I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff lately on the one-punch kill.  This probably has its base in Five Ancestor Fist.  The heavy bag for me was always one of the best ways of developing that kind of power.  Doing the shot and being able to repeat it, either in the same line and with the same tool, or switching the tool; say a fist switching to an elbow.  Or switching the line completely. 

Initially, I used to punch the bag with the idea of a man-on-man scenario, but as I got in more streetfights, especially in Benghazi, I found myself dealing with multiple opponents.  Surprisingly, this is where the one-punch solution really became important for me, because I couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time on one guy. If I hit him, I had to make sure he went down, because there would be another guy to deal with immediately. 

So this taught me not only to put everything into one shot, but to be able to keep repeating the shots, in a variety of ways, to deal with multiple attackers coming from different positions and in different time frames.  And the different time frames also necessitated the ability to ‘break time’ that I often demonstrate in my classes.

So there are three things that I used the heavy bag for that are not obvious: the so-called ‘one punch kill’; the repetitive, Uzi-like firing of multiple shots from various angles and positions (which includes developing footwork); and the ability to break time. 

But the most important thing about the heavy bag work came out of my experience when facing somebody with a knife.  No matter what else is important, if you get into an exchange with a guy with a knife, it’s really a case of three strikes and you are out.  If you get three strikes to the abdomen, technically speaking you’re dead.  And three is the maximum!

If you decide to initiate an attack on a knife guy and overwhelm him with your shots, then you’d better make sure that whatever you’re hitting him with fucking works.  Because if he gets the chance to stab you even once, it could be fatal.  Now, if you secure the knife hand and hit him with your other hand, then if those hits are not effective almost immediately, he’ll probably break free.  And the implications of that are not good.  So your strikes with that one hand have got to be extremely devastating.

If you decide to control the knife hand completely, you’d better make sure you’re able to break his fucking arm.  If you manage to disarm him, then be prepared to stab him with the knife, because if he’s really out for you he’s not going to be happy to remain disarmed and give up.

And here's another place where, if you are going to practice defence against a knife, it's a real benefit if you can generate the kind of power that can break an arm, because when you're blocking the knife arm you can potentially break it.  This occurs when you've learned to deliver maximum power within a reduced time frame and close-range development space. 

I'll give you a little tip on how you could do that.  Go and find yourself a door frame.  There are a lot of ways you can use this door frame to develop bone-breaking capacity, but here's one simple one.  Press on the door frame with the bone on the outside of your forearm/wrist as in a middle-block type of move.  Hold a strong isometric contraction for a little while.  Then bring the arm off a few inches, and smash it back on again as fast and hard as you can.  Repeat as many times as you can.  In this way you'll get the kind of conditioning you need to break arms with when blocking/attacking the knife arm.  You'll also strengthen the neural connections that develop that kind of power--those old motor units again.  Getting the timing in a real life situation is different, but when you train yourself to work within a limited space and reduced time, then the timing in the applied situation becomes easier.

You can apply this door-frame training to lots of body parts and moves.

The main thing here is this.  When I watch people doing knife scenarios, either pre-empting the knife attack or controlling the knife hand and striking in some way with a fist, elbow, knee, foot, head, or whatever, when you look at the strike they’re employing, there’s no potential for damage in it.  They can’t hit.  And the reason for that is because they’ve never trained to fucking hit.  They’ve probably trained on soft bags, or broken stacks of tiles in sheer.    

So make like Dennis Jones and go get yourself a hard, heavy bag!

I recently saw two comments regarding clips of guys working a bag.  The comments came from two of the top guys in their respective MA specialities.  Essentially what they both said is that somebody working a bag isn’t proof that they can fight, which is pretty obvious.  But that doesn’t mean that you can’t see the fight, or the conditioning for the fight, in the bag performance of the individual.  Just look at clips of Tyson on the heavy bag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dOMYoo5Zw&feature=related

or Buakaw training

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZMVetEi-bI 

Closer to home, look at Dennis Jones’ latest clip. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TYI3ClpP9c

It’s pretty obvious from these guys’ performance that their bagwork/padwork reflects at least one aspect of their fighting ability within their respective arenas.  There’s a quality within the performance that doesn’t come from just hitting the bag around to put on a show. 

These guys are hitting with bad intent, whether they are conditioning or working on the tactical elements.  You can see how they’re using the bag to reinforce that violent intent to destroy their target, which will be human in the fight but for the moment is only a bag that they imagine as a man. 

Sometimes the people who look at this footage don’t know what they’re looking at when they say, ‘It’s only a guy hitting a bag, it doesn’t necessarily apply to the fight.’ 

When Dennis Jones put up his clip on my old forum on Self-Protection.com,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnfldrDjopU&feature=related

I privately heard from a number of people who criticized the clip on the basis that it wasn’t anything much.  I put them straight as to what actually was going on there.  What they’d failed to see was how close the bag was to the wall, and how Dennis had to angle out (just as he might on the door) to get his shot in.  And what they also undoubtedly didn’t realise was just how hard the bag was that he was hitting. 

When I phoned Dennis up to thank him for the clip and told him about some of the criticisms and my reply to them, he said, ‘Steve, you’re the only one who’s seen that.’  The reason I’ve seen it and others haven’t is because I’m always looking analytically at movement, based on my experience.  The way I work a bag might not on the surface of it look the same as the way Dennis works a bag, but we’re both working it either for conditioning or for a specific tactical application.  And we both work heavy, hard bags. 

On a light bag, you can hit it more or less any way you like, even with a badly-formed fist, and you’ll get an effect.  You can’t do that on a heavy, hard bag, and you can’t do that on a man.

We’re hitting the bag with the idea of breaking bone (a rib, a nose, an eye socket, a jaw) or getting a knockout.  When I’m working a bag I’m also doing it with an awareness that I’m going to get hit back at about the same time.  I’m set to take a shot as well as deliver it.

I remember at Earlham Street, some visitor who was watching me hit the heavy bag sarcastically made the comment, ‘Bags don’t hit back.’  I said, ‘Yeah, you’re absolutely right.  But I do.’  And then...no, I won’t go into it.

When I was in Benghazi, I didn’t have any sparring partners, nobody to hold pads, all I had was a heavy bag made of sand (which was plentiful in Benghazi!) and a makiwara that looked more like a tree.  I used the makiwara to basically condition my hands and other body parts, whilst I used the bag to hit as I would be hitting on the street.  I’d also use the heavy bag rather like a blacksmith would be beating out metal, to hone my tools, because I could hit it at angles I couldn’t hit the makiwara.  And I’d apply tactics I would be using on the street.  Now, in that bagwork, in order to generate this explosive power, and to sustain the pain off those impacts, I had to psych myself up to hit it.  I had to jump-start the CNS and get myself into an aroused state of mind where I was going to be able to generate more power and deal with the punishment from the impacts. 

And for that energy to be any good to me, I had to give it a very specific direction, technically speaking.  I had to make it into ‘the bullet’ so that I’d be having an effect on the bag and not the other way round.  On a light bag, you can get away with it.  The hard bag, in a sense, does hit back.  It will hurt you.

If you’re developing this explosive force, you have to be able to condition the structure to be able to sustain the greater effort as well as the greater impact.  I started off not wearing gloves personally, and I conditioned my hands to be able to take the impact.  But in teaching, I realised some of the bags, especially the black bag at Earlham Street, were so hard that people were breaking their hands on them.  I was teaching by example and by technical input how to hit harder, but the problem was that guys’ bodies couldn’t sustain the higher level of impact. 

So I now recommend people to wear a bag glove, and then gradually start to reduce the amount you wear the glove as your hands get conditioned.  Don’t compromise the power in order to save your hands, and don’t switch to a light bag so as to encourage yourself to develop a follow-through, because it will be the wrong follow-through.  Use the glove, go for maximum, and then gradually try to wean yourself off the glove without compromising the release.

Here’s a clue.  When you hit a bag, give yourself the command: ‘Ribs: break.’ Say it aloud.  And follow your instruction.  Become committed to sensing and feeling the effect of what you’re going to do, and then carry it out.  Keep repeating that, and then give that release a sound (as I talked about in the post on vocalization) which is reflective of the intensity of the effort and the depth of penetration you’re looking for. 

Once you’ve got one shot working, whether it’s a kick, punch, elbow, or whatever, repeat the shot rather like you were repeating the firing of a bullet.  Set the tempo by the sound.  So if you want to make your repetitions faster, then shout out your sound at a faster rate and the body will do all it can to follow. 

In this way, you can condition not only the tool (i.e., fist, elbow) but you can repeat a shot if you need to.  And because you’ve built this dynamic, explosive pattern in, it becomes easy then to switch to another move without breaking tempo.  You develop that Uzi mentality, and your body really does become a kind of automatic weapon. 

Pads are also a really effective tool in training.  Repetitive pad work gives you both the conditioning of the tool and the anaerobic fitness that you need for fighting.  But their best usage lies in fight training, because the man holding the pad can initiate attacks and counters as well as defend against them.  Padwork, unless it is done purely for conditioning, must always resemble the fight as closely as possible, incorporating its emotional intensity, its chaos, timing, and functional skills.

The problem with pads is that they often don’t provide for the kind of impact you would be hitting on a real target.  A guy wearing an abdominal protector does provide a more realistic target, but the pads themselves are much more yielding than a real head would be.  And so, when you use pads, the pad-man has to know how to present them in a manner which will offer the most physical resistance.  And he should add a slight resisting movement at the moment of impact so as to make the impact harder for the striker.  Also remember, although the pad is a ‘softer target’ you must still set yourself to hit it as thought it’s bone.  Otherwise the practice becomes unrealistic.

The padman can give you feedback about whether your hits are penetrating or not, as well as encourage you, point out technical problems, etc.  At Earlham Street, we didn’t have Muay Thai pads available on the market in those days, so we used boxing mitts.  The guys I would hit would have to quit the session because their hands were hurting.  I turned that into my objective.  In the same way, the padman should let you know whether he felt your shot.

Sometimes I look at guys doing the pad and it looks like they’re standing on the runway at Heathrow guiding a jumbo jet onto the runway.  Obviously, the pad man has to stand as he would stand to fight, and not just stand there holding a pad as a target.  You might as well just hang up a bag.  The pad man has to be representative of the fighter you’re going to fight, whether he’s standup, submission, or ground and pound.  In my opinion, the key to producing a great fighter in a professional gym is the pad man.  It’s his job to get the best out of that fighter, physically, psychologically, technically, offensively, defensively, and counter-offensively.  A major part of padwork is clinchwork, and this is often neglected.  The padman should be able to slip one hand out of the pad so he can engage in clinchwork and then slip it back on again at need.  Most people have the pad strapped on so tightly they have to stop everything to take them on and off.  The padman has to be extremely fluid in the fight; you’ll see it in the gyms in Thailand.  They know what they’re doing.

Sometimes I look at the type of pad being used, as well as the type of bag, and I can’t see how it’s supposed to sustain any real abuse.  The pad, like the bag, is a piece of equipment that you want to buy with the idea of using it by abusing it!  Tom O’Shaughnessy was telling Trish recently how he used to bring in different pieces of equipment to the gym for me to test out.  He said when he got them back, it was like he’d given it to the dog.  When I was done with it, you couldn’t recognise it.

When I work anything, it’s like the man.  I’m out to destroy it.  So the equipment has to be functional, and not something you buy because you like the way it looks. 

Pat O’Keefe, the kickboxer, said that when he first came up to Earlham Street he thought someone was doing demolition work in the building. It was me doing my normal workout on the black bag.  That’s what you want to be going for when you work the bag.

Going back to what we see when we look at heavy bag footage.  Here’s the thing.  When I finally got the benefit of being able to look at a wider spectrum of training, particularly boxing and Muay Thai, I used that information coupled with my own experience to influence the way I work bags and pads.  I don’t try to reinvent the wheel.  I just tweak a little bit if I think I can improve it.

I look around at some of the experts, and it doesn’t look as if they’ve absorbed even the fundamental principles of using a bag or pads that you’d see in any decent boxing or Muay Thai gym.  Go to the best source for that kind of information and then modify it for your particular needs; don’t make it up as you go along!  It’s not necessary. It’s already there.

So when some of the experts look at a guy working the heavy bag, I don’t think they know what they’re looking at.  They’re imposing their own limited view of what a bag is for on what they’re seeing.  And so they’re looking at the wrong things.

 

From my very first break and every one that was to follow I never intended to promote the notion of the destructive power of karate or of myself.  I did breaking because I  saw its direct application to the fight.  Even my ability to break arms with what  Nick Hughes describes as a middle block from karate (White Crane would be a more accurate description) owes much to my ability to break engineering bricks and other challenging materials. The analysis and refinement of the processes involved in breaking would eventually lead to my ability to break bones during an exchange.

Whilst it is true that Oyama was the inspiration behind many of my breaks, I was working purely on the basis of photos.  Nobody taught me to break.  I initiated my own programme of breaking, taught myself, and subsequently analyzed and researched the processes involved so as to gain a deeper understanding.

This is why I do not credit karate for any part of my performance.  My ability to demonstrate ‘supernormal’ power (not superhuman, just supernormal) and my understanding of the psychological, physiological and physical dynamics involved in doing so comes out of my own work.  It owes nothing to karate.  Some karate master didn’t take me aside and  teach me any of it.  Nobody showed me, for example, how to internally generate and externally express the forces by which I was able  to stamp  twice through the Nipori  dojo floor (and as I’ve heard since, crack the cross beam) during a performance of the kata Saifa.  Nobody taught me, or even gave me a clue, how to smash a free-standing milk bottle, do the same to a brick, or crush engineering bricks laying  flat on the floor without supports or spacers.  Nor did anybody teach me any of the other so-called impossible things I’ve done.

Sure,  the karate masters, like many of the kung fu masters I was to see and  meet along the way, rambled on about ki or chi, but when it came to demonstrate this supernormal quality in a  breaking demonstration, striking a compliant student or being struck by one with hands, feet or some object, it was pretty obvious to me that the whole thing was a sham.  It is little wonder that if the so-called masters of the East  fake it, then their counterparts in the West will follow suit and  do the same, to the point where thousands of people fake  their ability to produce destructive power.

I suppose that if you are calling yourself a master, or if you believe you are a martial artist and promote the existence of the mystical powers of ki or chi, then you have to show that these powers are true.  The only problem is that most martial artists have never experienced anything resembling supernormal power, nor are they able to demonstrate it.  So they have to fake it.  

Rather than the ‘masters’ being amongst the most enlightened people on the planet,  they are probably amongst the most  deluded  and deceitful.  When you think about it, it’s really not surprising, because the masters of the East and the West have no reality checks.  Everything they do is about creating an illusion of being a  martial artist  and the possessor of special powers—amongst which, of course, is breaking.  They certainly never have to fight.

As I’ve said, as a martial artist everything I do or did in my training has been supportive of the reality of a fight.  Like karate’s kata, bunkai and kumite, faking or engaging in unchallenging breaks is not supportive of that reality as I know it to be. So when I did breaks they were for real and done with the sense that I was breaking somebody’s bones and that if I didn’t get it right I’d break mine.        

This brings me to conditioning.  Whilst it’s true that bricks don’t hit back, they do have the potential to break your hands or seriously fuck them up if you hit them wrong—not unlike the human skull—especially if  your hands haven’t been conditioned to hit hard things. For me as a fighter, the head has always been the major target, and the knockout, stun or complete disorientation of my opponent the best outcome of my strikes to his head.  However, whilst the more yielding hinge and point of the jaw are favoured pre-emptive RAS targets, relatively easy to hit when the head isn’t moving, they ain’t that easy to hit once the fight is under way and the head is moving all over the place.  Targeting the jaw when the fight’s underway, you’re just as likely to strike the skull, eye sockets, cheekbones, or an elbow that is part of your opponent’s intentional or unintentional defence.

In my book, rather than just targeting the jaw so as  to produce a rotational  RAS  knockout, stun or disruption of the labyrinthine system, it’s better to target the whole of the head and be able  to generate and deliver enough force with your hands to hit anywhere on the head.  In this way you will not only possibly cause a knockout, stun or disorientation, but increase your chances of success by being equally able to collapse an eye socket or cheekbone, shatter his jaw, or for that matter  hit a  defending  elbow without sustaining appreciable damage.  A damaged or broken hand is the last thing you want in a fight!  You need to have your hands free to switch to some other form of attack, hand-fighting, clinch work, a throw, takedown, or some form of defence, for example.

Being able to generate bone-breaking forces with hands that have been conditioned and tested is an important and often overlooked attribute that you should possess as a fighter.  To be able to use your natural weapons with complete confidence and commitment, they have to be tested against something similar to what they will need to destroy—just like any weapon would be tested.  Unlike a prize fighter of the modern era, on the streets you can’t protect your hands by wearing gloves.  Apart from wearing knuckle dusters, the only way to protect them is to strengthen the supportive structures of the hand and also condition your hands so as to raise your pain threshold and become capable of delivering and sustaining some serious impacts.

Testing your conditioning is one of the purposes of performing breaks.  Waiting to test your hands in a fight might be too late; better to test them in the gym. Breaking that is challenging and punishing (i.e., if you get it wrong, your hands are seriously hurt) is the test I chose.  And I recommend it to other martial artists.  Unfortunately, a lot of bricks you see being used in martial arts demonstrations are pre-baked and could probably be broken by a powerful fart!  Where’s the challenge in that?

Because of the strong possibility of damaging the hands in a bare-fisted fight, a lot of people (particularly within the self-protection industry) elect to use the palm rather than the fist in the belief it is the more natural weapon.  But here’s the thing: even though I was able to perform some pretty spectacular breaks by slapping and palming through bricks, slabs of concrete, and coconuts, I was able to perform more spectacular breaks using my fists once they were conditioned.  However, as far as brick-breaking was concerned, my elbows were the most devastating of all.  The trouble was, they were  only effective at close range and in a  limited way.  The weapon I found to be the most effective in a fight at all ranges, levels, and angles was the fist—but only because it had been seriously  conditioned. 

By the way, it’s pretty obvious that conditioning your hands to be able to break static bricks isn’t going to enhance other necessary fighting attributes. (These include dynamic visual acuity, reactive speed/power to a visual or tactile stimulation, visual tracking, visual/tactile memory, dynamic depth perception, dynamic balance, sense of both regular and broken rhythm, perception of interval of time, timing, hand/eye/ foot coordination, dynamic concentration, mindset, opportunism, mental toughness,  anaerobic and anaerobic conditioning, athleticism, fighting skills, tactics and strategies. However, these other attributes can be developed relatively safely in other ways in training).  Having said this, conditioning the hands to break, and learning to perform the breaks themselves, can provide some crucial components toward your destructiveness in a fight. 

If the breaks are challenging, it’s possible to get a handle on how to generate those internal and external forces by which to break bones.  This is accomplished through the development of internal representations comprised of visual imagery and biochemical, kinesthetic and biomechanical factors.  It’s an incredibly difficult process to describe, but one which is fundamental to breaking if you want to make your breaking practice translate into the fight. 

And the fight is what it’s all about.

The subject of breaking and all its offshoots is too big to squeeze into a single post.  So I’ll talk more it next time, and then I’ll be back to ‘karate and me’...