Martial Arts Cross-Training - Enhancing Karate
Martial Arts Cross-Training - Vagabond Warriors
Today’s lesson continued my teacher client from Cotswold Karate School’s progress with using Muay Thai martial arts cross-training methods to enhance his own martial art of Wado-Ryu Karate. As with my Taekwondo students who come to me for cross-training, I emphasise the point that my training is no longer in traditional martial arts. I have no basic training in Karate other than the abstract link to Taekwondo, which I haven’t formally trained in since the 1990s and various Chinese martial arts, which I haven’t trained in since the early 2000s. My knowledge of Karate comes from a generic overview of martial arts their history and traditions via writing on them and through such connections as my very good friend and practical karate pioneer Iain Abernethy. My martial arts cross-training service, especially to traditionalists, is not to teach them their base or primary art. My job is to provide them experiences and methods to use other systems. This is Clubb Chimera Martial Arts approach I call Vagabond Warriors.
Anyway, before I get back into that this was the outline of sparring rounds I devised to continue with his knowledge on knee strikes and how to better incorporate them into the practical application of the karate kata naihanchi. Along with elbow strikes (already covered in detail on this blog and via my YouTube channel), these will be part of a seminar I will be teaching to my client’s Cotswold Karate School in our seminar in September. Last week we revised the pure Muay Thai approach through a series of ecological dynamics Constraints-Led Approach rounds.
Specific Sparring
This week we brought the gi jacket into play, training half the rounds with it on and half without:
Round 1: Basic Grip Fighting
Cross-Training Element: Non-jacketed Wrestling/grappling systems (Greco-Roman, Catch-as-Catch-Can etc.)
Constraint: Only grips and their defence permitted. No takedowns, but breaking posture is encouraged.
Goal: Establish and defend no-gi grips.
Rounds 2-3: Basic Grip Dominance versus Disengagement
Cross-Training Element: Non-jacketed Wrestling/grappling systems (Greco-Roman, Catch-as-Catch-Can etc.)
Goal: Fighter A tries to establish plum or a dominant grip such as double under-hooks or a “boss” grip whilst Fighter B tries to disengage.
Rounds 4: The Exit Only Clinch (For Inside Fighting)
Cross-Training Element: Muay Thai
Goal: Both fighters start chest-to-chest in a Thai plum (neck tie). The moment a fighter completely breaks the clinch, they must immediately disengage and step completely out of striking range. Win the position inside, throw an effective knee or sweep, and cleanly disengage safely.
Round 5: Setting the Target
Cross-Training Element: Jacketed wrestling/grappling systems (Judo, BJJ, Sambo, Cornish)
Constraint: Only grips on clothing and their defence permitted. No takedowns, but breaking posture is encouraged.
Goal: Establish and defend grips on collar and sleeves to secure targets.
Round 6-7: Basic Grip Dominance versus Disengagement
Cross-Training Element: Jacketed wrestling/grappling systems (Judo, BJJ, Sambo, Cornish)
Goal: Fighter A tries to establish plum or a dominant grip such as double under-hooks or a “boss” grip whilst Fighter B tries to disengage.
Rounds 8: The Exit Only Clinch (For Inside Fighting)
Cross-Training Element: Jacketed wrestling grappling systems, especially Sambo
Goal: Both fighters start chest-to-chest in a collar and elbow. The moment a fighter completely breaks the clinch, they must immediately disengage and step completely out of striking range. Win the position inside, throw an effective knee or sweep, and cleanly disengage safely.Win the position inside, throw an effective knee or sweep, and cleanly disengage safely.
CSI - Keeping Training Relevant and Realistic
Now, the above seems like a lot for this morning, and we trained over a two-hour period, but the majority of the lesson concerned my consultation. This was more a teacher consultation lesson. My client wished to discuss with me the progress and future of his club. This is what puts his school ahead of so many other traditional martial arts schools: the desire to continually adapt, grow and solve problems. I explained to him the Vagabond Warriors approach to cross-training.
The scaffolding of my teaching rests on a tripod of principles, using the acronym CLA: Clarification, Scepticism and Individuality. I will break down my client’s case using this method.
Clarification: This is where you set your macrocosmic and microcosmic objectives, goals and purpose. In my client’s case he wishes to preserve what he sees to be the essence of his martial art in a practical way. He sees his martial art as being rooted in self-protection principles for civilians and a lifelong discipline for personal improvement.
Scepticism: This is the employment of critical thinking. My client has been using various philosophical razors to strip away elements from the syllabus he inherited that do not serve what he sees as the original intentions of the marital art. There is much in the original founder’s teachings and at the heart of wado-ryu karate that argues for peaceful resolution to conflict, which is why my client teaches soft skills in personal security such as situational awareness, fear management, recovery and the legality of self-defence. He has cut out the sport karate aspect that has become a big part of Wado-ryu and the other main schools of karate because the format does not harmonise with holistic fighting methods.
Individuality: This is the bespoke part of training, where the training must be adapted and moulded to an individual. Here we face the biggest challenge, as my client works to establish the identity of the type of martial art he is teaching his students. He wants a martial art that is identifiably karate, but produces black belts who are competent in practising all unarmed ranges of combat in a live environment.
My advice is to keep kata at the heart of his art. This is the single objective line I use in my diagram for cross-training. Visualise a single objective path, which is usually your core system or goal. You then re-tread that path and tangent off it into cross-training. When cross-training, you focus on the respective discipline with no thought to anything else. The cross-training art is to then return your main objective path enriched with your cross-training experience. Do not “weld” new techniques to your core system. Rather train your core system and allow the attribute training to enhance that experience. Likewise, be aware of what I describe as “The Calypso Effect”. This is when the cross-training experience takes over and you become enamoured with the nuances of a specific cross-training art, and force-fit the methods of the art to meet the goals of your core art.
My seminar with him will further cover these teachings (taught on 26th September). It is also covered in my book “Mordred’s Victory and Other Martial Mutterings”.
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