Spring is almost upon us, and with spring comes tournament season. I don't get to work specifically on tournament style forms any more, but I watch the footage my students put out and I'm a frequent youtuber of forms and ultimately end up seeing other school's tournament forms attempts. As I've been dealing with a bit of writers block, I thought it might be a nice change to take a vacation from forms analysis and actually write a bit about tournament forms.
Before we go any further, the advice I give is going to be general and more suited to traditional "karate" style tournaments. Your mileage may vary in regard to strict ITF or WTF style tournaments as they tend to be judged on slightly different criteria. In particular though, my intensity section is not going to apply to those of you into sports karate. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I understand the allure of that genre of martial arts or its rule set. Based on watching it I can tell you that the judges are looking for things that are vastly different than what I would look for at a local or even national level tournament that I might judge at.
Ultimately every martial artist has their own strengths and weaknesses, but there are a few fundamental areas where everyone can improve, and thus can improve their scores in tournament forms. These three categories are hip turn, reaction force, and intensity.
Hips do not turn on their own. This is something that many martial artists - especially physically strong ones fail to realize. I've judged more tournaments than I'll ever compete in, and if there is a universal truth it is that many black belts don't understand that the hips must be turned manually and it is only with very few exceptions that a movement forces the hips to turn. The hip turn is what is going to generate snap of technique and uniform to give the best audible presentation to your form. Unfortunately many men (and some women) rely on the strength of their arms and legs alone, and neglect to get their hips involved in the movements of their forms. They rely on a starched heavyweight uniform to generate sound, which is good, but getting the hips involved can make a lightweight uniform sound heavyweight. Learning, and drilling and forcing myself to get my hips involved have changed my execution of techniques and although I do not compete anymore, when I look back on the footage of me at second dan I can only shake my head and wish I knew then what I know now. With proper hip turn you look effortless -- you will look powerful and extremely fast, without looking like you are trying to be fast and powerful. This is good.
The reaction force is something I recently talked about in my Tuesday night class. Of course by reaction force I am referring to Newton's third law, that states roughly that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We understand opposite quite well in the martial arts. We know that when we execute a stepping straight punch that we leave the previous hand out there, and that we move it opposite to the punch we are throwing, back to our hip. Everything is supposed to stop at the same time, but it rarely does. More often we get an illusion of timing. We must be careful not to create an illusion of timing. Since we as humans are focused on the action, we tend to only notice the punching hand and the landing foot. Those things that are moving towards the action. If we focused more attention on the hand traveling away from the action, I believe we'd find that in a lot of cases two things are happening. First, we'll see a hand that stops short, and then sneaks into position at the hip. Second, we see a hand that doesn't even try to hide being late. I call it the illusion of timing because the action parts stop at the same time, but to have full good timing everything must stop at the same time, and stop at the right places.
The lack of real reaction force causes a reverb in the body. This reverb is a slight balance shift because one incredibly forceful move was not counter balanced and there is excess movement.
When a technique is performed with with proper reaction force it attains a stillness. The move will be fast, but when it stops, it stops completely and looks cleaner. In a tight competition, where you are equal on all counts, it is a subtlety like stillness that will win the trophy for you.
Finally there is intensity. I used to be a firm believer that there was no such thing as too much intensity. I've come to realize though, maybe even a bit grudgingly, that there is such a thing as too much, and too much intensity happens frequently. Intensity is to forms what condiments are to food. Too little intensity, and a form or food can be considered bland. Too much intensity can ruin a dish or form, because the object is to enhance what is already there, and should not be a featured part of the food or the form. To put it another way, by saying (forgive me) dumb words like "ICE", "Oss", "HA!" or any other almost English, Japanese or Korean word, you are not practicing what a kiap actually is. A kiap is an audible strike. Like any other strike it should be quick and hard, and you shouldn't see it coming if possible. It also shouldn't linger as you wouldn't leave your punch out for a disproportionately long time, so don't drawl out your kiap either. I've seen black belts who kiap well completely stop fighters in their tracks with a well timed kiap and open up enough time to hit that frozen fighter several times over. To think of a kiap as only "gamesmanship" is to be completely short sighted and deficient in actual martial arts knowledge. I admit, it is a bit subjective but I can assure all of my readers that no one has ever said to me "I really like how that guy kiaped for a sustained 5 seconds, it really added something to the form" or "the way that guy said ICE, really made that form more intense". Most of the time people say things like "how ridiculous was that guy's kiap?" or "that person really overdid it". No one ever says anything bad about a nice, sharp, loud (but not screamed) kiap in appropriate places. Let your intensity enhance your form and not be strictly what you are known for.
As I said at the beginning of this article, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Assuming you have solid technique execution, and decent stances (areas that entire books could be written on) then the next level of improvement must come by improving the fundamental attributes that make up your forms. The hip turn, reaction force, and intensity are three good starting points to focus on and take your form to the next level.
