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Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture
Trapping in Karate

My thoughts on trapping in Karate, clip inspired by Chris Hanson from Karate Unity after his UK Seminar.

I had a great time at the seminar and we have exchanged our views on Karate and decided to do a collaboration videos.

This is the first one from me.

Thanks for watching!

Kind regards

Les

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Good video Les. I love how you contextualised things too.

General Thoughts: Trapping is an important but transitory skill. We use it to create openings for strikes or to achieve a dominant grip. While extended “trap-athons” can be one way to drill and isolate that fleeting skill, they are not to be confused with the real-world application of that skill (a point well made in Les’s video).

Marc MacYoung once compared trapping to driving your car though a bad neighbourhood. If you drive straight though, then no problem. If you breakdown in the middle of the neighbourhood, then you have a problem. The key, of course, is to drive through the neighbourhood.

If trapping gets you the shot or grip, then all is well. If it fails, then you lose the initiative and control, and the enemy could have the advantage.

It’s not about maintaining “trapping range” for an extended trap-athon though. That’s akin to putting on the handbrake and doing doughnuts in the middle of the bad neighbourhood! That’s not a good idea because it won’t get you where you want to be; no matter how “cool” it looks ;-) Crucially, even if that was the intention (a dumb move), the enemy will also move such that the range is still lost. Trapping is always fleeting in application, and only remains in play beyond the spit second in drills (hopefully not misunderstood drills) and movies.

As I’ve said many times before, I blame Jason Bourne. The close-up, trap-athon fight scenes in that movie have been so influential that you see the influence everywhere. Because most martial artists draw on movies for their idea of “reality”, we are now seeing trap-athons being presented as reality-based training. As I say, that fine as a clearly defined skill development drill. Not so if those drills are presented as application drills,

Stephen Kesting does a good job of discussing the applicability of trapping in this video. It supports many of the points made by Les.

All the best,

Iain

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Hi Iain Thank you I like the car analogy and agree, also thank you for Stephen's clip.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Les Bubka wrote:
I like the car analogy and agree

I like it too. I’ve stolen it from Marc and use it quite a bit … it even cropped up at yesterday’s seminar when we did some trapping and I marking the difference between “application drills” and “skill drills”.

Thanks once again for the video. Lots of great content in there.

All the best,

Iain

deltabluesman
deltabluesman's picture

I enjoyed this thread, a lot of interesting information and ideas.  It's funny how people from different styles and approaches can converge on the same answers to the same problems.  I've never seen that video from Stephan before, but it maps on exactly to my own experiences with this skill.  

I have been actively working to improve my trapping.  In my experience, this is a very valuable skill that rewards time investment.  I am primarily a no-gi grappler and don't claim any special expertise in trapping, but I actually like the fact that the trapping range often leads right into the clinching range.  It creates a lot of opportunities.  

In the mid-2000s, I noticed a lot of reality-based guys (and MMA guys) arguing that trapping was a BS skill set that had no value.  I think this was based on a misconception.  (Maybe some of that was a backlash against certain forms of JKD, I'm not sure).  I'm now seeing trapping making a comeback in those circles. 

I personally use it often in sparring, with pretty good results.  In particular, I like this kind of hand trapping:

 

This is for consensual fighting (with perhaps some limited self-protection carryover).  I started off using it as a trick, but then I discovered other ways of applying the principle.  It quickly turned into a core part of my skill set, and I use it in a lot of different situations. 

I think we'll continue to see development in this area, with a lot of people "rediscovering" how useful trapping can really be.  And of course, it's been part of karate all along.

My two cents.   

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

deltabluesman wrote:
In the mid-2000s, I noticed a lot of reality-based guys (and MMA guys) arguing that trapping was a BS skill set that had no value.  I think this was based on a misconception.

I agree misconception are at the heart of this. I think the strongest critique tends to be based on the confusion between skill development drills and application drills. However, that confusion exists within the most vocal proponents of trapping as well as in those who critique it. Extended trap-athons (that should be understood as skill development drills) are presented as “reality” and hence that kind of trapping is quite rightly rejected.

We see a similar thing with kata. It’s useful or useless depends entirely on what is meant by “kata”, and the wider training matrix that does or does not supports it. Some of the criticisms of kata from the outside karate are legitimate because of how kata is misunderstood within some sections of the karate community. We can’t blame non-karateka for believing kata to be “an alternative to sparring because the techniques within it are too deadly to spar with”, and quite rightly criticising such a ludicrous proposition, when there are karateka saying those things and feeding that critique. As I say, I see a very similar thing with trapping.

People do tend to take binary positions on these things and nuanced discussion is not something normally associated with martial arts.

deltabluesman wrote:
I personally use it often in sparring, with pretty good results.  In particular, I like this kind of hand trapping:

That is functional trapping. It’s also a kind of “short hitike with gloves on”.

If we drill such functional trapping as it would be applied, and in conjunction with other methods (i.e. the strikes and grips that immediately follow), then we have an application drill.

If we create a drill that has a series of such functional traps end to end, then we have a drill made up of nothing but functional traps which is nevertheless divorced from reality because they are practiced out of context. Such a drill will allow the repeated practice of isolated trapping i.e. it is a skill development drill. If that drill was presented as being representative of how the methods contained within would be applied in reality, then problems arise; as do legitimate criticisms.

One of the reasons I prefer the label “limb-control” over the label “trapping” is that it avoids the baggage that “trapping” has in the minds of some due to the fairly widespread conflation of the associated skill development drills with direct application.

All the best,

Iain

deltabluesman
deltabluesman's picture

Iain,

Thank you, I appreciate the response.  I see what you mean about the difference between skill development drills and application drills, and I also see why it makes sense to call it "limb control" instead of trapping.  It seems to me that one of the great strengths of pragmatic karate (as recorded in the traditional kata) is how it teaches the principles of effective limb control without veering too far into overly-complex trapping routines.  As I see it, even the short hikite with gloves on is still consistent with the principles of limb control shown in Heian and other kata, even though it's in an abbreviated form and a different context.