Doing Techniques the Smard Way. Yes, Smard.

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Jesse in Archive, Karate

Last week, when I held an evening class in Karate, we had a visit from a young man who trains MMA. He sometimes trains Karate too.

Since we were uneven I had to train with him myself. It was nothing special though, we were just doing some kicks on each other.

But I noticed something that really surprised me.

He couldn’t control his power.

At all.

And as far as I have seen, not many people training MMA, or other full contact martial arts, can. At least not kicks. Punches seem to be easier.

To generalize, if we are talking about kicks, this is what I have noticed (and felt!):

• They can’t do the whole kicking motion slowly.
• They can’t stop at any given point.
• They can’t reverse the kick after it has hit the target.
• They can’t hold their balance when trying to control their kicks

Simply put, they can’t do hard, fast kicks with control.

But, if you are training a full contact martial art, do you really need to?

Is it really necessary to be able to control your kicks and punches?

I think…

Yes.

If you want to be the best, it’s important.

Let me explain:

In our dojo we have a small Japanese sign on the wall. It’s basically just a cheap piece of wood with some writing on it. Here’s what it looks like:

The translation is short and sweet: “Control over speed”.

Meaning, it’s more important to learn control than speed. It’s more important to learn how and when to stop your techniques than it is to quickly punch people hard in the face.

Or kick, for that matter.

“But hey, wait a minute… Why is the sign written in Japanese anyway? Isn’t that a bit stupid? Nobody can understand it when they read it, right? Except Japanese people.”

Yeah, sure, but it doesn’t really matter what language it is written in.

Because the truth is, many people believe that the word “control” is one of the most boring words you can hear in a dojo. They wouldn’t want to read the sign if they understood it anyway.

Nobody wants to train control.

It’s simply not fun – the word control has negative connotations.

Especially if you’re a young person. And more so if your goal is to kick hard! But learning to control your kick, I believe, is a prerequisite for learning to kick smard.

Yes, you read right.

Learning to kick smard.

That’s my own word, consisting of hard and smart together.

Kicking smard is superior to kicking hard. Kicking smard means kicking hard, but still maintaining full control of your actions. Because that’s smart.

That’s smard.

Consider this, when learning a technique: If you have control to begin with, then adding speed and power shouldn’t be a problem. However, if you only focus on speed and power from the beginning, then it’s hard to control all of that later on.

As they said in the movie Spiderman:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

The more power you have in your techniques, the more control is needed to handle that power (obviously), and therefore, training control should be a priority when choosing between power, speed and control.

I mean, you might kick hard as a mule, but when your opponent evades your kick, you will always be in a weak position if you can’t regain control over your limbs, to use a sparring situation as an example.

It all comes down to controlling your own body first.

If you can’t kick immediately again with the same leg you just kicked with, then you have failed yourself. And we don’t want that.

This principle applies to everything, by the way.

Especially ground fighting, and standing wrestling/clinch work. First get a position of control, then go for your submission (or strike). Everything will be hard if the ability to control isn’t first established.

In fact, self-control might be one of martial arts most important lessons.

And I’m not only talking about the physical aspect.

Self-control, as defined by my dictionary, is “restraint exercised over one’s impulses, emotions, or desires”. Isn’t that something to always strive for? Indeed it has to be one of the most essential virtues to have, in order to live a peaceful life.

Simply not to be moved when you don’t want to.

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

- Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

So if you can improve this quality in the dojo, why shouldn’t you always?

Always!

Be smard.

Now let’s look at that sign again:

“Control over speed.“

You want to know something fun? Let’s zoom out a little:

It actually hangs on our toilet wall.

Do what you have to…

But always have “control over speed”.

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