This article was compiled by Simon McMahon from an article by Geoff Thompson, author of “The 3 Second Fighter” and many other books.
Sensei Kidby often mentions the term “Muscle Memory” in relation to our
training and sparring, telling us that to be effective we have to make
it real. Pulling punches in the Dojo, like in sports karate, leads to
pulling punches in the street, he comments. Although we believe our
instructor implicitly, I think some of us may doubt the reality of such
an expression as “muscle memory”, believing that if and when the crunch
comes, they will be able to defend themselves and use all their skills
to the full.
To this end and to stress the point further, I recently came across the
following article on the subject of muscle memory and I would advise
all exponents of karate to read, digest and then decide for themselves.
It may well make you rethink your training style.
The author of the article, Geoff Thompson, has a long history of
martial arts from traditional karate, through semi and full contact
karate to writing books and creating videos on self defense. He
continues to train and runs seminars on self defense.
You can see more of what Geoff is about at www.geoffthompson.com
Geoff Thompson says in his article…..
Did you hear the one about the circus knife thrower that tried to kill
his wife but every time he threw a knife at her he missed? He had
trained so hard and for so long to just miss her that when he actually
wanted to hit her he couldn’t. His muscle memory was tuned into missing
the target.
I was at a traditional karate championship in the Midlands some years
ago watching fine displays of competition fighting by some of the top
point scorers in the country. One of the fighters, a member of the
Midlands squad and an excellent 3rd Dan competition fighter with 20
years karate experience approached me and asked for some advice. For
the benefit of the article, we’ll refer to him as T.
It turned out that T had recently been involved in a fracas outside a
local night club. He had had a good night out with his brother and a
friend and they had left the club late to make their way home. Crossing
the road he caught the eye of two aggressive looking young lads on the
opposite side of the street, both about 20.
“What are you looking at?” the lad shouted at him. Because the question
was completely unexpected he didn’t really know what to say so he
hesitated. Before he knew it, the young lad had crossed the road with
his mate and was reiterating the challenge, “Do you want some then, do
ya, do ya!”
His brother and his friend tried to pull T away, telling him not to get
involved. The lad got very aggressive, with his mate behind him for
backup and started pushing. Instinctively, T threw a punch at the guy
and landed what would have been the perfect knock out blow on his
aggressor’s jaw – had he not pulled the punch on impact with perfect
competition wining control.
His brother pulled him away, telling him to leave it and they turned
and walked away. As they walked T felt a heavy blow to the back of his
head followed by a few more, his brother and friend suffering the same
fate. Soon all three were on the ground and received a severe kicking.
In confiding in me, T asked why he hadn’t performed, why had he pulled
his punch? He had spent his whole adult life training in the fighting
arts and on his first real encounter it had let him down. The bumps and
bruises didn’t bother him – it was the fact that he felt so ineffectual
in the encounter. His attackers were nobodies, probably never having
trained a day in their lives. T was so distraught that he considered
giving up karate.
First, I told T not to abandon his art. The traditional style he
practiced has a good style, a hard style. What he needed to do was
change the way he trained. You get what you train for. If you train for
total control and practice thousands of pulled punches, day in day out
then when you are attacked pulled punches is what you will deliver.
It’s called muscle memory. When you repetitively train a technique it
will become a reaction, what we call automatism. The thing to remember
is that the untrained person in the street does not suffer from muscle
memory as they have never been trained to pull their punches, so they
will attack with haymaker punches and kicks with their full power
behind them.
I remember many years ago at a big international semi-contact meeting
in France when things got out of hand and tempers started to fray, the
whole contest arena exploded and everyone started fighting for real.
There were some of the best fighters in Europe at this competition, but
amazingly not a single injury was incurred. This was not because the
fighters were incapable – they were brilliant – but it was because
muscle memory pumped out what they had diligently trained for, to pull
blows. In actual fact it was not the karate that was ineffectual, but
that these guys, like the circus knife thrower, were trained to miss,
not hit.
Muscle memory is a good thing if you train it correctly, if you want to
feed out contact blows in a real scenario, then contact blows is what
you must train for. Muscle memory also affects your reactions to
capitulation. If you stop in the dojo when you get a bloody lip, when
you’re tired or feeling sick or scared, then that’s exactly what you
should expect in a real situation. So in the controlled environment you
must treat it as thought it were for real – if you stop in a real fight
because of something minor, then you’ll be waking up with a crowd
around you.
The views of Geoff Thompson are of course his own, as he is a
professional full contact fighter and master of self-defense
situations, so much so that he has written many books on the subject.
The use of this article for our purposes is not to advocate the use of
unnecessary force and power during training sessions but to make the
student aware of muscle memory from real situations.
Sensei Kidby instructs us to view all our training as “the real thing”,
including basics and kata, imagining an opponent in front of us to give
us focus. To this end we train to land the punch, kick or lock but not
to put the pain on. This forms our muscle memory and we feel what it is
like to land techniques instead of pulling short of target. We also get
to feel what it is like to be on the end of a technique, whether it be
a punch, kick or lock, before the pain is put on.
If you’ve never been hit in a real situation, when it comes you might
be so shocked you’ll pause before the adrenaline kicks in and open
yourself up to more attacks. Knowing that when we train and we have to
connect with the target allows us, and our muscle memory, to know that
in a real situation we can put the pain on and end a difficult
situation quickly.
Sensei Simon McMahon
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