The Bow

Hi Jason

While I agree with the benefits of training headbutts, I'm really not sure about the bow connection.

While much of kata is codified and requires unpacking and interpretation, I'm not sure the same can be said of the bow. We know well what it is used for as this has not changed over time and is still used on a daily basis. 

Headbutts exist within some of the kata but I think the bow itself is a separate entity.

Is what you are doing, is using it as an analogy to remind your students that everything they do has martial implications? 

Hi Gavin

As Karate is a complete fighting system i believe that everything you do within karate has a self-defence application to it, the Bow could be used as a self-defence technique if necessary. Its important that students have a quick defence move while the hands are in pockets and in a close quarter situation,the bow could prove very useful. I alway break down movments and  techniques and show a plausable self-defence  technique so students have a full understanding of whats going on and everything they do can be used in defence and attack. Of course this is only my theory and views on karate.

Kind Regards

Jason Lester

Jason Lester wrote:

...ones hands may be in their pockets as someone is giveing a lot of  verbal abuse

Yes, because I'd really have my hands stuffed way down in my pockets in that sort of situation! [Did they even have trouser pockets in ancient Japan/Okinawa?] The bows are just bows. Really.

I can see how the link between a bow, and indeed other forms of reigi (etiquette) including the salutations can 'have' martial applications - I just disagree they were meant for that.

Personally I find more use for them in the context they were designed for, and this is nearly always symbolism, cultural etc etc.

I do not believe everything in karate is combat realted.

It can be used that way, yes. However the bow is a sign of respect and has been practiced as such in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, plus North and South America for many years.  And in most cultures who practiced bowing also had access to swords, pikes and firearms. Therefore why would a Samurai use a headbutt when his short sword would do far more damage? As I stated in another thread last week after so many years add on bunkai begin to appear and there's nothing wrong with that, so long as the bunkai and movement complement one another, its just we can come away with a skewed since of history, if not careful.

I don't know the excact history here, but I wonder, was alot of bowing a part of kata practice originally anyway?

I know when kata is done in large groups formally, people bow, but it seems in groups where less formal training is the norm, there is not a  ton of bowing going on anyway, I have to wonder whether the constant bowing seen in Japanese influenced Karate is universal, or a relatively new thing. Anyone know?

You could interpret the bow as a technique if you wanted, but that's only because it's so simple that it could be superficially compared to many things, you could say the same thing about..yanjigo I think it's called where you readjust after kata practice in a group, it's a simple movement that could have come combative compenent if you wanted, but it probably was not meant that way.

Im not sure if they had pockets in  ancient okinawa,lol, but we do live in modern times. being an ex doorman i have been in a few situations when faced with a confrontaion were my hands have in deed been in my pockets so i was speaking from my own personal experiences so it is a effective technique if needed. So yes a bow is a bow but can be used as a defence technique also.

"As Karate is a complete fighting system i believe that everything you do within karate has a self-defence application to it"

While this is probably a great guiding principle when looking at kata and bunkai I think applying that maxim to the bow is taking it too far. Where does it stop?

Lowering into seiza being a defence against someone punching you?

Tying your belt a guide to how to garrot someone or tie their hands?

Sometimes a movement in Karate (and other martial arts) if simply a cultural specific or significant movement that has hitched a ride with the more pragmatic stuff. I think bowing fits that category.

PASmith wrote:

Sometimes a movement in Karate (and other martial arts) if simply a cultural specific or significant movement that has hitched a ride with the more pragmatic stuff. I think bowing fits that category.

Agreed. The bow is a repsect enforcing tradition that is rooted in the culture that karate comes from. There is weight to the idea that no movement in karate, specifically kata, should be treated as a wasted move however, the bow does not fall into that catagory. At my school, we often tell new students that bowing is a way to show repect to everyone in the room, as if making a mass handshake.

"Before I learned martial arts, a punch was just a punch and a kick was just a kick. When I studied martial arts, a punch was no longer just a punch and a kick was no longer just a kick. Now I understand martial arts, and a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

Bruce Lee

He did talk a load of old twaddle didn't he...

I am pretty sure that the Japanese formal bow was never originally intended as a practical fighting technique but if it can be adapted to work as such then brilliant.

The ettiquette of the Japanese martial arts does contain lessons for self protection though on several levels. I am sure many people will have heard about the peculiar methods of sitting and standing being optimised for maintaining spatial awareness and allowing instantaneous action in everyday movement for example. 

Perhaps on an even more fundamental level, the attitude of humility and respect that such gestures formalise and signify is a way to reduce the chances of getting into a confrontation in the first place. The Japanese of the past were rather paranoid about those kinds of concerns after all.

Clearly specific cultural practices won't be directly applicable everywhere but the principle is universal. 

Gavin Mulholland wrote:

He did talk a load of old twaddle didn't he...

No, I'm going to defend my point here. I think I see what he's getting at.

A punch is a punch. A Kick is a kick. A wristlock is a wristlock. But what about when a kick is an armlock? Consider:

So now the Martial Artist may think that a hook kick isn't a kick but is actually an armlock. We could cite many examples of this. But we can transcend this and accept that a hook kick is a hook kick and an armlock, that just happens to have a similar motion for entry... is an armlock. A bow is a bow. A headbutt is a headbutt.

Although I have just remembered this. It's worth seeing to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7auvfjC8-0&ob=av3e

Lol. Touché Tau.

Tau...you might wanna think about controlling his body with that arm lock.

It's basically an omoplata variation but if you don't control the body he'll be able to forward roll out of it.

PASmith wrote:

It's basically an omoplata variation

Oh yes, although a lot less applicable. I don't think it'd ever work in reality or in competition. It's still a fun technique.

Devil's advocate:  I honestly thought the bow at the start of kata could be interpeted as a ground fighting move. 

That's meant to be funny, not flaming.

Last night in class, I swept a guy using a boxers "jab" to make the point that anything can usually be **interpreted** as something else.  That's neither bad nor good by itself, and studying so-called 'known' combative aplications for additive non-typical purposes can add a lot to an advanced level study of the offensive and defensive uses of the body.  But personally, I would argue that 'interpretation' in general is a 'less efficient' form of training.  To me, its less important how a skill is **represented** for curricular puropses than it is to develop 'alive' methods of allowing student's to practice actual head-butting (or whatever).

And, as an aside on the subject of headbutts, I do teach them, but I have begun, after an article I read recently from Hock Hockheim describing their 50%+- or more chance of knocking out and/or scrambling the inititator's mental CPU, to substitute the 'nearly as effective' shoulder butt (assuming you are grip attached).  I know they are popular In England and you all probably know someone who has done one effetcively.  The article I read made the quite convincing point that you generally see a lot of these represented in RBSD curriculums without the actial application, and that, even if successful, the tactic runs the risk of even temporarily disadvantaging the initiator almost as much as the receiver.   So, barring the non-attached preemptive use of the forward headbutt (or positional variations like using it as a bear-hug defense when attacked from behind) , the shoulder butt is (I would argue) just as effective in the clinch, and without the associated risk of head trauma to the initiator.  So I switched, although I do show various 'last resort' applications to students.  Point:  I don't know that I would want people thinking of, and reinforcing the mental map of 'headbutt' everytime they opened and closed a form, class and the like.

But, all that said, I do seriously commend the creative interpretation of what is likely to have been a social legacy movement...  You are, I believe, absolutely correct that a headbutt can be 'read' into a form with the exact same level of associated 'interpretation' that a great many throws, locks and the like are.