Protective Arts

Elite Competition

Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.
Begin with the clash between Agamemnon–
The Greek warlord–and godlike Achilles.

So opens the Illiad. Homer focuses our attention on the combatants: this is an epic struggle between two Greeks, Achilles against Agamemnon, even if the bulk of the verses are about the gristly combat of Greek against Trojan.

Achilles retreats to his tent and refuses to enter into combat because Agamemnon took honor from him (Briseis). We moderns need to understand that this isn’t just a personal insult leading to a sulking response (even if Achilles was in fact a petulant teen-ager).[1]

Achilles tending to Patroklos – Achilles is a beardless youth

Achilles’ rage results from the loss of honor, not personal pride, but his standing. His standing amongst his fellow kings is diminished by Agamemnon. In a positional culture where your worth is determined by the honors others bestow upon you, this public taking by Agamemnon is a direct insult and an overt power play.

Achilles withdraws from combat (elite competition par excellence) to show everyone precisely how necessary he is to Greek success. He is the greatest warrior and he will prove it with the pain of his absence and triumphantly with his dominating return.

The ancient Greeks were competitors bar none. They fought with everyone and defined the world competitively to demonstrate arête – excellence. Ancient Greek education (paideia) sought to teach the ideals of moral (and practical) excellence and the Greeks split the world in a binary manner – you either shared the ideals of paideia or you didn’t. Arête was an ideal to achieve and the binding concept which demands contest. The Greeks awarded prizes for excellence and competed in everything. They were the first “best of…” list makers. In Book 23 of the Iliad, right after Achilles kills Hector, the Greeks return to camp, blood splattered but victorious, to honor Patroklos with a funeral pyre and games of competition. They nominate judges and name prizes to be awarded the winners of each contest; the best charioteer, the best boxer, the best wrestler, spear fighter, etc., all of whom struggle (at grave personal risk) to prove their excellence.

The Greeks perfected this elite contest and all the quarrelsome city-states sent their very best to compete before the gods at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Elis. That site, Achaia Olympia, gives us the name for the Olympics.

The Olympics celebrate the pinnacle of human achievement, show us the limits of what the human body and spirit can achieve, and provide exemplars of what we should all strive for – that binding and galvanizing sense of paideia.

How far we have fallen. What a travesty these once-great games have become! I am aghast to see the talking heads laud Simone Biles for walking away in the middle of competition. The media is calling her brave? That is linguistic corruption; doublespeak at its best. That is the very opposite of the definition of bravery. This coddle-culture that celebrates weakness has infected the very ideals of elite athletic performance.

The ancients would not have understood this inversion. For them, failure was instruction, pain was proof of striving, and competition itself was sacred.

Imagine other elites using the same failure-logic. “Sorry general, but Seal Team 6 is having a mental health day…” Ludicrous! It’s absurd, and it reveals how far the contagion of fragility has spread. We are discussing the best in the world who have trained mercilessly for years, dedicated their entire lives to show us the tested limits of human physical achievement. For the media to focus on and celebrate Simone’s failure of will is a travesty and diminishes the accomplishments of the other athletes.

Achilles walked away from the battle to provide a context that would force everyone to know with visceral pain that he was the greatest of all time.

I imagine that Piers Morgan will be castigated for having the courage to say what needed to be said: Sorry Simone Biles, but there’s nothing heroic or brave about quitting because you’re not having ‘fun’ – you let down your team-mates, your fans and your country. As a culture, we need to get our shit together and stop celebrating failure.

I know if this post were widely read I would be chastised by all those who believe mental health issues should be given more prominence because they are real health problems. Yes, I know mental health issues are real. But that isn’t the point. The point is that while mental health issues deserve compassion and treatment, they should not be confused with heroism. They need to be addressed privately, not celebrated publicly as examples of courage.

And most importantly, it has no place in conversations about elite performance. By definition, the elite are those who perform under conditions that would break ordinary people.

The Greeks understood this truth instinctively: excellence demands cost, honor requires endurance, and civilization is built by those who refuse to quit.

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[1] Ruth Benedict popularized the shame vs guilt cultural description in her The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. The terminology is broad-stroke and sociological refinements like Emmanuel Todd‘s shift the focus, but remain essentially an analysis of how individual psychology is culturally constrained. A more recent global survey was just published (Sept. 2021) by the National Bureau of Economic Research: Herding, Warfare, and a Culture of Honor. It is a global survey of Shame societies:

According to the widely known ‘culture of honor’ hypothesis from social psychology, traditional herding practices are believed to have generated a value system that is conducive to revenge-taking and violence. We test this idea at a global scale using a combination of ethnographic records, historical folklore information, global data on contemporary conflict events, and large-scale surveys. The data show systematic links between traditional herding practices and a culture of honor. First, the culture of pre-industrial societies that relied on animal herding emphasizes violence, punishment, and revenge-taking. Second, contemporary ethnolinguistic groups that historically subsisted more strongly on herding have more frequent and severe conflict today. Third, the contemporary descendants of herders report being more willing to take revenge and punish unfair behavior in the globally representative Global Preferences Survey. In all, the evidence supports the idea that this form of economic subsistence generated a functional psychology that has persisted until today and plays a role in shaping conflict across the globe.

JOINT CONTROL

Any martial artist must study the use and limitations of the body; its structure and mechanics – and specifically its joints. (The banner image shows the major synovial joints of the skeletal system.)

In Aikido, we are principally concerned with the control of the opponent’s “center” but the techniques achieve this by working from the outer joints toward the inner joints:

[Fingers] -> Wrist -> Elbow -> Shoulder -> [Hips] -> Neck / [Head/Spine]

I [bracket] those parts of the body that are used but not always given the primacy of focus that they merit. The joints of the lower body, foot, knee, to hip are subject to the same manipulation as the upper body, but they are not the primary focus of Aikido.

Fingers/Wrist

The fingers are not explicitly discussed as often as they should be. Aikidoists usually discuss the tekubi (wrist) as if nikkyo/sankyo/kotegaeshi were just “wrist” manipulations. The progression starts small bones to larger bones.

Nikkyo as a wrist lock only works when the thumbs are aligned so as to compress the metacarples and the power of sankyo is amplified when the phalanges (fingers) are captures and torqued. Kotegaeshi as a proper knife strip must control the thumb first before the turn of the wrist. And knowing that the wrist is a condyloid joint (a limited hinge) allows us to manipulate the elbow through the wrist by applying pressure along uke’s shyuto during the throw.

It is important to know that the hand is holding the weapon and therefore a critical target to manipulate and disable.

Even in a nuke fight

During our warm-ups, we self-manipulate our wrist joints. Too often this becomes a rote activity, done so often it becomes perfunctory and devoid of real value. Slow down and really manipulate your body to learn to better manipulate others.

Ikkyo – compress your wrist joint tightly, fold your fingers to your inner forearm, yes, but then isolate the fingers while the wrist is bent to compress them individually. Can you get your thumb to touch your inner forearm? Feel how your index finger is more painful to compress – that is the extensor indicis proprius (EIP) tendon.

Nikkyo – fully grasp your own hand to compress the metacarpals and position them 90-degrees from your own wrist and only then crank them, little finger leading, toward your nose. You should feel a strain in the muscles in your forearm and your elbow should lock. Lock small joints to control larger ones closer to the core.

Sankyo – this is the clearest example of small bones locking to control larger ones. While we usually grasp palm to palm so our controlling hand had thumb around tekubi and fingers around the opposing thumb, try grasping your fingers instead and then applying the outward torque. You should feel your fingers lock wrist then wrist lock elbow to then drive the forces into your shoulder.

Chiba sensei 1991 – look at the finger lock lead

Yonkyo – is a nerve and tendon manipulation foremost, but it requires a torquing action on the wrist to expose the median nerve and make it easier to manipulate.

Any yonkyo’s failsafe is to crank the wrist in a two-handed grab to lock the elbow, brace uke’s shoulder on your lead knee and then drive into uke’s shoulder for the control.

Gokyo – requires the same hand control and manipulation that nikkyo does, but it is taught as a gross-motor, stop-hit first. Neglect the hand control at your peril.

The fingers are the key to wrist control, and the wrist is the key to locking the elbow.

Elbow

The elbow, or hiji is a primary target for Aikido. Both hiji-kime-osae and ude-kime-nage name the elbow explicitly, but the anatomical target of shiho-nage, ikkyo’s pin, figure-4 locks are all the elbow. Lock and break the elbow with a direct force against the hinge and the arm is rendered combat-ineffective.

With longer two-hand weapons like the sword and spear, the elbow is relatively inert when compared with one-handed blade use. In pugilistic arts, the elbows are direct extensions of the body structure and act to transmit power from the spine to the hands via shoulder/hip rotation. Likewise, manipulating the opponent’s elbow creates a direct path back to the the head/neck/spine via the shoulders.

I have covered ikkyo in several posts to cover aspects of this ‘basic’ technique but here it is important to see ikkyo as an elbow manipulation because it is an accessible contact point, proximate to the body and below the threat of uke’s weaponized hand. The intercepting contact with the forearm is really a stop-hit at the triceps to better access the elbow in order to take uke’s balance and control them.

Understanding how the elbow is manipulated, we should learn how to defend against – or limit the exposure – we have in the offense. The shape of the ‘unbendable arm,’ exercises like hiriki no yosei and the jodan blocks in karate all emphasize the connection between the elbow and the core.

The physiology is simple: keep your elbows ‘soft’ (don’t lock them, keep a slight bend at all times) and keep your armpits closed. As soon as your elbow breaks the horizontal plane, it will be used against you to control your balance.

The offensive use of knees and legs are not part of the overt curriculum in Aikido, but note that your elbows and knees are essentially the same joint type. And where the elbows connect to the upper body to spine (center), the knees of course connect to the lower body in the same manner. Therefore, they can be used to disrupt the hip line and the opponent’s spinal integrity from the bottom up.

It is also vitally important to understand how knee alignment is to effectively transfer power from the hips; and not just for muscular transfer from kicks, but also for delivering upper body strikes, throws and fa jin projections as well. The knees and feet should point in the same direction and be aligned the the top of the sacrum to allow for maximum rotation and energy transfer from the feet into the spine via the hips. We keep this connection by use of the sliding step (suriashi) and by flexing bodyweight onto the balls of the feet by bending the knees and pointing them into the target.

Shoulders/Hips

The shoulders and hips are identical ball joint structures on the high and low lines and are responsible for transferring power from the spine to the extremities (arms and legs). As such, learn to use your peripheral vision tuned to the shoulders/hips to read your opponent’s intent and respond accordingly. Stay ahead of your opponent’s OODA loop! Aikido teaches that the hips are the body’s primary driver of momentum and power generation.

The shoulders are a key area of focus, both offensively (in using a sword) and defensively. A simple example is counter-yokomen, where nage strikes to the front of the shoulder to check the opponent’s arm while entering. The vast majority of Aikido’s locks and controls are applied to the shoulder in order to dislocate it or to secure the lower arm and weapon.

Entering to control the shoulders and hips is done to ‘control the center’ and more honestly, to get easier access to the head/neck/spine.

Head/Neck/Spine

The head appears to be an easy target, but it is encased in bone (skull) designed to protect the brain. While weapon strikes to the head (especially heavy blunt force) can be very effective, closed-fist strikes will usually do more damage to the assailant unless they know precisely where to strike. There are soft tissue targets on the head, such as eye sockets/temples and ears, but these are small targets and we all move our head reflexively to protect them. If, however, you have properly moved up the chain, locking hand to elbow to shoulder to gain access to the head, neck and spine, you now have several handholds (ears/hair/eye sockets/mouth) that are easy to grab and manipulate. Polite Aikido ignores most of these natural handholds, but the bunkai of irmi nage will still employ nerve control on the mastoid.

The neck is the most vulnerable part of this chain since it is without a protective bone structure such as the ribcage and skull, so the soft tissue and nerves are exposed and vulnerable to direct manipulation or attack.

For the spine, it is usually well protected by muscles of the back and can be hard to attack. The tailbone is a notable exception and can cause disruption through the whole spinal chain when damaged. This can be done using strong, direct knee strikes or also by causing the opponent to land heavily when sitting down backward from a sweep or drop.

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This article should be reviewed in conjunction with Human Frailty as well as Will To Win, both of which review physiology, and Thrusting Triangle which shows proper targeting, all of which takes place within the box containing our larger vital organs bracketed by the four points of both shoulders and both hips.

GYAKU HANMI PROGRESSION

A class outline for progressive techniques from static gyaku hanmi katatae dori

Gyaku hanmi katatae dori: what is it? A hand grab. Why? Uke stop-hits a thrust, taking control of nage’s knife hand. From the grab, each player needs to match extension to create the dynamic tension necessary for a static encounter.

Nage’s focus is on tension-release. Solve the basic problem of moving around the fixed point (axis) of the encounter. The basic (kihon) resolution is tenkan.

From tenkan how does nage extract the knife/free the grasped arm? By simply raising his arm like bringing a sword to jodan. Nage needs to keep his arms close to his center and with a slight camming action of the grasped arm – from knuckles to the mat to shyuto to the mat – while raising the sword to jodan. Two variations here on footwork (ashi-sabaki): last night I demonstrated a simple slide entry rather than a full irmi-tenkan, both are possible. From jodan, turn the hips toward uke’s center then drop your arm for kokyu stretch.

The bunkai (application) is to grasp uke’s obi (belt) with the free hand and then break the back over your knee by driving the grasped hand down over the neck. In polite Aikido grabbing the obi facilitates leading uke’s center forward. As uke, keep your belly muscles engaged, do not simply “limbo” through the stretch. If nage raises their arm, advance toward it to keep contact (don’t create a gap); when nage lowers the arm, keep positive pressure against it. Any gap in contact is an opening to strike: close the spaces to avoid atemi.

From the stretch, a breath throw is possible: kokyu-ho. I demonstrated both the basic and the dynamic variation which replicates the sword raise to an immediate turning cut. The important body mechanics are the same however: from the grab, slip to the flank while allowing uke to keep the initial grab, raise your sword, turn your hips back toward uke’s center, drop your arms heavily and dynamically straight down (cut with your sword) as you advance with your hips through uke’s position. The throw is a physical displacement of uke’s body augmented with the arms – the arms must break the balance (i.e., manipulate uke’s jaw/head) but the impelling force is from nage’s lower body and hips.

Progression: from kokyu-ho to kokyu-nage. If uke is resolute in their contact, or starts a reversal, nage must solve that new problem. Uke does not allow nage to raise to full jodan extension and keeps their weight forward, so nage now must change vectors. Do not continue to go through uke (against their weight) but rather find the path of least resistance and go with the flow – so execute a snappy turn of the feet, blend with the incoming force (face the same direction as uke) and throw forward. Nage’s arm movement is a cut down and I demonstrated with a bowie-knife trainer to make the camming action of the arm visible. Nage executes a C cut (from migi-hanmi [right] and a reverse C from hidari [left]). The final position of nage’s arm is shyuto toward the sky with a positive (forward extension) energy toward uke.

The tanren-geiko (body development) version requires solid connection to the mat and deep muscular action in the belly. To provide a fluid image, I then moved to ki-no-nagare presentation – a “two finger” throw. This is a visual presentation to show the dynamic fluidity of the motion. From a distance (increase maai) uke approaches. Nage presents two fingers to ensure lighter contact and flows in a continuous motion, drop weight (break uke’s balance), blend, raise, cut. Same principle motions now just done for continuity of motion – capture the timing to effect the throw.

Then back to more body development. What if uke holds on at the terminal motion – isn’t thrown? Uke starts to turn back to continue the fight, so nage has a new problem to solve. Before uke can punch with his free hand, nage must slip to the flank, grasp uke’s hand that is controlling nage’s knife hand and free it. This is otherwise called, gyaku-hanmi ikkyo. The ashi-sabaki is key to avoiding uke’s counter punch – don’t stay in a horse-stance where your nethers are exposed to uke’s snap kick. As you move off line, keep your grabbed hand low as you cam it from palm up to palm down, rotating against uke’s thumb. As uke’s thumb is exposed, break the clutch with your free hand – ensure your counter-grab is thumb over thumb. As you strip uke’s grasping hand you need good hand strength to compress uke’s metacarpals and rotate the small bones away from your center, which causes uke’s elbow to lock (bone-locking!) and rotate up. Facilitate all this with dynamic physiology – move your body toward uke and you can use your forward shoulder to augment the power of your counter-grab/stripping hand. If your hand strength is insufficient to rotate uke, then you need to use your full body weight to advance, compress uke’s hand against your shoulder/clavical and force uke’s elbow up.

Once you see the elbow point-up to the sky, that is the key. Nage uses their newly freed hand to eagle-claw uke’s elbow and cut straight down in order to continue the lock into uke’s shoulder. From there – execute the pin – inside knee to the ribs, shoulder driven straight down to damage the bursus, keep uke’s arm as vertical as possible. Then inside knee down, outside knee/thigh used as a brace point and as you advance to kiza, forward pressure with the outside knee to keep uke’s arm above the line of their shoulders. Nage should still have a firm/compression grab on uke’s hand which must be manipulated shyuto down toward the mat. Remember the key is uke’s index finger to make the pin effective! This ikkyo pin (flat on the mat) more closely resembles nikkyo’s hand control.

But what if uke is too strong to drive through to execute ikkyo? Making sure that you retained solid control over uke’s grasping hand, keep the rotation on and slip to uke’s rear – nage’s chest slides along uke’s back. This requires split coordination. Nage’s controlling hand leads uke away (and rotating) while nage’s free hand thrusts forward and leads nage’s bodily advance to uke’s rear. Imagine a fencer’s thrust, the limbs are moving in opposite directions. Nage’s goal is to get his free hand to uke’s neck. The counter ikkyo leads to irimi-nage.

From uke’s rear, nage can firmly grab uke’s neck – pressure points and mastoid muscle, then with a turning drop, bring uke to the ground. From there, nage can exert neck control, but as uke raises to escape, nage remains “in the pocket” behind uke to execute a throw (strike to the jaw). The polite Aikidoist will ensure that nage always maintains a close control on uke’s neck – firmly attach it to nage’s shoulder – so that the throw is a rotational control and not a strike. Nage’s arm appears to windwill for the throw, but that is to avoid the live edge. Nage is using the false edge to trap and throw rather than decapitate.

thumb down, shoulder relaxed, throw by advancing

Gyaku-hanmi -> kokyu stretch -> kokyu ho -> kokyu nage -> ikkyo -> irimi nage.

Just one possible progressive technique sequence to demonstrate the dynamic nature of Aikido.