The Three K's of Karate: Part I (Kihon)

It’s interesting that various styles of Karate can be as different from one another as any two completely different martial arts, yet nearly all of them subscribe to the idea that the so-called three K’s (kihon, kata, and kumite) are Karate’s foundation.  In my classes and personal practice, I no longer do many stereotypical Karate movements.  You don’t see people sitting in horse stance punching at the air.  You don’t see anyone memorizing and performing artistic katas.  Similarly you’ll never see any ritualized ippon or sanbon kumite.  This doesn’t mean I've forsaken the three K's and I'm doing kickboxing in a gi. I just take a more liberal interpretation of them.

Kihon are basics. Typically in Karate this involves using exaggerated and hyper-stylized form, different from what you  would use during sparring.  Students get used to low postures and exaggerated movements in the beginning for strengthening and  progress to using a more natural stance with compact movements when they are more advanced.  By practicing this way they wind up committing one set of movements to muscle memory which they need to completely retrain later on.  This is inefficient, especially as most of us are hobbyists with a limited amount of time to practice.  It's even more of a problem if you begin Karate later in life as an adult and don't have five years to throw away on something you'll need to unlearn later.

Many of the bad habits you can develop from kihon (such as hands pulling back to the ribs instead of to the jaw to guard yourself) can be very difficult to untrain and can get you into trouble during sparring.  That isn’t to say no good effects come from traditional kihon.  Proper hip-rotation mechanics can come as a result of it, but boxers develop identical mechanics without the need to learn two completely separate ways of moving. 

In short, karateka want to be able to move like this:

Yet most spend countless hours practicing their basics like this: 

Compare this to a boxer practicing his basics.  It looks just like what he will use in an actual match:

  

Still, focusing on the basics is a good idea in Karate, or any activity you want to excel in.  The key for more modern, efficient training is simply to focus on the actual movements you plan to use in sparring from day one.  Judo also has some training movements that are intended to be more foundational than practical.  For example there is a throw uke goshi, that is generally not very effective, but needs only a slight addition to become harai goshi or uchi mata, both of which are very useful in competition.  Uke goshi is simpler and lays a foundation for doing the more advanced techniques.  Furthermore, there are classical, textbook techniques where you learn the mechanics that make the throws work, as well as competition variations which aren’t as pretty, but may suit one body type better than another.  The difference between Judo’s method and Karate kihon, however, is judoka are not expected to learn two completely separate ways of moving.  Instead, the student learns a basic way and continues to build on it as he progresses.

So, instead of having new students punch the air in kiba dachi or sanchin dachi with their hands on their hips, I teach them how to punch the same way I got proficient at it: by holding focus mitts for them and correcting their form while they punch it.  The very first thing I do is get them into their basic fighting stance, keeping their hands up the entire time, and drill them on the footwork involved with no upper body involved at all.  Then we add the hips turning to the footwork, but no actual punches are being thrown yet.  After this we begin throwing some light punches in the air.  Shortly after, we move to performing the punch against the focus mitts.  Finally students progress to moving around, as if they were fighting with the pad-holder, while performing their punches.  The pad holder will often help them practice their defense at the same time by striking back at them with the pads after the punch. 

This all seems so basic (kihon are basics after all), but the majority of Karate schools, even the good ones, are not training with this practice-it-like-you-use-it-from-day-one mentality.  This fact saddens me, because it dooms students to a much longer path than is necessary to become proficient, which means most will quit before ever experiencing how enjoyable Karate is when you’re decent at it. Karate is, by its nature, a very minimalistic art compared to Judo, Jujutsu, and most other arts that have a much wider array of techniques, so a strong emphasis on continually practicing the basics should remain central to the art.  That being said, instructors should reconsider what parts of our own development were truly building blocks toward becoming proficient and which were hurdles.