Expressing ki -- kendo vs. other martial arts

[Halcyon]

I've been re-reading a book by karate sensei Kenji Tokitsu titled "Ki and the Way of the Martial Arts." I read it once before, but I've been getting some new things out of it with more years of training under my belt.

He talks about how ki is the defining quality of budo, and that kendo, in particular, is a "privileged discipline" because it allows the expression of ki more than other martial arts.

"Compared to judo or karate, kendo offers greater opportunity to open to the sensation of ki, for two reasons. The space between combatants is more important because of the use of a weapon, the shinai. Anticipation of the shock of blows is less of a factor than in karate because of the use of protective armor, and this makes it possible not to close down the sensation of the body into a defensive attitude that becomes primary."

He goes on to note that this is another reason you find older sensei in kendo who can still dominate younger, faster, stronger opponents.

"Later on, toward the age of thirty-five or forty, we begin to experience a reduction in the quality of our physical condition. In kendo, this is the moment when practitioners enter the most meaningful and intensive phase of the practice, because they become sensitive to the problem of ki in a real way and begin to adjust their approach to combat so as to shape it as budo. At this same moment, the majority of karate practitioners have little inclination to persevere, because those who have practiced combat seriously have accumulated various traumas, and because the model they have learned gives them very little room to adapt to advancing age. Therefore they quit or reduce their level of training, contenting themselves for the most part with the practice of kata, in which combat remains virtual. However, combat in budo is never virtual."

This and other points he makes is about the most cogent reasoning I've seen on why older sensei still kick butt in kendo, and why brute strength doesn't prevail in kendo. What say ye?

[cesarekim]

As a retired judo and tkd practitioner I can definitely empathize with accumulated trauma on the body. I spent way too many years getting hurt and my doctor gave me a choice between walking and doing judo over 10 years ago. The choice was obvious as many of my sempai and sensei walk with an obvious limp and have had their hips or knees rebuilt.

I think it is significant that we are often whopped by old men who sometimes have problems with just walking. In a randori or kumite type situation, we might hurt them even though we would not necessarily achieve an ippon. The odds are definitely stacked higher in kendo as there is a lower emphasis on direct use of body strength and an interaction distance which is much further out than in judo or tkd. I think it significant that 6dan in judo is usually a written test...

[stealth_monkey]

This and other points he makes is about the most cogent reasoning I've seen on why older sensei still kick butt in kendo, and why brute strength doesn't prevail in kendo. What say ye?

My issue with Ki is that I've never seen a solid definition. Most authors define ki in whatever terms best support their argument. My personaly theory as to why older sensei kick butt as it where is that it doesn't exactly take a huge amount of strength to tap someone with a 500g piece of wood.

[verissimus]

My issue with Ki is that I've never seen a solid definition. Most authors define ki in whatever terms best support their argument. My personaly theory as to why older sensei kick butt as it where is that it doesn't exactly take a huge amount of strength to tap someone with a 500g piece of wood.

But they can do it repeatedly, whenever they want.

[stealth_monkey]

But they can do it repeatedly, whenever they want.

Yes, which is a function of the incredible hand eye co-ordination, reaction time and knowledge of body language one would gain by practising the same thing for 60 odd years. It just happens that they can do it for longer than say, a judoka because a 70 year old body doesn't exactly recover well from being slammed into a mat for a few hours a week.

Kendo is not a physically demanding sport, thus, people with physical weaknesses such as those gained naturally through aging are able to excel at it more so than a sport requiring a higher level of physical conditioning. No ki required. I'd imagine you'd still find 80 year old fencers wiping the floor with 20 years olds as well

[hl1978]

There are karate guys who can express ki or more along the lines of kizeme as we see in kendo, ushiro kenji (hachidan shinoryu karate and 7th dan kyoshi in ZNKR iaido)is one such example who also shows how to generate power from the lower body/tanden.

http://www.fightcon.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=1217 coredlli is haming it up as usual, but check out 2:00 for a demonstration of ki as kuzushi on contact with no armstrength, but power from the ground. at 2:45-3:00ish he gives a demonstraton of what we interpret as seme or kizeme. Cordelli describes the same experience many of us feel in kendo against high level guys where they move and we just feel overcome with pressure.

in this second video, its not about ki touch knockouts, look how he forces the guys to flinch/stop same as in kendo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsuhU...ext=1&index=32

I know more than a few people who have felt Ushiro Kenji first hand and all report the same thing as in these videos. I wonder if he figured this out from his Iaido practice or karate training? He is fairly big on the aikido seminar circuit.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I'd imagine you'd still find 80 year old fencers wiping the floor with 20 years olds as well

Not as I understand the culture.

[hl1978]

My issue with Ki is that I've never seen a solid definition. Most authors define ki in whatever terms best support their argument. My personaly theory as to why older sensei kick butt as it where is that it doesn't exactly take a huge amount of strength to tap someone with a 500g piece of wood.

A preface: this has to be felt. Words alone can not explain something outside ones experience. Likewise how can one explain the sensations used when maintaining balance while riding a bicycle.

The kanji for ki basically means air pressure, which is a big hint..... (kokyu power)

CMA/JMA people back in the day didn't have a western education and while they probably understood Newton's third law conceptually they didn't explain it as such. Rather it was more of a catch all term to describe the sensations the practioner would feel within themselves and what other would feel when applying this skillset (heck its also used to describe the waves of the ocean to food as well). Thats why in a martial arts context, you see references to ki of heaven, ki of earth, admonditions to power strikes with breath, "use the hara", hard/soft power etc. These are common terms to all martial arts, just very few people explain explicitly it means. Instead people just say "use your middle" and the rest of the class nods their heads "knowingly", passing the same thing on to their students without explicit instruction (save for a few, or for those that figure elements out on their own).

To give a one example,example some of the texts refer to gathering ki from the ground and projecting this outwards. Does this mean that someone who can use this energy is sucking it out of the ground from their feet and spraying it through their fingers into their opponent like something out of star wars?

No, instead they are using their legs, the middle of the body and as little upper body muscle as possible to direct their opponents energy into the ground so that their opponent "feels the ground" (what the CMA guys call a groundpath) since Newton's third law is for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. This "pushing into the ground" is the same as if I pushed a brick wall; the brick way isn't pushing back, rather I feel my own push forcing my body backwards. I don't feel a force on force experience like when you are arm wrestling someone. The result is that the other person pushes themselves away when they try and push you. It doesn't take much imagination on how this could be used to control and manipulate the center in kendo, or force your opponent to throw themselves in judo without feeling any push or pull initiated by you.

Now to give a (longwinded) definition: Ki is a catch all term for both the sensations experienced as a result of building a skillset derived from a connected body, a groundpath as explained above, kokyu power with the additon of power sourced from the legs and middle of the body.

connected body=whole body power, not ki-ken-tai as timing but ki-ken-tai as the bodying moving as a single unit transfering all of your weight into an object through an opening or closing of the body.

open/close: body going from a convex shape=open, concave=close. This is preformed by "rotating" the tanden forwards and backwards like an eyeball which is developed through kokyu (breath) power.

kokyu: utilizing reverse breathing to generate and move pressure about the body to move the limbs with the adominal muscles (sounds crazy but has to be felt).

What results is a very strange sensation when someone "extends" their ki into you because you don't feel a force on force push because they aren't pushing or pulling you with their arms like most people do. Instead they are pushing and pulling you with their legs, pelvic crease and a ball of muscle 2" below the belly button. It "looks" completely different too as you see the movement originate in the center of the body and move outwards.

We have a number of people on kendo-world who have trained with the same people I have or felt people who can do the above (forum members Ellis Amdur, Josh Reyer, and Kent Enfield come to mind). Once you have that sort of experience, a lot of the older writings take on entirely different meaning. The most accesible way for the average westerner to gain some familiarity with this concept is to work out with an aikido group associated with Tohei, but the quality varies, or look into discussions in the non-aikido section of aikiweb.com.

It requires a CRAZY amount of solo training to figure this stuff out, so doing 10,000 reps of suburi a day for 30 years isn't enough if you aren't thinking criticially (and recieving guidance from a teacher) about what is going on in your body when you cut. Likewise a lot of training elements that people hate or think as useless start to make sense.

Yes, which is a function of the incredible hand eye co-ordination, reaction time and knowledge of body language one would gain by practising the same thing for 60 odd years. It just happens that they can do it for longer than say, a judoka because a 70 year old body doesn't exactly recover well from being slammed into a mat for a few hours a week.

Kendo is not a physically demanding sport, thus, people with physical weaknesses such as those gained naturally through aging are able to excel at it more so than a sport requiring a higher level of physical conditioning. No ki required. I'd imagine you'd still find 80 year old fencers wiping the floor with 20 years olds as well

While undenibly someone who has done kendo 40+ years should be amazing at reading their opponent and it is an element of it, I'd argue its has elements of something completely differnt, as Sagawa Yukiyoshi was well known for beating up olympic level judoka while in his 80's, and reaction times do go down as we age (I wouldn't trust my 72 year old father to take up high performance driving with me). High level older kendoka don't require that much strength to take the center, they just aren't sourcing their strength from the same places younger less experienced kendoka are. Instead they are using their legs with the "middle" as a control point (the chinese refer to this as "jin"). There is also some evidence that the fascia do not degrade the same way as musculature as we age and that kokyu power teaches you how to contract the fascia. If you go by what some of the internal strength enthusiasts say, this may be infact what these older experienced kendoka are using in additon to the legs to power their cuts.

[Josh Reyer]

I usually try to stay out of discussions on "ki", because they generally don't end well, but since I've been name-checked, some clarifications:

I myself have nothing in the way of "internal skills". The person I trained with was Rob John, a student of Akuzawa Minoru and a member of the Aunkai. It wasn't hard core training; rather just a one-time session wherein Rob demonstrated what he could do, along with some demonstrations (participatory, of course) of the kind of exercises they do. I have since felt the same kind of skills in the Yagyu-kai, although neither of the terms Hunter uses above (ki, kokyu) are prevalently used in Shinkage-ryu.

Josh Lerner, a frequenter of other MA boards, once made what I thought was a very astute generalization: in the West, it's assumed that everyone experiences the universe the same way, but argue over whose terms best describe that experience; in the East, everyone uses the same terms, but each particular person/group thinks that only they know what the terms really mean. The upshot is, "ki" has a lot of meanings and nuances depending on the context. "Weather" is "heavenly ki". "Electricity" is "lightning ki". "Feeling" is "bearing of ki". We don't need a clear definition of "ki" to understand "heavenly ki", or "lightning ki" or "bearing of ki". We understand these things because we have personally experienced them. It's the same thing with the "ki" Hunter is talking about above. It is not mystical, magical energy that allows you to do incredible feats. It's just an idiom for something practical and pragmatic.

[hl1978]

I usually try to stay out of discussions on "ki", because they generally don't end well, but since I've been name-checked, some clarifications:

I myself have nothing in the way of "internal skills". The person I trained with was Rob John, a student of Akuzawa Minoru and a member of the Aunkai. It wasn't hard core training; rather just a one-time session wherein Rob demonstrated what he could do, along with some demonstrations (participatory, of course) of the kind of exercises they do. I have since felt the same kind of skills in the Yagyu-kai, although neither of the terms Hunter uses above (ki, kokyu) are prevalently used in Shinkage-ryu.

Josh Lerner, a frequenter of other MA boards, once made what I thought was a very astute generalization: in the West, it's assumed that everyone experiences the universe the same way, but argue over whose terms best describe that experience; in the East, everyone uses the same terms, but each particular person/group thinks that only they know what the terms really mean. The upshot is, "ki" has a lot of meanings and nuances depending on the context. "Weather" is "heavenly ki". "Electricity" is "lightning ki". "Feeling" is "bearing of ki". We don't need a clear definition of "ki" to understand "heavenly ki", or "lightning ki" or "bearing of ki". We understand these things because we have personally experienced them. It's the same thing with the "ki" Hunter is talking about above. It is not mystical, magical energy that allows you to do incredible feats. It's just an idiom for something practical and pragmatic.

Hi josh, a couple quick things I wanted to mention..

I only brought your name up as someone who has felt this sort of skill.

The concepts of ki/koyku in a martial sense are well known, just different terms are used in different arts. The aunkai, for example, doesn't really use either as a term, but instead has its own vocabulary. Likewise CMA uses different terms, for example I am not sure of a "unversial" japanese term for the concept of "jin".

Like you said, these skills are all over the place (you need some experience to recognize what they are), however there are variations of them. Some people gain some elements as a biproduct of their practice over the years. Others who specifically train them are of course going to feel different and be able to do "interesting" things. The guys that speciically train it are probably going to have a better success rate at using it outside their base art which is why I was curious if Ushiro Kenji picked up his stuff from iaido, karate or both.

[Rennis]

I was curious if Ushiro Kenji picked up his stuff from iaido, karate or both.

Like Josh, I generally try to stay out of these type of conversations as my hands on time has been minimal to say the least so far, but it was my understanding from some interviews I have read of Ushiro's that he primarily credits his "skills" to his karate training and he is particularly big on Sanchin training.

[hl1978]

Like Josh, I generally try to stay out of these type of conversations as my hands on time has been minimal to say the least so far, but it was my understanding from some interviews I have read of Ushiro's that he primarily credits his "skills" to his karate training and he is particularly big on Sanchin training.

Sorry Rennis, I didn't intend to leave you off the above list, but I had forgotten that you have met some of the same people I have. I had been studying Sanchin for 12 years before I was exposed to this sort of stuff and suddenly sanchin made sense when I knew what it was actually supposed to cultivate and what the point of 2 person practice really was. Just saying it was a breathing exercise wasn't much help if you don't know what the breathing is supposed to "exercise", and your teacher's either never taught it to you or might have not known it themselves.

For those who don't know what sanchin is, its in the beginning of one of the Ushiro Kenji videos above.

[ender84567]

Yes, which is a function of the incredible hand eye co-ordination, reaction time and knowledge of body language one would gain by practising the same thing for 60 odd years. It just happens that they can do it for longer than say, a judoka because a 70 year old body doesn't exactly recover well from being slammed into a mat for a few hours a week.

Kendo is not a physically demanding sport, thus, people with physical weaknesses such as those gained naturally through aging are able to excel at it more so than a sport requiring a higher level of physical conditioning. No ki required. I'd imagine you'd still find 80 year old fencers wiping the floor with 20 years olds as well

Go find the youtube with the nanadan that wipes the floor with a bunch of hachidans, despite being able to barely move he makes them look like a bunch of teenagers still in highschool... how does that fit into your hypothesis?

[pgsmith]

Go find the youtube with the nanadan that wipes the floor with a bunch of hachidans, despite being able to barely move he makes them look like a bunch of teenagers still in highschool... how does that fit into your hypothesis?

The reason for that is because the Japanese sword arts, which includes kendo, are based upon the concepts of distance and timing, not strength and speed. The longer you practice the sword arts, the better your grasp of proper distance and timing becomes, and the less you have to rely on strength or speed to get by.

[MartialArtsGirl]

I've been re-reading a book by karate sensei Kenji Tokitsu titled "Ki and the Way of the Martial Arts." I read it once before, but I've been getting some new things out of it with more years of training under my belt.

He talks about how ki is the defining quality of budo, and that kendo, in particular, is a "privileged discipline" because it allows the expression of ki more than other martial arts.

"Compared to judo or karate, kendo offers greater opportunity to open to the sensation of ki, for two reasons. The space between combatants is more important because of the use of a weapon, the shinai. Anticipation of the shock of blows is less of a factor than in karate because of the use of protective armor, and this makes it possible not to close down the sensation of the body into a defensive attitude that becomes primary."

He goes on to note that this is another reason you find older sensei in kendo who can still dominate younger, faster, stronger opponents.

"Later on, toward the age of thirty-five or forty, we begin to experience a reduction in the quality of our physical condition. In kendo, this is the moment when practitioners enter the most meaningful and intensive phase of the practice, because they become sensitive to the problem of ki in a real way and begin to adjust their approach to combat so as to shape it as budo. At this same moment, the majority of karate practitioners have little inclination to persevere, because those who have practiced combat seriously have accumulated various traumas, and because the model they have learned gives them very little room to adapt to advancing age. Therefore they quit or reduce their level of training, contenting themselves for the most part with the practice of kata, in which combat remains virtual. However, combat in budo is never virtual."

This and other points he makes is about the most cogent reasoning I've seen on why older sensei still kick butt in kendo, and why brute strength doesn't prevail in kendo. What say ye?

So brute strength really DOESN'T prevail in kendo? Hence the whole "women can't do as well as men in kendo" is not true? hmmm... ok, carry on with the regular conversation. Sorry for the tangent!

As far as ki goes, I'm not really sure I believe in it. It makes things hard because my Sensei sometimes explains things in terms of ki. But the entire idea of ki sounds so magical that it turns me off. Some kind of magical engery? Uhm yeah... I think ki is probably some sort of way of describing something more concrete that is going on, though I'm not sure what. But I don't believe in it as some kind of magical energy. Even so I'm open to believing in it in some way, especially if I experienced it myself. But for now, it seems to me to be more of a kind of visualization tool. If someone had a better explanation of what it is, it would be nice to know.