Goju Sanchin Kata "Gone Wrong"

[Van Canna]

Sonnon

Focus upon exhaling through every movement. Never inhale consciously. Don't move unless you are exhaling. Keep exhaling while you are moving... one long exhalation. Match the exhalation explosiveness to the biomechanical acceleration: slow if slow movement, explosive if explosive, but keep exhaling always...

[Van Canna]

Dear Canna sensei

In fact, the system as taught in
China and Wakayama did not call for such traumatic conditioning.

Severity
in training is far different from what we think of as "severe" these days.

The ego -- the "self" -- takes the heaviest beating, not the body.

The
physical body does indeed take some conditioning, but the vital spots
(kidneys, liver and spleen, heart, throat, etc.) are left alone -- internal
organs cannot be "conditioned" nor should anyone delude themselves into
thinking so! Very dangerous training.

The spirit of the practitioner -- his willpower, his determination, his
sense of real humbleness, his stamina and endurance -- these are conditioned
to be like iron.

[Van Canna]

The UechiRyu conditioning most people know about was created after the 50's,
probably in the 60's. It had more to do with tournament fighting than real
street defense. Common sense -- you DON'T want to stand still and "solidly
rooted to the spot" in a street fight! Nor does UechiRyu kata teach one to
do this, but that has to be shown by the teacher.

[Van Canna]

In china and Wakayama, there was no "sanchin testing (shime)" such as
today's. It was all kitae -- conditioning -- and there was no "test", it
was simply another ongoing process of growth. The point was never to see
how much a student could take (or worse -- how much a Sensei could dish out)
but to indicate to the student the level of his conditioning WITHOUT
destroying his Sanchin, knocking him backward, boouncing him around the
dojo, etc. in the process.

[Bill Glasheen]

Van

There's a big difference between performance breathing and exercise breathing. Goju Sanchin is an entirely different kettle of worms. It doesn't really fit in with Sonnen's suggestions on how to breathe during an athletic event.

The issue is the inhale part. If you restrict the exhale repetition after repetition in Sanchin without similarly restricting the inhale, you lose your ability to maximally "milk" the vena cava in the kata. It gets squeezed and squeezed, but never gets blood sucked into it. One could also argue that restricted exhaling breath after breath without balancing with a restricted inhale may have a net effect similar to a Valsalva.

I discussed much of this in my dissertation, by the way (Analysis of Cardiopulmonary Rhythms).

I take this Goju Sanchin breathing and run with it in my class. We have myriad warmup exercises I do with dynamic tension where I have the students employ this breathing. By the time we're done, the body is both warm and flushed throughout, and the students are energized (as opposed to spent). I've been doing this for a couple of decades now. I have lower-than-normal mean (resting) blood pressure, and an "athletic" pulse pressure and heart-rate (at age 55). So I'm doing something right.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

The issue is the inhale part. If you restrict the exhale repetition after repetition in Sanchin without similarly restricting the inhale

Would you classify the tsst sound[brief exhale we hear] after a Uechi power movement as a restricted exhale?

And how to learn to breathe when in the grip of adrenaline?

Good stuff.

[Bill Glasheen]

Would you classify the tsst sound[brief exhale we hear] after a Uechi power movement as a restricted exhale?

First... As you know, the breathing in Goju Sanchin and Uechi Sanchin are very different - primarily because the former is done with dynamic tension and the latter is not.

That said...

I cannot speak for how others do what I like to call dolphin breathing. Basically I engage in non-breathing except for in-between movements. However I keep my epiglottis open so that if I have any kind of trunk movement, I am "breathed" by my body motion. (Sonnon calls this "being breathed." I accidentally stumbled on this, and completely agree with the description.)

Now to your specific question.

*I* do a quick exhale/inhale in-between movements. It's a rapid exhale with no resistance, finishing off with the tongue slamming shut on the roof of my mouth as I transition from exhale to inhale. Neither my tongue nor my epiglottis restrict the exhale. I do however use the tongue as a one-way valve so that it slams shut on the inhale, causing me to inhale through the nose (fully open nostrils). The exhale is sudden and forced; the inhale happens naturally.

I had years to think about if there was any advantage to this kind of breathing, other than rarely being in the midst of a breath when hit. I came up with an answer when researching my "almost" dissertation.

The sudden burst of air out and in causes the air to go from laminar flow (normal breathing) to turbulent flow (pulse breathing). This has to do with chaos, Reynolds numbers, and other such things that aeronautical and fluid mechanics engineers pay attention to. In any case, turbulent air flow is replete with thousands and thousands of mini eddy currents, causing rapid mixing up and down the airway. Result? It's as if you were breathing deeply, only you aren't. When I do this right, I can respire adequately with a shallow breath (tidal volume) even though I'm exerting myself. When done with Uechi Sanchin, my blood gasses are in perfect order. I am not at all out of breath.

When folks don't do this right, they are out of breath at the end of Sanchin.

And how to learn to breathe when in the grip of adrenaline?

Several things to consider here.

First... deep breathing lowers the heart-rate, which helps the individual put a cap on the survival stress reflex. The deep breathing we do in the junbi undo in fact is an exercise now taught by RBSD experts. They call it autogenic breathing. (Grossman, On Combat)

Second... sometimes when folks get into condition red or even black, they stop breathing. Practicing breathing while engaged in martial movement (e.g. Sanchin kata) will make it easier for you to remember to breathe when experiencing extremes of neurohormonal stimulation (a.k.a. "the dump").

That's how I view it.

- Bill

[maxwell ainley]

Bill ,please correct me if I have this wrong ,but Gem sensei stated during a dynamic tension topic ,that uechi-ryu did use dynamic tension .

[Bill Glasheen]

Bill ,please correct me if I have this wrong ,but Gem sensei stated during a dynamic tension topic ,that uechi-ryu did use dynamic tension .

Many years ago when I first started doing Uechi (1974), there was a practice of doing the first few Uechi Sanchins with some dynamic tension. That was done (as in Goju) for warm-up and strengthening purposes. But then the final one or two Sanchins were done relaxed with fast movement.

I haven't seen that practice in decades, Max. I honestly don't know where it started. It could have been a temporary Goju influence on Uechi Ryu. It could have been a Charles Atlas Method influence on Uechi Ryu for all I know. But I haven't seen this practice in a while.

Personally I believe that if you don't match the dynamic tension with the (properly executed) Goju breathing method, then you aren't properly integrating breathing with movement. So it's just as well that the practice was dropped.

Meanwhile, we do some out-of-the-box dynamic tension movement with "dragon breathing" as part of my dojo's training. I choreograph the movement on the spot. There's no religion about this. It's a useful method that can be employed in whatever way the informed practitioner wishes to use it.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

Good post Bill and I don’t disagree at all simply because I know that there many ways of breathing _ and countless experiences with particular breathing methods _ either accepted or discarded by countless athletes, martial arts practitioners, and combat professionals.

For example, Carlos Ciriza has reported a particular method of breathing by Shinjo sensei that appears to increase his power exponentially.



My post here is a description of personal beliefs of what has worked best for me over the long years in enduring the athletic demands of soccer, rowing, track and field, and karate tournaments.
Inthe few fights I have been in, unfortunately, I have no recollection at all of the way I breathed.

All in all, it has been my position that people will breathe according to individual beliefs and performance efficiency_ suiting their body make up and life experiences.

In my classes, I don’t teach breathing methods. I allow the students to choose _ experiment and breathe as they wish.

I am a true believer in the following:

_ By blowing out, exhaling forcefully through constricted throat and lips, one can pressurize the torso and provide a safety valve at the same time. This also gets rid of pent up adrenaline.
_ Constrained exhalation serves to pressurize the torso in a way that supports the spine, without blocking the air, and thus absorb peak moments of stress.

_ a pressurized torso also stabilizes the shoulders and provides a foundational connection to the hips.

When I hit the heavy bag, as an example, I force air through the small opening of my lips, mouth and throat, sort of like oil passing through the small aperture of an automobile's shock absorbers.

The force of my exhalation and the restriction of my mouth reaches maximum intensity at the exact moment my strike impacts the bag and sinks through its surface to its depths.

This gives me a constant line of support and force from my feet up through my hips, continuing through my torso and shoulders down my arm to my fist.

Without a pressurized torso, I would lose the connection between shoulders and hips, hips and shoulders.

Sprinters exhale through pursed lips with every step, or thrust. This is the way I was taught to breathe by my soccer coach when sprinting on the pitch and when firing power kicks at the goalie.

Not breathing while exerting power is sort of contrary to most other exhaustive type of sports or activities, and for me it is almost unnatural.

And then …as you know…In a sparring or combat situation I think that it is much more important to get the strikes in as fast and powerful as possible instead of worrying about holding one's breath or not. Just let nature takes its course - which, I believe, will probably be exhaling while striking.

I consider striking as ‘horizontal loads’, and with a little thought and practice we can determine when to inhale, when to pressurize, and how much air to allow as an escape-safety valve.

[Bill Glasheen]

I'm having to split up my posts, Van, as we're posting at the same time and I'm tweaking what I write. So I'll re-create this part so that it flows naturally from what you wrote.

*I* have dynamic tension movement (with appropriate breathing) in several parts of Sanchin kata. I do it in the opening and in the double thrusts, when squeezing and opening the fists. I also do it in the beginning when drawing the fisted hands up, and opening the hands to nukites. Again... I make my students adjust their breathing accordingly. Nobody taught me to do this, Max. I do what makes sense. And I haven't had any complaints from Uechi masters who have seen me do this. They get what I am doing and why.

All in all, I'm employing three distinct breathing methods in *my* Sanchin.

• Dragon breathing (Goju Sanchin breathing) in a few brief parts of the kata where dynamic tension is employed.
• Dolphin breathing (pulse breathing, "tsst" breathing, whatever you want to call it). This is the in-between breathing method. So no matter how slow or fast you do the kata, you're always going to be respiring in a very efficient manner.
• "Being breathed." Van is more active about this than I am. I'm quite passive. This is the breathing I naturally (passively) do with open epiglottis when I focus the core on a thrust. The more you use your core with movement and allow air freely to go in and out of the lungs, the more you'll do this. Therefore when I'm just literally going through the motions to show them how the form goes, I'm not breathing here.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

I consider striking as ‘horizontal loads’, and with a little thought and practice we can determine when to inhale, when to pressurize, and how much air to allow as an escape-safety valve.

This is a good way to think about it, Van.

It's also worth mentioning that when we do kata thrusts against air and with nothing in the hands, we're engaged in a "no load" situation. As such, my breathing with movement isn't anything to write home about. But when I hit things and I'm contracting that core on contact to continue the penetration, then that sudden high load on my contracting core causes a much more pronounced exhale. Again... I follow my principles and let what happens happen.

Similarly in the weight room when I have a load on my arms in a bench press, you're definitely going to hear me breathe with movement. And there I tend to match the load with restricted exhale breathing on the extension, and some "sniffing" on the retraction.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

_ By blowing out, exhaling forcefully through constricted throat and lips, one can pressurize the torso and provide a safety valve at the same time.

This is key. It is why I "dragon breathe" with loaded movement. Same thing, Van. You use your lips as the valve; I use my epiglottis. The engineering diagram is the same.

I personally like the dragon breathing method because: 1) I learned it in my very first kata (Teisha 1) where I hissed like a cat when drawing into a cat stance, 2) I can do it, and 3) it's what cats (the tiger) do and I completely identify.

This also gets rid of pent up adrenaline.

I'm not sure what mechanism you are implying here, Van. Do you have a source on this?

I believe that breathing can control neurohormonal status. But my understanding of it is quite complex. I DO however believe people used it long before they understood why it worked.

- Bill

[cdoucet]

Since we are on this particular topic of breathing I will pose a question.

Sometimes when I am moving or hitting or doing whatever strike/block I find that the exhalation of air starts to hurt my throat. In many cases I feel that I am doing something wrong.

Or is this just a symptom of the force of the exhalation.

Fwiw I do the "dolphin breathing" in pretty much everything I do that uses extra effort. (lifting heavy objects etc) keeps a reminder to breate just goes to show how this exorcise gets incorporated into daily life.

I still like doing the Dynamic Tension in Sanchin, I like using it to pinpoint and make myself/people aware of which muscles are being engaged.

[Bill Glasheen]

Sometimes when I am moving or hitting or doing whatever strike/block I find that the exhalation of air starts to hurt my throat. In many cases I feel that I am doing something wrong.

Or is this just a symptom of the force of the exhalation.

It's difficult to answer that question without seeing you and listening to your breathing.

I will however offer a thought. There's a lot of musculature inside the mouth and throat. If you allow the tissue there to more-or-less flap in the breeze of a forced exhale, it might be a bit rough on it. If however you put a bit of muscle tone in the airway, then your throat may not get beat up so much.

Getting this muscular awareness can be accomplished via several ways. Singing helps. Goju Sanchin breathing helps - IF DONE CORRECTLY. Both of those end up being "weight lifting for the breathing apparatus."

Try becoming more aware of what you're doing with the throat in these forced exhales. Also... maybe don't try so hard with the exhale. The horse should lead the cart, and not the other way around. The breathing supports the core movement; the core movement should not be driven by the breath.

- Bill