Sparring vs. Drills

In both Tai Chi and Karate there are types of full contact continuous fighting that draw skepticism from people who don't practice the art. "American Kickboxing" or "Full Contact Karate," (not to be confused with "Knock Down Karate") which I myself practiced when I was in Jr. High and High School:

Most critics objections to this? No kicks to the legs... if we are going to kick, why skip the most likely kicks be thrown in a real street fight? Likewise, Tai Chi has a form of wrestling called "moving step push hands" where no grabbing of the legs is allowed, which I myself have had some training in as an adult:

I think it is very helpful for self defense purposes to practice putting the your opponent on the ground while you remain standing as with the Tai Chi above. I strongly doubt the usefulness of fighting in a throwing high kicks (which can easily be caught) while in a long stance as with the Karate above (less effective for grappling, fighting with both hands and evasive footwork.) HOWEVER, the above Karate guys ARE fighting continuously, if they were sparring like that continuously (instead of competing in it,) it would be extremely legit sparring, just like the above Tai Chi. Because they are both continuous and have contact, they can really pull off the moves they are practicing in a fight.

But there are closely related to drills, which though often competed in and can thus sort of be called "fighting," can't be called "sparring" at all if practiced outside of competition. Starting with Tai Chi "stationary push hands" here:

That is not sparring. I myself have competed in this, and I can tell you that though it is a great drill for developing balance on your feet when someone is trying to push you, it doesn't cover any techniques you would actually use in a fight - and it is constantly stopping and starting over. Sparring, by definition, is a continuous form of practice where you do not have a ref judging you, pulling you apart, or making you restart. Sparring also always includes techniques you might actually defend yourself with some day.

The above drill is with 100% resistance, but it is nothing close to sparring. It may or may not be helpful for some martial artists, but it is no replacement for sparring. Same goes for this incredibly popular practice related to the karate "kick boxing" above:

As you can plainly see, these fighters don't spend most of their time practicing against each other, they spend most of their time stopping and starting over whenever the ref or judge tells them to, they are not getting the same kind of continuous practice in the first karate "kick boxing" video above. Also, the techniques used in this karate "Kumite Point Fighting" drill are less realistic for fighting than in the first karate "kick boxing" video above. I have competed in this as well. It is an interesting drill for using reach, timing, and finding openings on your target, but it is no substitute for actual sparring.

Before you attempt to say this is not a fair comparison because Karate "kick boxing" has been successful in MMA but Tai Chi has not, please keep in mind that numerous Tai Chi practitioners are involved in combat sports, and you have probably already seen Tai Chi in combat sports without realizing it. The best example is probably Nick Osipczak of the UFC:

So yes, it is a fair comparison, in fact I believe it is a direct parallel. I am livid that in the 2020 Olympics Karate has been reduced to Kata and Drills without any real continuous fighting technique of any kind, which Tai Chi and Karate are both capable of. In fact, this is what people who understand martial arts wish was in the Olympics instead of Karate drills:

But as you see above, there is a big difference between drills and sparring. Drills can involve a lot of instructional oversight, stopping and starting over, and may use obscure techniques not often actually used while fighting, in the interest of building certain characteristics in the martial artist. Sparring on the other hand is continuous and ongoing, and focuses on techniques that are actually going to be used. Karate "kick boxing" and Tai Chi "moving step push hands" are examples of sparring, but Karate "kumite point fighting" and Tai Chi "stationary push hands" are example of drills that are not sparring.

High Kicks: Cool Story Bro

It is an impressive act of skill for an individual martial artist to get a KO by landing a kick on his opponent's head - it takes flexibility, diligent training, some body strength and a certain amount of natural talent.

But it is NOT an accomplishment for a martial art to teach people to KO someone by kicking them in the head.

KOs happen by rattling someones brain - imaging the skull is the rattle and the brain is the thing inside the rattle that makes the noise when you shake the rattle. The way you shake the human skull like that is to deliver a strike with enough speed and weight to make the skull travel faster than the brain can follow, smacking the brain into the inside of the skull - that's your basic KO.

Look at where a punch goes from the time it begins until the time the punch connects. Typically it goes from the puncher's jaw to the arm being fully extended, in the time it takes to twist the hips into the punch. That distance is under 3 feet.

Now look at how far a foot, ankle or lower shin travels before it connects with the head, typically over 4 feet. It is delivered with a twist of the body that takes almost the same amount of time as a punch, so that it must be moving faster than a punch would be at the point of impact. Then there is the issue of the body weight, most methods of kicking high project the body behind the kick even more so than in a punch, but with the rare kicks that just use the weight of the leg, that's still a significant amount of human bone and meat behind that strike to the head.

In other words, almost any conceivable high kick can KO someone. The weakest kick is a front snap kick, and now there have been many documented KO's from front snap kicks to the face:

Now while most of those weren't exactly a lead leg teep, almost anything you do to get your foot up high and fast enough to connect with the head is going to get KO force going behind that kick. Almost any high kick from almost anyone is a potential KO threat.

There are more ways to kick the head from martial arts from all over the world than I care to mention. I am equally unimpressed by all of them. I am impressed by fighters who can pull them off, but I give the individual martial arts very little credit for their high kick techniques being in some way more special or effective than the others. A high kick is almost always a threat, no matter what spin you put on it.

Signs of the Martialocalypse

Just one month ago I predicted that the MMA community would be infiltrated and economically undermined by the Kumite Point Fighting ("Karate in the Olympics,") which would result the "martialocalypse" (or the end of our current MMA-induced golden age of martial arts.) This is a still reportedly taken from footage outside of a UFC branded gym in Quezon City about 48 hours ago:

To fully appreciate how alarming this actually is, understand there are 3 very different types of Karate, based on their sparring practices:

1. The best kind is called Knock Down Karate, notorious for being bare-knuckle and not allowing punches to the face, but otherwise being more or less like Muay Thai with a Gi... with less grappling and more high kicks...
2. The next kind is called "Full Contact Karate" (once occasionally referred to as "American Kickboxing," though that term is now inappropriately misleading to use,) this was boxing with only kicks above the belt allowed. I strongly doubt the value of this martial art to martial arts consumers, but you spar or you don't, and they definitely spar. They are decent at what they do, which is punches and high kicks, even though their kicking over all is missing the most important kicks of all, low kicks. Some full contact karate fighters have had more than decent footwork as well.
3. Then there is the very bad type of Karate, which trains to fight in "Kumite Point Fighting". In this type of fighting, they stop and start over every time someone is perceived to have executed a good technique... usually with only very light contact allowed. The end result is a lame game of tag that has nothing to do with fighting... some see it as a helpful drill for beginners, but most who practice this form do it instead of any real sparring training, and I see it as a plague that almost killed off martial arts in the 80's.

The type of Karate in the Olympics is the last kind, Kumite Point Fighting. How could the UFC/MMA fall victim to this atrocity? Well there already was mixed striking and grappling combat sports (what we now call MMA) before the UFC, the most famous called "Pancrase" at the time. Here is the Pancrase fighter's experience from the first few UFCs:

To hear him tell it, you would think the early UFCs were an advertisement to sell BJJ lessons. Sore loser, right? Probably not, check out Full Contact Karate legend Bill Wallace's recollections of the same events as a ringside commentator:

 Stylistically Pancrase is nearly the opposite of Full Contact Karate, and these two have exactly zero motivation to agree with each other on these accounts. Your takeaway here is this: originally, the most famous MMA venue of all, UFC, was specifically designed to sell BJJ lessons.

The second thing you have to realize, is that us Muay Thai and Sanda guys were saying things like "cool story bro, you pull that crap on us and the bottom of our foot is the last thing you will ever see." When one of the most respected fighters from our clique was finally allowed to participate, he cleaned house in the UFC:

And from then on until now, BJJ has had to share the MMA spotlight with Muay Thai. I know of fully 3 cases in the last 5 years in the Seattle Area where BJJ institutions attempted to sabotage the teaching of Muay Thai.

This creates a "bad romance" between Kumite Point Fighting and BJJ. Potentially the two are a match made in hell:

1. BJJ needs striking to look bad for self defense. Kumite Point Fighting is a tragedy when it comes to self defense value, and BJJ instructors can use it as an example of how it is so easy to close the distance with a striker that striking itself is not a reliable strategy to defend yourself, because after all, "most fights end up on the ground", when your striking experience is the one year it took you to get your Karate For Kids black belt.
2. BJJ fighters sometimes see themselves as closing the distance quickly, so that they are likely to only get hit by one strike on their way in to a take down. Kumite Point Fighting is only concerned with that one strike, it sort of matches the BJJ stand up game plan.
3. BJJ was in a Brazilian cultural context, which is generally rejects blind obedience to authority. In today's world with ever inflating BJJ tuition and increasing competition from other martial arts, they need their followers to have a different mentality in order to come up with a car payment level of tuition every month and never question most BJJ schools very limited striking and footwork. The styles of Karate that are most represented in Kumite Point Fighting were specifically recreated from previous martial arts, in order to spread Japanese Imperialist values - blind obedience to authority.

The UFC/BJJ economic powerhouse has a perverse incentive to see Kumite Point Fighting succeed. This is likely to catch up with them in the long run: almost anyone can get a black belt in Karate-tag quickly, and then point their new students to show-off long-stance MMA fighters who beat even-one-fighter-with-any-BJJ-rank-whatsoever, and thus claim that Kumite Point Fighting beats BJJ in the UFC all the time.

Rigid Karate

There are so many variations of Karate that it isn't fair to lump them all together, but here's my gripes about Karate as a whole:

• Rigid Technique: In pretty much every other striking art, one does not try to stay flexed all the way through the strike, but rather relaxed, building up as much speed, structure and body weight as possible at the point of impact with the target. In general Karate tries to keep the same speed from the beginning of the strike to the end. 
• Rigid Movement: moving around super stiff is the ideal practiced in Karate Kata. This is practiced in almost no other arts outside of Karate, and for good reason - movement should be adaptable and fluid.
• Rigid Defense: Being stiff as a board makes strikes more effective against you, because you can't "roll with the punches" that way. Super stiff inside-outside blocks to block kicks? Probably going to get your arm broken against someone who knows what they are doing.
• Rigid Stance: Because most Karate doesn't spar with leg kicks, they get into a long stance that is terrible for fighting against sweeps, leg kicks, and grapplers (as in the case of Full Contact Karate.) It confines movement direction, makes the groin more vulnerable, makes the practitioner more vulnerable to circular strikes, opens the jaw to straight punches, etc. etc.
• Rigid Mindset: If you find karate that does spar with leg kicks, they often spar without any hand strikes to the head - you know, the most likely strike for you to be attacked by (as in the case of Knock Down Karate.)
• Rigid Strategy: The lack of head and leg targets is if you find serious karate into sparring, unfortunately stop and go "Karate Kid" style Kumite Point Fighting, not really continuous sparring at all but a strange game of useless tag that has no application to self defense to speak of, is what most Karate Schools do instead of doing any real sparring or fighting.
• Rigid Kata: Almost all traditional martial arts spend too much time on Kata and not enough time sparring, but Karate is extreme in this regard, especially since so many Karate styles are kumite point fighting instead of doing real continuous sparring.
• Rigid Application: Karate is notorious for its practitioners disregarding Kata as not relevant to fighting. This is almost always by karate people who are talking about kata not applying to Kumite Point Figthing - which no kata should, because Kumite Point Fighting is very unlike any kind of real fighting. It turns out that if you spar continuously, it is far easier to see the applications in kata... though on average, Karate kata are much more sanitized for political reasons than other martial arts with kata or forms.
• Rigid Philosophy: Karate was popularized in Japan at a time when they were trying to instill a very specific group of values into the young people of that era - Japanese Imperialist values - warrior codes that would later justify mass rape, murder and attempted genocide. The blind respect for authority they praise in Karate is the last thing you or your children should be internalizing.
• Rigid Ideology: Why do you think they tried to get the people they occupied (especially in Korea) to study Karate? Usually occupied peoples are not encouraged to do martial arts by their oppressors. Karate was, even more so than Aikido, first and foremost a way to teach a specific set of values, than it was to teach people how to fight. In fact Kumite Point Fighting was arguably created to make sure people didn't learn how to fight!

Or in other words:

The more a Karate style avoids the title of "Karate" (Kudo, Kenpo, Kyokushin, Enshin, etc.) the better of a martial art they tend to be. As Kumite Point Fighting in the Olympics in 2020 diminishes the reputation of martial arts as a whole and destroys the reputation of Karate, I encourage all practitioners of Karate that are truly serious about the martial arts allow their art to evolve beyond Karate:

Post MMA Martial Arts

You first need to read my post on Martial Eras and my post on the coming Martialocalypse in order to understand what I am talking about in this post. Until you do, just understand that I think we live in a very specific time when it comes to martial arts, and I think that time is coming to an end as the public imagination turns from MMA to Karate Kumite Point Fighting.

From my POV, MMA had one job, and that was to stop the spread of Kumite Point Fighting. Look at WHY it failed to do this: there never resulted from MMA a casual tournament format. The genius of MMA is that it is still more of a testing ground for martial arts to prove themselves than it has been a martial art in and of itself. But that never really made it to the tournament scene in a big way, not like Kumite Point Fighting did. Instead with are left with the several mixed grappling/striking formats we had before MMA: Pro Hapkido, Sport Japanese Jujitsu, Pankration, etc.

There's another WHY that should be mentioned here, and that is that the UFC always was a ploy to make BJJ look good. Let this sink in: how many MMA instructors out there think that we actually don't need mixed striking/grappling tournament rules because we already have BJJ tournaments? How many BJJ coaches have said to themselves "if people really need striking tournaments, they can do that Karate Kid point fighting stuff, after all, it's probably just going to the ground anyways so it's the BJJ skills that really matter, who cares if their stand up striking is garbage?"

Kumite Point Fighting is going to get the public's imagination in a way that it never did before. It will suck finances out of the BJJ school system, and MMA will have less viewership as people believe the lies of Kumite Point Fighting. That infrastructure that has kept martial arts at a high quality in our age today will be degraded.

But as more people do point fighting, some fraction of them will become disillusioned with it, because it's still ineffective in real situations. So basically all new students of non-kumite-point-fighting schools will be disillusioned former Kumite Point Fighters themselves. They will be looking for mixed striking/grappling arts with better sparring rule sets.

The mixed striking/grappling martial arts, given very little attention in MMA, may have their day in the sun in this new age of martial arts:

• Kudo is very likely to explode in popularity. 
• The Tipon/Gathering scene is likely to become the new gritty street fighting venue. 
• The grappling arts that have significant striking elements that they sometimes compete with - such as Combat Sambo - are likely to see significant growth if not dominance. 
• BJJ, in response to selective pressure from Sambo and Kudo, will likely become mostly the Combat version with no Gi and lots of slapping each other around. 
• Muay Thai will remain very popular because of their clinch fighting, and ability to quickly teach people real striking skills to fulfill the broken promises of Kumite Point Fighting.
• Knock Down Karate (Kyokushin, Enshin, etc.) will become very popular as the "real Karate."
• Many TMA schools who are not married to any particular tournament rule set are going to have some kind of ground grappling that they never took seriously before MMA became popular.
• Combat Glima is going to become the default grappling style for any martial arts system looking for easy answers to their lack of grappling. It's going to be huge in Western/Midevil martial arts as those arts continue to move on to more realistic continuous fencing practices, shamed away from traditional fencing by stop-and-go Kumite Point Fighting dragging down the reputation of martial arts as a whole.

But here's what we are not going to have: that standardized mixed striking/grappling ruleset for casual tournament competition that martial arts has desperately needed now for over a century. MMA will be like the Shoulin Temple is now; there will be a lot of martial arts schools tracing their roots back to fighters who once participated in MMA in it's glory days. There may not be many BJJ schools left to study at, and the ones that are left may be very different than the ones we enjoy now, but MMA will have passed on the legacy of grappling to that part of the martial arts community that still cares about effectiveness.

Vertical Fist

One of the first things I noticed in Chinese Martial Arts when I was first exposed to them was be it in Yang style Tai Chi or Choy Lay Fut, the basic straight punch was thrown with a vertical fist instead of a horizontal fist.

As I got into kickboxing I used vertical fist punches mostly at close range to the body, and horizontal fists long range to the head. My aspiring kickboxing career ended after my first two fights were cancelled because of chronic wrist pain in the mid 90's, which is were a lot of my aversion to punching to the face comes from.

Over the last few years I have gotten into cross training with MMA and Muay Thai fighters. My wrists are so sensitive that I can't hit focus mitts for more than a few rounds without the pain coming back. But I recently discovered that if I strike with a vertical fist I don't get that wrist pain:

I figured old people teach kung fu forms, so as they get older, of course they teach old people ergonomic moves like vertical punches. Imagine my surprise when Fight Perfect recently produced a video advocating this style of closed fist strikes (Update 3/14/2020, Fight Perfect has been censored on YouTube, but the following video covered more ore less the same material as the now missing Fight Perfect video):

It is interesting to note that the vertical fist straight punch has been around a long time in western boxing as well:

In today's world there is a lot to learn about martial arts in general and striking specifically. Where I personally lost power on my straight punches wasn't on under rotation of the punch, but on my elbow coming up. The easiest way to keep my elbow down has always been vertical punches, and now that I see they are also more ergonomic, it seems to me that this is the fastest way to teach people to throw an effective straight punch.

Viking Wrestling: Combat Glima

As a Tai Chi practitioner, I have become very interested in Combat Glima (aka "Viking Wrestling") over the years, and I have noticed its popularity growing among historical western martial arts groups. WHY I am interested in it is this: in many indigenous grappling arts the goal is to put your opponent on the ground while you remain standing. But very often in the grappling styles that emphasize this, both opponents go to the ground. Stopping sparring to reset frequently is a poor sparring practice, and if your sparring goes there all the time you should probably just include it in your sparring. The logical implication would be that if your main goal was staying on your feet in the first place, getting back to your feet should your main goal on the ground. That is Combat Glima in a nut shell:

This has a few ergonomic advantages over MMA grappling styles, which make it less injury prone and less expensive in terms of infrastructure (notice Glima mostly training on grass instead of mat$.) First instead of trying to drive the opponent into the ground or otherwise submit them, on the ground they are grappling to get up:

Second they are not trying to slam their body weight down on top of their opponent when they throw (because they are trying to stay on their feet when they throw like in Sumo, Muay Thai or Tai Chi):

Even in Tres Espadas there are critics of Combat Glima, "I have done grappling before, and I think that Combat Glima has poor technique." But all the above advantages still stand - so if the technique could be better, lets improve it!