignment all the way from my knuckle into my forearm.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that is the tip of the spear.
SPEAKER_06We call it a shoken. Okay, so shoken in and it's supposedly from um Phoenix I fist kung fu in China. It's the Phoenix I fist is the old old term for it.
SPEAKER_01And if you're if you're putting it in the right places, that can be a really powerful knuckle strike.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now my experience is that I find impacting that point really uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So if I can back up a little bit here. Sure. So one of the things that I'd like to point out at this point is that we talked about hard and soft. And what let's talk about hard and soft targets. So if you look at a human body from down from uh from top to bottom, meaning if somebody strikes down, if when we strike down, we can get generate more power.
SPEAKER_01Right, with gravity.
SPEAKER_06So if I strike you in the chest, the chests are like plates that protect.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_06And your deltoid, if if I look at down, imagine a imagine a brick or or a small stone falling from above. Almost every place it hits, it it would glance off. That the head is shaped, the the trapeze is. We're very like solid against something falling from on high or a strike that goes downward. Right? If I were if I were sitting and you punched down on me, almost everything you look at is is pretty much like uh it would glance off. Heavy and it's exactly the opposite of something shooting up through the floor. Something shooting up the floor could get up under your neck, it would get up under your armpits, it would go into the groin, it would go under the the pectoral, the solar plexus to some extent is an upward the the temples, you know, the eye sockets, almost everything up. You know, I would much rather have a a fairly large rock fly from above down on me than a small one to accelerate up at me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're much more vulnerable in those directions. You're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_06And hard and soft is the same way. I can I can generate a lot of force down, but you're ready to take it. Whereas I can generate much less force up. I'm much weaker lifting up, moving up, but you're much more vulnerable. And so what we see is a lot of strikes like the Shokan are meant to go to places like the solar plexus or to the temple or uh in other places where it's just devastating. If I punch you in the temple with a full fist, it'll hurt, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna basically put you down, probably. But if I did it with a shoken and I can and I actually hit that point, it it's very bad. Same with the eye. There's lots of so, in other words, the the constant, I don't have to hit a wall with the shoken. I don't have to be able to break wood with a shoken. Right, right. I'm looking for accuracy and I'm looking for a a killing, a Kiroshi target. A Kaioshi? Kyoshi and Kiroshi. Killing blow and a and a and a a uh a killing target. So I I'm definitely on board with that. But I I wouldn't consider using the shoken as like a utility player that you use for everything. Uh there was one master that I heard about, I didn't meet him, who used to punch people's between the knuckles of their fist with a shoken. And no one wanted to spar with them because he would just like you'd be you'd you'd be sitting there like squaring off with them, and he'd just come in and punch you between the knuckles.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And it was basically a punishment for you to just like not for waiting, for not doing anything.
SPEAKER_01Um, so I I I wanna I want to throw in a comparison here for the same hand weapon. If I so we've been putting the um thumb straight behind the very first bone of the index finger backwards. Now, if I want to knock on a door, I'm probably not gonna do it this way. I'm probably gonna take my thumb and put it on the crooked joint of that so that I can wrap. And it ends up being a downward kind of motion.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. We don't use it that way, but I see what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01Right. Now, one of the one of the important disadvantages of this is as we were saying, that initial shoken is lined up with your whole forearm. This isn't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But what I was mentioning earlier, when I use the classic shoken knuckle on my Makawara, I don't find that real comfortable. But this knocking version I find just fine. And again, not for a multi-tool, but more of like a scalpel.
SPEAKER_06Just say it 30 years. What? Give it 30 years. That's all. Um, no, you're right. It it I mean the shokin, I I I use my shokens regularly on like sheetrock and stuff like that, just to kind of tough see how. But we also do the same thing with the toe. In Weichi, we punt, we kick with the toe. Um and it's it's really kind of the the inside, like if you look at the toe for the big toe from the top, it's kind of the inside of that toe. And it's you know, it's backed up the whole thing. So it's piercing. It's about it's about piercing the target.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's um, in a sense, that's similar to the way Savat throws front and roundhouse kicks. The the way I used to phrase this is the best part of your foot to hit your opponent with is the sole of your shoe.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, the heel of your of your stilettos.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. But the the toe tip kick with the sole of a shoe behind it, yeah. Um that's devastating. That's a really powerful strike. That's true. Um so to talk about other bony parts brings us. Well, we we we can do that one, but let's uh let's bring this to what I think the defining characteristic of Weichi Ryu karate is, and that would be the Boshikan.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01So again, we're gonna go to anatomical terminology here for a moment. So the fingers each have three bones, each one is known as a phalanx, the plural is phalanges, and the thumb is regarded as just having two phalanges, and then the metacarpal is what allows us to oppose and do all these fun things that my dog can't do to open the refrigerator.
SPEAKER_04Right. Luckily, he'd eat everything.
SPEAKER_01Yes. But Weichy, in um a fit of genius that I can't explain, decided and actually concluded that the first metacarpal, the base of the thumb, is the strongest bone to hit with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, there's a guy named Um Evan Pontazzi, uh down in Massachusetts. Uh he was a George Dillman student many years ago. He went on his way a long time ago, but he has um some materials available on what. He calls the six G hands of the Bubishi.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And these are all body weapons of the type we're talking about. And one of them he calls the ironbone hand, which is the Weichi Goshi gun. But his the observation I want to get to is if you look at your own hand, and I'm assuming that all of our listeners have at least one of these to look at right now, uh the largest knuckle is where your thumb meets your hand.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01It's like twice the size of your index finger knuckle. It's big.
SPEAKER_06So I don't hit with that knuckle though.
SPEAKER_01I I can believe that. I can believe that. He he does, and that's the argument that he makes is that this is the largest bone in the hand.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah, I could see somebody thinking that we do hit that with that because of the way we we strike, but we hit with the this the first knuckle of the thumb.
SPEAKER_01So when I when I crook my thumb, the very tip that pokes out, that's what you're talking about?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so so let me explain it a little bit. So imagine, you know, instead of when you're making a fist, instead of making a fist, push your fingers back. Right? And then take your thumb and try to put it at the base of your ring finger, like you're holding a piece of paper, a penny, like you're holding a penny on your hand. And it's gonna cause your your forearm to like spasm, stretch, you know, be be tight. This is a focus point as well as a position. And so if you watch San Chin and Wei Chiru, that's what we do. Well, that's also a strike. If you've ever watched us do like the the Waoki blocks, we block and then we pull back, and we these these two bushkins hit and we hit somebody under the ribs and in the solar plexus. It's very powerful. You can also take that and you can hit somebody up under the chin. And you know, if your hand's big enough, you can put your fingers in their eye socket and grab their skull. It's fairly brutal.
SPEAKER_01But but there's also a lot of there's a lot of really vulnerable targets, as to your earlier point, right under the jaw.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and I think if I hit you with this under the jaw, and I'm holding, you know, if my I'm looking talking about my thumb, it's much less likely to hurt me than if I try to use anything else.
SPEAKER_01So in this hand position, yeah, what backs this knuckle up? What supports it?
SPEAKER_06Well, so if you look at it, it it goes right down my arm. It's the point of my arm. So you're up against my fing my foot, my hand.
SPEAKER_01So you're lining this thumb tip up with your entire forearm when it impacts. Okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's how it that's how it's done. I didn't realize it until I had been doing the the style for a long time, how special that was. It was probably what I was at West Point on the karate team before I realized that most styles that you know MMA styles that we see today don't don't get that deep into this.
SPEAKER_01Um God know. Uh for reasons we've already talked about. Right.
SPEAKER_06Because they're hard styles most of the time. They're most of them are hard styles.
SPEAKER_01And also if they're competitive styles, they get to wrap their hands.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's true. And and they can't they can't make the the use of it. Um so this is just, you know, we call this Tuesday. This is just a normal thing for us. We don't, you know, you the average Wei Chi practitioner who hasn't studied any other style, that they don't know that this isn't the way the world all works. Um but but a lot of the Chinese styles, this is you know also the way. Uh if you look at a soft style, they're always going to be using something interesting to hit you with. Um one of the ones that I like is it's the um, I guess it's the beak. If you take your hand and and you you just just take your fit your hands and start waving, like you bend your your finger straight in a 45 at a 90 degree angle, and then take your thumb and put it on that first knuckle of your index finger. And you basically got like a Kermit the Frog puppet, right? But but that is a you know, that is a like a powerful, you know, fingertip hitter. Right. And that can be used. One of the things about that is if I use that to uh to the back, it actually, even though I'm going straight, it has an upward arc.
SPEAKER_01And so that's someone that's in Wei Chi's Saison, correct?
SPEAKER_06Yes, correct. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_06So we there's a lot of that in Weichiru, but we also have, you know, just the regular punching and things like that for people. Uh what the problem, the sh the the really sad part about my experience in Wei Chi is that 90 plus percent. I I won't say it's 99%, but I fear it might be. Uh, most of the people I know who practice Weichiroo don't take this into sparring. In other words, they'll they'll spar like their Bruce Lee or they'll they'll spar like their taekwondo. And they they kind of forget the kata when they're sparring. And it's kind of like the difference between judo and jujitsu. Judo was invented so that you could spar with someone in jiu-jitsu without having to get a new partner after every move.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_06You know, disposable partners.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think this is where the um the Koteki tie drills come from, at least within Ishinru, which is what I'm familiar with, I can take the five drills that we have and I can create a sparring system in about two minutes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_01I can show somebody how to do that. Um one other point I wanted to make here with this with these issues that I find utterly fascinating is if you look at any old karate book in the West, in English, yeah, they're gonna have a whole chapter at the front about hand weapons. And after about 1970, they disappeared.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The um one of the older, well, so um I misspoke here. One of the more recent karate books that I have from around the transitional period is Joe Jennings winning karate. Um Joe Jennings um was my teacher's teacher, actually, Rochester New York. Um and Jennings Jennings is a very interesting figure. I've never gotten to meet him, I've never gotten to speak with him. I would love to. So, Master Jennings, if you're listening, call me. But um I don't he definitely talks about hand weapons in it, but it's not the same thing where there's this devoted chapter. Now, in contrast, um the George Dillman books, there's three big ones that he wrote with Chris Thomas, and this the third one, um, which is on joint locking, also has an appendix at the end where they go through these in detail. Um I happen to be acquainted with Chris Thomas, and I've talked to him about these issues. Um, and I've also spoken with Matt Brown, who is in our area.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And he's a Dillman master who's also worked with the Weichy guys, and I've spoken with him about this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_04Why do you think this has disappeared?
SPEAKER_01I think it had to do with Christ attempting to be more of a sport. Because I well, I think that there's been a misunderstanding, and uh this goes back to my first principle that if you can form it correctly, it should be relatively impervious right away.
SPEAKER_06Yes, agreed.
SPEAKER_01Whereas the stories, whether these are accurate or not, that we have from the Chinese martial arts are of many years bludgeoning your hands at disadmission. Nobody wants to do that.
SPEAKER_06I I think again, it it depends on what how what the path is. So, like as I said, if it's done right, there's no bludgeoning. You know, right. I have to practice the shoken, but I don't I don't have any arthritis or damage to my hands. Right. And some people would look at me and say, Well, you're not doing it right. I disagree. I think the fact that I have you know no arthritis after 50 years of doing weight roo means I'm doing it right.
SPEAKER_01I would agree with that.
SPEAKER_06Because otherwise it would have been like I would have been, you know, really killer in my 20s and now I'd be disabled. And I know people that walk that route. And I I don't I don't recommend it. Um my instructor didn't have arthritis or you know, swollen knuckles and things like that, but I know people who did because they beat the they beat it up. Um I think it's more of a training and an instinctual if you do yakata every day, then it making a shoken that's strong is is is not not that hard. And also, discretion is the better part of valor. I don't punch you know plated steel with shokens. I I might I might punch sheetrock harder than most people would would care to to do it. But I also don't plan on hitting anybody in the forehead with a shoken.
SPEAKER_01Right. I am reminded all of a sudden, I don't know if you ever saw it. There was a, I think it was 1979, there was this movie about the Japanese martial arts called Budo, The Art of Killing.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, I haven't seen that one.
SPEAKER_01It's actually great, but there is this moment when there's a Shotokan guy, I am not making this up. You see him punching a locomotive, which is just insane, but it suggests that same idea, that fanaticism. All right, I gotta hit something hard. So here's this steam locomotive.
SPEAKER_06So I I saw an article. Um one of the things that's dangerous in our style is to under in our world is to assume everyone knows the same stuff and everyone has the same perspective. That's not true. It's also equally dangerous to think we have the right perspective. And I so I try very hard to make to to to to accept the fact that I may be wrong in some areas. And I'm I and I that's why I welcome these conversations, especially with people like yourself. I read something and I was like, well, of course it doesn't work that way. And I realized that the way the the uh the chew-don block, uh the uh the gate on block, the the low block is done. Classic down block. Classic down block, right? You know, the way I was taught it seems to be different than what I've seen read about, because there was a guy who was like seventh Don who said, uh, and I forget what style it was, and he said, um he he realized after 20, 30 years of studying that he'd been doing the Gaidon wrong, and everyone he knew was doing it wrong. I'm like, what what is he talking about? And he said that the bone on the side, it's like if you make if you talk about the hammer fist, if you look at the bones directly down from that on your forearm, there's a bone there. Uh I think it's is it the ulna or the radius?
SPEAKER_01That's the ulna. Yep.
SPEAKER_06So the ulna, and he said that ulna can break after, you know, I don't know how many pounds of force he was talking about. It was probably nine or seven. It wasn't a lot. And he said that it's dangerous to block with that. And so, and I'm like, well, you'd never block with that, anyways. And I read and continue to read, and what it was is it was a realization from him that he had been taught to do basically a hammer fist down to make the ulna block the low the lower extremity. So basically, his gaiton was his ulna sweeping that area. That's not how I was ever taught it. I was taught that the top of the arm is what does the gait on block, and the arm turns to have the ulna facing out at the bottom of the block. And that changes everything. It means that I'm using a muscle to sweep the space and to catch everything. And so if if you've got a lead pipe sitting out there, I can block the lead pipe or or the bow or or anything. Maybe not a sword. And I'm not I'm not I'm not hitting it with a bone.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you can end up with what's known as a uh both bones fracture. Um we tend to see this more in the lower extremity, and it usually has to do with the bumper of a car.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it also has to do with losing the fight.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's definitely losing the fight, but I also um I have a relative who was once attacked with a club and he put his arm up and it broke both arms, both bones in his arm.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06So interesting. When he put his arm up, did he put it up so that the bone was? So I don't I mean somebody could hit with a club, somebody could hit your arm no matter how you put it up in a way that breaks.
SPEAKER_01And what's even what's even scarier, if I remember the story correctly, the um attacker was actually in a moving car.
SPEAKER_06Oh, they were like swinging like they do for for uh mailboxes?
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_06That's ugly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So but but anyways, regardless, um I can see we have a lot to talk about on this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we do, we do.
SPEAKER_06Well, one what let me do one more thing about that. So if you if you do the the high block or the low block, the turning, that turning at the end of the block, the last bit, has a bit of a a centrifugal effect on the thing that you're blocking to throw it out away.
SPEAKER_01Right. And it also the rotation in your forearm with those blocks adds another dimension. It adds another place that you can control the motion. Now, what's what's interesting is the story, and I don't believe this, but the story in Ishinru is that our blocks were changed, so we went from uh palm up for the chudanuke to thumb up, specifically so that we could use that muscle on the outside of the forearm. I don't believe the story because I think, like you're describing, that was already happening.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think what it is is it was a reimagining of the why. Uh here's here's the problem. No one's perfect. Masters got things wrong. Masters thought they knew what what why something was being done, but in the in the in in the um in the collective cultures, it's not it's not cool to ask why you're liable to get wrapped. Right. And if if it's and the answer is liable to be because I said so. So I think that we just like you know, mutations in DNA, most styles accumulated errors or they lost details.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_06So that we ended up with well, yeah, you do this and this is what it looks like. And and what they used to say is they those were secret moves. We don't we do this so that they can't tell. And maybe that was the case between schools, but I think it's really just the you know, the way they did it, I don't know that they were trying to be sneaky. In in Weichiru, you know, it I was told once way early on, I'm not sure I don't think I ever heard it again. This was back in the 70s, that when you throw the shoken, you come back into an open hand, so they can't see what you hit them with. And and it's like, yeah, that's mysterious. So that it might just be that you know, they they do that so that you're ready for the next thing, so you're not, you know, in a or a development move.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. So I I think we have to understand that it's been a boon to the martial arts in some ways that we are an individualistic society, and therefore we can say why. And when the answer doesn't make sense, we can say, yeah, that doesn't make sense. Uh you still want to be respectful. This is the biggest challenge I have, is walking that line between, okay, why are you doing that? And and it's it's part of my trepidation when with work working with anyone, especially in Wei True, is I know why I do almost everything. It's been it's been my focus, my inst because of who my instructor was, because of the way I've been training for the last 50 years, I'm I got a really good understanding of the why for almost everything, not everything. And and I'm open-minded. If someone says, well, we do this because of this, I want to hear it, but I'm not necessarily gonna buy it. I might, I might say, well, my why makes more sense to me. This is why I think we do it this way. Um, and so that's something that I'm I'm looking to start navigating as I get, you know, I move on to a new new school, new instructors, um, and uh have these conversations. But I like having them with you to start. We're we're about 40 minutes in, so I we didn't, I don't know that we've plumbed the depths of this topic. I think we're gonna be talking about this more.
SPEAKER_01I think we ought to do a part two, but so I want to I want to wrap up with one small thing. These matters are very subject to a little bit of self-exploration with hitting the right object. You will learn real fast what hurt and what doesn't. And if it hurts, it's not a great idea. Because to hit somebody that way when you're already in danger puts you in more danger. So the I have found that the classic makawara for a karate practitioner who uses these kind of hand forms is an invaluable tool.
SPEAKER_06Right. Because it's hard enough to be real, but it's forgiving enough that if you don't go nuts and wail on it, you might not break anything, even when you make a mistake.
SPEAKER_01Now, my the the way that I use them is the board gives. It's really important. Now, the the classic, I mean, the term means wrapped with straw, wrapped around with straw. And if you've seen the traditional ones in Okinawa, it's like four or five inches of straw. I mean, it's a lot. So the way I make them is I have a oak board, I have a pretty thick, pretty dense piece of foam, uh, the same kind of stuff you'd find in a foam roller or a yoga block, and I wrap it with 200 yards of paracord.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yeah, that's that's a way to do it.
SPEAKER_01Because the the paracord represents those tissues in the body that you have to penetrate through. So a little bit of twist as you impact, um, you notice immediately that it spares your hand a little bit and it's it's more penetrative. So, you know, I'm not encouraging anybody to be stupid, but if you have the opportunity to train with one of these or you want to construct one, it's really valuable. It's so valuable that um the founder of Shito Ryu, I'm trying to remember his name, it'll come to me. He said, uh, there are no karate pre karate practitioners who do not use the Makawar.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So in other words, if you don't use it, you're not a karate practitioner.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I and I'm not saying that that's strictly true, but yeah, yeah, it illustrates the importance of it. So all of these things are really worth testing, and a heavy bag is not the right device for this.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Um is an important tool. Um the heavy bag's a good place to start, but it's not it, it it's it's got it doesn't have the same consistency.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't have enough give, among other things.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, another device that I own is called a maze bag, M-A-I-Z-E. Um, it's actually used in boxing, so they're they're readily obtainable.
SPEAKER_06Is it filled with corn?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, yeah, corn or beans. Um and they use it for slipping, for practicing head motions. Yeah, yeah. But it's it's not very big. It's about the size of a human head, so it's not real dense, and it allows you to practice your knuckle strikes on it without a lot of pain.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Have you ever done any iron palm training?
SPEAKER_01Uh I have not, but I've researched a lot and we're talking about very similar things here.
SPEAKER_06Uh, we used a when I did it in in high school, uh, we used a bag of um corn, right? You know, coin kernels, uh, which turned into a dust after not too long. And uh and then we also had a uh bag of um of uh lead balls, lead shot. And uh got to the point where a friend of mine, Dave, uh got to the point where he could. Break a brick. You could cut you could cut a brick in half pretty easily. Um with iron palm. And it it was an uh there's a wine, and you'd you'd hit the you'd hit the bag and you know you wouldn't like destroy the bag, but yeah, and you'd so you'd practice it and the liniment would go in your hands and it it was an interesting thing. I I wouldn't mind doing it again sometime, but um I think shoveling gets me enough of the uh calluses right now.
SPEAKER_01Well, so this is this is part one of small circle small surface strikes.
SPEAKER_04All right, cool.
SPEAKER_06All right, remember where we left off, but we're we're getting down, we're getting this is a long episode. We should probably call it there, but as usual, very interesting to talk about.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, I will make note of it, and I have more. I have a lot more to discuss.
SPEAKER_06Excellent. All right. Thanks, Walter. Well, thanks, thanks uh for everybody who listens, both both of our listeners. Uh, and uh I'll look look forward to talking to you again, Steve.
SPEAKER_01All right, take care.
SPEAKER_06Thanks. Bye.