At the Budo Journeyman, there was an interesting article about excessive tension, as well as relaxation in karate training, which applies in my opinion to all martial arts. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.
No sports coach has ever said to his protégé, ‘you need to have more tension’’. If anything, it’s going to be the complete opposite.¹
I have seen this so many times. It’s a bit like driving with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time.
It’s not just a matter of agonistic and antagonistic muscles (like the paired cooperation of the biceps and triceps) it’s more than that. It’s about the body’s ability to create perfect concert in movement, without unnecessarily burning energy that would be better employed doing something else. This is what highly trained martial artists should be trying to achieve.
In this piece I want to:
· Explain how this is locked in to karate culture.
· Describe how it manifests itself at individual level.
· Outline what a headache it can be for instructors desperate to help students eliminate the problem.
· Have a look at some possible solutions.
Karate styles across the spectrum.
From my observations, some karate systems appear to have totally bought into the strength and tension hegemony. If you speak to representatives of those styles and ask some searching questions about this, they have answers that make sense at an expert level, but sadly the erroneous image is out there, well ahead of any logic they want to apply to it. Look at Sanchin kata in Goju Ryu and related systems.
The image of the sweating, panting tension-ridden karateka has seeped into the public consciousness; isn’t that what you guys do? That and yell ‘Oss!’ at each other?
Not really.
In Wado?
Some branches of Wado karate made efforts to escape the stranglehold of ‘strength/tension is good’. Others, seldom think about it and carry on as if the conversation doesn’t need to happen. In Wado, here we have the curse of ‘just making Wado-like shapes’, only stronger. It’s very low down the evolutionary ladder.
Boys will be boys.
There’s no getting away from it, largely, this is a ‘guy’ thing. Seldom seen amongst female karateka.
The origin of it is quite simple…
Guys have a model in their heads of what the THINK strength looks like.
Self-awareness and conscious intelligent engagement.
The default for any instructor, Sensei or whatever, is that you have to consider that you are dealing with intelligent and reasonable individuals, who mostly want to change. I say ‘mostly’ because I have met people who are (educational term) ‘advice resistant’. This just creates an extra barrier.
Based upon my experience, most of these individuals fall into these general categories:
· ‘I’m not doing anything wrong; this is just me showing my strength/spirit/energy’ whatever… If that’s the case, you’ve got a mountain to climb with this person. Plus, they are not really valuing your opinion – another problem that needs addressing.
· ‘Yeah, I know, I just get carried away’. Well have a little self-awareness and just self-regulate!
· ‘I know you keep saying that, I think I get it’ (but deep down you don’t, because you are not aware of what it feels like. There’s a reality gap that needs bridging).
You could apply that old learning trope of:
Unconscious Incompetence: You don’t know how to do something, and you don’t realize that you don’t know it.
· Conscious Incompetence: You realize you lack the skill and notice your gaps.
· Conscious Competence: You can do the task, but it takes hard work and focus.
· Unconscious Competence: The skill becomes second nature and easy to do.
That would all be nice, but it’s never as simple as that. (Above definitions courtesy of AI Gemini).
Ultimately, it’s all about how you converse with your own body, often coupled with an inability to see yourself as others see you (particularly your teacher). On that last point, I have noticed than when a video recording is used for feedback, it can help to bridge the reality gap, but it’s not the magic bullet.
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