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Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu would be easy if all you had to do was learn the kata and learn their applications. However there is more to it than that. Once you’ve learnt the applications you then have to put them together in some way. The manner in which you put them together I call a ‘format’. However it would be incorrect to assume that you could use these applications in any format because the format affects the validity of the applications. For example you wouldn’t expect a grip release in a self defence format to be the same as a grip release in a pushing hands format. In any format it is possible to ask the question "In this format what would be the right way of…" e.g. "…performing a grip release" or "…applying an arm lock". You will get different answers depending on the format. This means that whoever constructed the kata in the first place must have had to decide on a format before doing so. Without a specific format it is impossible to create useful techniques, because no technique is useful in every format. It is also improbable that someone would create a kata from techniques that are not useful. Therefore one kata equals one format but one format may contain more than one kata. So it is important that the correct format is chosen for the applications of a kata otherwise the format will contradict those applications.

This may seem academic but even from a non-academic point of view it’s still important. Beginners do not care about kata or their applications. Beginners think in terms of format. They will instinctively distance themselves from an art if the format does not make sense to them or if the techniques they are taught don’t make sense within the format. Even advanced students unless they are prepared to assimilate dogma at the expense of common sense won’t care about kata and applications more than they care about format. So if the wrong format is chosen for the applications a situation will arise where the format contradicts the kata and in turn a dogma will arise to cover up this contradiction (just as in modern karate). Any practitioner who starts to question the art, as all practitioners eventually do, will start to have difficulties. Difficulties will lead to disagreements and disagreements will lead to splits. So it is important for a group such as Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu that the art is self consistent and if possible consistent on some level with the rest of karate. In future I will refer to this concept of internal and external consistency as ‘soundness’.

In order to examine the internal soundness of Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu I will attempt to work around what I call "The Cycle".

If the Applications on the Cycle are not sufficiently similar to the Techniques on the Cycle or the Karate Kata on the Cycle are not sufficiently similar to the Recreated Kata on the Cycle then the art must be considered ‘un-sound’ or inconsistent.

It would be unreasonable to expect Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu to be entirely externally sound because ultimately it is trying to be different from other styles of Karate. However Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu is trying to be the same as other styles of karate on a kata level. Those who practise it like to think of it as a style of karate even though it is difficult to see the resemblance to other styles; it also contains three of karate’s most important kata. Therefore I would expect Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu to be externally sound on the level of kata only. This is why I have named the first part of the Cycle "Karate Kata". I would also expect Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu to be sound on every level with respect to the beginners mind. Beginners are in a fortunate position; they have not been exposed to the dogma of the art and therefore are able to judge it in an unbiased manner. Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu Ka have a biased view point. Often what happens with martial arts is that beginners have to go through a process before they are allowed to have an "understanding" of the art. Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu must be understandable to beginners without conditioning, otherwise when the conditioning wears off the practitioner will turn against the art; again this is what is happening to modern karate. This will lead to splits and eventual disintegration and possibly endanger the mental health of practitioners who take it too seriously.

Ultimately, my objective is not only to cast judgement about the soundness of Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu but also to contribute to its improvement. I do this by pointing out its faults so that they can be fixed. It may be the case that people within the art of Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu will attempt to counter some of the statements in this document with their own arguments. To ignore the faults in the art by covering them up with words would be foolish. I simply ask anyone who reads this document to ask the question:

The first fault you find in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu when traversing The Cycle is that the kata selected to form the basis of the art are not particularly representative of karate in general. Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin lack many of the statistically common movements seen again and again in karate kata. These kata have been referred to as ‘key’ by many old masters, however considering that many old masters believed that kata could be used in fighting it would be unwise to accept their word as gospel. By looking at the kata of karate you can see that Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin stand out as being very different from the other kata. The notion that they are "key" is statistically untrue. To base an art on these kata would be like basing a scientific theory on freak evidence. However I do accept advances in any science often come by attempting to understand unusual phenomena. However once you have understood Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin the other kata of karate seem unusual and therefore also worthy of study.

By choosing only three kata to form the basis of Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu one excludes a vast number of karate kata. All arguments for the exclusion of certain kata will be based on certain assumptions. There is no way of determining whether those assumptions are correct prior to the completion of The Cycle. Even after the completion of the Cycle those assumptions may be questionable. For example if a researcher excludes a kata simply because it doesn’t appear to be systematic this only demonstrates that researchers distaste of non-systematic kata. Or if a researcher excludes a kata because it doesn’t appear to fit a format this only demonstrates his belief in that format. There is nothing wrong with using Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin as a starting point but to deliberately exclude everything else is definitely not a good idea.

If we assume that an art can be based on just three kata namely Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin the next question is ‘Are the applications reasonable?’ I believe that they are reasonable for the most part; the only exception to this is Sanchin section 2 which does not resemble the kata closely enough to satisfy me.

The shape of the movement whilst performing the application is different to the shape of the movement in the kata. The shape of the movement in the kata is a kind of forward backward linear movement however the shape of the movement in the application is a kind of double semi-circular movement. This is not close enough for my standards, especially when you consider that it isn’t hard to come up with a plausible application that does match the shape of the kata.

Assuming that all previous stages are accepted then we must consider whether the applications themselves are effective. As I have said before a technique can not be judged effective without first deciding on a format. The following criticisms apply in the pushing hands format.

Some of the single hand grip releases from Rokushu are not as effective as they could be. I was taught the application of Rokushu as successive methods of escaping from a wrist grab. However there are problems with this approach.

When your hand is being gripped on the cross side by a particularly difficult grip it can be impossible to raise your arm into a Sanchin-like position. You can’t even start the Snake or the Laying Dragon. However if you pull your hand back to your side prior to performing the application (i.e. change it) then it becomes a lot easier.

Both the leopard and tiger are effective even when gripped by a particularly difficult person. This is because they both pull the arm back to the side. However the Standing Dragon is impossible to do against a strong grip. Again you can make it work better by pulling your hand back to the side of your body prior to doing the technique. However this constitutes changing the technique and you would expect the kata to change accordingly.

This raises the question why doesn’t the kata pull the hand back to the side of the body before Snake and the two Dragons? Perhaps the kata has been changed at some point in the past. I would suggest that the applications for these techniques are subtly wrong; they are not just simple grip escapes. They require the hand to be pulled or pushed in specific directions by the gripper. This does not make very much sense in a pushing hands format because pushes are usually applied without a grip.

The format for Naifuanchin is different to the format for Sanchin and Rokushu. It’s not that un-logical to move from Sanchin and Rokushu to a pushing hands format because all of the moves of the kata end with a push (with the possible exception of Sanchin section 1 as it has clenched fists). It is also logical, but perhaps not realistic, to move from the applications of Naifuanchin to a civil arrest format because it involves subduing the other person. However I would say that this split in the format is unnecessary from a Zen perspective. Sanchin, Rokushu and Naifuanchin are all grappling kata; therefore it is possible to combine them together in a grappling format. I successfully achieved this in 2002 and taught several people this method. It was relatively easy to teach pushing hands as an add-on to this method and on the plus side it taught very good posture. However it was only a prototype for what was to come. I would now (2004) concede that Naifuanchin does not belong in the same format as Sanchin and Rokushu but from the point of view of Zen practise they can be combined successfully. However I can understand that this may not be desirable since they are ‘different animals’. Essentially The Cycle splits into two paths and we can follow these paths through separately without worrying about how it affects our analysis.

Assuming that we have to live with two different formats, we can look at them in turn to see if they make sense.

Pushing hands in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu is usually explained in terms of objectified meditation but let’s take a step back and look at what’s happening. Essentially we take too normal people and program them with certain habits; driving force habits and response habits. The individuals have some freedom to choose which driving force to use but no freedom to choose which response to use because in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu there is one response for every driving force. Essentially both people are operating a system within which there is only a small amount of freedom. I must also point out that it is very difficult to discern between an effective technique and a non-effective technique in a system where responses are programmed. The requirement is not that the technique need be effective but that the force giver is expecting the response. So the question is why would anyone want to subject themselves to this practise? It is limited in that it only gives you the ability to operate that system with a person who also knows that system. Admittedly it is a wonderfully crafted system but what’s it for? Why would you program yourself with these movements?

The answer to this question is that this is done in order to learn physical self control. This has a positive side and a negative side. Obviously self control is very useful but the pursuit of self control can be self destructive. It assumes that you know what is best for yourself, but how can you know what is best for yourself without already having lived your life once already. In my view pushing hands should be practised with this in mind. Know when to stop. In particular know when to stop training and start enjoying the art.

Lip service is paid to civil arrest in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu, to my knowledge no one actually practises it. It is assumed you can arrest someone simply by controlling their limbs. This is wrong! What actually happens is that the arrestee uses brute strength to break out of the grips and the arrester will end up looking like a fool for trying to control them in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the best way of arresting someone is by threatening them with or actually using overwhelming force. Grappling the limbs of another person does not represent overwhelming force unless the person doing the grappling is incredibly strong. Even if they were that strong there are still easier ways to arrest someone.

Assuming that the art can be composed of both pushing hands and civil arrest then the first thing to notice when moving from format to techniques is that there is a considerable amount of stuff missing from the art. There is also a considerable amount of stuff we don’t need.

If you’re going to challenge someone psychologically by pushing them, a small amount of experimentation will show you that the natural way of doing this is by pushing with both hands on or towards their shoulders. If you push with a single hand towards their centre then it is very easy for them to move out of the way around your corner rendering you unable to continue challenging them. The pushing hands drills in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu are based on four variations of single hand centre pushing, they are not very psychologically challenging. The only challenge with the four pushing hands drills is to force yourself to push in an unnatural way and program yourself with responses.

If you’re going to challenge someone psychologically by pushing them, you would be wise to remember that that is what you are doing. It should be emphasised to students that they are trying to psychologically destabilise the other person. Teachers should never let their students settle down into a nice predictable and unchallenging systematic practise. This idea of attempting to obtain an objective and avoid simply just operating a system I call "an objective over system mentality". In this case the objective is to psychologically destabilise the other person and the system to be avoided is the structure of the pushing hands as laid down by drills.

Without worrying about kata if you experiment you will find that you only need four grip escapes in pushing hands. Two for single hand grips crossed and uncrossed and two for double grips crossed and uncrossed and if done correctly these are nearly impossible to counter. There are nine grip escapes provided in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu, this is unnecessary. Moreover the grip escapes that are natural in the pushing hands format are not quite the same as the grip escapes from the kata (I have already touched on this).

If we are going to practise civil arrest then we ought to test out our techniques somehow. The obvious way of doing this is by practising scenarios whereby one person has to arrest another. Obviously there is a limit to unarmed civil arrest. For example it is extremely difficult to arrest someone who is aware that you are about to arrest them. If you are going to take the concept of unarmed civil arrest seriously then you need to practise unarmed civil arrest somehow. However to my knowledge no-one actually practises this in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu.

I did say that I wouldn’t be making any suggestions to improve the art and only pointing out flaws. However in this particular case in order to point out a flaw I have to make a suggestion. I do this to show how easy it is to come up with plausible arrest techniques. If you experiment with unarmed civil arrest then you will find that a face to face approach rarely works and that a side or behind approach works a lot better. Assuming that you are not going to strike the person in order to arrest them I have the following suggestions based on one afternoon’s experimentation:

Surprise: The person you are arresting should not be made aware you are about to arrest them

Immobilise the neck: Pull and twist the neck clockwise with the right hand using the chin as a handle…

Traction control: This should raise them away from the ground slightly and remove their traction. It should also prevent them from escaping by twisting and create a very unpleasant sensation against which most people would not even try to struggle. It should now be possible to walk the person where you want them.

Using these principles you can also very easily choke the other person and if necessary kill them. As I mentioned before “the best way of arresting someone is by threatening them with or actually using overwhelming force”, obviously the ability to take away their oxygen supply represents overwhelming force.

The reason I am mentioning this technique is to illustrate the kind of thing that is clearly missing from Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu. I’m sure that there are many variations and improvements that can be made to this approach; however none of them will resemble Naifuanchin.

The number of techniques in Naifuanchin is far too many to be useful in a civil arrest format. In fact there are no useful techniques in Naifuanchin for civil arrest. The very first technique of the kata is totally flawed because it is executed from a facing position. I’ve already pointed out how difficult this is. The best approach is from behind or from the side so that the arrestee doesn’t know what is happening until it is too late. You can only arrest someone reliably from a face to face position if you have a deadly weapon. Obviously there is no evidence for use of weapons of any kind in Naifuanchin.

Assuming that we corrected everything from the point of view of optimising the effectiveness of the format then we would have to dispose of Sanchin section 2, reformat Sanchin section 1 and 3, dispose of everything but the Snake and Tiger from Rokushu and reformat the Snake. That would sort out the grip releases. We then would have to change the pushing hands drills to double hand pushes towards the shoulders. Then openly state the objective of pushing hands is to mentally disrupt the other player then introduce civil arrest techniques and scenarios and completely dispose of the Naifuanchin techniques. Let’s think about what we would have left.

As you can see we wouldn’t have much left of the original applications. In more precise terms the Techniques on The Cycle are not the same as the Applications on The Cycle. So the question has to be asked have we got the right format for the original kata? The answer must surely be NO. So at this point I can declare Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu unsound and desperately flawed. No amount of patch work can cover up this flaw. I would like to remind you that this flaw was created from the assumption that the correct format for Sanchin and Rokushu is pushing hands and that the correct format for Naifuanchin is civil arrest. THIS ASSUMPTION DOES NOT HAVE TO BE CORRECT.

If we insist that the formats of pushing hands and civil arrest are correct then it is worth asking the question is there anything that is really worth putting into a kata. I think the answer is no! Pushing hands doesn’t really work that well in kata form. There are only four grip escapes required and it hardly seems worth putting them into a kata. Civil arrest doesn’t really work in kata form either. So we don’t actually need kata for anything!!!

So we can’t go from techniques to kata because given the format there shouldn’t be any kata.

Let’s assume that we did make a kata from our 4 grip escape techniques it would be viewed by someone who wasn’t aware of its non-authenticity that it was just a version of Sanchin. It would be quite simple and look distinctly like a Chinese Kung-Fu form and not like an Okinawan kata. In essence we have lost slightly over two thirds of the kata we started with. So the comparison between the Karate Kata on The Cycle and Reconstructed Kata on the cycle is very poor indeed. Once again on the basis of this information I can declare that Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu is unsound.

We could also make up a kata based on pushing hands techniques. If we did this it wouldn’t look anything like Okinawan kata and once again it would look more like a Chinese Kung-Fu forms.

We could also make up a kata based on civil arrest techniques. It wouldn’t look Chinese, it wouldn’t look Okinawan and wouldn’t look Japanese!! It would look Western and modern.

It is important to remember that all flaws in Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu are caused by the flaws in the mindset (way of understanding) of the people that have put it together. I am referring to modern creators and not the original creators. These people are the people least likely to see any problems with the art itself. They should ask themselves the question, "Am I just seeing things the way I want to?" If Zen Shorin Do / Ko Do Ryu is fixed here and now while it’s still young it can avoid a lot of problems in the future. I don’t know if writing this document will help to do that but I owe it to myself and everyone else who believes in the ideals of understanding of karate kata.