- There is a revolution going on right now
in the karate world.
More and more "Karate
Nerds", such as yourself
are getting increasingly interested
in how to apply their techniques
in a functional setting.
It's not just enough to
kick and punch in thin air
or to use karate as a
sport to score points.
They wanna know the true
functionality hidden
beneath the surface of the moves.
To make karate practical,
like it was supposed to be.
And the reason this revolution
is happening right now
is because of two things.
Number one is the internet,
which changed everything.
In the old day, you could
practice your karate
in your corner of the world
and not have any clue about
what other people did.
But right now, that's impossible
because everything is transparent online.
You can see what people are doing
and compare that to what you're doing,
and if you don't like what you're doing,
well, you're gonna do something else.
The second factor is
MMA, mixed martial arts.
And I know because my brother
is a professional fighter.
And whenever we practice,
I discover at least 20
new practical applications
of the karate moves I've been doing
since I was a kid.
'Cause I never had that pressure testing,
that is so prevalent in
modern combat sports like MMA.
And it is the world's
fastest growing martial art.
It's everywhere.
Even your grandma probably
knows a double-leg take down
and some "ground & pound".
And the revolution is a fact.
So the question is; should
we now practice for exposure
or should we use the internet
and MMA to expose our practice?
And to see if we can dig deeper
and find what really works?
Well, I contacted
somebody who really knows,
somebody who saw this
coming before everybody else
and did it before we could even see it.
That person is Sensei Patrick McCarthy.
And today he's gonna reveal a
pathway, so that you can learn
how to make your karate functional again.
Check it out.
- Like, would you want me to
focus on a particular area
or you know... kata, we
could talk about kata or--
- There's this huge wave of people
who want to make their
karate more practical
as, you know, it's more popular than ever,
but there's a lot of misinformation
or just ignorance out there,
so I thought why not go to
a pioneer, such as yourself,
to get to the bottom of this
so that people can actually
learn this concept that is so--
- Oh, are we recording that?
I just wondering, you're like
impeccable right now.
- (laughs)
- I realize the recording light's on.
- Well, I haven't--
- Okay, hang on, hang on!
Sorry.
- Let me do an introduction, all right?
- Okay okay, sorry.
- What's up Karate Nerds?
Today I'm joined
by the one and only
Sensei Patrick McCarthy.
Thank you so much for being here, Sensei.
- It's a really, it's
always a pleasure to be here
and great to see you,
and please wish your mom a
happy Mother's Day today,
don't forget now, hope you've
given her some flowers.
- Now most people know you
as the western world's
number one karate historian,
researcher, and author,
and your most famous
piece of work, I assume,
is the Bubishi - The Bible of Karate.
But, what I would like to discuss today
is something known as
the Habitual Acts of Physical Violence,
a concept that you
discovered and popularized
throughout your work,
but a lot of people don't know about it.
However, I think it is
the most important concept
in all of karate.
If you wanna make your art functional.
Why are we always defending
against karate attacks
and not street fighting attacks?
- You think about a
bicycle wheel for a minute.
There's a lot of spokes, right?
- Yeah
- And so if you could think
of the wheel, let's say, Budo,
like you know, martial ways of Japan,
and then all the different spokes in it
could be representative
of different the fighting arts,
Kendo, Judo, Aikido, Shorinji Kempo,
things like that, Sumo.
So, we'll think that "Karate-Do"
became one of those
in December of '93,
and it was based largely upon
a very embryonic practices
that were brought up from Okinawa,
so the idea of grappling with somebody
was not needed by the
Japanese from the Okinawans
at that time
because the Judo or Ju-Jitsu
or the modern interpretation
of Ju-Jitsu by Kanō Jigorō
was much more prevalent
in mainland Japan, as was Kendo,
so they didn't need weapons,
they didn't need to grapple.
But this idea of a clenched fist,
this was a good idea,
and they'd never seen kata,
if you think in terms of
the value of karate kata,
especially during that time,
I mean you know with
Kendo you need two people
to make it work,
and with Judo,
you need two people to make it work,
but with karate, you
could do it by yourself,
it kind of all makes sense.
Kata wasn't used for its
application purposes,
in the way that you and I
are gonna talk about today,
it was used as an adjunct
through which to funnel
physical fitness
and social conformity,
so it's not surprising
that it would catch on.
It was a couple of students
of Funakoshi Gichin,
who, with already an extensive background
in Ju-Jitsu and Kendo,
who decided that they
needed to create something
that was more indicative
of what had already existed
that would help with the current mindset
in the matter of learning,
so they developed something called kihon,
and that was, so kihon's
not hundreds of years old,
it's really just about in the 20s and 30s,
and that was,
those two specific
people I'm talking about
was Ōtsuka Hironori
and Konishi Yasuhiro.
Interestingly enough, these two guys
who came from different backgrounds
were just born one year
apart from each other
and died 90 years later,
one year apart from each other,
and when somebody says, "You
know, in Kendo I go like this,
"I will do hasso or jodan,
"and I come with the attack,"
and its a beautiful
template back and forth
and hopefully, that template
leads to functionality
and the same thing in Judo,
you know I learn, I got my gi
and I learn about ukemi waza,
and I learn about the footwork,
and I practiced a million uchikomis
to enter into a situation
and then, bang, randori!
But, where is that in karate?
There wasn't.
There wasn't any,
when it came up to the mainland of Japan,
so guys like Konishi and Ōtsuka,
they are seen as the
pioneers of this movement
from which kihon lead to,
well, let's get "how
do you apply the kihon
well, if I attacked you
with a reverse punch,
you could do a age uke,
and so, let's make a one step attack,
now let's make a two step attack,
a sanbon kumite, a three step attack."
and ultimately, the bread
crumbs lead to jiyuu kumite,
or freestyle sparring.
"So, why can't you just question him,
saying that's not wrong,
let's do something else?"
Here's why.
Modern Japanese culture is
built upon a millennium
of extremely discriminatory,
male dominated culture of conformity,
that rests quite nicely into
a Confucian-based mindset,
and the first tenant of
Confucianism is fillial piety,
or ancestor worship.
What we take from that is the
no questioning of authority.
So, what is the mechanism
that keeps it all together?
Thanks for asking.
It's the Senpai/Kohai system,
and, of course, in a perfect world,
what that means is mentorship.
Juniors imitate the ways of seniors,
and imitative behavior,
though the trickle-down effect, perpetuates
the practice or the mindset, and so on.
Well, think about this;
if there's no questioning of authority,
so here's the tradition
that's been handed down,
taught a certain way,
there in this structure mechanism
exists the reason why the
reverse punch or front kick
or whatever it happens to be
has never been questioned.
And then we get the, you know,
I learned very early on in Japan,
you've lived in Japan,
you know what I'm talking about,
please help other people understand it,
is, don't rock the boat.
If this is the way it's being taught,
that's the way it's being taught.
And who are you?
You're just a "gaijin" (foreigner).
You don't know anything about
our culture, our language,
You notice everything fits
into a box in Japanese culture
because it's been done
for a thousand years.
Except for, and I think your,
many of your subscribers and members,
oh sorry, nerds, nerds,
I'm the old nerd,
they'll laugh, the ones
who've lived in Japan
because they'll know what I mean
when I say, "You gaijin,
me Japanese."
You know, there's always
a distinction made,
"You gotta make sure that
you are not the same as us,"
good or bad, it's irrelevant.
It's just, that's the mindset.
So, understanding that
makes it a little easier
to understand why.
- Yeah
- So, we get back to the point,
Ee're here, we've made a big
circle back to the point,
if you're looking at self defense,
you better hope that if you
ever do need to defend yourself,
that you have experienced
that which is probably gonna happen,
and the number one thing
that's gonna happen
is a lot of hell's gonna break loose.
And the brutality that is
associated with this behavior
is very unpredictable,
and so, it wasn't like, "Oh!
"Hey Pat, what are you doin'?
"Oh, hey, Bob, I'm just
warming up a little bit
"'cause I'm getting in
a fight at four o'clock
"down on the corner,
"I'm just warming up, you know?"
That's not the way it works.
You know, in my teaching,
I draw on a dear old Irish friend of mine,
Sensei Murphy.
"What can go wrong will go wrong."
And the more aggressive
resistance there is,
the more it's likely to happen.
In the learning process,
for all the parents out there,
by the time your son or daughter
got to a certain age where,
"Dad, I want a bicycle!"
They want to get on a bike or something,
so, what did you do?
(laughs) It's not the 50s anymore,
"Okay, Bob put 'em on the thing,
"and just shoot 'em down the hill,
"and come back at--
"be home before dark!"
That used to happen by the way.
The reason why you don't
treat your children that way
is because they could be harmed
or they could be hurt,
and the reason why you don't
wanna harm or hurt them
is 'cause they're your children,
and you love them.
So, let me just switch
that scenario around.
If you're a Sensei,
you should be more concerned
with the direction of your students
than you are with yourself.
You don't wanna harm your students,
you wanna teach them how to learn,
not necessarily what to learn.
You wanna give them the seeds
from which to grow
and understand what you and
I already know to be true.
And so, you say to the
child on the bicycle,
"I'm gonna put your elbow pads on you,
"a little helmet, maybe and a mouthpiece,"
I don't know.
When you take the training wheels off,
you know, and, "we're gonna
put in training wheels first,
"and we're gonna wheel around,"
and there's this little pathway process
you follow before your child
can take the training wheels off
and drive around the
house with their hands up,
and it's that process
that I'm talking about.
So the person who's going to attack you,
they're going to use passive resistance,
they're gonna comply,
they're gonna be compliant with you,
and that doesn't mean your
gonna take their head off.
I see that all the time
at seminars I teach,
I ask them, "please take it easy,"
already somebody's gonna--,
"It doesn't work!"
- (laughs)
- So, the idea is to,
the mechanism in the pathway process
is to use passive resistance,
passive resistance,
adding resistance, adding
resistance, adding,
and not just on this side,
not just the attacker,
but also the defender.
Because here's something that, again,
people don't talk very much about.
If the attackers bent upon,
as they reach down grabbing
you and pounding you.
Okay, but lets say he reached to grab you
and as he did that, I was
able to protect myself,
maybe overhook the arm
or something like this,
slam an elbow in before he hit me,
that doesn't mean he's
gonna stop pounding me.
So, now we have this
process that's played out,
and through the process,
through the pathway
process that I call it,
the aggressive resistance reveals
my friend, Sensei Murphy.
And Sensei Murphy, as I mentioned
earlier, is the guy who,
"What can go wrong will go wrong,"
and that really, my friend,
becomes the learning process itself.
Because it's adversity that
gives you the best lesson.
So, that process becomes the art itself.
You know,
"In our karate dojo, you learn kihon,
"and then after the kihon,
"you start to assemble
the kihon into drills,
"and ultimately, you got a kata,"
I call that this kind of
pyramid structure of learning,
you know, and my own opinion
is that it's detrimental to your progress,
to tell you the truth.
Unless you're in a rule
bound cultural recreation
where you never have to test the veracity
of what your doing,
because everybody's complying with you.
That's wonderful, but
that's not the perspective
that I'm taking.
So the two-person associated drill
becomes the art itself.
And they can rehearse that move,
"He's grabbed me!
"I push my hand on his face!
"I elbow him as I wrap
my arm around his neck,
"I, semi guillotine,
I start to use my other hand to push my--"
You know, this is the radial bone
across the carotid artery from here,
Oh, but he escaped from it,
how did he do that?
Well, he was able to plant
his feet solid on the ground,
get his hands on my hip,
and shove it, so they
created a big distance
like this from my body,
and he used that to escape.
"Back to the drawing board again."
Ah, I got it now.
This time, in the bear
hug when he grabs me,
I shove at his face,
and he knocked my hand out to the side,
and I put the elbow in,
and I guillotine him in
the space that I created
in that heartbeat of moment of time,
as he's still trying to crush me.
I get my hand around,
I start cranking up like this,
and knowing that he
might try to use his feet
to stabilize his balance,
I take my right foot, I
grapevine his left leg,
I adduct my legs to get it tightly,
so he can't separate his legs
to get that balance,
and he's skinny, he's getting strangled,
little stars are starting to come in,
as I'm putting a squeeze on him,
and then as he's trying
to get the balance,
he goes to sleep.
And the funny part about that
is there's your first move in Bassai Dai,
for example, you see.
And so I'm able to reenact that template
as a mnemonic mechanism,
and it serves to remind me what to do
in that set of circumstances,
you see, and then you can
take the solo representation
and glue them together in
any geometrical configuration
that you choose as an artist.
Science and art coming together.
This is the magic of what
a dojo should represent
in my opinion.
And you are able to
create something greater
than the sum total of
its individual parts.
And therein is the process
by which kata evolved,
and so, the end result
is to arrive at functionality for you.
And by the way, the learning is separate.
That's a whole separate thing,
By the way, it's like teaching and doing,
it's two different sets of outcomes.
So, you've learned, you've practiced,
and now lets jump ahead.
Now your ready to train.
We had a look at the solo representation.
Lets look at the act of violence.
It's a simple double lapel grab,
and for that, I can be headbutt,
I could be knee'd,
I could be thrown to the ground,
I could be choked,
so the moment it happens,
you need to create a distraction.
Just a really quick--
and a flick to the testicles
with the fingertips is perfect.
I told you earlier,
your hands can only ever be in 3 positions
unless your seizing,
on top, underneath, or one over one,
under six and one half a dozen of another.
In this case, I want the left hand
to come over his right hand.
That's his power hand.
I want the other hand to come
up underneath him from here
and watch what happens
as I hold him in this position.
I compromise the integrity of his balance
by stepping backwards from here.
As I step backwards from here,
I try to push the hand out,
I may get it, or I might say,
"oh you attack me wrong",
I push, if he doesn't break that's okay,
I just need a pathway
to get my hand through.
I'm holding his strong hand down,
so all I do is I reach out and grab it.
I stick my thumb in his eye,
and when he goes back
to grab a hold of that,
I turn his head sideways, like this.
And then as I pull his head around,
I bicep bump,
I bicep bump the face
at the jaw.
I wanna get that brainstem twist,
affecting the sympathetic nervous system
and potentially putting
this guy out of business
for the time being.
But that's one thing.
Let's look at the solo reenactment of that
in the template form.
I'm standing here, like this,
I put one hand over, I go like this,
I turn the hand up,
I step in with the first
hand to the eye socket.
I then turn the neck
and then I bicep bump.
I put some form to that,
and it becomes this.
So, what I mean to say then about the kata
is they're a collection
of conceptual practices
against Habitual Acts
of Physical Violence,
which when linked together,
not only culminate
the lessons you should
have already learned
at a 2-person practice,
they create something greater
than the sum total of
their individual parts,
and therein lies the essence of kata.
Are we good?
Lets get back to work.
