Karate Optimization by André Bertel-Sensei
Report by PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
“Methods themselves are weapons…They are all just sides of one active, fighting and charged life.”– Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics, 1931.
In this piece, I will go into details about Andre Bertel-sensei's Karate optimization training as I have recently experienced it, up front and personally, in one-on-one training at Bertel-sensei’s office, the Oita Budo Sports Center.
Notes
Context is Everything
This report ends more than a decade of radio silence on Karate. Why am I doing this? Put simply, the main reasons are 恩返; the utility of Asai Ryu Bujutsu Karate as taught by Bertel-sensei;the quality of Bertel-sensei’s Karate and his methodology –particularly the breakthrough I had understanding dynamic power generation, removing the static/white noise, and clarifying a whole new way of movement; and, finally, to strongly support the IKS – not as yet another dan-issuing organization printing press, but as a complementary alternative approach to Karate excellence going back to the pre-JKA Nakayama roots of Karate instruction.
恩返 Ongaeshi
First, ongaeshi. Bertel-sensei came along to teach Yuko and I ata private seminar back in 2010. His main reasons, as he told us,for this were (a) he did not want us to have bad memories about Karate, the Karate world, and Karateka, and (b) he wanted to show us that there were other ways of approaching Karate.
That he did that for us, that he didn't have to, and that didn't need to, and for which there was no advantage or benefit for him, told Yuko all we needed to know about Andre, who is one of some very special and lifelong friends we made through Karate.
So, in writing this piece, I’m performing an act of「恩返」or ongaeshi – an expression of gratitude and “returning the favor” to a kindness done in the past, which was performed without any sense of doing he person who received that kindness, a favor.
To understand ongaeshi, it is important to grasp that it is not transactional. With ongaeshi, the original kindness was performed without consideration of return.
Spiritually speaking, the concept of ongaeshi, involves there turn of a kindness to prior act of unlooked for/ unsolicited kindness.
Forget about the price tag
In other words, I’m writing this because I really want to.
This surprised Bertel-sensei, who was perfectly happy to keep
our interactions private if we still felt we needed to protect
ourselves (i.e. Yuko and I, and of course, our daughter). After a
discussion about this, we both agreed, it was time.
And moving on, you will recognize the on in ongaeshi as
the on in Jion, which also makes an appearance later. Hold on to
your dogi pants.
Asai-Ryu Bujutsu Karate
Bertel-sensei’s seminar had a profound impact – the pun was intended – on Yuko and I, particularly Yuko. After five years of genkai-made and kushin, of screwing down and (in my case attempts at) exploding out, pushing our bodies (again, in my case, average athletic ability) to the limit, and of having forced stretching inducing injuries put on us. So, when Bertel-sensei introduced us to Kakuyoku Shodan it felt like… a merciful release.
For Yuko in particular, training Asai Ryu Karate was just a better fit and felt more natural than struggling through something like Gankaku. Sure she loved it, it looks really cool, for youngsters it tickles their ego, but the kicks hurt and, well, just what are the oyo?
By way of reference, Yuko’s original style back in the 1970s had been Shito-Ryu. Our training in the 1990s under Richard Amos’s excellent and expert teaching in Yohji Yamamoto’s Nishi-Azabu Branch had been under the Asai-JKA. So our first Karate was what I would call Asai-influenced Shotokan. One of the major events in my early Karate life, apart from seeing the magic of Asai-sensei’s movements when he would come in and teach, was when Amos-sensei introduced us to Hachimon, which must have been about the time the videos were being shot. To be honest, sure I kind of understood why I had to struggle through the Heian-gata, so, so, so necessary. But to me, personally, and that’s only my personal opinion, Asai-gata feel like what they are: A graduation and liberation from the 26. Might they have been an antidote too? By 2010, having reached the end of the road in what you might describe as a toxic/ abusive relationship with Karate, Yuko and were, it’s fair to say, ready to appreciate Asai-Ryu Bujutsu Karate.
Nearly fifteen years later, with Yuko fighting a long-term battle with a hernia and me needing to protect my hips after a double replacement following rapid onset arthritis in my mid-50s – conditions we partially attribute to unnecessary wear and tear caused by our hundreds of black belt classes in our previous organization, both of us feel that Asai-Ryu Bujutsu Karate offers the most appropriate dynamic for injury and intellectually interesting training for us. That means much more than the flowing, body friendly and heavily Okinawan-influenced Asai-Ryu Kata, of which Bertel-sensei is absolutely the world’s finest practitioner, as I’ll try to explain later.
Sense and Sensei-ability (Apologies to Jane Austin)
For those of you who know a little bit of history in our traditional Shotokan-focused corner of Planet Karate, Ibusuki-sensei, as a member of the post-War Waseda Daigaku Karatebu (I’m a Keio OB) experienced Karate under Gichin Funakoshi. Then, after founding his own company and becoming wealthy, Ibusuki-sensei rejoined what had become the JKA and was personally taught the newly formulated/standardized “official”Kihon and 26 Kata by Nakayama-sensei.
As we knew him through the hundreds of hours of social interactions and private training, what really drove Ibusuki-sensei’s approach to life was his extraordinary openness and love of things Western while strongly maintaining his sense of Japanese pride and culture – being open minded enough and strong enough to accept new thinking and new ways, his desire to pass on Karate deleted by the JKA, and his love of Yahara-sensei’s Karate.
This did lead to some pretty funny incidents. For example, the first week he was asked to teach the group we used to belong to, he started Kata training with Heian Shodan in the original Pinan version, with koshi shomen – the complete anthesis of the maniacal obsession with hanmi-genkai-made that was, well, let’s call it the official dogma of the day.
(As a note to those who have had the occasional meeting with Ibusuki-sensei, he did, in fact keep on teaching us regularly behind the scenes through to 2012, and maintained our friendship in strict confidence and privacy through the 2010s. For every hour you’ve spent with Ibusuki-sensei, Yuko and I have spent days).
Another thing that drove Ibusuki-sensei was the pursuit of excellence in everything, everything. An accomplished pencil artist and fluent in English, Ibusuki-sensei strove to be a Renaissance Man. He he was always drawn to the best and was exceptionally open minded for his generation in seeking out intelligent perspectives, conversation, learning, and new perspectives. And what amazing stories. And, for Ibusuki-sensei, Yahara-sensei’s genius made him Ibusuki-sensei’s favorite.
The other side of Bertel-sensei’s seminar was his becoming a student in a special class by Ibusuki-sensei. At the end of the class Ibusuki-sensei suddenly asked Bertel-sensei, out of the blue to demonstrate Jion. Why Jion? I don’t know.
As for Bertel-sensei, the best way I can describe it is that he killed it.
I have never seen Jion done like that before - an awesome display of power and dynamism and sharpness. But that’s not me just saying that. I checked with Yuko yesterday afternoon to see if I’d developed any false memories about this.
As I thought, I clearly remember that Ibusuki-sensei, after checking Bertel-sensei’s Karate, and making him perform Jion out of the blue, pronouncing that that Bertel-sensei was the best Karateka that he (Ibusuki-sensei) had seen in 20 years.
No, said Yuko, I’d gotten it wrong.
She clearly remembered Ibusuki-sensei had pronounced Bertel-sensei’s Karate as the best in the world at the time (as of 2010), and that his karate reminded him of Yahara-sensei’s Karate.
Of course, I’ve been up front and personal with Yahara-sensei’s Karate over hundreds of hours of training when he was in in his 50s, and as Jukendai (aka dog’s body for demonstrating uraken on in front of foreigners, an experience I can still feel today – itai!) But Ibusuki-sensei was referring to Yahara-sensei when he was at his peak in the 1970s and 1980s.
So don’t take my word for it when I describe Bertel-sensei’s Karate as awesome.
Asai Ryu Bujutsu Karate: Dynamics of Power Delivery
It would be easy for Bertel-sensei to play the master and teach down to his students, and he does think differently about how to structure his group seminars, which he plans in detail. However, when it comes to private training the Bertel-sensei as I know him works with you. He’ll train you on something in a way to expose and improve a weakness that you didn’t even know you had. I very much got the feeling I was working with the Karate equivalent of a consultant physician – you know, you’ve got the MRI scan pinned up there and he’s got the test results.
But don’t take that comparison too far. Bertel-sensei talks when he needs to, but you’ll mainly work the issues, not talk about them. He’ll answer questions and then, 30 minutes later, you might physically really understand the answer to your question because he will have moderated the training specifically to give your body the chance to practice the answer to the question by actually doing it.
I personally got immediately comfortable with Bertel-sensei’s approach to Renshusei training because I find long expositions on this and that boring. I highly value to the point contextualized information and guidance. “You are doing this because.” “This works because, let me show you. You try. Now try this, Now try that. You see?” “Or for example.”
When I made connections implied by actually doing things, I was highly gratified intellectually by Bertel-sensei’s ability to deeply explain effectively what was going on. The point is that he does it quickly and efficiently, and he’ll add in something specific to teach your body to answer the question your mind generated while not losing sight of the particular objective he developed for you.
Here is a summary of what we did, anyway.
1. Choku-zuki: Without hikite direct from ryoken daitai mae
- Focus on inversion on the opposite hip and heel of the thrusting arm.
- Stillness at the end of action.
- Hikite correct (higher than you’re used to) based on the crease of the elbow/forearm.
We got in bowed and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, Bertel-sensei completely eschewed the warmup and we got straight down to business. I think this was to shock me out of old patterns. I’m pushing 60 and my 10-20 minute daily yoga and calisthenics workouts (and old fashioned basics such as pushups, fukin and squats) designed to keep some basic degree of movement and to protect my hips are no substitute for the discipline of regularly doing kihon.
Bertel-sensei seemed to already understand my limits and my potential, and the lack of warmup or warm down was fine with me, as I left the training on a real high – helped of course by a glorious rotemburo onsen in the mountains in the snow later.
No doubt those who need junbitaiso or warm downs will get them.
Hikite-nashi choku-zuki? You must unlearn what you have learned.
Those of us of a certain age will remember Asai-sensei as Yoda and Yahara-sensei as Darth Vader (“No…I am your Sensei” …cue John Williams, creepy breathing, etc.)
Of course, now that I’ve done it and had it integrated into a completely different way of thinking about speed and power, it seems blindingly obvious. My body just couldn’t handle performing a fast, accurate choku-zuki aimed correctly just above the solar plexus without hikite at first. My whole Karate life, hikite, and for the previous six years of my Karate life hikite-genkai-made had been driven into my Karate.
One of the first lessons you learn in boxing is that you pull back from the punch into guard while the other hand is always guarding, and the same common sense applies to Karate whether or not you factor in the relationship (if any or not to) to koshi-no-kaiten and power generation.
However, the mental processing to stop performing the hikite was amazing. Where did all that tension come from? Why did my shoulders forget hundreds of commands to relax and stiffen up?
It had never occurred to me to maximize the speed, power, accuracy while maintaining the balance and weight distribution just for the punch alone. But of course, it’s blindingly obvious because all athletes combine isolation training to optimize a certain component of their technique.
Part of the problem and part of the solution is what I would have, before I tried, it, considered as redundant over-extension. A key part of this choku-zuki technique is extending the reach of the punch (impact) I’d say at least five or even approaching ten centimeters beyond what I was used to.
I understand something about punching through and behind the target, and, after doing a year of bag work at a local boxing gym in Shibuya was gradually able to do away with the wrist wraps. Poor technique means you soon get your writs hurt if you pile in with long-distance Karate punches on a heavy sandbag. The local boxers thought I was nuts. They are not the first.
So apart from opening up the shoulders and relaxing them, exacerbating the stiffness problem, the seeming over-extension of the punch then seemed to ruin the focus and introduce the dreaded wobble (the Karate equivalent of the dreaded soggy bottom in the Great British Bakeoff).
This made even worse by then adding in inversion on the opposite hip and heel of the thrusting arm.
So, at the start, deleting the hikite ruined my choku-zuki, and then over-extending the punch and then inverting the opposite hip turned it into a disaster.
Until it didn’t.
And that’s the point.
Then, bingo! A whole new way to think about the most basic and important punch in Karate. Another way I can put it is that we are always told to drive from the elbow. The more we realize that, the more effortlessly faster things become. Make sense?
Isolation. Integration.
And then add in left and right stance shifting.
And then getting it right again with movement.
And then, adding in the hikite, but raising the height well above the belt into what I’d call a more Shito-Ryu or Wado-Ryu position.
I can just imagine it.
Heresy! Heresy!
She’s a witch!
Burn her!
I can just imagine some of the reactions. A higher hikite scrunches you up.
It’s weaker,
It removes the connection with the hip.
Well, yes, in a way. If you have spent your whole life seeking to generate power from extreme koshi-no-kaiten, drilling down into kushin and then exploding [or in my case attempting to] off from extreme compression and spinning with go-tai-ichi, then welcome to a whole new world of generating speed and power!
Going back to the last time he taught me, Bertel-sensei,from my memory, usually teaches the Asai-sensei philosophy of using the arm as a whip and a chain.
To be honest, I’d never really been able to loosen my shoulder up enough to do it because all my yudansha life had been about learning how to generate power up from the floor through the hips. I couldn’t really “get” with the flappy arms stuff and see how it worked.
I can see the light now, but this is something that I’ll really need to work on.
2. Shuto-uke: Dropping and relaxing the spear hand through the elbow
Well, next, it’s obvious that Bertel-sensei must face this issue particularly with those who have trained kihon based on hip rotation and kime through go-tai-ichi. What Bertel-sensei did with me was attack the issue through shuto-uke.
Now I love shuto-uke because of personal reasons. Before I look my Shodan, Yahara-sensei took it upon himself to personally instruct me on Bassai-dai, probably because he felt if I was going to be able to do one Kata in my Karate life to a reasonable standard, it might as well be one of his favorites.
In particular he worked on my shuto-uke. One of the things I detest in Karate is people who flap around with shuto-uke. Of course, it’s the original “Karate chop” for God’s sake, and although we all go through the fiction of Sentei nashi, the whole idea is to get inside and smash the bloke on the neck or in the windpipe. Right?
So become a bit of a blowhard and legend in my shodan mind on this because of Yahara-sensei. You know, those really scary hungry wolf eyes and the blackout thud of his carefully controlled shuto-uke on my neck, horrible blackout pain and feeling dead on my feet, and him shouting at me, and getting increasingly angry, doing it again, and again and again with me getting to the point of thinking, “I want to do someone with this.”
So what Bertel-sensei did was force me to completely rethink the only one technique I secretly think I’m not actually terrible at. Oh no. Well, after learning to relax the shoulders and simply drop the elbow, I realized I’d near doubled up on my speed.
From this, so far, one thing I really learned is the counterfactual value of attention to detail on isolating even individual movements, getting your body to re-understand them from a completely different perspective through practice and, hopefully, through training re-integrate those movements to create new or different or complementary muscle memory.
Bertel-sensei was dropping clues and have me work towards them and it was so much fun suddenly not only seeing a path to optimizing a technique through isolating it, but teaching the body to reintegrate it into movement.
3. Yoriashi in shizentai with simultaneous stillness
This was so basic and so refreshing I’ll leave it at that. I think the more basic kihon you have done in Japan, the more exciting and challenging the simplest things are. Because of time constrictions, I won’t go into this because I’d like to focus more on my rediscovery of kakato chushin.
4. Oizuki: Attack with zenkutsu-dachi
- Center shift strong, tsuki arm relaxed and before the completion of the stance to optimize mass and velocity; displacement of weight.
More familiar ground. Never get tired with practicingoizuki. I won’t go into details here but here the focus was on focusing on relaxing the arm to relax the body to remove tension to speed up and weight and center of gravity shifting. This was a major physiological shock to the system because my yudanshacareer had been focused on using the hips and compression to achieve extreme distance and power and speed. This is how Bertel-sensei can be super-light and super-fast, then hit you like a freight train – and you just didn’t see it coming.
The second point about this is that Bertel-sensei insists on training on tatami. While I can put my hand on my dogi and say that I never cheated myself or my Sensei or my dojo or myself with less than 100% effort at least 90% of the time, it was very easy during ultra-slow practice to weight shift because of (blushes) the slippery floor.
Caught out on the tatami, this time, I’m afraid. Not getting around Bertel-sensei there.
5. Synthesis: Putting the Pieces together with Kizami-zukiand gyaku-zuki
In this practice, we focused gain on generating kime on both tsukiwaza, without don’t focusing again on the hikite but, rather, squeezing (shime) of the elbows.
I get extremely irritated by my own incompetence and I cover it up with very loud ossing (what we call kiai-cover) because I get so angry at myself.
So when Bertel-sensei reiterated the very first teaching point at the beginning of the session, I realized just how my Karate was infused with misplaced power and tension. If you are a Karateka and understand this already, well that’s wonderful, bully for you. But learning how to optimize speed, power and precision without hikite was just so interesting for me. It was really an exercise in deconstructing that tension by making things simple, not relying on hikite, and then achieving precise targeting and optimal depth of impact of the of the suigetsu and jinchu through shime.
6. Kata: A Whole New World with Heian Shodan
- Kakato chushin in turns.
- Age-uke (shime of the wrist).
- Ukewaza — hands/arms precede the body.
- Shuto chudan uke — form practice
Bertel-sensei is of the mind that you can do all the fancy Kata you like but the proof of the pudding is always in Heian Shodan. From my experience of dozens of international gradings, I’d agree. It’s painful sometimes. It really is. But here I was blindsided again. I thought, well, of course we are going to go through Kakuyoku Shodan, or, I might get a real treat, something like Kakuyoku Nidan.
Fortunately Bertel-sensei had something much more important in mind; reacquainting me with kakuto chushin in turns. Now here, for the world of me, I can’t quite get it straight. I know, deep within my Karate memory, I have been taught to move that way. Probably Amos-sensei originally taught me this, and maybe it is the way that everyone does it.
But for year after year, my turns were based on compression, dropping into the spin, kushin, driving hip rotation and expansion (and an almost fanatical devotion to the [use your 21st century imagination]) and, to be honest, I was very proud of that. If there was thing that Kallender could do reasonably well (except in Oslo, of all places) was batter along with HeianShodan.
So much for that. Well, Bertel-sensei introduced turning on the heel.
I couldn’t do it at first. The horror of it! Turning with lightning speed and no effort? It was too easy.
But the point is that kakuto chushin in turns isn’t too good to be true, and I honestly have no idea how I forgot that did something much more difficult instead.
I discussed this with him this week. His view is that you should know both. There is no “correct” way when you are not so much worried about getting a certificate, rather, improving your movement. His point of view is that you should be excellent at both, and rethink not only Heian Shodan but your whole way of doing Karate. Now that’s what I call typical of Bertel-sensei’s common sense intelligent approach for Karate optimization for yudansha.
Another vital point I had forgotten is shime of the wrist without distortion or unnecessary tension. This is mainly because when I did Karate, in any form of kumite except jiyu kumite we were told to attack and go for it and the aite didn’t block properly and got smacked or clobbered, then that was their fault. Of course, that’s what made yakusoku kumite interesting.
In any case Bertel-sensei demonstrated attacking my attacks with faster blocks that left my attacks for dead and that was that. Point taken.
Something to add to the list.
And then we applied that to hidari jodan tate-uke/ migi jodan-kamae again using the elbows and shime.
And then we ran out of time. Lunch, rotemburo in the snow, and an evening flight back to Haneda.
IKS and the Current Karate Landscape
As you can see, I really appreciated the way that Bertel-sensei isolated and integrated his training of me. As the class proceeded, I got a strong sense that things were moving beyond challenging the deep programming of my body’s muscle and weight shifting memory-movement away from very powerful but rigid sets of ways of generating speed and power to achieving something that can be much faster and powerful by removing useless tension and misplaced stress.
You can only compress the spring so many times before it loses its elasticity. My hips are now made of ceramics, plastics and aluminum. We love our Shotokan Karate. But not at the price of our bodies. The choice is available. We have a chance to do something that really is excellent and interesting, that can be calibrated to optimize our Karate capabilities without correcting us from some deviation of one-size fits all form or process that that was made up in the 1950s to be “correct” and that has made so much money for so many people, decade after decade, that is not interested in having us pay it for certificates for dans let alone plastic cups and silly titles, and that will not have us in a wheelchair or hobbling around on walking sticks.
The proof of the pudding of course comes in Asai-Ryu Kata, which, if you do them JKA style, look completely average and distinctly uninspiring. They also defeat what I call the photocopy or empty Karate of foreigners who have high athletic ability but never really trained the core basics. Asai-gata don’t lend themselves to narcissistic balletic performances.
But when performed with relaxation and movement the way Asai-sensei developed, they become the amazingly dynamic, powerful and body-friendly exercises you see in Bertel-sensei’s performances
So, you have the Karateka, the Karate and the organization.
As for the former, Bertel-sensei doesn’t brag about it, but, quietly, senior Japanese sensei send their students to him for specific training. So, I was humbled not only that my friend Andre was there for me, but that Bertel-sensei really cares about Karate and actually offered to train me.
JKA and other organizations mass produced Karate, which created our modern Karate world with all its awesomeness and awfulness, Karate was built on the close relationship between Sensei and a very few students, many of whom would learn only three kata in their entire lives.
IKS has in many ways just gone back to Karate’s roots, but with a major 21st century upgrade: Bertel-sensei offers not only an intelligent and integrated instruction style, but, in Renshusei class, a positive feedback loop.
Don’t mistake this for boutique Karate or getting daft.
If you probably know what you want, then you are going to be disappointed. You’ll probably get what Bertel-sensei judges you need. You don’t pay him to be your trainer. He trains you.
He’s not interested in people who want to pay him money for dan grades or positions. He’d rather not have your money or membership if that’s what you want. That’s what the other places are for. He wants to meet people interested in improving their Karate.
Bertel-sensei’s business is Karate. Karate is not a business for him.
