Teaching Vs Learning Karate 3 - More Authentic Learning

This is the third post in a series that compares traditional teaching to the learning that occurs in the best karate dojos.

If you've read posts 1 and 2, you may be saying, "wait a minute - karate is not authentic, because my sensei is all into bowing, and ousing, and we punch the air all the time." And if he or she does, you have a point - I concede that not all karate teaching is authentic, and in fact, I'm arguing for much more of teaching in karate to be authentic. You can find plenty of commentary, such as 24 Fighting Chickens and Bruce Lee who make the point that traditional karate is non-authentic.

Let's return to some more authentic and inauthentic examples of training.

Take stances. We spend lots of time learning in shotokan karate about front stance. Front stance is authentic only if your goal is traditional art - then it's used primarily in kata. For any kind of self defense or sparring, kumite stance is used. It is a springy stance alowing movement in any direction and great power. On rare occasions, you might see someone shift from kumite stance to front stance for a finishing blow.

If your goal is self-defense or sport karate, authentic training should be tied to your skill level. You might start with one-step kumite, which pairs people into defender, attacker pairs. Initially, the attacker tells the defender what's coming, executes, and it's up to the defender to get out of the way, parry, block, or counter-attack as appropriate. Still, you might ask, why is that authentic? Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't - it depends on the skill level of the practitioners. If at least one of the karateka is not experienced, at least one-step kumite slows things down so that the less experienced person doesn't get clobbered, and has a chance to develop awareness, timing, and can be comfortable in these simplified situations before moving on.

Sidebar: in an earlier post, I mentioned "scaffolding" where the difficulty of learning situations is progressively increased. Learning theorists sometimes call a goldilocks exercise like this that is not too hard and yet not too easy, a zone of proximal development or ZPD. The goal of every instructor should be to find the ZPD for his or her students. Let's return to the example.

Let's say the students have become comfortable with one-step kumite. It's easy to increase the difficulty while controlling for safety by adding parry-and-counter to the initial attack. In parry-and-coutner, the defender knows what's coming, but has to parry and counter-attack. A more difficult progression is to limit the number of moves to 2 or 3, tell the defender that one of the set is coming, but not which. Good sensei's progress until free-sparring is developed.

Taking authenticity one step further, are folks like Peyton Quinn who developed "Adrenal Stress Conditioning". The dress attackers up in big padded suits, develop realistic scenarios, add screaming and shouting, and then freak the defenders out. The purpose is not to overwhelm them, but to teach them as authentically yet safely as possible. Authentically, because in real life, you often get freaked out, your adrenaline kicks in, and your motor control and vision degrade considerably. "Redman" is a variant that many law enforcement agencies use. If you're not freaked out by one assailant, then they use two. If that's not bad enough, they arm them. You get the point.

Meanwhile, back in the classroom...

Johny is doing times tables and copying spelling words. He's probably wishing he could put his teacher through some authentic red man training. Maybe then the students could start doing some authentic learning.