One of the fundamental objectives of training in karate is to develop skills that can be used in lawful self defence. Most of us will never have to defend ourselves of course; but some of us might.
The headline in the Nottingham Evening Post for Saturday Dec 17th 2011 read: “Teen fought off 18 stone attacker”. We hear of these kind of things happening on the national news with depressing regularity – but this incident was in Keyworth, literally a ‘stone’s throw’ from our dojo.
The female victim was confronted by a man armed with a 10 inch kitchen knife and a stocking over his face. After initially collapsing in panic there came a point during the ordeal when she found the will to fight back. She managed to swing her legs up around the attacker’s neck and squeezed as tight as she could and he dropped the knife enabling her to escape. There was no suggestion that the girl was a martial artist; but she had a martial attitude. She found the will to fight.
The founder of karate, Gichin Funokoshi said many profound things, among them was this:
“spirit first, technique second”.
Those who train in karate, or indeed any fighting system, will overlook this lesson from the master at their peril. Authentic training in the dojo, and by that I mean training that has real potential to develop functional self defence skills, has to be tough. You must regularly visit places during training sessions where you ‘override’ the instinct to give in. As the pro cyclist training for the Tour de France ‘suffers’ for hours in the saddle as he climbs mountain after mountain, mile after mile, so too must every karate-ka ‘suffer’. Whether it’s drilling repetition after repetition in kihon practice, pushing the boundaries of courage in kumite, or maintaining perfect form in kata when the body is all but spent, there must be discomfort to overcome.
Sensei Terry O’Neill 7th dan of the KUGB recently said this in an interview:
“Karate enables self-defence amongst many other things, including confidence and fitness. But the most important thing is the notion of ‘will’. The ability to transcend the discomfort and pain of training and injury to deliver beauty in the form of a perfectly performed kata, for example”.
The international Rugby ace, Jonny Wilkinson had this to say about training:
“Why train? Well, apart from the need to build strength and stamina, I think a major point of training is being able to strengthen yourself mentally – to be able to push yourself outside your comfort zones. What I’m talking about is being able to understand what it feels like to think you can’t go on, but then actually manage to do so, to go further; or to be able to approach a session knowing that it’s going to be incredibly tough and that you’re going to be in some kind of physical discomfort, yet not to fear that session, to actually look forward to it. That sort of attitude training, mental toughness if you like, can be the difference between winning or losing”.
The development of technique is of course important, and good technique can overcome untrained brute strength. But technique won’t work without the will; but will can work without the technique. The human animal is capable of achieving phenomenal things if aroused enough. The assault victim said:
“I knew I had to act quickly and I had absolutely nothing to lose”.
This is where instinct plays a huge part; our innate ability to solve a problem we’re confronted with; to allow the situation to tell us what to do and provide the answer; to improvise according to what’s happening to us. And karate techniques honed through hours of ‘suffering’ in the dojo must never be allowed to get in the way of this natural process; they must enhance it.
As I understand it, the teenager who fought off her attacker thankfully achieved this remarkable outcome without a knowledge of any technique. That tells us something about the power of will and the instinct to survive; and it’s very heartening.
With correct training and proper understanding, the techniques of karate provide extra physical skills to improve our chances of surviving a violent encounter.
But they won’t work without an indomitable spirit.
SOUTH NOTTS KARATE 