"Just
a question by your definitions, when you talk about explosive short
energy, are we talking about Chinkuchi? When your are talking about
relaxed breathing and fast snappy movements are we talking about
Gamaku?"
Hi John,
I believe you hit the nail on the head when you described Chinkuchi as being grounded in Sanchin.
My
one instructor Charles Murray probably wrote the first description of
training with Cico when he returned from Okinawa in the early 70's.
When
I was training under Charles his focus with me was preparing me for my
Sho Dan and in the few months after that event before he returned to the
USAF he did explain and demonstrate his studies. He never used
additional terminology to explain other Isshinryu principles and as I
was not specifically trained in the method he was shown to (right word)
generate or use Chinkuchi in his technique I never tried to take that
and work it out on my own.
The
words I have do not explain it better than his original description,
but essentially the training he received was a way to work on the kihon
and would deliver a lot of energy in the strike.
All of which matches John's description.
I
have a hard time trying to follow the other use of outside terminology
to explain what happens in my Isshinryu. I just try and work on it as I
was shown and try to teach it the same way. I work
with my students to try and refine their execution step by step.
But as in Sanchin the key is using the entire body as a shocking unit in each technique.
victor smith
bushi no te isshinryu
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Article on the myth of "kime"
Romney and Steve,
It looks like this may be our discussion.
Mr
Harrill never used the terms Chinkuchi or Gamaku in the Dojo, he always
just said focus. In the last three years of his life as he traveled
more and spent time with other's who trained with him on Okinawa he
began to hear and use these terms.
The
underlying theme in the Dojo was that the focus used in all Isshin ryu
techniques regardless of whether a Shorin ryu or Goju ryu based Kata
comes from Sanchin Kata, not a blend of Gamaku and Chinkuchu or not
unique to either Gamaku or Chinkuchi. The phrase Sensei used was what is
Isshin ryu is Sanchin and what is Sanchin is Isshin ryu.
I was fortunate to spend time last year on a couple of occasions with
Tokomura
Kensho, he stressed Makiwara training and Chinkuchi in Isshin ryu
techniques. There are several documented interviews over the years with
Shimanuku Tatsuo's number two son Ciso were he stated that his father taught Chinkuchi in Isshin ryu.
Please
don't get me wrong here, however someone wants to train in their Dojo
is up to them. Isshin ryu however as taught by it's founder is meant to
be Chinkuchi based and does not use Gamaku in any of the Kata.
John Kerker
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Hi Steve and Romney:
If
your punch or block is causing severe and immediate pain when used
forget the name Chinkuchi/Gamaku or the other one you have a very good
Waza, you could just call it your punch.
thank you
bill steigner
Jinbukai
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Greetings – Steve san,
You said : "I personally punch in a chinkuchi-like gamaku, if that makes any sense at all."
I
think I understand completely , and IMO this is valid, What I believe
causes this combination is that we use a Goju-ryu stance or lower body
dynamic and added it to a Shorin-ryu upper body dynamic, the meeting
point of course is the waist , or the muscles which control the torso
and connect to the hips, and this IS what the entire conversation is
about, and why it is confusing for me to distinguish a definition ..
This
is also one reason I have trouble distinguishing between the methods,
truth be told , In kata, when I am in Sanchin dachi or performing a Goju
type method (like the beginning of Sunsu) I am using what I understand
as the Goju-ryu method, when I am in Zenkutsu dachi , (as in much of
Chinto) I am using what I understand as the Shorin-ryu method, when I
shift into Seisan dachi , and perform a snapping strike, I am combining
the two, and I think this is the offspring. (Isshin-ryu)
This throws a wrench into the entire conversation and makes the methods we are using very hard to separate.,
Romney^..^
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I
noticed "the General" on the GKA lamenting this version. I honestly
think it all comes down to applications. Those "whippy" movements won't
work for some types of applications. "whippy" is not necessary for
larger joint locks or body throws and there would be more leg and body
power behind them.
For
smaller joint locks or striking targets, the "whippy" motion makes a
huge amount of sense as a method of power generation. So, in my mind, we
are back to "what does it all mean?" : )
Well, I don't really use either term, and don't really punch either way completely.
As
an identifier, I thought koshi was more in the same vein as gamaku, but
koshi (snapping power) was helped along by gamaku (hip power.)
I
personally punch in a chinkuchi-like gamaku, if that makes any sense at
all. The arm doesn't really move to terribly much and the bulk of the
power comes from body rotation, body movement forward, or leg thrust
upward. So now that I've alienated every Isshin-ryu teacher on the
planet . .
Steve
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Greetings
– Steve san, you got me thinking about this topic, watch this video of
Shinzato sensei talking about gamaku and koshi, this is the best
Naihanchi I have seen, and the strikes he demonstrates are wicked fast.
The original YouTube video is no longer available, this is a different one of Shinzato Sensei performing Naihanchi.
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUcAJrv78MY
comments ?
Romney^..^
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I came across this article, the author's viewpoint is from Shotokan but I believe it could apply to IR's use of Chinkuchi. I posted this on another list, but didn't get any discussion so I thought I'd try here to get some discussion going. It's a little on the long side, but is interesting and goes fast. The original article is on www.24fightingchickens.com Unfortunately, I do not have the name of the author.
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One of the more outstanding things that anyone observing a typical Shotokan performer will notice is the particular way in which body dynamics are employed. Most people who practice Shotokan Karate try their best to move fluidly throughout their motions, and then suddenly tense not only their extending limbs, but also other parts of their bodies as well. Some enthusiasts even go so far as to choke their breathing so as to create internal isometric tension to help with the timing of muscle tensing so that all of the contractions take place at the same time. This practice is referred to by many as - kime- using Japanese terminology. In English, the common jargon used is the word -focus. -
I think it is important to note, here, up front, that I will use the terms focus and kime interchangeably to refer to tensing muscles on impact. There are other meanings for focus and for -kime… Notable among these, and wisely prescribed for karate training, are strong mental concentration, putting conviction into your techniques so that you follow through completely and with full confidence and effort, and forging technical skills that allow your techniques to be fight- ending single strikes that drop opponents with only one blow (hopefully).
Those other concepts which can be attached to these words often become red herrings when trying to discuss the practice of tensing muscles on impact. So when I use them in this article, I will be referring only to that physical practice.
So, what is the Shotokan expert doing when he makes those snappy actions that are so precise? And how does he learn to do that? When I was coming up through the ranks, it was explained to me thus:
-Make yourself like water and ice. Water during movement, ice at the moment of impact. Try to be as fluid as possible in your movements, for maximum relaxation of all of your muscles. When you are relaxed, you can move fast. Then, when you reach the point where impact would occur, tense all of your muscles at the same time, making your body into a single, linked solid object. Try to achieve as large of a difference between your relaxed state and your tensed state as possible, so that the execution of your techniques is very dynamic. When relaxing, relax quickly and to a very relaxed point. When tensing, tense instantly and totally with all of your effort. -
The punch accelerates most at the beginning, and then acceleration decreases.
Before the arm is fully extended, the punch begins to decelerate. Impact carries the most force if the impact happens before the line turns blue.
That is the advice I received and heard repeated by many a famous, and not-so-famous, instructor during the course of my years of training. I followed this advice religiously. There were many particular practices I undertook in order to facilitate more dynamic relaxation and tension in my techniques and body movements. I would hit a makiwara 200 times on each side daily with reverse punches, enjoying the kinesthetic feel that I was improving the range between my relaxed and tense states while becoming a stronger puncher. I used to stand in place and extend a technique, and practice repeatedly tensing and relaxing my limbs, trying to learn not only to tense tightly and quickly with all of my muscles synchronized, but also to relax quickly and deeply. Tensing was always easier than relaxing.
Through these and many other exercises, I worked diligently to become a master of focus - someone who, when he performed, would clearly be seen to move quickly and have his techniques appear to hit invisible brick walls when they were stopped.
I believed strongly in the value of the practice, my exercises, and the skills of those around me who could do it better than I could. I confidently believed that the better I was able to focus, the more damage I would do when I was forced to hit someone to defend myself.
During my training, I found many proposed theories as to why this practice was so effective that I clung to mercilessly.
One of the theories behind this practice was that it was physics in action. That impact damage is essentially a result of a combination of speed and weight, and that relaxing helped the speed, and then tensing on impact linked body parts to give the entire body-s weight to the strike. Essentially, focusing was an attempt to reap the benefits of speed and weight and combine them. It was an attempt to cheat at physics and get the best of both worlds - a fast and heavy object can do a great deal of damage when it collides with something.
The faster the better. The heavier the better. Both? Much better!
Another theory I was given was more complicated. That as the technique was stopped suddenly, and the body connected, that any stray reaction forces would be expended into the target instead of being conserved, and they would emit from my now motionless fist and cause internal damage to my opponent as if I was shooting energy out of my knuckles.
Because of theories like this, I believed that focus, kime, tensing on impact, whatever you wish to call it, was the definitive difference between Shotokan and other types of karate - the thing that set it apart. I even considered it something that made Shotokan a superior method to other methods.
But, some time passed, and I had some thoughts that caused me to begin to doubt. And while at first I was stubbornly resistant to these doubts and bitterly argued in favor of my beloved skill at focusing, it was too late. The foundation had cracked, and one reasonable day I found myself unable to go on lying to myself. I no longer believed that tensing muscles on impact actually works.
Velocity increases dramatically, starts to level off, and then drops back to zero at the end of the punch. Force against the target is maximized if the impact happens before velocity begins to deteriorate.
My
doubt began one day while demonstrating breaking some boards. The
entire event was mostly a joke, intended to make myself and a friend
laugh more than actually accomplish anything. I am no proponent of
attacking innocent squares of pine. It rather bothers me because trees
die so slowly after being cut, I wonder if it ins't like punching a wounded man right where it hurts. But, all silliness aside, I was punching through boards.
I had trouble getting through a particular number of them held up in front of me. I could not figure out why I was leaving knuckle prints in them and hurting myself, but the boards were not cracking in half.
My friend, not being any sort of martial arts enthusiast at all,spoke up and pointed out -Maybe you should just punch all the way through them and stop that thing you are doing.-
-What thing-?
-That thing where you tense up right when you are starting to hit it. That can't be helping. Why are you doing that-?
I then went into my focus diatribe and ranted appropriately with self- righteous indignation. I explained the combination of mass and acceleration by linking the body at the last instant of impact.
But, he used to teach physics. He said, -Wow. If you can do that, you- ll probably go backward in time, because you would have to tense faster than light if you wanted to do that.-
At his urging, I hit the boards without any focus at all. Snap! They broke more easily. I tried some that I had not previously battered. Snap! They were shattered as well.
Uh oh.
Apparently, I was doing more damage by just relaxing all the way through the impact and not trying to tense my muscles on impact at all. This could not be! Unacceptable! Outrageous!
Inescapable.
My friend and I had a long talk about this concept. He watched me move slowly, his mind the empty cup, unfettered by any agenda or egotistical need to have the results come out a certain way. He tried to explain to me why focus doesn't work, and I listened, and now I believe I can explain it myself.
The unfortunate truth, which I wish were not the case given my significant investment in learning to tense on impact, is that it weakens a punch, it does not strengthen it.
Contact with the target is most effective if the punch is not decelerating and has maximum velocity. Do not tense antagonists to break the punching motion until the impact is complete or the arm is in danger of hyperextension - whichever comes first. When the punch is moving toward the target, it has a certain speed. That speed decreases, unfortunately, at a pretty slow rate even when a karate master is tensing his muscles as fast as he can. So, as you begin to tense, you begin to slow down.
But my combined body parts, linked by the increased muscle tension, cause my weight (mass) to increase! No, this is not so, either. The mass of a strike is the combined weight of the moving parts that will rest some of their momentum on the striking surface. In a real-world example, if I throw a reverse punch, the striking surface is the knuckle. The mass calculated into the force will be all of the body mass that will lean on that knuckle when it hits.
Simply put, everything moving forward at the moment of impact counts, tense or not, as long as some of its weight is thrown forward to rest on the knuckles for a moment.
Tensing your muscles at the moment of impact slows you down while doing nothing for your weight. Essentially, this practice not only is not helpful, it is actually detrimental to any attempt to damage something with your hands or feet. With this realization, that I was, all the time, not practicing enhancing my technical skill and the lethality of my abilities, I was in fact learning to intentionally dampen the force of my strikes, I was rightfully horrified.
I did not bother trying to reach out for explanations involving squirting -ki like water- out of my knuckles nor waves of energy mysteriously radiating forward from my fist after it had stopped moving. My belief in tensing the muscles on impact was shattered.
Punching a rib or other bone with the intent to break it requires applying force to a small area and creating high pressure for as long of a time as possible. This applied force bends the bone, stressing it until it gives and breaks. The farther you push in, the more stress. Tensing on impact reduces this effect and causes less bend. I experimented, trying in vain to reestablish some way that focus might work for me. I hit my makiwara and tensed on impact. A nice solid hit. I held the makiwara bent backward a little, and then released it. I then tried punching it without tensing, just punching through it. The makiwara moved much farther backward, and I could not hold it forward. And let me tell you, this punch hurt like a- like something very painful and unprintable.
At first, I was thrilled with this result. My tensed punch was more powerful, because it hurt less and was a more solid hit. I asked a student to observe without telling him what I was doing. He saw the makiwara go back much further when I relaxed.
I realized that the reason it hurt more was that there was more force involved when I was relaxed on impact. My knuckles were aching because the reaction force from the makiwara was equal and opposite, as all reactions are, and the harder I hit it, the harder it hit back. I was hitting it harder.
And then there was the fact that I could not hold the makiwara back. Why was this true? I came to realize that the makiwara, the harder it was hit, the more it moved, the more it resisted. I no longer was pushing it back only as far as I could resist it without the added force of moving. It was now pushing back so hard that the reaction was too strong to hold forward while standing still.
Punching into the abdomen or another soft tissue area not protected by surface bone is the same. The farther the punch penetrates, the faster it is going, the more it pushes in, the more tissues are stressed, causing tearing, and compressed, causing contusions. Tensing on impact reduces this effect also and causes less soft tissue damage.
These experiments were all just re-runs of an old aikido trick where someone puts out an arm, tenses it up, and tries to resist having the arm bent. But if the person relaxes and just tries to point forward, the arm is nearly unbendable. This is not because of mysterious energy, but rather because of efficient use of muscles.
The muscles in the arm that move it forward in the punching action and hold it up in the air must be tensed to shape the limb and move it. But all of the other muscles should be relaxed. During such a motion,
speed is maximized. As much of the body should be moving with the punch
as possible on impact, not stopped, so that weight is increased. This is the secret of a powerful punch.
To put a little more oomph in my punch, I learned to -unweight- my front leg a little to increase the weight that leans on the fist, but that is a topic for another article.
The deltoid lifts the arm horizontal and pulls the elbow upward. The triceps straighten the elbow. The biceps hold the forearm up by holding the elbow closed through the motion. The secret to a fast, relaxed punch is to minimize biceps usage and maximize triceps and deltoid output until the impact is over. Tensing the biceps (blue) pulls the elbow closed, reducing the forward force of the punch after it hits a target.
After years of believing that if I tensed on impact my punch would be stronger, I have learned the hard way that it is not. Efforts to prove otherwise only showed me the depth of my foolish belief in focus as a concept. Instead, the best way to make a punch is to relax all the way through and only contract the minimum muscle necessary to prevent the elbow from hyper-extending. All other purposeful tension only slows things down and weakens the punch.
This explains to me why many styles of karate in Japan other than Shotokan do not teach tensing on impact, and why Egami, in his book on Shotokan, recants the practice as well. Tensing on impact is very pretty to behold, especially if you are programmed to look for it as proper body dynamics, but in practice, when used on a target that resists, tensing too many muscles on impact in an attempt to focus is not a very good idea.
However, when I perform techniques, I still very carefully tense the minimal muscles required to prevent injuring a joint. What if you miss the makiwara or the heavy bag with your punch? You do not want to over-extend your elbow, so tensing in this limited regard I find very useful and continue to do. But I only tense those muscles I need to prevent joint injury. If I do miss, my trained reflex to tense those protective antagonist muscles kicks in before the joint is over-extended.
How does all of this play into sparring practice? Well, the concept of focus is actually very useful during free sparring, for the over-tensing just before impact dampens the force of the strike and lessens any chance you will harm someone else.
However, when executing many techniques consecutively and as quickly as possible, maximum tension means a slower rhythm and more opportunities for your opponent to get through, so even here I try to use depth perception and long and often-practiced touch control to prevent my punches from penetrating rather than over-tensing extraneous muscles in a vain attempt to increase the impact effect.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The target will harm itself by stressing against the punch via the reaction force. This reaction is instantaneous and is not aided or accelerated by leaving the fist in the target after the punch has stopped moving forward. The reaction only lasts while the punch is pushing in.
Experiment with this concept on your own and make up your own mind.
Remember, when hitting something feels comfortable for you, the strike was probably not truly as strong as you are capable of. I have found that my strongest techniques are those that feel otherwise.
I am a big believer in the concept of karate and baseball being nearly identical in body dynamics, even if you include the thrusting straight punch. The back foot pushes, the hips turn, the shoulders turn, the front foot slides forward a little, the back heel comes up, and the hands and feet follow through as much as practical without causing a loss balance so that more techniques or a change of direction can follow. Doing more than this, in my experience, is not so much practical as it is merely aesthetic.
Now that you have read my conclusions on focus, which I came to very reluctantly, you are probably feeling pretty reluctant yourself. I do not blame you one bit. It is not easy to go against the grain, in your own mind, and do something completely independent of what you have been taught or what you see others doing. When 1000 people run for the exit, the urge is to run with them, not watch them run and sit still.
I think if, rather than reacting to these concepts in my mind and trying to think up reasons why they were wrong, I had truly pondered them and experimented on my own, I would have come to these conclusions with less pain and effort on my part. I now comfortably participate in any karate training without worrying about focusing, because I am convinced that there is no such thing.
Below, I have attached some challenges that I have received in the past in support of kime meaning "maximum body lock down or tension on impact."
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Arguments For and Against
Unfortunately, I do not have the name of the author.
Force = Mass x Acceleration. By tensing the muscles at impact, we are able to make our techniques fast and heavy because tensing the muscles links body parts together to increase mass.
Tensing muscles in the arm or the rest of the body, both agonist (those that push the technique forward) and antagonist (those that arrest forward motion), creates the kinesthetic sensation of extra mass, but because motion is arrested by the addition of the antagonist muscle tension, in fact less mass is at work. The mass component of the equation for force is lessened when less of the body is in motion.
If you wish to have more of your body weight behind a technique, instead of tensing muscles, which does nothing, I recommend that you shift your weight so that your front foot is unweighted as much at possible when a landing a punch. That way, your weight will be distributed between your fist and your rear foot. Your front fist will keep you from falling, and your punch will be a punch coupled with the force of you stomping one foot on the floor.
Suddenly arresting forward motion might reduce penetration but increases "shocking power" by causing the target area to rebound suddenly back into the strongly supported technique. This second impact causes great damage.
Suddenly arresting forward motion using the antagonist muscles means that muscles that dampen your ability to push forward to resist any reaction force are at work, and that means that your support for your technique is actually reduced. Even if the reaction force happened on time delay like this, which it does not, your technique would be less supported that in would if you simply continued pushing it forward.
Maximum
transfer of momentum occurs when two objects have the same mass. What
this means for karate players is that when you attack a light target
like a head, it is bettter to make your punch "light" and fast. When you attack a heavy target like the torso, it is better to use a punch that is "heavy" and fast.
You already know this if you think about it: A baseball is light, so when you want to throw it you keep your arm "light" and swing it as fast as you can. A broken down car is heavy, so when you want to push it you use lots of "heavy" muscle tension.
This example does not apply to a karate technique, because the goal of a karate technique is not to push a human body away. A karate technique's goal is to cause disabling pain or damage at the location that the strike occurs on the body. A punch to the jaw should break the jaw, not cause the person hit to fly backwards. That is the difference velocity of a technique makes. Pushing on something slowly causes the integrity of the body to be maintained so that it is all pushed backward. Colliding your fist into a part of a big car should dent part of the car (ouch!), not push the car forward, because that is what a karate technique is for.
I think this example would apply better if the goal were to damage the baseball and damage the car with the baseball bat. In both cases, you would swing the baseball bat as hard as possible. The ball, because it is constructed to do so, goes flying. The car is beat to a pulp.
So, it is always best, if you want to do maximum damage, to punch or kick something as fast as you can.
In
order to knock someone out, you have to hit their head and make it snap
back so that the whiplash effect is transferred to their brain,
causing them to lose consciousness. Therefore, it is better to use a different technique to the head than to the ribs or the stomach.
In order to make someone's head snap back away from your fist instead of breaking their jaw or cheekbone and leaving them conscious, increasing the surface area that you hit with is necessary. The smaller the surface area you hit with, the more localized and penetrating the technique is, and the more likely you are to break something on their head instead of making their head go backwards.
Therefore, instead of hitting with just one knuckle, hit with the flat of the fist or palm heel. This is why boxers and UFC fighters wear gloves - it prevents broken jaws and increases the chance of a knockout. Hitting more slowly or quickly or with more or less tension has nothing to do with trying to knock someone out.
By locking down at impact, you are drawing energy from the floor and adding the mass of the Earth to your own. This is very powerful.
When you tense antagonist muscles, you are no longer pushing forward off of the Earth, but instead are now conserving your forward motion and energy. Instead of drawing energy from the Earth, what you are really doing in this situation is drawing energy from your technique to create the sensation of tensed muscles on impact. There is no way to add the mass of the Earth to your techniques. Your mass is constant.
Think of a collision between two pool balls. If hit correctly, the first ball can come to a complete stop after the collision, and the second ball can move away with the same speed as the first one. In this
situation, the first ball has transferred all of it's momentum to
the second ball. This is possible because the balls have almost identical mass.
Now think what would happen if you replaced the first ball with a bowling ball.
If pushed with the same speed the bowling ball will obviously have an awful lot more momentum than the cue ball in the previous example, but it will keep moving after the collision, i.e., it will only transfer a tiny portion of it's full momentum. This is because the difference in mass is huge.
What I'm trying to communicate is that we should not simply be trying to generate as much momentum as possible with a technique, we should be trying to transfer as much momentum as possible. Depending on the target, it can be more appropriate to use a fast technique with more or less mass behind it to do this.
This kind of comparison does not work where karate techniques are concerned. For one, the bowling ball has momentum and nothing but momentum. My fist is being pushed forward and is not coasting on momentum into the target. Even as the collision happens, I am still pushing the fist forward into the target. It is always receiving energy with which to further penetrate.
Another problem with this analogy is that the bowling ball's mass is known. What is the mass of a punch? What is the projectile?
Physicists disagree on this. Some say it is the fist and forearm.
Some say the entire arm up to the shoulder. Depending on the person, the final projectile mass could be variable by 100 pounds.
As for the analogy of the automobile, consider that there is no such thing as "heavy muscle tension." Instead, you are describing the difference between trying to push something as a unit away from you and trying to damage some part of it. Give me a baseball bat, and if I want to beat your car into a junk heap, I do not place the bat on the surface and begin pushing slowly and powerfully. I swing the bat as hard as I can - for speed - and I twist my hips and put my entire body behind it.
Usually
analogies that try to prove the usefulness of focus that
utilize baseball are made without having actually played the game.
In baseball, a lot of body weight is put behind the bat - not in linear fashion, but by swinging with not just the arms but also with the entire body.
Using momentum transfer to describe a punch hitting a person is impossible. What is the mass of the target? The body? The rib? How much of an arc of the rib? The mass of the underlying tissue? Don't ribs vary in mass from person to person? What about when hitting the stomach? What is the mass there, since no solid bone exists to be measured, and instead all we have in a large mess of soft tissue?
Trying to put physics equations to work to determine the best type of karate technique is a feat of engineering that humanity is not yet capable of doing. When confronted with a person taht wishes to do me great harm, I plan to punch and kick as fast and hard as I possibly can, not carefully measure my techniques against their targets and risk getting myself killed as I try to perfect the transfer of energy into a target. Hit fast, hit heavy, hit hard.
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Let me know what you think
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