Starting Goshinjutsu
For more years than I can remember I followed the martial teachings generated over the last hundred years or so and passed down in classes, seminars and conventional books.
I was happy to carry out all the pre-planned actions and reactions in kicking and punching, throws and takedowns, and learning my set movement pieces (kata).
I never queried the realities of trying to use for real some of the convoluted stances and techniques carefully choreographed for each particular attack.
I enjoyed the sport aspects where a referee always monitored the outcome of encounters and illegal actions. In the 1970’s the karate was hard with lots of physical contact and the judo was just physically demanding as always, and although I never got involved in the kung fu scene, I believe they also had parallel situations.
I was never exposed to the fear of a sudden and savage attack where no rules existed and your attacker had a mindset to do you massive damage without care or conscience!
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I began going to various seminars around the country and came across the occasional senior individual in martial groups who had spent time in the fields of body guarding, night club or pub ‘bouncing’, strong policing or similar areas where they had to deal with aggressive confrontation in low/no rules situations.
They had found that their martial skills had to be re-interpreted and ‘toughened up’ from the dojo applications in order combat the aggressive incidents encountered. Their art had moved back from being one of sports and self-perfection (ju-do, karate-do, ai-ki-do) format, to one of pure self-protection and martial combat – jutsu techniques.
This aspect I liked!
The original reason I joined a martial art club in the first place (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) was NOT to find my inner self and become a better member of society, but to burn off excess energy and learn a working self-defence method to protect myself, or my family!
As a by-product of martial arts training, the concentration, teamwork and appreciation of the consequences of use of violence will change you for the better over the years.
Over a period of time, the information I took away from these teachers and their books started to make sense and I could overlay their modifications on top of my existing martial skills. These changes made a massive difference in my confidence in the ability of martial arts to work outside of the training area!
Some of these teachers have spent much of their senior martial art life looking for answers to the same questions I was asking. They have spent thousands of hours investigating and revealing the secrets hidden in the older documents available.
These secrets were then used to re-interpret the body movements in kata as if two people were involved in each movement, where to strike special points on the body, how to strike them, at what angle, in what sequence, and what results are expected.
Performed solo, kata are a personal aide memoir of a sequence of individual situations where the realities of the actions to be taken are in the performers head against an imaginary enemy and so are carefully hidden from observer’s eyes. Solo kata will not help improve the dynamic interaction and timing that occurs between two opponents.
Looking into the average dojo shows that perhaps many people teaching and training in their martial art are not closely following that essential information – because it was hidden and the explanations never passed on! The body shape is there, but the kata has become a solo dance in fresh air to be demonstrated with power and ki-ai for a grading.
That’s not to say that many of these people are not strong and athletic and capable of giving someone good ‘punishment’ anyway!
I remember seeing in one well-known martial arts magazine where people at an international meeting of their group were showing ‘made up’ kata being performed to music! Personally, this is a shift too far from the norm for me.
I also remember attending my first George Dillman seminar in London in 1994 at Sutton, London. George was dropping grizzled old yudansha like flies using his knowledge of karate kata and pressure points. One was heard to moan he’d been wasting time “…learning all these kata for the past 30 years…”
George explained that the time had not been wasted; all he had to do was learn and add the missing information into the equation to make the moves realistic and literally ‘deadly’ effective.
So I’m grateful to the ‘Masters’ such as George Dillman, Vince Morris, Peter Browne, Peter Consterdine, Geoff Thompson, Tom Muncy, Rick Moneymaker, Russell Stutely, Tim Larkin and others whose seminars and books have made my martial art richer, more effective, and more efficient by giving me the ways and means and the understanding that goes with them.
Malcolm Keith
Chief Instructor
Youshiki Goshinjutsu
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