How tension can ruin your karate, and what can be done about it.

Excessive rigidity and hanging on to strength is a total curse.

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.

This model is not compatible with high levels in human movement skills like the martial arts. But it becomes so hard-wired that unless alternative models are presented in a very practical way, young men will keep retreating into the default. Literally, sometimes they have to feel it.

It’s not a case of re-programming alone, certainly not something that is coming to them solely from an outside stimulus. There are other factors at play.

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.

You are not alone.

Speaking from personal experience, I had to work hard to re-educate my body over a number of years, because the mode of Wado that I had been operating under for the first seventeen years of my training was very much just the ‘harder, faster, stronger’ variety with all the rigidity that came with it. It was a devil of a job, and, under pressure, I still catch elements of it rising to the surface that I have to dial-back.

A couple of approaches for teachers to try that might deliver some positive results:

Nag, nag, nag and keeping nagging! Exhausting I know.

Or you could try…

Take the student to the point where muscular tension just can’t hold out and so the technique has to come from somewhere.

Examples.

I used to attend courses where a particular Sensei would enjoy setting the target of 1000 punches, all done static. We all knew this was going to throw up specific challenges.

One time, I had an Italian Dan grade next to me in the line. On every count he powered it like he was pushing a steam locomotive (with appropriate breathing). I knew exactly what was going to happen. He got to about 250 and couldn’t sustain it, his muscles were giving out, particularly ones that contributed little to the actual punching action. Fortunately, on that particular day he was in a minority. The majority had previously had the lecture about ‘unnecessary tension’ and were aware of how this was going to play out.

Actually, we all learned this lesson from the very early days whilst in the UKKW, but, at that time we were not smart enough to figure out the value of it.

On the big week-long courses from the 70’s and 80’s, the Japanese Sensei would break you down and build you back up again. It was through the harsh attrition found in absolute exhaustion that something special would happen. I noticed that when the courses were over my movements were more economical, using muscle tensions that were appropriate to the job. The hanging on to power had all but disappeared. But, I never joined the dots, neither did anyone else.

Conscious muscle tension.

I was taught this technique by my late friend Tim Dixon, who advised me to use it to eliminate pre-contest nerves. The technique was to consciously tighten up all the muscles in your body and then release them. This systematic switching on and off seemed to drain away all the useless tension (and the stresses). It works really well with anything to do with overt tension.

Conclusion.

I will circle back to what I consider the biggest problems:

· The malformed image in some people’s heads of what they THINK strength looks like and feels like.

· The disconnect; the illusion that they assume they know what their bodies are doing, causing a fall-back on to engrained habits, without the self-awareness and the tools to do the job.

I don’t want to put this solely in the hands of the student. The Sensei has to contribute; possibly in two ways; firstly, by explaining it (and repeating it where necessary) and secondly, by living up to that mode of operating themselves, so that hopefully the student can see it.

A final solution – ever thought of hypnotherapy?

1. With apologies to Sugasawa Sensei, who I borrowed this idea from.