Rhythm of the fight
December 17, 2018 Leave a comment
Ever since the Kyokushin tournament I did a year ago, I felt like I lost confidence in my sparring. I didn’t fight the way I wanted to, and this has plagued my sparring for a long time.
I’ve been experimenting a lot, perhaps too much. Always trying something different and always seeming to be in no mans land. Caught between my old shodan brawling style, a hint of my controlling the fight nidan and trying but failing to adapt to a counter striker. In the latter style I’ve been very accurate, but often find myself off balanced and not able to dominate or control the fight like my normal swaggering style.
Outside of karate just for fun I’ve been taking up salsa with a couple of work colleagues. Naturally I just throw myself into it having a laugh. I get asked if I have rhythm. I normally just follow my own beat.
Recently however, one of my colleagues has been practicing with us a couple of times a week, I’m actually starting to nail down the basics, actually finding the beat of the music.
Another colleague of mine has been doing Capoeria for the last decade. We have bouncing off a shared passion for the martial arts with one another. I tried out Capoeria if he tried out karate (only fair) and I love it (no where near my first love of karate) this beautiful hybrid of dance martial art mesmerises you in there movements. Your not always sure when they are going to kick, until they kick. They do so many tricks, trips, feints and takedowns. It made me feel like if I experiment with this for karate (yes I know, I’m experimenting yet again) then I might be able to evolve into a counter fighter at will.
Flash forward to yesterday, a mate from our London club came to spar me for two hours. He is training for his thirty man next year the same challenge I did two years ago and he is one of our associations top fighters.
At first I felt useless, my accuracy was there but my feet were all over the place, I was predictable. My mate (with coaching from one of my best buddies) rapidly improved for the whole session. Am I really a nidan I thought. Then my buddie told me to close him down, going back to what I know best for that round brought back my old confidence, I’m a natural sanchin fighter. This allowed me to experiment my a bit of capoeria in my fighting which both worked and didn’t work.
Then I felt his rhythm. He is a dancer, and has this natural ability to feel rhythm, and flow and change in a fight. But I felt it, I connected with it, and waited for when I wanted to disrupt it with a different beat. It was like magic, I flowed from one style to the other and back again.
Today was not about winning, for him to gain some outside perspective and experience and for me to gain a bud, to begin to evolve in how I want to fight.
The London Shihan is correct, to be a good fighter you first need to be a good dancer.