The Sanchin form is fundamental to Goju-ryu, Uechi-ryu and the Fujian systems, which has always suggested to me that Sanchin represents the way you should fight.  After all, you should train as you will need to fight, and fight as you have trained.  And before I ever walked into a dojo, I’d already concluded from photographs of Sanchin positions in Oyama’s books that this fighting position was very similar to one which wrestlers adopt when hand-fighting, judoka adopt when looking for grips,   and the position adopted by some boxers who use a more-square, two-fisted approach.  The Sanchin kata ought to contain the fundamentals of fighting.

But when I began training in Goju-kai in Japan in 1968, I was perplexed to discover that the fighting was nothing like what the Sanchin suggested.  In fact, when you view the demonstration of fighting within these systems, or their application as forms of self-defence, they bear no resemblance to the Sanchin.  Here’s a clip of, I think, Tazaki and Yamamoto doing kumite.  This is typical of Goju Kai of the period, and you still some of it about today.

And here’s another clip, this time of Uechi-ryu fighting.  This was typical of the fighting on Okinawa in both Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu that I witnessed when I visited in 1969.  Again, never mind both hands on the wheel, this is an example of ‘Look, Ma, no hands!’

Although I had a Super 8 film on Muay Thai that I’d got around 1965 or 1966 which showed bagwork, padwork, and fights in the ring, I hadn’t actually seen Muay Thai personally until I got to Japan.  There I started to see that there was an important connection between the way the Thais fought and the Sanchin form.  The Thais could be seen to exemplify the principles inherent in Sanchin in their fighting, whereas the kumite of the Japanese and Okinawans had nothing to do with Sanchin. The only exception is Oyama, who towards the 1970s began to alter the kumite so that it became a weaker version of Muay Thai.   (This occurred largely through the influence of Kurosaki Kenji, who’d trained in Thailand and brought some of the methods back.  There is also a possible second influence on Kyukushin Kai by a guy called Saiwa Kenichi of Tai Ki Ken, who is rumoured to have created the name Kyokushin Kai.)  Kyokushin Kai does resemble Muay Thai, and therefore we might see some of the Sanchin principles illustrated within the fighting.  But ironically, when the Kyokushin Kai guys come to demonstrate their karate, they revert to the stereotypical kumite kamae of karate.

There's another little irony about Kyokushin Kai.  If you look at the link I've put up for Kurosaki, you'll see a reference to the Japanese being beaten by the Thais in the early 1960s.  Between the 60s and 70s, the only Japanese who were able to defeat the Thais were themselves training in Muay Thai, or who were karate-ka primarily from Kyokushin Kai who had cross-trained in Muay Thai.  The idea that karate was able to defeat Muay Thai is a misrepresentation.  But the irony is that the practices that would have made karate ka into formidable fighters were already there in the kata Sanchin/Tensho, but misunderstood and not practiced appropriate to the fight.

As my research into the Fujian connections with Goju-ryu/Uechi-ryu developed, I began to see a group of principles that they had in common with each other, as well as with the arts of Indonesia and the Philippines.  However, only in Muay Thai did I see these principles in evidence in the fighting.  For the purposes of this article, when I say Muay Thai I’m referring to a group of Indo-Chinese fighting arts that includes Muay Thai Boran, Myanmar Lethwei of Burma, Tomoi in Malaysia, Pradia Serey in Cambodia, Muay Lao of Laos.  Muay Thai is the most famous and globally recognized. 

The more I watched Muay Thai and the way the Thais trained, the more I was able to see the true fighting context of the movement patterns characteristic of the Fujian, etc. systems that I’d studied in some depth.  Seems like I am the only one; I don't know why.  Maybe it's because when I look at a fight, I can’t afford to wear rose-tinted glasses.  I could see these connections taking place right before my eyes, connections that others, less invested in analyzing fights for the purpose of fighting better, might not have been able to see.  Maybe others didn’t have the information I had about the Fujian systems, or maybe it didn’t occur to them to imagine that a Muay Thai fight could have anything to do with their 'battlefield art'.  

It is true that in the Fujian, etc. systems the movement patterns have become heavily stylized.  In Muay Thai you see the essentials that I’m always talking about, and you see them in action.  Here are the clips I put up in Part One of this post.  Look at them again. 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V3vrziWRjwY

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kg4TQRlqQ3k

If you study a Fujian system or one of their derivatives, you can find in these clips many, many connections to your system in this close-range fighting.  I could go on about the beggar hand guard/Mantis insect feeling position typical of the Hakka/Fujian systems—you can see it here, but it’s not stylized.  It’s practical, and its purpose is clear.  I could talk about the stance: both hands on the wheel and all weapons aligned to the target.  I could draw your attention to the C-shape or rounded back, or the three step walk of Sanchin, which is strongly similar to the yang sam kun in Muay Thai, tacking into the wind like a boat.  I could point out how the throwdowns from close range are encapsulated in the twisting and stepping turns in Sanchin.  Not to mention the mental and physical toughness/conditioning with respect to taking a shot—tested in Sanchin and exhibited by Muay Thai fighters.  Naturally, the handfighting for positional control, including tie-ups, is evident both in the Fujian, etc. systems and here in these fights, as well as short range offensive/defensive/counteroffensive skills.  As I mentioned in my previous post, every strike in Muay Thai can be delivered from the close position, even kicks to the head.  And of course, you’ll see the all-important explosive short-range power.  I could go on and on.  It’s all there.  Look at it.

One of the key issues here is that you want to fight on your feet.  The fighting we see in Muay Thai is a combination of striking and grappling, and because both are allowed, you have to be able to switch instantly from striking to grappling and vice versa; that’s what ‘hands on the wheel’ is all about, as well as the squarish stance which prevents your opponent from turning your corner and also enhances your stability so that you can retain balance in the close fighting mix.

Many people interpret grappling as ‘going to the ground’.  Grappling can and does include standup, as seen in Greco-Roman and freestyle.  A decisive phase of the fight can involve grappling not to go the ground, or grappling to off-balance your opponent to throw him down—the latter uses of grappling are seen clearly in judo and sambo.  They are also seen in chi sao, which is about pushing, controlling, trapping, off-balancing your opponent with hand-fighting.  We’re back to the same hands on the wheel.  When I studied Wing Chun in the 1970s, I started to see how Wing Chun employed the two-hands-on-the-wheel approach that Goju-ryu ought to be practicing, because it was within this fighting position that the hand movements of Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu found their explanation.  But the Goju-ryu practitioners weren’t aware of this; they were all caught up in the kakie, single-hand pushing.

So we see standup grappling in many martial arts, and it is practiced competitively in Greco-Roman, freestyle, and to a degree, in judo and sambo.  The only difference is that in these standup grappling systems, the grappling has been extracted from the fight and practiced for its own sake.  In Muay Thai, the grappling aspects of close fighting are occurring in the context of a full-out fight, strikes and all.  You will definitely get punished if you make a mistake in Muay Thai.  So the Muay Thai representation of standup grappling is the state of the art, and the one that I draw on for my analysis of close-quarter fighting.

What’s happened since the advent of MMA and the recognition of a need for ground fighting, is that karate guys started going around teaching new ways of interpreting their kata so as to retroactively put ground fighting into it.  But the point is that these original China-hand systems would have been primarily standup in the first place.  Why is that?  Because on the street or on the battlefield you don’t want to go to the ground.  You’re going to end up with a figurative pack of dogs tearing you apart.  So the systems that gave to rise to karate would have been focused on staying on your own feet while putting away your opponent(s), either with strikes or throwdowns (which you could then capitalize on without going to the ground yourself).   Studying groundwork has value in giving you ways to escape and get back to your feet in the street, and as aggressor/dissimilar training it’s essential to work with grapplers so you know what you’re going to be up against.  And it can be employed in the context of a challenge match, where you don’t have to be worried about anybody else getting into the mix when you’re on the ground.  But you want to win the fight on the feet; or, if you’re against multiple opponents, you want to not-lose it.  Your training is about not going to the ground.

These Fujian, etc. systems would also have included bladed weapons.  The principles of close-fighting are the same with or without weapons.  Naturally, depending on the weapon and the situation, the way you fight may be modified, but the underlying close-quarter principles don’t change.  You have to deal with the worst possible scenario in your training, and the worst possible scenario—although potentially the most rewarding to you if you come out on top—is being eyeball to eyeball with your armed opponent.  I don’t think it’s an accident that the Hakka and Fujian systems are aggressive, forward-moving systems that rely on taking the fight to the man.  When you are up against a man armed with a bladed weapon, your aggressiveness and your ability to take the fight to the man, anticipate what he will do before he does it, and capitalize on his reactions are critical to your ability to overcome the man.   Because it’s the man you have to beat not the weapon.  The challenge is greater, the risks are greater, but the principles of fighting don’t change just because there’s a weapon.

Dear karate guys: in case you haven’t worked it out yet, I’m doing you a big favour here.  I’m telling you clearly what your tradition is really about.  You don’t have to invent new applications.  Everything you need is already there.  It’s just that it needs to be going off in a real fight, like what you see in the Muay Thai clips I’ve put up.  It’s staring you right in the face.  Put away all the other crap that you’ve been coming up with to try to explain or justify your practices.  Watch the fight.  Watch Muay Thai, and watch a lot of it. 

Then bring thatinto your dojo and you'll be going somewhere.  

One of the most frequently-heard expressions in Primal is ‘get your hands on the wheel.’  It means, get your hands positioned so that you can touch your opponent’s hands.   This close position is the phase of the fight where the majority of knockouts occur.  It’s where you run the highest risk, but play for the biggest payoff. 

There’s another driving analogy that crops up when we’re doing this work.  I’ll say, ‘get on his bumper’ and that refers to the way a Formula One driver can tailgate his competitor at very high speeds, because of his anticipatory skills, his reaction speed and timing, and daring.  I want you to be familiar with working at this range and within it, because you need much the same ability as a race car driver to anticipate and take advantage of opportunities that flash momentarily and then are gone.  It’s a very dangerous position, but it’s crucial for fist-fighting as well as knife.

Most street altercations end up in a kind of hand-fight, a pushing/jostling, grabbing situation that closely resembles the position I’m talking about.  I’m not talking about a fence.  As with your hands on the wheel of a fast car, this position is dynamic and changing.  You can drive your car with one hand, and you can even momentarily take both hands off the wheel at times.  What the position is really about is controlling the lines of engagement, your opponent’s and your own.

I’ve talked before about working in reduced time and limited space, and about taking into account the strong possibility of missing or of your shot not having any real effect.  I’ve also talked about how important it is to be able to focus on your objective while being hit, jostled, thrown off balance.  Some people’s solution would be to stay out of the close-position phase of fighting and try to pick off the guy from the outside.  I never found that this worked in a fight of any consequence. 

Here’s the way I look at it.  If I’m closer to the guy, my chances of missing go down.  If I don’t hit my intended target, I’ll get a piece of something.  Even if the shot fails, I’ll be able to capitalize in some way; I can turn it into a clinch or some other form of control.  So I want to fight in close.  But there are problems with this. 

1) I’m bound to get hit.   I need to be mentally and physically tough, and ensure that my major target, the head, doesn’t take a hit—at least, not a substantial one.
2)I’ve got to have great skill at anticipating, very good timing, and reaction speed in case things don’t go to plan. 

 4) Finally, if I’m in close with the guy, driving on his bumper in this way, then there’s a very good chance that there’s going to be a crash.  That means I’ve got to be able to clinch.  It therefore follows that from the clinch I have to be able to strike in a variety of ways, or throw him off balance to strike him, or throw him to the ground to strike him. 

If we were to put this into the context of the street, against one man or multiples, it’s inevitable there’s going to be a ‘crash’.  Some people have assumed that because I am an advocate of MMA training, that I would automatically go to the ground in a fight.  I don’t want to get my head kicked in by some guy’s mates, nor fight in dog shit.  I want to be able to throw the guy to the ground, or use him as a human shield against anybody else who might be coming in.  At times it might be necessary to crack his head against a wall or post. This is where the control in a close position comes into play.

Standup means that you need to stay on your feet.  No matter what.  But to do that, you need to dominate in the close position.  That’s how you control the standup and reduce the possibility of going to the ground. 

I’ll show this hands-on-the-wheel approach in a number of clips.  It is one that you’ll see characteristically in the Fujian and Hakka systems of Southern China, and subsequently those styles of Okinawa, Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu that they’ve influenced, as well as their other Southeast Asian derivatives.  The fact that this close position fighting is seen across the board in these systems isn’t necessarily dependent on their common ancestry, but it is certainly dependent on the fact that a fight is a fight.  And the real fight happens here, in this range.

I’ll be writing several posts about this, but for now it is the standup of Muay Thai that I would use as my model for the interpretation of a standup fight, because Muay Thai is about staying on the feet and winning the fight on the feet.  Naturally, Muay Thai work has to be modified to address the shoot and the knife, but as far as street fighting goes, it is the best representation that I’ve seen of a fight.  And the close-position, hand-on-hand fighting is characteristic of a Muay Thai fight. In the clips below, you will see the fighters exhibiting a whole range of skills, from kicks, elbows, knees, throwdowns, all within this close range.  This is the range where all the real work gets done, offensively, defensively, and counteroffensively.  Naturally, handfighting positions (as in chi sao, for example) might be seen in many of the Southeast Asian arts, but in Muay Thai the fighter is being rigorously tested at this range.  The proof is there to see; it’s not academic.  So Muay Thai makes for the best resource. 

Here are the clips, starting with a reference that shows how well Muay Thai can be adapted to MMA.

Here is Namkabuan, the Ring Genius, in action.  He epitomizes what I’m trying to say here.  Watch him. 

and some more links of the same fighter:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CAtjI1f1_oY

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qHpw_ST9Pq0

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBQOtHuQNA

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a9iLIVoTy84

Finally, here’s Saenchai, a guy who really is tiny and takes on bigger opponents, but shows how effectively you can throw a guy to the ground.

And a compilation of Buakaw and Saenchai, both of whom are masters of close fighting.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DdC5ePY9Aes

I was up in Hull on Saturday at the invitation of Neal Lofts of the East Coast Coalition mixed martial art team.  Mel from Hull Sports Ju-jitsu hosted the course.  There were some really promising fighters there, and I gave them a taste of what we do at Primal.  My main objectives were:

1) to raise their aggression level and set them up with a destructive mindset
2) to give them an experience of the kind of training that will raise anaerobic threshold levels
3) to teach them the simple biomechanics needed to produce more explosive power, particularly as applied to striking

By the end of the lesson, I think they were getting it.  We worked on a number of different ways to use the bag and the pads to develop explosive power in a repetitive way.  Then we translated that into more tactical work. 

Particularly with the pads, I wanted to give them an insight that the pads are for fighting, and need to be used dynamically and in a non-clinical, working context.  The padwork needs to resemble the fight, not a sterile, laboratory exercise.  Like I always say, a lot of people when they hold the pads, they look like they're standing on a runway signalling in a jumbo jet.  The good pad work you see tends to be from Thailand, and the reason for that is that most of the trainers in the gyms are fighters.  They are using the pad from a fight perspective.  They're fighters training fighters, rather than some trainer who has never had a fight using a piece of equipment in a stereotypical way. 

We also did clinchwork, including hand-fighting phase and close contact work.  Here the emphasis was on striking at any opportunity, rather than turning the clinch situation into a clinch game.  A lot of people draw on Greco-Roman wrestling for their clinch model, but in Greco-Roman, striking isn't an option.  So if you rely on the Greco-Roman way of doing the clinch work and you find yourself against a good striker, you could just end up with a knee or elbow in the head.  So the whole point of it was to run the clinchwork, but always be seeking opportunities to strike.  And in the same way, learning to be aware that in that close contact position, you will be struck and you have to be able to deal with that.

I also emphasized to them that although takedown is important in MMA, as a striker if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t strike for whatever reason and you’re fighting for positional control, it’s important to try to off-balance him long enough so that you can strike.  It’s better to do this than to try to take him to the ground and put yourself at risk of being hit in the process.  

Currently within MMA, although the game is gradually turning around in favour of the standup guys, there is still a tendency for ground work tempos and levels of aggression to set the tone even when the fight is on the feet.  That’s why I say, take the level of aggression and explosiveness that would be found in a good Muay Thai or K-1 match, and bring that to the ground.  Don’t bring the chess-playing, slow game to the feet. 

In all, it was a good day.  Neal is really keen to move his guys to the next level, and the way I work, I can get very quick results.  I’m looking forward to going back and doing more with these guys. 

As for Primal on Sunday, it was the worst attendance in the year since we’ve started.  I had three guys—they happen to be the best three guys I’ve got (Rob, Rory and Spence), and that’s no coincidence, because these guys train and train and train.  They just soak it in and they reap the rewards.  So it was the worst attendance, but I reckon the best training day we’ve ever had.  Things really started to click in, and although it goes without saying that their anaerobic fitness and conditioning is superb, the thing that really stood out was their knockout power.  It’s way up there.  At a gym level, I haven’t seen anything better.  And I’ve seen a lot of guys over the years.

I’m extremely proud of this small group. 

With regards to the attendance, I’ve been thinking about it and I’m going to be addressing this issue in another post.