If you choose not to strike him, you must control his range of movement using 'wedges.' This often entails sensing where his center of gravity is - in essence, it's a problem of martial geometry. Anxiety breeds panic, which leads him to make mistakes.ĭisadvantage: When a person panics, he moves more erratically. For you, there's an advantage and a disadvantage associated with this.Īdvantage: A person wastes energy because of the anxiety that accompanies being in a bad position. These choices give you leverage as he tries to regain balance and structure - but you are a half beat ahead of him. When he's in an unbalanced position, you have a choice: Strike him or take him down with a throw or sweep. This opens the door for you to use leverage - both physically and with respect to timing. The most advantageous blind spot you can achieve is to get to your opponent's back. That enables you to use kuzushi to redirect the opponent so you're facing him and he isn't facing you. The ideal position to be in, according to sabaki, is the person's blind spot. This is similar to what unfolds when predatory animals hunt their prey. The footwork and angles ideally put you in a position from which you know more about him and he knows less about you. Sabaki teaches you to seek positioning that puts your maximum force against your opponent's minimum force. Positioning and LeverageIn sabaki, achieving proper positioning relative to your opponent is critical. Many times, that limb is overextended because it's being used to regain balance or to avoid pressure. On the ground, kuzushi can be used to disrupt a person's balance and create entry points that are useful for attacking overextended limbs. In sabaki, we can apply the concepts of kyushu and kuzushi while standing or on the ground. It means 'to borrow the energy of the opponent to destabilize his structure or balance or both.' Kuzushi essentially overloads his central nervous system, giving it the message that to regain balance, the body must create an imbalance structurally to 'catch' itself. This leads us to the next concept: kuzushi. Beyond that, kyushu enables the person who's 'listening' more intently to then direct the flow of the confrontation as he or she sees fit.

The fundamental sabaki concept of kyushu means 'to absorb the oncoming force of an opponent.' If your adversary launches a strike with a given amount of energy, you should plan on absorbing precisely that amount of energy so it's canceled out. The following principles and techniques will illustrate the enshin expression of sabaki. In the art my father created and in sabaki, we wish to honor and strengthen this fighting spirit, but at the same time we recognize our limitations and seek ways to use our unique talents to grow physically and mentally. In many circles, the hallmark of doing full-contact karate is the ability to endure physical punishment from an opponent and persevere despite normal human limitations. Grasping sabaki to the point at which you're capable of using it in a match requires plenty of patience, sincerity and humility. That said, I must note that learning sabaki, like everything else in life, also involves a caveat. This allows you to feel early on when a technique is done correctly or incorrectly. You're working with natural geometric shapes like circles, triangles, straight lines and spirals.

The irony is that when you use sabaki, you're not fighting your opponent. This serves as a bridge to grappling for people who are used to striking and a bridge to striking for grapplers who are used to the ground. I chose these four because during the pandemic, my father decided to incorporate newaza (ground techniques) into the enshin curriculum. In this article, I will present four concepts and several related techniques that illustrate this special quality of sabaki. Sabaki is not a martial art per se rather, it's a traditional idea that's open to evolution and reinterpretation - and that just might precipitate a revolution in the fighting arts. My father Joko Ninomiya, the founder and grandmaster of enshin karate, created the Sabaki Challenge, a tournament designed to highlight this intelligent system of working with an opponent's force, which often involves taking advantage of circles and leverage. In Japanese, sabaki means 'to work with energy efficiently.' It's a state of being that expresses strength coupled with ease and grace.

Sabaki challenge