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Ukemi, Taking a punch

Ukemi is being able to endure pain in all its aspects of life…..
This we learn both by doing rolls and falls, but also within our techniques, the most common being taking the ability to take a punch…..
There are a lot of different views within Martial Arts on the subject of taking a punch, it can also mean some thing different from art to art….
The art of taking a punch is important, because you cant expect to enter a fight without getting hit at least once and then you need to be able to take it…

But on the other hand some sports like kick-boxing or hardcore arts like full contact Ninjutsu, they go over the line, they go so far with the idea of taking a punch that the students get hurt and there is no reason for that….There are many ways of training this in a safe and good way, where nobody gets hurt and most student join a Dojo to protect them from getting hurt (on the street) so i would be a bad teacher if i start by hurting them….

Most arts has this kind of training build in they start the student with training with only 10% intensity and moves on to around 80% at around black belt….
This is a nice easy way of doing it and most student get use to it and never have a problem with it…

There are also drills that can be done to ‘harden” the body, in my mind a lot of this is in the mind of the student and not the body that gets ‘harden’, of course you could do really hardcore drills like in Thai-boxing, leg to leg, but that destroys the nerves and it can be done different, you are better of raising the students tolerance for pain then destroying his body…

Ninjutsu besides basis drills and techniques, uses rolls and falls outdoor on roads, fields, hallways and other areas you can think of to both train ukemi (taking pain) and there falls/rolls, if you are a Judo man and only been doing rolls/falls on the mat in the dojo you should try it outside, it makes a big different and helps you a lot in making the technique some thing you can use in real and the less pain you fell when doing it (and the more silent), the better your rolls are getting….
The goal for it is a no sound and no pain roll….

There are also ways to put your mind in the game, when you train drills or techniques to better “take a punch”, in general in a drill or technique you know what area your opponent is going to hit. This means you mentally can protect the area by mental imagery. You in you mind imagine the area being a wall of protective energy and focus on that, really see this energy wall, when you become good at this it helps you taking a punch better…This might sound odd to many with a energy wall, but to me its not that odd you are using the body and the mind as one, and there by using the body better, its not in my mind any thing magical but more a naturel way of using your body by this i mean you breathe, relax and tense the muscle at the right time because of you mind is in the game (of course this is a simple way of putting it, there are a little more to it try also reading my post about the mind)…
I hope you enjoyed reading my post and please fell free to use the chat (where i answer questions) or post a comment to this article…

Sincerly yours in the art,

Jan Jensen

Originally posted 2009-08-31 18:01:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter