Pelvis as Pivot in Wado-Ryu Karate
Reflections on the Writings of Hironori Ōtsuka
In the late 1980s I began my journey into the martial arts. I had always been fascinated by karate, so when a friend invited me to join him at his new karate club, I joined. And loved it.
After a significant foray into Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA — which I still study and enjoy), I decided to return to Wado-Ryu karate to complete the journey I began decades ago. Over the years I had mantained my fundamental skills and continued to watch and learn from many martial artists, but I wanted to explore the Ju-Jitsu base of Wado-Ryu more.
As part of my journey, I have had to unlearn much of what I was once taught. This has been a really satisfying journey and I have been blessed with a Sensei who really seeks to understand and embody the movements he has learnt from his own studies in traditional Wado-Ryu. The other students have been patient and helpful with me as I unlearn old habits and learn to flow in more effective ways.
Hironori Ōtsuka founded Wado-Ryu Karate-Do with his wealth of knowledge from Ju-Jitsu, Okinawan Karate, and other indigenous martial arts of Japan. The following article explores some of the most important things that he wrote about the pelvis and moving the whole body when punching.
(I am indebted to Shingo Ishida’s English translation of Hironori Ōtsuka’s book, Wado Ryu Karate, published by Masters Publication in Hamilton, 1997. I quote extensively from this book. Please note that my comments in no way represent Australian Wado-Ryu Karate-Do Academy, Wado-Ryu Karate-Do Academy, nor the International Federation of Wado-Ryu Karate-Do Organisation, Tokyo, Japan. They are simply my observations based on my professional and personal experience and study of the text).
Pelvis as Pivot
Under the heading of Sonoba-Tsuki, which is where you sit in naihanchi stance and do alternating punches, Ōtsuka Sensei expands on the general principles of body mass and execution of techniques (p. 57):
Three main points of a punch:
(1) Speed
(2) Use the whole body
(3) Twist the waist as you punch
Imagine a small car hitting something and a large tractor trailer filled with sand in its back hitting the same thing. The force with which contact is made depends on mass and velocity, as demonstrated in: fs = 1/2mv2 (sic).
Here he sets up the basic physics principles of the punch, and then he goes on to expand this principle to all of karate. Now at this point, we must remember that one of the primary tenets of Wado-ryu is to always keep your centre of gravity, to always be in control of your body, and that these three principles listed above are at play in everything. He frequently reminds the reader that it is the whole body with which we perform karate. The next paragraph reads (p. 57, emphasis mine):
This applies in karate also. Instead of using just the arm, if one uses the whole body, mass m above will increase. Using the pelvis as a pivot and twisting the waist to pull back on the left arm incorporates the same force into the right arm. It is logical. Twisting the waist increases the speed of the left fist. Also, the fist itself is twisted as contact is made, so the force of impact increases. Similar logic behind bullets, I suppose.
The two bolded pieces struck me.
He talks differently about the pelvis than he does about the waist. They are distinct anatomical parts. The pelvis pivots as the waist twists. This is consistent with how I have been taught to re-think my kicking and my stepping — it is all with the pelvis carrying the movement forward.
The way I have had it described verbally (and how the book sometimes describes it) is by saying that you “step naturally” and “use the whole body”. The visual demonstration and correction I’m given at these times emphasises pivoting around the hip joint proper (the ball and socket).
As I play with this, it makes sense from an anatomical perspective. The hip joint has considerable musculature and design dedicated to it being strong and mobile through many ranges of motion. The design of the pelvis is to transfer forces from the ground and lower limb into the torso, and it does this through rotational vectors.
So in this case, the pelvis remains horizontal and vertical (neutrally aligned) and the movement occurs through the ball and socket joint itself. The pelvis remains parallel with the floor as it pivots around the hip joint. In this case, you could think of the thigh as an axis and the pelvis as the object pivoting around that axis. The opposite hip, the one that’s connected to the foot that’s moving forward during the punch, also pivots to open up the hip joint as it moves. Such pivoting allows the knee to change orientation without turning the body with it. This puts a different load on the lower limb and helps to maintain centre of gravity significantly. (It also means the kicks do not look nearly as fancy as in other styles, but the power they pack is undeniably greater).
Jun-Tsuki
Heel Lifting
When talking about the Jun-Tsuki, Ōtsuka expands on his concepts of weight transferance. I occasionally find his logic difficult to follow, but it seems that a reading of the whole scope of his work brings a more precise understanding of his intent, because he repeats the same concept sin other contexts that allow you to glean his meaning. It may just be that something is lost in translation — maybe I need to bring my goal of learning Japanese forward a bit more!
In the jun-tsuki which follows next, when the body moves forward with the punch, weight increases as well as velocity; hence, the force of impact becomes significant.
I do not excel in either physics nor human biology, so I am not able to explain this too well. I will not argue too much based upon science. Also, the velocity of the punch changes depending on the direction in which the punch is thrusted. When one attempts to punch with the arm alone, the elbow tend to lift and send the punch upwards, lessening the velocity of the punch. And because the fist travels a lesser distance compared to when a twist of the waist is incorporated, velocity lessens.
In jun-tsuki, strength remains in the upper body, causing the hind heel to lift. To prevent this, one places force in his lower abdomen, which will prevent the heel from lifting, but cause the punch to lose force … (p. 57).
He seems to be talking here about the error of punching only with the arm (he revisits this concept during his kata commentaries). In Wado-Ryu, this is an inefficient and less effective way to punch. The result, according to the book, is that the force goes to the upper body and the body rises (he mentions this several times throughout the book). This then results in the rear heel lifting, which is a big no-no. Same for Gyaku-Tsuki.
Lifting the heel off the ground compromises mass, velocity and force, because it produces less contact with the ground. Now, there are other arguments we can make about how to get force through the ball of the foot, but the technique we are after here is specific to Wado-Ryu, and my goal at the moment is to learn Wado-Ryu technique as best I can. I want to understand Wado-Ryu as the founder himself intended it, as much as I am able to, while being so far removed from him in time, culture and place.
In Wado-Ryu, to have the full effect of your mass impact the opponent, you need to have full contact with the earth. You need to be grounded. This occurs through full contact of the sole of the foot with the ground.
Having this connection with the earth also allows you to pivot through the pelvis properly, transferring force from the earth up through the lower limb, propelling you forward. Keeping the heel on the ground is a reminder to generate a punch from the whole body, rather than just the upper limb.
Sharpness
… Extend the middle finger of the punching fist to see what I mean. If no strength is placed before a punch is thrusted, the punch will move more swiftly and have a great effect on the opponent. The fist will naturally travel the shortest distance possible. Punch as if your arm were a piston. Your extended middle finger will be as a spear, as you try the above. It is not all about “power” or “strength,” but rather a “sharpness” in one’s punch that matters the most (p. 58).
I love this idea. The middle finger extended takes out the ability to be tight in the fist and elbow because of the way the muscles are designed. Thus, to get the punch out there, you must relax and allow it to move out via the propulsion of the twisting waist; the movement of the fist becomes almost a passive motion. Almost.
Relaxed, you can allow the waist to begin the motion and only once it is moving bring the motion to completion using the arm and shoulder muscles. However, they must relax as much as possible, and only activate enough to send the fist forward. Once that momentum is reached, the arm muscles relax again until the very last moment when the fist makes an impact with its target. Then immediately after impact, it relaxes again. This provides for the sharpness of which he speaks, but this sharpness ofmovement is not from forcing the fist out with the strength of your arms, but from allowing the arms to be thrust forward through momentum of the waist being transferred into the arm. Note that muscle activation is still required in the arms. Just not as much as we often think, and in varying amounts depending upon where in the strike in you are.
This is important for the next part of the text, which says,
At rest, the fist and the body must be able to instantly react to anything from any direction. The same applies to one’s heels — the heels must be prepared to shift the body in any direction without hesitation (p. 57).
In Wado-Ryu, when you land a basic punch, you want to do it with the whole of your mass behind it. When the heel is off the ground, it provides a place where energy can leak out through the “spring” of your foot-ankle-knee complex, and the impact of your strike can be significantly reduced. To counter this, people tend to rely upon the strength of their upper limb to generate force.
In so doing, they increase tension in the upper limb. This tension slows the movement of the limb, because there is more resistance for the prime movers of the action to counter. This extra tension makes it difficult to change the direction of movement instantaneously, which is fundamental aspect of Wado-Ryu. It pops up again and again throughout the book.
In this quote, we also have the basis of movement for Ōtsuka’s karate. The heels. The pelvis cannot be an effective pivot if you are not on your heels, becaue there are too many ppotential places for extraneous movement to occur (which results in energy leakage in the movement, or kinetic, chain). It’s not to say the heels won’t lift off the ground, because then how could you move swiftly? But when your strike lands, the heels should both be on the ground. This optimises force.
This is in stark contrast to the sport karate we see, where people score points while they’re up on their toes and bouncing around all over the place. These are very fine athletes with great skill, and most of them would likely defeat me in a match with ease. It is, however, sport karate, and is not meant to harm the other person. But we find that people lose their technique from their basics when they aply karate like that. I wonder how much more potent a competitor would be who practised their sparring with these principles in mind.
Once the adrenalin of the moment kicks in, it is difficult to maintain these principles unless you have trained them through gradual progression.
One thing that fascintes me about this is that the points based karate that we call “sport” is said to have come from Wado-Ryu, instituted by Hironori Otsuka himself, as a part of his model for training martial artists. In this model, everything is a part of the progression toward being able to use techniques at will in real combative situations. Basics, kata, paired work, and kumite are all part of the spectrum of learning how to apply these techniques in the real world, and of bettering yourself as a bringer of peace in society. So I find it somewhat ironic that so many competitors fail to utilise these very principles in their sparring.
Ōtsuka himself notes, change is an inevitable part of life, and of martial arts. Nonetheless, I believe that these principles can still apply in the context of sport karate.
Whole Body
Later, under the heading for Jun-Tuski, he says,
Every movement occurs with the whole body; never with the arms or feet alone. With arms alone, no speed results. One must not forget speed, the body and the twist of the waist. Things such as the length of a step, location of the waist and so on differ with every individual, so these become variables. The space between the feet can not be too narrow or two wide. Both knees are to be flexible — firm, but not fixed. Make sure that knees do not point inwards when taking a step or producing a kick. The hind knee should be comfortable; not outstretched or bent too much (p. 59).
This advice is echoed again and again throughout his book. Fight with the whole body. Not just the arms. Relax the arms and fight with the whole body. this takes a lot of training. I had the same advice from my Savate (French kickboxing) instructor on that solitary lesson I did with him. I was too tight in my arms, too tense in my upper body, and it wore me out. He told me to do exactly the same thing that my Sensei now tells me to do … relax the arms, relax the shoulders, and practise the techniques slowly. Speed comes later. Be relaxed (not loose), train slowly, and speed can come later. First, gentle precision.
… Both soles of the feet should be placed flat on the ground and place no strain on the ankles. Practise makes perfect. One stands with his whole body and not just his legs alone. In the second movement [the step with punch], the front foot should open slightly to the outside, or else it will be difficult to follow with the hind foot. But open the stance as the step is being taken … The legs do not carry the body; the body carries itself … When the legs carry the body, the body moves up and down, slowing the speed of forward motion and hence lessening the impact of any punches being thrown. In noh plays and indigenous folk dancing, nobody “walks” with their feet. They walk with their whole body; the feet just smoothly follow. The same applies in karate (p. 59).
This paragraph is packed with goodness.
Keeping the body at the same height means you have to “pivot” with the pelvis. This activates the glutes, adductors, hamstrings and hip flexors all together. And quads. And calves. Wow. This is a whole body thing. It’s no wonder I get so exhausted just doing our basics up and down the dojo.
This paragraph tells me there is a whole other realm of study to be made of “noh plays and indigenous folk dancing”. I wonder what gems we could discover by studying truly indigenous Japanese folk dancing (I don’t think I’ve ever seen any), as well as Noh drama. How they move, the grace, poise and control, and more than that, how they are taught to move. Imagine if you could do some training in the basics of movement for Noh plays and apply that to your karate.
I could go on and on, but I’ll leave you with this quote from Ōtsuka Sensei, at the end of his Jun-Tsuki section (p. 61):
When stabbing with a spear, it is said, “Stab at 30%, withdraw the spear at 70%.” These are words to remember.
From memory, this is the only time he says something like “these are words to remember”, so I imagine they are important. He references them again later on. I think further study into Japanese spear work is warranted because of these words and because he talks about spear work a bit in places referring to techniques.
Stab at 30%, withdraw at 70%. Thrust with the punch at 30%, and withdraw the punch at 70%. This is a very different beast to what I often see being taught and practised, and very different to how I use to practise myself.
The effectiveness of all of these elements comes from the pelvis acting as a pivot. From a stable, powerful hip joint comes the ability to pivot about the pelvis, and transfer the forces of the earth up and through our body, into our strike.
Thanks for reading. You may be interested in these other stories of mine:
