Uechi-Ryu.com

Pain Ya Gotta Love It.


Pain is the way of telling the body it is suffering an injury. However, once that message has been received it really is not needed anymore but the body keeps sending the message until you do something to stop the injury or care for it.

In a self protection situation responding to pain may be very detrimental to survival.

Learning to take pain and compartmentalize it, as “pressure” to be dealt with later is a skill set martial artists should have.

If we compare the feelings to having dental work done without that local aesthetic or with one you get the difference between pain and pressure. Now in truth the pain is still pain but we learn to regard it in a different way.

In a self protection situation we have to learn to take care of the situation and get ourselves (and or family) safe and only then can we care for any injuries.

I am going to go into a few drills that try to teach this but first let me give you some examples from training about going through pain.

I train with a good buddy Reg almost every Friday morning. One morning we ended up ground fighting and I went for a choke. As I was sinking the choke in Reg grabbed my thumb and cranked it. Now a good rear naked choke applied properly only takes a few second to put the guy out so I decided I could take the pain of even a broken thumb and still choke Reg out. So I simply compartmentalized the pain as pressure and slammed the choke on hard.

Reg went out before he could break my thumb. Now I ended up with the worst sprained thumb I have ever had and I have had a few.

Why do that? I mean it was just training so why put my thumb in such jeopardy?

In truth I am not sure you want to approach every training session that way but for me it was a true test of my theory and now I know in real life that I could ignore that pain and survive.

I had another training situation with Reg where I was after an arm lock or something and he put his thumb on the pressure point behind my ear and shoved. It felt like he had buried it in my skull to about the second knuckle. I decided again compartmentalize it and just do what I had to do and it worked.

Reg said after he wished he had been able to find that pressure point. I told him he had I just had chosen not to care. And again there was a price because my neck hurt for a few days.

Neither of these stories is intended in anyway to be bragging. They are intended to illustrate where in a real life self protection situation you cannot bow down to pain. If you are kicked in the thigh and drop to the ground because of the pain and you have your teeth kicked in before they smash a cider block on your head then may be you should have taken that pain and fought back anyway. (If you think my example is far fetched a man and women were attacked in my neighbourhood by a gang of guys. He was killed and they tried to kill her by smashing her head in with a cider block after she fell to the ground.) You cannot stop protecting yourself for anything because there is nothing that stops them.

So that is the rational for this. At the same time I always tell my students to alter their training when injured (but always train). Adding further damage to an injury just to train is not self protection. Always train just learn to modify it.

So how can we safely train this skill set?

Drills listed in the next post right ….NOW!

Pain Resistance Drills:

All these drills are done to the level of the people in involved.

The point is to create pain but not injury.

I work from a base of a common drill: Sanchin Stepping.

Sanchin stepping I am sure is very common in most schools so the idea of what is needed to do this is in most schools.

The first three are pretty common Sanchin stepping then things get to where we are going. Partners A and B alternate back and forth across the floor.

1. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their fist on A’s lower stomach. A begins to walk forward across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their fist giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

2. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their fist in the middle of A’s stomach. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their fist giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

3. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their Shoken fist right on A’s solar plexus. You do not have to use a Shoken but this gives B a chance to strengthen a Uechi weapon. At the start you may need to lighten the pressure back off this one because the shoken is pressing right on the xiphod process. Take care not to snap it off. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their fist giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

The three of these drills focus the mind on moving forward through the “pressure” (resistance) being given to them. This sets up the right mindset for going through pain.

4. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places both their shoken fists into the upper chest muscles of A and drives them in as A steps. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their shoken fists giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

5. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places the tips of their thumbs pressing up under the clavicles (collar bone) of A. (Do not break the collar bones just inflict some very noticeable pain.) A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their thumbs giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

6. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their middle finger in A’s tracheal notch and presses DOWN (do not press straight). (The tracheal notch is the little V at the top of the sternum or breastbone.) A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes in and down on their finger giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

7. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their thumbs into the front sides of A’s neck. To find the spot use the Sanchin hand position but with the thumb lined up on the side. Run your index finger along their neck until the thumb touches the front of A’s neck. That is the spot, press straight in with the tip of the thumb. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their thumbs giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move. (Warning: After taking a step you may need to pull back a little and let the blood flow or you can be dizzy by the end of the drill.)

8. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their shoken fist on the upper part of A’s sternum or breastbone. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their shoken fist giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

9. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin and raises their arms slightly opening their ribs up to B. “B” places their shoken fists on either side of A’s rib cage pressing up into the ribs. A begins to walk across the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their shoken fists giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

10. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their Tiger hand on A’s biceps where their thumbs can drive straight into the biceps. A begins to walk cross the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their thumbs giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

11. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin the other “B” places their Tiger hand into A’s shoulder joints where their thumbs can drive straight into the joint. A begins to walk cross the floor keeping focus and not rushing. B pushes on their thumbs giving enough pressure to make A sweat and work hard but not so much they cannot move.

Here we change up slightly in that B will not be pressing against A as they try to walk forward or perform a movement but rather B will be striking A and A has to go through the strike anyway.

Do not make this a contest – work to your partner’s level. They should be able to go through almost all of the strikes.

12. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin and it is their job to step forward across the room. B’s job is to punch them in the stomach mid-step. A begins to walk cross the floor keeping focus and not rushing and keep moving.

13. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin and it is their job to step forward across the room. B’s job is to front kick the thigh of the stepping leg mid-step. A begins to walk cross the floor keeping focus and not rushing and keep moving.

14. Partners face each other. One partner “A” gets in Sanchin and it is their job to step forward across the room. B’s job is to roundhouse kick the thigh of the stepping leg mid-step. A begins to walk cross the floor keeping focus and not rushing and keep moving.

15. This time A’s job is to roundhouse kick B’s lead leg. B’s job is to punch A in the stomach mid-kick. A must go through the punch and kick B anyway.


To do all these drills you must drop into a real hardcore mindset that the pain you feel is nothing but pressure and cannot stop you from doing what you need to do.

Focus and drive forward through it all.

I am trying to think of the others we do because we did them Monday night for about forty minutes solid.

Your thinking all the time Rick and first time I ever heard of drills like this, ideal in that the one receiving seems to control the level of inflicted pain.
My own observation on how much pain a person can take is environmental, it may also be genetic who knows.
Best example I can think of is a student we had years ago, Ian worked in a family logging operation and injury was excepted part of "gettin the trees out". One class I was doing leg conditioning with him and after sometime he asked if I could go lighter so the stiches would hold, his leg I discovered had been hit by a chain that let go during a drag and along with severe brusing some laceration took place on the shin area. He told me he still had to "eat" (work) "so a little karate stuff ain`t nothin" . Pain was simply part of living to Ian and how much we can tolerate I think is based on attitude as much or more than physical conditioning. Our experiment continues...

_________________
Léo

Yeah, it really became apprent on thursday. The conditioning and the drills really became apparent when you and Rav were fighting. Rav said to you that you hit him good, but found that it didnt hurt it because his breathing was already down.
And me, i wasnt as scared of getting hit as i once was!

Hey Rick, try eating some Chili Peppers before the drills next time. They are alleged to release endorphins in the brain which are more potent then morphine once they are activated.

Hi Leo: Thanks for the comments. Yes there is only one person in control and that is the person learning to go through the pain. The big key is know your limits and work on pain not injury.

At first you tough it through. Then you use a little F-you attitude and then you get to a calm mind where you try to be indifferent to it.

Tony: I’ll have to give those chillies a try.

Adam: You did well the other night.