Never step back

There is too much philosophy in Karate, and it's mostly the poorly-thought-out kind.

We do a thing called step sparring. I've always been taught that you face your partner close enough to touch. The designated attacker takes one step back, and we are now ready to start. A recent visitor insisted that the designated attacker must step forward, not back.

No big deal, I suppose, but it makes correct distance harder to gage. People can get hurt in step sparring. Safety is facilitated by accurate distance, and the step forward makes correct spacing much harder to judge.

Why did he insist on the step forward instead of back? He said, "In Karate we don't back up."

Really? We don't? Seems awfully short-sighted to me. But let's assume I'm wrong.

With either version of step sparring, the next movement has the designated attacker taking one step forward punching, and the defender taking one step backward blocking.

Did you catch that? The defender takes a step backward. The instructor's philosophy said we don't step back, but we do. Not well thought out.

I suppose it doesn't matter all that much if we step forward or back to set up step sparring most of the time. It will matter tomorrow, as we have a different visitor coming to do belt exams. Last time he was here we had six people testing. All did the step-back setup to that part of the test, and all passed. If the examiner had wanted step-forward, he surely would have mentioned it, even if he was willing to let it go.

I honestly don't know what he wants.

In the old days it was much easier for me to anticipate what examiners wanted. I used to write my own notes during exams on my students. Later, the examiner would tell me in detail what he had seen for each student. I would amend my notes accordingly. Usually, I had nothing to add or remove from what I had written. I knew all the test techniques for every belt by heart.

But that is beside the point. I was nattering about philosophy.

Take Karate punching. It is fabulous. It is fast, and very strong. But it does have one annoying weakness. The punches are straight. This is good, unless the opponent has a strong block in place. I'm not saying we need a hook. What we should have is the equivalent of an overhand right. This is where your punch's trajectory curves just enough to go around a defensively placed arm. Why not? Philosophy.

Fight on the ground, never. Philosophy.

If you have a philosophy about fighting, it needs to be consistent. In Science, it would be called a theory. If the evidence doesn't consistently support it, the theory is disproven.