When I first started training in martial arts I was taught in all the systems I studied to move fast but stop my punch just before hitting my partner. This was done I was told for the dual purpose of training safety and teaching me control. I agree that it is safer but I’m not sure about the control benefits.

During college I and a few of my friends from the BU Football Team used to work as bouncers at a number of establishments in Boston. One night at a club down by Fenway Park there was an all out classic bar room brawl. I saw the most beautiful cross over side kick thrown at one of my friends face. He was completely caught off guard but not injured at all. The guy throwing the kick stopped it right on his nose. Needless to say things did not go well for the guy throwing the kick after that.

What’s the point? You do what you practice so stopping your strikes before actually striking may not be the best choice.

So how do you train safely? Slow down and follow through. In our art we move slower when practicing with partners but actually put the strikes where they would be only slower. If you don’t move you will get hit but it doesn’t hurt due to the decreased speed.

Your body actually learns more this way even though it is much slower because the proximity and actual alignments you will encounter are in the training. Then when we want to test the training at fight speed we pad up the attacker for additional safety. The results have been much better.

Many people in the martial arts have a habit of collecting kata. They learn the movements to a kata, say they have that one and move on to the next. In our art the idea is not to collect the kata but to experience them kind of like a car wash.

Its winter in New England where I live and there is salt and dirt all over my car. When I go to a car wash and give them money I don’t get to take the car wash home. I don’t collect the car wash.

If I go to the car wash and watch other cars go through I could explain it to you but my car would still be dirty. My car hasn’t changed.

When I go to the car wash, pay my money and actually go through the experience my car comes out on the other side changed. It is clean now.

This is what kata in our art actually are. Experiences that change you. You can’t collect them and save them. You can’t just watch them and intellectualize about them. You have to experience them and when you come out on the other side you are changed.

Many martial arts make you conform to a certain way of doing things, everyone is striving to look like the art. Taijutsu, the basis of To-Shin Do and ninjutsu, is the opposite. It custom fits to you.

Last night was a review and test for this months curriculum and the magic of this art was on display. We had a five month pregnant woman, a couple of twenty something male collegiate wrestlers, four kids all around four feet tall, a six foot seven adult male, and a number of other adults with ages in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

Everyone looked great but someone watching for the first time might have thought they were doing different arts. When they defended against a cross punch using a water technique our very tall student dropped back lifted his arms and looked as if he was holding off the attacker with a long stick. One of the kids did the same technique bent their legs, got real low and pulled the attacker off balance with their positioning right into a strike.

During the defense against a side headlock our mother to be couldn’t get around behind her attacker to break their balance because baby was in the way. She made an adjustment and used her new condition to swing her forward to take the attackers balance with her knees. She and everyone last night did an amazing job using taijutsu their own way.

Taijutsu is the understanding of principles of nature and survival. How you use them “literally” depends on you.