Getting into fighting condition...

Recently I had the dubious privilege of finding out what it feels like to sprain a tendon in the wrist, as well as break off a toe nail - all in the space of one class. Thank God I heal like a gecko! The Eagle eyed among you may have noticed that my logo is a modified version of City of London Corporation's crest with a fist on it. Underneath are the Latin words "Domine Me Fortum Facit", which means God makes me strong. This is a reference to spirit and the notion that as long as there is spirit still residing within my body, I am not defeated and can get up and fight on. The opportunity always comes sooner than you think as was the case when I attended a Tuesday night training session under Sensei Linda Marchant at her Tooting Karate Club.

Sensei Linda Marchant warming up at seminar in Winchester

Sensei Linda's teachings at Tooting Karate Club expound on traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate with a high degree emphasis on preparing the body to withstand and deliver effective self defence techniques. What does that mean, I hear you ask. In layman's terms it means lots of sweat, puffing and panting as we bulldoze through a physical curriculum that builds the body in many ways for combat. The most basic levels would be increasing cardio ability, strength, stamina and flexibility. More advanced would be developing sharp reflexes and co-ordinated movements and more refined still would be increasing bone density and body conditioning to train the body to withstand the rigours of taking and delivering powerful blows.

Master Tan Soh Tin, Grandmaster of Nam Yang Pugilistic Association, once told me that in the old days, Kung Fu fighters would thrust their hands repeatedly into a wok full of hot pebbles as a way of developing hands that were formidable weapons. He also spoke of a tradition amongst masters practicing iron palm technique intensely, which was just to condition one hand so thoroughly it became almost like a paddle. This was the reason only one hand was conditioned to this degree - the other could then be used to wield chopsticks, to write and to do all the other things that don't involve carving someone up with bare hands that one needs hands to do! Somehow my feeble paw just didn't seem likely to stand up to the type of training needed to turn it into a paddle, not that my will to do such a thing was any the much stronger...

Training at Tooting Karate Club typically starts with Junbi Undo - a series of warm up exercises designed to limber up the body for the activities to follow. Whilst many are light stretching type exercises, some follow movements that Qigong practitioners would approve of, moving the fluids around the internal organs and shaking off the lymph. Later exercises provide mild toughening and cardio exercises such as striking one's palms with the knee or building the tendons and flexibility of the wrist so as to cope better with the possibility of it being locked or twisted by an opponent.

During Junbi Undo I felt a sense of "what am I doing this for? Why didn't I just take an early night" as one's initial movements stir up all the dross in one's stagnant lymph. As it starts to move and clear, so too the movements become easier. There definitely is a link between physiology and emotion.

Following Junbi Undo comes the fast strength and cardio training - intense sets of star jumps, press ups and sit ups interspersed with punches. Building a weapon to fight with out of your own body sure requires a lot of effort! It's at this stage the mental training is really starting. Whilst I might feel lazy and sluggish to start off with, now it's flat out to the count and the harder you start to pant, the more the mind considers stopping. You can consciously know that one more press up is not going to kill you, it's only going to make you stronger. Yet in that fleeting second where the count marches on, can you push your conscious thought to continue around your body louder and stronger than the subconscious concedes defeat?

In today's class, we moved through some basic techniques straight into body conditioning. For those of you who have no idea what that is, let's say that body conditioning is the moment when you realise just how tough professional fighters are! It's the moment when you can feel that no matter how great your technique seems, there are other dimensions to fighting.

Body conditioning, Okinawan style, builds the body up through impact training. As I understand, the human body is an incredibly adaptable vehicle and if exposed to something regularly, it reforms itself so as to deal with the experience. In the case of a martial artist, it's pretty useful if your knuckles don't break when you punch, that you don't get thrown mentally off guard by being shoved and that blocking doesn't leave you wincing. Regular practice makes it easier and using special exercises the bones become denser, the ligaments stronger and the body more used to impact.

Training personally with Sensei Linda, we begun by throwing roundhouse, or mawashi geri kicks, into each others tightened arms and lats. Not really hard, obviously, as Sensei Linda is quite capable of kicking me into my next rebirth, yet the contact was sufficient to give a feel and just enough discomfort for it to be strengthening without becoming injuring. That's perhaps the secret of doing a good conditioning session - knowing that too little doesn't build you up and too much knocks you down. Sensei Linda emphasised that time, patience and persistence in practicing little are often are the best route towards building a truly strong basis without injuring the body or aging it prematurely.

Next we moved on to working on the hands. Sensei Linda began by noting that we haven't enough stones to go around so we'd be using each other to toughen up on. With clenched fists we took turns to strike the other's palm using a hammer fist technique, thereby allowing the other to build their iron palm technique. Using clenched fists we used a backfist technique to strike the back of the other's clenched fist, almost like making a game of conkers out of getting rapped across the knuckles. Oh, that stings! And if that wasn't enough to make me realise how far removed from being a Kung Fu legend I was, we followed this with a real tear jerker! Using the open hand to strike with the back of the hand at the opponent who did likewise. Being that I had one hand in a bandage all class long, Sensei Linda and I had been pounding our (OK, my... ) left hand purple and after about the 10th strike my eyes began to water involuntarily and I began to yelp like a puppy who's foot had been trodden on! Sensei Linda, clearly completely unfazed by my efforts to point smiled and gave me a hug and released me from my failing facade of fierceness. Not only is she incredibly strong, her sensory acuity always amazes me.

We closed the session by practicing a variety of formal set moves or Kata. These combinations of techniques form the catalog of techniques from which Karate students draw and in Goju Ryu Karate, many of the Kata have their roots in Southern Kung Fu forms. With the body drawn to a heighten state by the conditioning, the practice of Kata is quite different! It encourages a broader perception of the difference between hard and soft style techniques.

Although it was less than two hours of training, each second seemed like an eternity of sorts whilst performing the hard conditioning. Whilst these sorts of traditional methods clearly promote a battle tank-like physique they do require determination and perseverance. To be at the level the legends speak about would require incredible spirit to excel and people like Sensei Linda Marchant have clearly preserved an element of this, developing hands that are powerful, resiliant and tough. And yet her hands have all the softness one would find desirable in a woman's hands with no deformities, callouses, restriction of movement or other such unattractive features. Truly they are like the well fashioned Samurai sword - beautiful yet deadly!