The last thing I’d encourage anybody to do is to practice Sanchin, particularly in its Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu variants.  Sanchin kata is the central kata in those Fujian systems and their derivatives, and as such we would expect to recognize elements of the fight in the kata and vice versa.  It all goes back to my earlier post about close-fighting.  The close-fighting position is often a decisive phase of the fight, and if you’re going to need to be able to strike and grapple with your opponent and defend against the same while remaining on your feet, then you need to be in a position to do that most effectively. 

 The Muay Thai clips I showed exhibit what the principles of Sanchin in action would be.  They tell you what your kata’s about.  If you were to extrapolate from the close-fighting exchanges of Muay Thai, and distill that down to a form, after a couple of hundred years of stylization and formalization, and no real fighting, you might very well end up with the Sanchin that you’ve got today. 

 Tommy, you asked about the turn/throwdown.  I’ll put some clips up of clinchwork with throwdowns.  Look at the clips and you’ll see the Sanchin basic application as plain as day. 


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L0kEaQQhTkc
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m9eCggRHpEQ
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sei1haw9O8
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-L0OsPTJpAY

Here is an important thing.  There still seems to be an argument that the fight will inevitably go to the ground.  It’s only inevitable if you don’t know how to stay on your feet.  In the street, I don’t know how to say it any plainer, you cannot go to the ground.  And if you do throw someone or are thrown, you better have a way of getting up.  Fast, and tactically.  And funny enough, there is a system within Fujian, Dog Boxing, which addresses specifically offensive/defensive/counteroffensive work off the ground.  This is something to supplement the standup systems, which otherwise don’t include that work.  The katas essentially don’t go to the ground. 

Look at this clip.  It’s about staying on your feet. 

 Now, about the three-step, or the yam sang kun.  This stepping pattern within the wai kru and ram muay is very ritualized.  It has religious and magical connotations, and is associated with Pra Isuan (Shiva).  But essentially it’s a walking pattern.  Here's an example of how it should actually work in a fight in this clip of  Jongsanan vs. Superlek. You’ll see the way Jongsanen advances, and marks time to a beat.  The way the advancement is made is always angulated as if you’re tacking in a wind.  You’re not going head-on as if the wind’s behind you.  You’re always looking to cut an angle to avoid or control the center line.  Sanchin practice generally doesn’t reflect this at all. But it should.  Miyamato Musashi talks about walking towards one’s enemy.  Exactly the same principle. 

 I had a hard time finding a clip of chi sao without it being too formalized.  This one took place last year at SENI, and it has a competitive element.  If you compare that clip with the guys doing their clinchwork in the Muay Thai gym, you’ll see a resemblance.  The reason I put this clip up is because Wing Chun through the Fujian system of Yung Chun White Crane could be said to be a cousin of Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu.  The chi sao within the systems of Fujian is a common practice in which the two hands are engaged in a handfight for control of position; it’s one phase of the fight.  It’s that part of the fight where the initial entry has occurred, before the breakdown and finish. 

 It’s what I was always talking about when I was trying to get through to karate, and showing them how the application of their forms could work. When I show this material on a course, you can see people having a so-called 'light bulb moment' but sometimes seeing the connections in a clip can be hard for some people.  Especially if you've got all the baggage of the so-called tradition in your head. 

It's easy to show if I've got you in a room. 

And by the way, I don't practice Sanchin (or Tensho)--don't practice kata at all for many years--and I don't encourage people to do so.  All I'm trying to do is point out the way your system suggests you should be fighting.  And that's definitely NOT 'fighting in Sanchin'.

That's about as clear as I can make it.  Have a look at the footage.

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.