subject: Three Steps To Making Deadly Martial Arts Moves [print this page] Everybody wants their training to result in the deadliest Martial Art Techniques, but most schools don't deliver. Teaching children, training for tournaments, these concepts take from the combative arts. Interestingly, one need only understand the three stages of technique, or bunkai, and it doesn't matter whether you do karate or kenpo or Aikido or whatever, and your art is going to get pretty darned deadly.
The basic idea and principle of what you are doing must be understood. Often there are a bunch of little things that need to be understood, but they come together in a single idea. This idea is presented in the form, and it is why things like Karate kata or taekwondo poomse are actually vital training tools.
The form, you see, is a concept that is perfect. You practice it without distractions and you attempt to make each move as perfect as you can. You try to lose such things as reaction times, and you train your body to move more and more efficiently.
The second thing you need to do is apply the pieces of the forms in bunkai, or techniques. You need a touch of controlled distraction, you need to experience resistance. Most important, you need to experience the reality of bodies colliding with bodies.
The idea here is that you need to have somebody try to stop you from doing your technique. This enables you to deal with real live forces and flows, and go through the doors that will enable you to make a technique work, and to find all the 'what ifs' that will get in the way. This is perfection pushed to a new high; this is learning how to make the art work in spite of anything that might get in the way.
The third thing is to take your skills into the arena and make them work. Here your kenpo techniques may not work, in spite of everything Mr. Parker might say, and you are going to have to push through all resistance and make them work, in some fashion, anyway. Ultimately, as you hone these techniques and find the working parts, you are going to find the perfection available in such forms as sochin and bassai and even lowly kebon.
The thing you have to watch out for, in this process of making the art work, is coming to believe in violence as a solution. You must not allow the Joy of Combat, for that is a lie. You must, in spite of the chaotic nature of the art you study, hold to a calm, inner peace; you must control yourself until you find yourself.
The martial arts are a method of discovering yourself through intense workouts, and through the seeking and isolating of perfection in every technique you do. Perfection is there, you know, but there is a price that must be paid. Deadly Martial Arts Techniques, you see, are found only by seeking inner peace.
