Chikai-no-hiji or "close in elbow"

Updated Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 at 11:07 hours

Chikai no hiji  [近いの肘] This is the name I gave to a kata I created a few years back and it brought to mind the why. It came to be a favorite technique, elbow strikes, because they were powerful and Henry Sensei liked to use them all the time when we sparred. It requires one get really close to an opponent/attacker. It made me think of fighting or being attacked on the street.

Lets just say fighting as in school yard scuffles. It may apply to other area's of violent behavior/attacks but that is best left to the professionals with a whole lot more experience than I. I have been in a few fights so that is my limited basis for this post.

I have come to the theory that fights tend to get very up close and personal. There are no large area's where everyone dances around feeling one another out and faking/feinting, etc. Usually it is close, brutal, and quickly done, if your lucky.

Note, one must end the fight fast. The longer it takes the more opportunity the attacker will have to hurt you bad, basically. It's is complicated. Anyway, when someone decides to clean your clock they tend to move in with a haymaker, if untrained, or a kick/strike, if trained, and then it tends to go to a clench, etc., i.e. basically in a school yard scuffle.

I found that using elbows, for me, tends to be powerful so in order to bring together those elbow techniques I created the "Chikai-no-hiji" which means, I think, close elbows kata. It requires one to get in very close and use the elbows to dominate and end it quickly.

I don't hit directly but come up, down or from the various side angles to strike across and into the body as I find that works better than direct impact which the body is built to endure.

What all this brought to mind is in kata and kata practice we tend to use a lot of floor space. The embusen and the lines we follow for each kata are kind of set for the basic's of the system. Where I go further is that once I got the basics of the system somewhat learned I stretched outside the box and beyond the gross body movement, etc. and moved toward "economy of motion/movement."

In my kata practice I tend to work the footwork, movement, motions and kamae/stances where I can assume each one in a "very, very small space" as if I were in a close up and personal fight. It can look as if I an twisting, turning, and dropping into various stances, etc. in a space about four foot square - give or take as I have not measured it for specificity.

Try it sometime. Do a kata as you normally would slow and easy, relaxed in a positive relaxation mode. Then do another working the movement, stances, stance transitions as if you could not leave that four foot square box. Visualize it as if you and the attacker are face to face throwing strikes, punches, elbows, forearms, etc. leaving out grappling to ground work cause I try to avoid that for me although I don't mind putting my attacker on the ground using gravity to help me out. Try this, see how things become a bit different.

If your new, leave it alone because you really have to know the kata instinctively/consciously, etc. or you get confused. Even higher level practitioners who try this lose the kata but persistence and knowledge will blend the two much like doing kata in mirror fashion, i.e. one side then reverse the side to start, etc.