RIKodokan Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate Main

Miscellaneous Thoughts About Movement

By Sensei Frank Duffin

I keep emphasizing the concept of movement as I teach Goju Ryu, but what do I actually mean by understanding it? When I see it, I know what it looks like. When I feel it, I know how it feels like. But trying to teach it is another issue. So, what does it mean to understand movement?

In Goju Ryu, as with other forms of the martial arts, the movement is the style. We usually combine various movements and call it a kata, which is a choreographed dance we do alone. When this dance is done with a partner it’s called bunkai. The better we do kata and the better we do bunkai, the better a person understands movement.

The standard procedure or pedagogy the martial arts follows is to break down the katas into manageable chunks which is called basics, i.e., the typical punches, kicks, and blocks that make up the katas. Although they are basic and can give the practitioner a good cardio workout, basics are more than basic… they are a foundation that has an unlimited depth for which to build an understanding of not only movement and karate, but an understanding of oneself.

Allow me to explain. We stand in san chin dachi (basic stance) with the toes turned in, heals out, and with knock-knees. Without much work a person can envision a rather uncoordinated youngster who can’t walk very well and who may have coordination problems. And this is karate? This is considered a basic stance on which to construct knowledge of movement, of karate, and on which to construct knowledge of one self? In fact, I tell my students who just enter the dojo to train that I would never use this stance, as it stands, in a practical situation if that situation ever arose… which begs the question “Why teach it?”

For virtually everything we do in basics and in karate, the same skepticism can be found… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Despite this healthy dose of inquiry, there is really no other way to instill in the karateca an understanding of movement. Although san chin dachi is rather strange looking, it facilitates a physical understanding of ki and it builds physical strength. The stance literally draws attention to the hara, about two inches below the belly button. With the knees and toes pointed in, and with the hips flexing inwards toward the chi, the focus of movement is drawn to the chi instead of to the place where the technique is happening, i.e., arms and legs. The total body is involved in the movement and not just in isolated parts of the body. In developing the understanding of chi with san chin dachi, that understanding can be translated into any other stance or position a person is in, even in a shizentai or natural stance.

In addition to understanding chi with the san chin stance, we can develop body symmetry and understanding in our punches and blocks. By juxtaposing a punching or blocking arm on the one hand with a chambered arm on the other, this movement facilitates the relationship between the right side of the body and the left side. Without this understanding, punches would be weak and blocks would be ineffective. In practical situations, however, it would be foolish to chamber one hand while the other is executing a punch or a block. While the punch or block is being made with the other arm in chamber, the side of the body with the chambered arm is exposed and vulnerable. In many practical situations we don’t see fighters or boxers chamber their non-punching arms… which begs the question “Why teach it?”

Similar to the previous rhetorical question about san chin dachi, by training punches and blocks with the opposite arm in chamber we are disciplining one side of the body to work with the other side. Although, the response of chi does not necessarily work in this instance, a physics analogy is more appropriate here. Newton’s third law of motion that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction sort of hits the target: the action of a punch or a block going forward is counteracted by the other arm (specifically the elbow) going backward into a chambered position—the faster the acceleration of the punch going out, the faster the acceleration of the elbow coming back.

But any good skeptic will realize that this coordinated movement doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding movement or understanding power. You can have speed without power, or in physics lingo, you can have acceleration without force. Just going through the motions of one arm extending out into a punch or block and the other arm bending back into chamber, whether it’s slow or fast, doesn’t translate into understanding movement or power. It’s a superficial understanding at best, as is the efficacy of the movement—superficial. There is not much force behind punches or blocks that are just done for the effect of speed, nor is there much force behind punches or blocks that only rely on the arms or the upper body to do the action. In order for punches or blocks to be effective, the entire body needs to be incorporated into the movement—which leads us to Newton’s second law of motion: The more force on an object, the more it accelerates. But the more massive it is, the more it resists acceleration. The force comes not from the arms, although they are an integral part of this scenario, the force comes from the hara or the place where the ki is located, which brings us back to san chin dachi.

The circle is now complete—the upper body’s punches and blocks are unified with the lower body’s stance, and the lower body’s movement is unified with the upper body’s movement. But this theoretical understanding is just as superficial and shallow as punches and blocks are without a practical understanding. A sensei can talk about theory and reveal all of the secrets of the style, but the secrets have little meaning to the listener without training. Train movement a few times and the idea of the entire body being incorporated into a punch and a block is observable. Train it for four years and a punch is no longer a punch, a block is no longer a block. Train it for ten years and a punch is just a punch, a block is just a block—it’s just not the same as when we began. It’s this and so much more. We can then get to that point in our training when we forget the form in order to really understand movement and the essence of the martial arts. But in order to forget the form, you first need to have the form.

I think a salient passage from Chuang Tzu’s Basic Writings articulates exactly what I have experienced and what I hope our dojo will experience soon: “The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you have gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you have caught the rabbit you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you have gotten the meaning you can forget the words. Where is there a man who has forgotten the words so that I may have a word with him?”

Joyful Training!

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