Karate from the Ground Up. ¤ 1

There are some things that can be let go until later, and some things that should be properly rooted at the beginning and continually cultivated. Also, there are styles, and there are the fundamental principles of physics and neurophysiology that govern the effectiveness of all martial arts. What style one gravitates toward may be determined by body type of personal preference. Whether one attends to fundamentals or not determines what kind of progress one may make. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

Question: What happens when your two hands advance to attack him while your two feet retreat to escape him?

Your answer:

Lesson: It is imperative to keep your torso vertical under almost all circumstances.

Demonstrations: Being pushed or pulled while standing on tip-toe, while standing on a line perpendicular to your opponent's advance, while leaning toward opponent (guard against he-quan defense), or leaning away from opponent (guard against a qin-na or aikido defense).

Goals: You are going to learn how to maintain dynamic equilibrium, how to avoid giving momentum over into the control of your opponent, and how to use his/her analogous mistakes to your own advantage.

Methods: We are going to use "shaping." That means that we will establish certain fundamentals in the beginning and worry about certain details only later on. For instance, different styles point the front toe in different directions. None of these schools is wrong. Each has chosen a different direction because of a preference for the kind of advantage it gives. Eventually you want to be able to choose which direction you use according to circumstances. In the beginning we won't make a big issue of it. On the other hand, whether you let your center of gravity get out somewhere above your front toe or not is a big deal. (Demonstration.) So we will keep working, in various ways, on what you do with your center of gravity.

Bottom line: You knew this all along. Don't lean to far out the window.