Victory depends on your ability to distinguish vulnerable points from invulnerable ones.
A master said this many years ago. If you train hard there will be more points that are vulnerable to you but also if you train hard you will also have more resistance and less vulnerable spots for your opponent to hit. Now that does not mean you are invulnerable if you train hard in Shotokan karate or any other martial art but it sure helps. Not only is your body harder and strong muscles can certainly withstand more than weak flabby muscles but educated muscles can also withstand even more. What do I mean by that? Proper response to a strike will make the damage negligible or at least lessen the damage. Boxers learn to roll with a punch to lessen the force that they actually receive. Football players often go with a hit and go into a roll if necessary. I teach my students to do all of the above and more. To lesson the impact to your abdomen, you must time both the tensing of your ab muscles and also let the air out of you body to act as a cushion. When you do this, you don’t get the wind knocked out of you because you anticipated and breathed out with the strike, thereby lessening it.
Bending or changing the direction of force is not that difficult once you learn the idea but full resistance is difficult. Kinda like marriage. I won’t go there! But there’s a great saying; you have to go along, to get along. Kinda makes sense in this aspect if you think about it. A palm tree will bend nearly over in a major tropical storm but the next day, if the roots hold up, they are standing up tall as if nothing ever happened. Palm trees bend, but they don’t break. I do love Florida but not tropical storms. I sat out a tropical storm once and thought every tree would blow away and the next day the palm trees stood straight up as if to defy the weather.
Remember, Victory depends on your ability to distinguish vulnerable points from invulnerable ones, but sometimes we can be less vulnerable.
Written by:
Sensei Perry Culver 6th degree Shotokan Karate, 1st degree Syu Sin Do (pressure points & joint locks)
Chief Instructor of Culver Karate Club in Connellsville, PA 724-626-KICK (5425)
