Help understanding Kime

[jacob]

I trying to figure out “Kime” can you help ??

As I understand it (with my limited Wado knowledge) Kime is focus. So taking Junzuki as an example...
So at the end of the slide forward to the opposite stance and then punch/thrust trying to get all your body weight into the impact... Is Kime sort of where the arm/body locks out then immediately relaxes after impact or are you supposed to be relaxed all the time even at impact?

Not sure I’ve explained it very well.... but I tried

Thanks
Jacob Haliday

[Gary]

Hi Jacob,

I remember a discussion we had about Kime on the old forum and to what extent it existed (or not) in Wado karate.

Also, Shingo Ohgami writes about it in his Introduction to Karate book.

This guy has an interesting way to describe it as well:

http://www.karatebyjesse.com/kime-putti ... he-coffin/

Gary

[metalfury]

and here's an interesting 'physics' explanation

http://www.24fightingchickens.com/2005/ ... -of-focus/

After years of believing that if I tensed on impact my punch would be stronger, I have learned the hard way that it is not. Efforts to prove otherwise only showed me the depth of my foolish belief in focus as a concept. Instead, the best way to make a punch is to relax all the way through and only contract the minimum muscle necessary to prevent the elbow from hyper-extending. All other purposeful tension only slows things down and weakens the punch.

[Gary]

Hi Rob,

Science is great isn't :)

If you watch instructors like Shiomitsu, or Arakawa sensei they have a very relaxed continuous flowing movement through their technique.

They don't tense at all (it seems) and yet they deliver unbelievable energy into the target (I was lucky enough (if you can look at it that way) to have been Arakawa sensei's punch bag a few years ago!!!)

What a saw (and felt) was a perfectly honed and timed technique with everything (correct form, focus, breathing and technique etc.) coming together at exactly the right point!

This to me is kime.

Effortless - and great to watch.

Gary

[oneya]

Hi Jacob,

Here again I think that the meaning of kime can easily be 'lost in translation' if we think of it simply as focus because we are often then only talking in terms of a physical aspect where kime actually calls for more than this. If you have heard the phrase ‘ki ken tai no ichi' or perhaps ' ichi go ichi e' you may come to understand there is more to it than just muscular contraction.

For instance in Sumo a contest can be decided by kimedashi in which one guy wraps his arms around his opponent and pushes or lifts him from the ring which takes more than just tensing the muscles of the body. It requires the coordination of one’s mind, body, spirit, skills and strategy, timing and willpower and zoned thinking to defeat an opponent that is also trying to use all of these same aspects of his being to defeat you at the very same instant.

Comprehending the total amount of keiko, renshu, willpower and spirit to achieve this coalescence of ‘one single split second in time’ chance known as kime is profound when one considers the difference between life and death or the perfection of the tea ceremony [chanoyu] may be the outcome. It is only by understanding this complexity as ‘focus’ that a glimpse of what you are searching for may be close.

oneya

[Gary]

Probably Reg - If the fella's a newb, he'd best focus on the physical first?

"Kime" as a word seems to be used more frequently in karate dojo than Daito-ryu, jujutsu/kenjutsu dojo in my experience, and there may be a reason for this.

I may be wrong, but what I think the OP was referring to was the "kime" (the legendary snap as it were) at the end of Ido Kihon techniques in Wado - and trying to make sense of that.

Of course kime extends well beyond the physical (as you have said), but even within the physical, there are areas that perhaps as karate-ka we don't always consider that much.

Grappling and throwing arts also have "physical" kime to make them work - there's not really a visible "kime" - but it is there.

Gary

[oneya]

I'm not sure who or what 'OP is Gary but neither of the directions he was pointed towards were wado ryu, so I thought it preferable to start by broadening the scope of a poor translation and suggest a wider mind. He is not going to find kime by reading some website sage's conclusions anyway and If he's already been lumbered with the muscle contraction 'focus' then he's too narrow. If he's simply looking for the snap with his dogi maybe he should be looking in the nukeru basket.

oneya

[Gary]

I'm not sure who or what 'OP is Gary but neither of the directions he was pointed towards were wado ryu, so I thought it preferable to start by broadening the scope of a poor translation and suggest a wider mind. He is not going to find kime by reading some website sage's conclusions anyway and If he's already been lumbered with the muscle contraction 'focus' then he's too narrow. If he's simply looking for the snap with his dogi maybe he should be looking in the nukeru basket.

oneya

Not sure I'd agree that the weblinks provided were entirely un-wado, and I guess you have to start somewhere.

Truth be told, that somewhere is in the dojo - but a question was asked...

[oneya]

Hi Gary,

I'm pretty sure 24 fighting chooks is not wado ryu and karatebyJesse seems not to be but I may be wrong. Shingo Ogami's book was not a weblink so again I must be missing something? and I am still running a blank on the OP you referred to??.

But you are right a question was asked and - I thought - answered.

oneya

[wadoka]

Think OP stands for original post/poster, as in the first item in the thread.