The Good in the Bujinkan

To add, I think there's a real danger in trying to look at Hatsumi-sensei demonstrating something and thinking its the entirety of the form. How much of that clip does Hatsumi-sensei actually teach the entirety of the technique (structure, timing, distance, usage, etc.) vs highlighting a few points of difference between the typical tsuki and one from Shinden Fudo ryu? I think it's fairly safe to think that Ishizuka-sensei learned to tsuki that way from Hatsumi-sensei, not from thin air. (Not implying that's what anyone is saying, just making a point)

I think it's fairly well established at this point that attempting to duplicate whatever Soke is doing vs being taught the art from the ground up from someone in the line of transmission, is one of the reasons why Bujinkan practitioners on the whole are openly mocked. How many people can honestly say they have been shown and instructed in how to properly attack by someone in that line?

 

Most people in the Bujinkan practice with their weight centered in kamae and this is wrong especially in the basic level.
This takes away the freedom to move quickly.
For instance in ichimonji no kamae if you dont have your weight enough on the backfoot you cannot go to hicho without moving your bodyweight to the rear foot. that means you will be to slow to move your leg is an attach is to the front foot. Try it with a skilled spearfighter.

As you point out Ishizuka sensei. This comes from him:
In Kamae you have to be able to freely move your front leg (to hicho) in ichimonji without shifting your weight. The same thing goes for when you are in tsuki "position" then you need to be able to move your backleg freely without the need to shift your weight. This will ad more speed to your movement. because you dont need the shift the weight for the next step.

Now ishizuka sensei is very skilled and he can do this without having his weight fully on one leg. This requires a special kind of conditioning of the tendons and muscles that almost nobody has done.

This is one of the fundamental lessons from koku.
If you try full speed with a real attack if your weight is centered you will get kicked. (If you don't do it the fluffy bunny way by thinking you can hit the arm and make your opponent take a step back so you have time for the kick.)
There is a guy who practiced MMA and Bujinkan (he used to be on this forum) who tried to kick a lot of the japanese and western shihan in koku.
There is only two people who didnt get kicked.
Ishizuka sensei was one of them. The guy called koku the shihan killer.

 

It is taught in the BJK guarding up with the rear hand as well. But because it comes from weapons beginners are usually taught the rear hand at the hip first so the learn proper body alignment first before as a way of conditioning.
Once you have mastered the proper body dynamics you can move the rear hand to any position.

 

Actually that is wrong and this is one of the biggest mistakes that people make.
Its easy to do wrong and when you see soke move sometimes what he does even looks circular although it is not.

Its hard to explain because it should be shown and explained in person but it has to do with physics. So here is my attempt to explain the problem.

Any circular movement will lead to centrifugal force. So if there is a circular movement in your tsuki that means there is centrifugal force. Your body understands this so counters in four ways:

• Stepping with the front leg outside of the center line, thereby exposing the groin to attack.
• Bending the front knee to the side to lessen the force on the knee and thereby makening it weak to attack.
• Bending less in order to lessen the force thus staying higher on your feet.
• Moving slow, which is the normal training speed for a lot of BJK practiotioners.

Also, adding circular movement opens your center line to attack that is very dangerous when fighting someone skilled especially when using weapons.
This goes for both training in yoroi as without.

It is a very common mistake.
But when done over a prolonged period time it will damage your knees.
As you knee is twisted and not aligned with the force generated.

Now the good news is that there is a way to do it (switching sides without generating centrifugal force) It has to do with the timing of the switch and a special way to use your body. This movement has no opening in it as your centerline is always covered.
This is part of the basic transmission. You need somebody to show you in detail how to do it, it will take at least a couple of hours of instruction to be able to grasp the details and years to perfect the movement.

Most people have never seen this let alone practiced it. I myself feel like im only scratching the surface of the depth of tsuki after many private training with my teacher on tsuki.

The tracking comes from moving the line, not adding a circle movement.
The movement should be precise, straight and fast.

Everything you practice has to be done full speed and/or against a fully resisting opponent other wise you are just larping at leat some of the times as it brings out mistakes in your movement and techniques that will otherwise never show up.

 

Sure there's circular movement, the question is where. The key is to be able to move circularly without creating centrifugal/centripetal force. That sounds impossible but it is. How? By moving the circle creating spirals instead of circles. For example, the hips move circularly, but because they either move forwards or backwards, the resulting force is linear. You can pivot the foot circularly at different points in a movement but again the resulting vector elsewhere isn't circular.

The rear leg shouldn't step forward straight during tsuki, reason again being because you have a groin and plant leg to protect, so again there is circularity found. You don't want your feet on the same line, as that is unstable also so in order not to open your groin, you have to use your knee and hip movement to close it off to attack when you step.

 

His head is directly over his knee and toes. Which places his weight just about within his base, which works as he's hitting with his weight.


Which is the limit for balenced extention, which is lucky because he's in the full extended position for striking.

 

Effective hitting is adding centrifugal force to your body mass in motion. You can't not have a fundamental physical force apply to you, anymore then you can choice to ignore gravity.

All joints move in circles, by adding corindinated joints in together you can add these circles together to make straight lines.
Which is why when under the effect of adrenaline these coordinated motions degrade and people tend to swing blindly instead.

 

Actually we may all be talking past each other(one talking about joints, one about footwork, another about four ways it affects you). Forces can be nullified to a certain extent, even how gravity affects the body. Skydiving is a good example, as is shotenjutsu.

 

Shotenjutsu is a good example, gravity is always a constant, the run up provides inertia, the head "drop" (in relational to the feet) releases potential energy, and provides centrifugal force to drive the flip and landing.

I might look for a physics explanation of a backflip if it exists.

 

Hello, my name is Juan, i am a rookie and hope to learn and share knowledge with you.
I have all flowers to say about Bujinkan, the best one is to work and take care of the heart. Recently I had a motorbike accident, and broke my arm, 3 broked bones and 35 sewing points. The doctor said with irony why I was alive, because the obvious place for me now is the cemetery. I remember 2 things before I got unconscious: my shihan told me: "you, accept things as they come and confront them", and before that another shihan started to throw me some fudo ken behind my back, and i don't know why i moved before they hit me, was the same sense before the crash.

Rarely, shihan said "you, fight below the sanctuary", and i felt very nervous, because i am a mukyu (not ranked). Somehow, that feeling helped me in that accident.

What else? Lots of things, you can speak with shihan without words, he knows when you impose yourself good or bad intentions, he detect your internal changes with no miss, and you can play with him, so to show you what errors of thoughts you can have, and is hard to accept at first, when you start to get courage and surrender, to go for the change is so incredible that happyness is colossal.

Is like being uke with your mind, the sensation is that we are fighting in another level, not only physical, but mental. The surrending can be: physical, accepting the pain your tori puts on you, mental, by accepting your bad thoughts, and spiritual, letting your internal world go outside and manifest it.

To be short: the pure heart is very important, to get your senses flowing.
Is about love, when you love something, all gets easy.
When you think bad, the senses go away because of the internal suffering.

Ah! the thinking! I realized that thinking blocks you, the body gets very tight, the mind gets too stoned, and the heart feels nothing. Sensing helps much more than calculating.

Thank you for reading this, and to care about this nice activity we train.
Keep going!

 

Traditionally, you should practice from "face to face" or "in your face" as modern self defense experts teach. From the beginning, punching, oitsuki, is done from kame, as is Ichimonji, as well as face to face. There is no adaptation of: boxing, karate, or crazy comes at you close enough to kiss; realistic distance is practiced from the get go.

When you are in a "duel", the ichimonji variant tells you how to attack (with oitsuki kata containing more then one punch); when you are face to face, you can do the same attack.

IMO, the Ichimonji "long attack" is 10 times more difficult and technical then the close encounters one. It's not just a training tool.

 

I trained here for 18 months and got more disillusioned as time went on, my problem was , why am I rolling around (badly, but that's my fault) pretending to throw shuriken at people and having mass gradings where everyone passed http://www.shinobi-kai.net/contact.html
I must add that this is not affiliated with any x kan, he trained to 4th Dan with the Buj, dunno if normski is still about but he told me some stuff. As in the instructor shouldn't be teaching

 

I can not even imagine how devastating it must feel to devote yourself to something and later find out that it was fake. I think it takes great courage to admit it tbh. I've seen people that got burned, and instead of having the courage to admit it, they go in the aggressive denial syndrome, the eternal hater.

I meant to write a short introduction to ninjutsu, 99% of that was actually just classical j martial arts. I gave up on it because i realized 2 things. One, who cares about the subject has enough info already; Two, the ones that say they don't understand, that PR or Big Will are criptical or elusive, don't really care anyway. How many threads do we see about the strikes or throws in the takenouchi ryu? Ironically, there is more inf on some of the Ninja schools then the classical accepted ones.

 

I did learn some good stuff it just seemed to get worse with the ninja film watchers etc, Peter himself was a great bloke, but I'd make a point of kneeling behind the long serving black belts, otherwise it was a waste of an evening

 

What do you mean realistic distance is practiced from the get go? Not in my limited experience. Granted I was just in for a few months but I watched the black belts and their distancing was typical BBT. Starting off at that long range Oituski. How is that realistic distance and training to deal with up close attacks?

Now granted maybe I missed some of the black belt only class's but I didn't see anything done at close range. Secondarily, Dealing with the long range Ichimonji attack is 10 times easier then close encounters, due to the fact I can see it coming from the next time zone.

 

I said in the traditional training you train from "face to face" attack, along with the "long range". If you did not do this, you either trained for only 2,3 lessons, or i don't know, not the best teacher. The "typical" Ninjutsu training i think you know already that it's not the best, unfortunately, you might have been a student.

 

I see the goodness of decent ninjutsu training , just where do you get it, there's 15th Dan's everywhere you look, they even had to add another 6 Dan's cos they are so hard

 

Look at the line of transmission, not the rank. Don't know how to say it...it's visible like a modern (kyu/dan) art, but transmitted like a Koryu. If you want the grades you go the former, the skills the latter.