So here are some tips I have found useful for getting good kamae for beginners. It’s based on working on the 3 facets of kamae; accuracy, flexibility and strength.

What I have found useful is staying in one kamae for extended periods of time. One minute in correct kamae is great to start with, and if you can get it up to five minutes it’s more than enough for our purposes. Ichimonji and hicho no kamae are great for this kind of training.

Do it in front of a mirror, so you can keep yourself in correct alignment through-out!

Another simple exercise for your kamae is to go from shizen no kamae to ichimonji to hicho. Do this slowly and on both sides. Again, do this in front of a mirror to spot and correct any mistakes.

2) Flexibility

Many instructors recommend that beginners train with lower kamae. It helps build leg strength from the get-go. But you have to make sure your knees are aligned with your feet. If you don’t, taking low Bujinkan kamae may bust your knees in the long run.

Not good.

So if you have difficulty with this, you may need to increase your flexibility, especially in your groin muscles and hip flexors. One useful stretch for this group of muscles is the butterfly stretch, where you sit with your knees bent and the soles of your feet touching each other. Then you bring your feet in and bend forward from your back (not neck, shoulders or upper back).

Anything worthwhile takes time and effort to attain. Kamae is no exception. If you have troubles with your kamae, try the tips and suggestions here and let me know how it goes. I hope this helps!

That way we can all enjoy this Budo journey together!

But one thing I will NOT do to promote this art is to promote it as something it is not. And that includes the area of fitness.

So let me lay it out for you clearly: Bujinkan Taijutsu is NOT good for developing fitness.

By fitness, I refer to two aspects, cardiovascular health (your heart & lungs, your physical stamina and endurance) or strength (the increased capacity of your muscles to exert greater power). Bujinkan Taijutsu does not help in those areas.

Some Bujinkan instructors add in extra exercises into class so as to help their students increase their fitness levels also. Great exercises to add into a Bujinkan class would be those that work out the arms and the core (such as push-ups and sit-ups). Why? Because in regular unarmed taijutsu those muscle groups aren’t really pushed hard. In beginner classes we usually use lower kamae (stances). Those may get some thighs sore in the beginning, but after some time you’ll need to add in some squats, jumps and sprints to build up leg muscles also. 

Why? It’s instinctive for men to try to punch (with closed fist) another person in the face during a fight. But if the punch misses the face and hits other parts of the head, the hand is very likely to be injured. The skull is thick, hard bone (to protect the brains) while the hand is made up of many small, thin bones. You can see the possibilities for serious hand injuries right there!

So what are your options?

1) Train yourself to overcome the natural instinct to use the closed fist when attacking targets around the head. Shuto and Shakoken are very safe for that. Notice how often the basic Bujinkan waza use the shuto? There’s a very obvious clue for us right there!

2) Train up your knuckles so that even if you DO hit someone on the skull with a closed fist, your hand is able to take the impact. Once you get the correct alignment for your fist, wrist and arm, you should get down to gradual, consistent conditioning for your knuckles. Avoid overtraining and going too fast. We use our hands for many precise tasks all through the day. No point injuring your hands and messing up your entire life!

We see examples of both in the Bujinkan ryu-ha. In Shinden Fudo Ryu we see the first option, they would strike trees with ura shuto and with kicks. In Koto Ryu we see the second. They would wrap straw around trees, cover the straw with cloth and use those as their training targets. And they would include the clenched fist also (fudo ken) in the training regime. Notice how the target has more padding in this case? It’s because Koto Ryu has other precision strikes as well, so practitioners would pad the target more to prevent injuries.

Conclusion:

There is no easier, less demanding choice, between the two. Both take time and dedicated, consistent effort. If you are new to conditioning your hands, don’t try any of these until after your teacher has checked your form and confirmed that you know what you are doing. Then get on with it, so that if you should ever have to strike an opponent someday with full force, you won’t break your hands!

A) Koshi Kihon Sanpo – 骨指基本三法 (striking)

1) Ichimonji no Kamae 一文字の構,
2) Jumonji no Kamae十文字の構
3) Hicho no Kamae 飛鳥の構

B) Torite Kihon Goho 捕手基本五法 (grappling)

4) Omote Gyaku 表逆
5) Ura Gyaku 裏逆
6) Oni kudaki 鬼砕
7) Musha Dori 武者捕
8) Ganseki Nage 巌石投

Some instructors leave out Oni Kudaki and have Omote Gyaku Tsuki instead, which is basically an Omote Gyaku done against a grab-and-punch attack. In earlier versions of the Kihon Happo, Ganseki Nage is replaced with a Muso Dori (with similar body movement principles). Your instructor’s list may differ slightly from mine, but that’s OK. Hatsumi Soke has released slightly different versions of Kihon Happo over the years. The techniques and movements may be different, but the underlying principles still remain the same.

(It does not mean that one of us is a heretic…)

When I first started taking lessons, I read in a website somewhere that the Sanshin no Kata and the Kihon Happo are the most important aspects to pay attention to. So this gave me direction and focus as I attended the lessons. I kept looking out for the Kihon Happo, made sure I took notes on them whenever they were taught in class and practiced them whenever I could.

(some of them really look silly when practiced without a partner, but I did them anyway…)

Of course there is a lot more to Bujinkan Taijutsu than just the Kihon Happo, but they lay the foundation and give you a framework on which you can apply the various principles of our art. Like the Sanshin no Kata, a good teacher will enable you to discover and apply the Kihon Happo in a combative situation. So make sure you get really good at them!

Then I started to interact with martial artists of different backgrounds. And I also began to pay attention to mistakes made by newbies. If they have been attending lessons for more than 6-9 months but still couldn’t get the basic techniques to work, it’s usually because their distancing was bad. And more often than not the distance was wrong because they didn’t dare to move into the right distance to make the techniques work. Not having enough guts made all their technique practice fruitless.

And in our taijutsu, if we have no courage we have no power. Why? Because we generate power, not by muscular contraction and expansion only, nor by cultivation of internal force (气, they call it) but mainly by moving our body into the right distance. That momentum is the source of power for our strikes, our locks and throws. If we don’t move in correctly, or fail to move in confidently, we have no power, and have to struggle to make things work.

In Chinese martial arts, we have a saying: 一胆, 二力, 三功夫. This means courage is the most important, then power, then comes technique. I can’t speak for other martial arts, but when I see how much Bujinkan taijutsu depends on us having the courage in order to derive power and effective technique, I am thoroughly convinced this saying applies to us.

So how do we develop confidence in ourselves and in our students?

1)      Know the techniques work

The kihon (basic) techniques work. Some parts of the syllabus are scaffolding, exercises that are meant not for combat but to inculcate various principles and movements into us. But a lot of what we work on, especially the kihon happo, are powerful techniques. They make sense from the physics point of view as well as the physiological aspect.

I have taught the kihon happo to people from other martial arts backgrounds and they totally love them. Many of them can see the beauty and effectiveness in them. Can we?

2)      Drill the basic principles over and over

Work on them until you follow them without thinking. Correct distance, kamae and breathing should be automatic, even during relaxed training. If you can’t get those aspects right even during relaxed training, what makes you think you can get it right under pressure?

As for strikes, Hatsumi Sensei has said that they should be practiced against an appropriate target.  He also wrote “the purpose of a strike is to stun or knock down an assailant, and the only way to develop a consistently reliable strike is to work at actually striking a target over and over again repetitively.” (Ninjutsu, History and Tradition, Unique Publications Inc. 1981)

We don’t strike each other full force during training, that would be stupid. But that means that we have to work on our strikes during our own personal practice time to ensure that they work. In the old days they would practice against trees and other targets. We now have heavy bags and focus mitts. Whether you choose traditional targets or modern training equipment, make sure you put in the work. Knowing your strikes are consistently reliable is a great confidence booster!

3)      See the principles applied in many different situations

It’s one thing for me to tell you the basic techniques and principles work, or for you to see your sensei make them work. But that doesn’t compare to YOU actually getting them to work against:

• A wide range of attacks, even those from other martial arts or unplanned attacks, OR
• A wide range of body types, even those bigger and physically stronger than you.

So if you haven’t been taught much variations or adaptations in your basics after a year or so, or you find yourself with just the same body types to train with class after class, recognize that you will have to do something to deal with this limitation on your training. You may have to attend another class or even a Bujinkan seminar in another country for the sake of getting the experience and exposure you need to have a real confidence in your skills.

And if you are a teacher, you grow in your confidence in the techniques when you are able to teach them to newbies and they can make them work. Now in my class I would rather my students not teach another student too early (giving little pointers are fine), but I know from my experience that successful teaching is another great confidence booster.

Conclusion:

Developing confidence in your taijutsu may not be an urgent need in your training if you have just started. But it will be important over time. I hope you will find the pointers here useful in giving you the confidence you need to make your taijutsu work for you!

And besides unarmed techniques, we also have weapons material that are more applicable immediately, such as knife and hanbo (3-foot staff). We are more likely to find these combat tools around us in our modern day environment.

So why learn kenjutsu, when we probably won’t be carrying a Japanese sword with us as we go through our daily lives?

1) Kamae -

Weapons work in general, and kenjutsu in particular, is putting your kamae under a microscope. Little mistakes you might regularly miss become obvious to you and your instructor once a training sword is put in your hands.

Once the details of proper kamae carry over to your unarmed taijutsu, you will truly understand the importance of kenjutsu training…

2) Distance –

A katana may seem heavy and clumsy, but it can move blindingly fast in a cut. You can’t match it for raw speed, so we use distance to give us safety.

Kenjutsu trains us to function at a greater distance we are accustomed to for unarmed taijutsu. This expands our horizons and further enhances our perception of body movement, both ours and our opponents’.

3) Principles –

Once we start holding a katana, that’s a large change. But as we train in using the blade and our bodies realize that a lot of things remain the same, such as footwork, we grow in our mastery of Bujinkan taijutsu principles. Remember, principles are what stay the same when other things change.

The benefits will be different for every practitioner. For me, my footwork improved drastically after I learned how to recognize the correct distance for a technique to work and let my footwork bring me there. After I got it during kenjutsu, it somehow carried over to my unarmed taijutsu.

4) History, to honor those who came before us, who learned these principles on the battlefield. A lot of our taijutsu makes sense only when you take the sword into account. For example, why do we start some of our grappling waza from the standard judo grab position? Because it hinders the opponent from grabbing his sword. Why do we start Sanshin no Kata from Shoshin no Kamae? Because we would want to keep one hand ready to secure the sword in the sword belt at our waist.

In fact, in many traditional Japanese martial arts use a kamae that has one hand down at hip level. Why? Because you are keeping a hand ready to draw your sword. If you are doing a boxing match, then your hands should be guarding your face so that you don’t have to pick up your teeth from the floor later on. But for the traditional arts, the real test of skill is not the boxing ring but the battlefield. It’s a different ball game entirely!

Conclusion;

I hope that I have shown you some of the benefits of training in kenjutsu. In our regular class, we don’t often get the chance to work on this area. But once in a while I will plan for special kenjutsu introductory sessions. When I do, don’t just dismiss it as being irrelevant and skip it. You stand to learn a lot, so do your best to turn up!

Last week’s post looked at speed in the Bujinkan. Now let’s look at the topic of generating power. There are three main aspects of delivering force into an adversary to consider.

1) The body in movement

” engages the motion of the entire body”… ” power is a product of the entire body in relaxed yet vibrant motion”

One thing about beginning versions of Bujinkan techniques, they make using the body movement very obvious. At the beginning we step forward for our strikes, whether it’s the fudoken tsuki (lunge punch) or even our sokuyaku geri (police-stomping-down-the-door kind of kick).

We also do a lot of weight shifting from one leg to another. That movement not only creates distance (safety), it also generates force for strikes and some of our grappling techniques. As we advance we can get results from smaller movements, but that comes from the next two factors, which are…

2) Kamae (posture)

“movement of the body from a base at the natural centre of gravity”

You can generate a lot of momentum and force by throwing your body forward. But if you do not have a solid foundation for your force, a lot of that force is going back into your body, or your opponent can redirect that force away easily. That can result in you flying away from your opponent and crashing onto a wall or floor, with both your body and ego severely bruised.

That’s why Hatsumi Soke mentioned that we need a base at the natural centre of gravity. In plain English, that means good kamae with good structure and balance.

Common mistakes in this area include:

Moving the hips too much – the hips can give you more movement and thus more power. But if you throw them out of alignment they also absorb back the force of your strike. It’s like hitting someone with a pillow. No matter how much force you create, it just doesn’t go into the opponent.

And in the meantime, you are in range for your opponent to hit you back…

Unstable base – when we are doing bigger strikes, the hand or foot is pushing off the rear foot. For example, if you are hitting with the right hand (or foot) we are pushing off the left foot, and vice versa. This is how we do strikes at the beginning.

One common mistake I see is people twisting the rear foot as they strike. If you are stepping forward you’ll need to turn your foot as you move forward. But if you turn the foot too late, you can end up striking as your foot is turning. And that is an unstable base. If your foot slips at that moment (just as you send your whole body hurtling forward) or if your opponent steps forward securely and you just bounce off him, all kinds of things can go horribly wrong…

So at all times watch for your kamae. Don’t let the movement take you away from the base Hatsumi Soke wrote about in his book!

3) Relaxation

“… the entire body in relaxed yet vibrant motion”

If we are tense we end up fighting our own movement. That robs us of both power and speed. So one simple (notice I didn’t say easy) way to gain both speed and power is to learn how to move in a relaxed but firm way.

A few things help with that.

• First, junan taiso, the warm-up and stretches of the Bujinkan. Make them a core part of your daily training.

  Second, constant drilling. Once you get a particular technique, keep drilling it until your body is familiar with it. Going through many, many, many reps also allows you to notice the parts of your body that you tense up as you execute the technique

  Constant drilling will also help you with the third aspect, confidence. We tend to tense up when we aren’t sure what we are trying to do works. But if we drill a technique to the point we know we get it right, that it will keep us safe while making our opponents’ lives miserable, then we can be confident enough to relax as we execute it.

And that will improve our speed and power. A lot.

Conclusion:

Knowing these three factors help us to train with awareness. Understanding what we are doing keeps us from wasting time and effort from pursuing other methods of generating force. So as you train, well, more power to you!

However, the Bujinkan is a deep martial art, with more than just speed to consider. Training in our taijutsu also means working on the following to complement raw speed.

1^st – Distance – if we are further away it takes more time for the opponent to hit us. And it gives us more time to react. Our basic sanshin distance is just that little bit further than many martial arts. That is also the distance in Koto Ryu’s seigan no kamae. If we keep to that distance the opponent is slower, in a practical sense. They have to close the distance, we make them do all the hard work!

2^nd – Angles- if we are offline (45 degrees) the opponents will have to re-orientate to find us after every move. It confuses their minds and thus messes up their speed. If they are firing combo attacks on automatic, that makes them even more vulnerable to our counters. Their speed becomes irrelevant.

3^rd – Kuzushi – If we are in close, upfront and personal with people, every move we make should disrupt their balance and structure. A quick shakoken to the face doesn’t need much power to confuse the opponent, neither does our perennial favourite, the ura shuto. All these disrupt the opponent’s balance and buy time for the techniques that are slower, such as our torite (gyakus, onikudaki and all that) as well as a nice, big, lunge punch. In fact, I personally believe we should NEVER step forward (with either the fudoken tsuki, shuto or anything else) unless the opponent is off-balance, physically or mentally.

Conclusion:

The Bujinkan is a deep martial art. If you want quick results, go do something else. It is counter-intuitive to use distance, angle and kuzushi to complement speed. But that’s the Bujinkan for you! So as we train our taijutsu, let’s do it with awareness, understanding what we are doing. That way we can confidently use all the skills we have trained!

First released in English in 1987, the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki is the official syllabus of Bujinkan unarmed taijutsu. It is made up of three distinct sections, namely:

Ten Ryaku no Maki (Scroll of Heaven):

• Rolling, breakfalling, leaping,
• kamae,
• basic strikes.
• sanshin no kata,
• kihon happo,

This is where you will find the alphabet of our taijutsu, so to speak.

Chi Ryaku no Maki (Scroll of Earth):

• Hand and body escapes,
• Hand and arm locks,
• Kicks
• Throws
• Chokes

The kicks, locks and throws here are more challenging. We are starting to develop the framework we need for the next stage of taijutsu growth, which is…

Jin Ryaku no Maki (Scroll of Man):

This is where you start to see the many facets of Bujinkan taijutsu. Cross strikes (Koyoku, Setto), changing of levels (Hibari), waiting for the opponent to give us an opportunity to move in (Shiho Dori), facing combo attacks (Koku, Renyo, Saka Nagare) as well as Togakure Ryu (the official ninja) techniques.

There are two main types of teachers within the Bujinkan. The first type believes that if Hatsumi Soke took the effort to write the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki for the Bujinkan as a syllabus, we ought to use it as a syllabus and base our lessons on it. The second type believes that Hatsumi Soke wrote the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki not to teach specific techniques but to impart a particular feeling and mindset to taijutsu. So as long as the feeling and mindset are imparted, it isn’t essential to use the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki for that.

For me? I am of the first school. I recognize that the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki is not all there is to the Bujinkan. There are different weapons and different teachers will teach those differently. But if Hatsumi Soke wants us to know the Tenchijin Ryaku no Maki, then I will continue to work on its contents. And teach my students to do the same.

After all, the last thing I want is to have Arnaud Cousergue’s quote apply to me and the students I teach!

• Togakure Ryu Ninpo (34th generation)
• Koto Ryu Koppojutsu (18th generation)
• Gyokko Ryu Koshijutsu (28th generation)
• Kukishinden Happo Biken (28th generation)
• Takagi Yoshin Ryu Jutaijutsu (17th generation)
• Kumogakure Ryu Ninpo Happo Biken (14th generation)
• Gyokushin Ryu Ninpo Happo Biken (21st generation)
• Shinden Fudo Ryu Dakentaijutsu (26th generation)
• Gikan Ryu Koppojutsu(15th generation)

To help us get a sense of what that actually means, here’s some facts about Japanese ryu-ha in general.

1) They value preserving what they have in the first place.

Most of us think things get better over time. In the ryu-ha paradigm the original ideas were the best and ought to be preserved. Some ryu-ha claim divine inspiration as the authority of their techniques. So the idea is you better not mess with what the dieties or spirits took the effort to teach you…

Within the Bujinkan we have two ryu-ha that claim divine inspiration: Shinden Fudo Ryu and Kuki Shinden Ryu. “Shinden” (神伝) means “divine transmission”.

2) Innovation and adaptation DOES happen, but it’s the purvey of the Soke of the art. The idea is that only someone who has fully understood the intricacies and concepts of the art will be able to adapt the art and help it keep up with the times.

It’s like allowing only those people who know car engines inside-out to tinker and modify your car engine…

3) The ryu is transmitted via two channels concurrently:

A) the Densho – written transmission. This describes what is written down in the scrolls of the ryu-ha. Often the scrolls would only contain lists of the techniques and not detailed instructions. Sometimes the instructions would be vague, cryptic or incorrect.

This means only people initiated in the secrets of the ryu-ha would be able to make sense of the scrolls.

B) Kuden – oral transmission. This describes the parts that are taught and not written down. This requires a relationship of trust between the teacher and the student.

4) in the old days, the techniques in the scrolls were supposed to be taught in the order they were listed. You had to finish one technique before you moved on to the next. Likewise you had to finish all the techniques in one level before you were issued with the license for that level and were allowed to learn stuff from the next.

5) Only a student who has learned everything there is to learn about the ryu-ha, via both the densho and kuden, will be given Menkyo Kaiden in that ryu-ha. Only a person with Menkyo Kaiden can call himself the Soke of that ryu-ha.

Conclusion:

I share all these not because they will directly affect your progress in Bujinkan taijutsu, but because we study a Japanese art. Therefore a little understanding of the history and culture can help us appreciate how and why some Bujinkan teachers (even non-Japanese ones) do and teach things the way they do.

But of course make sure that you don’t get too caught up in the culture and history at the expense of missing the taijutsu. That would be like going to a restuarant, appreciating the architecture, decor and menu design but not trying the food!