Ernest Cadorin

Techniques vs. Principles

Different Training Systems, Different Emphasis

When I first got involved in martial arts, I trained in a variant of aikido called aiki ju-jitsu. The training system we followed was highly structured, and the requirements for each belt rank were very specific. For your green belt, for example, you had to be able to defend yourself against twelve prescribed attacks using each of three specific defences. Moreover, as a yellow belt working towards your green belt, your training focused exclusively on learning and becoming proficient in those particular techniques.

Not long after having started my aiki ju-jitsu training, I enrolled at the Toronto Academy of Karate and began my life as a karate-ka (it’s a long story – I might explain it in a future post!). One thing I noticed almost immediately was that the training approach for karate was very different from what I was used to. Instead of methodically working our way through a well-defined syllabus of techniques, we bounced around from one exercise to another in seemingly random fashion.

The karate classes had a lot of variety and were definitely challenging and enjoyable, but it wasn’t long before we had covered dozens of different techniques within countless defensive scenarios. It was starting to get a little disconcerting. In a real confrontation, how would I ever be able to choose an appropriate defence, recall how to do it, and execute it effectively – all within the split second that it takes for an attack to happen?

Eventually, I came to the realization that both of these training approaches have their advantages. With the methodical aiki ju-jitsu approach, you become very proficient at executing specific techniques in specific situations. With the karate approach, you become good at applying the principles of good technique in everything that you do.

What this means is that in a real confrontation, we karate-ka may not necessarily execute a defensive sequence exactly as we had done it in the dojo, but we will execute a defence that is principled and therefore effective. We will turn with balance, block with precision, and counterattack to an open target because that’s what we’ve done thousands of times in class. It’s the principles of good technique that become second nature to us rather than the dozens of self-defence sequences we’ve learned.

In the next post, I’ll describe an event that required me to use a principled defence quite unexpectedly! For now, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from an article I came across in the December 2018 issue of Black Belt magazine:

When it comes to the physical response, Richard Dimitri advocates learning principles rather than specific defenses. Planning to use specific defenses is problematic, he says, for two reasons: You need to learn a technique for every possible situation, and remembering and effectively executing the right technique in a split second is nearly impossible.