By Gavin King, 2nd Dan Go So Kempo

“All you need to do is apply pressure here and…..” WHAP goes the Uke’s body into the floor and hands of his Instructor! The gym is filled with a deafening thud; Uke gives a huge “Ooof” followed by a pained “Arrrgh!” and the whole class simultaneously inhales the entire oxygen supply of the room. Uke rises slowly from the slumped heap rubbing his neck with a beaming grin from ear to ear as the oxygen level return to normal with a united sigh of relief. Oh the joys of being Uke!

Uke literally translates in English to mean “to receive”. In Martial Arts circles it is a way of referring to a training partner who initiates an attack only to be on the receiving end of the defence of said attack. The role of Uke takes on a more sinister guise when you have the joy of being an Instructors Uke (commonly referred to as “Bitch”).

An Instructors Uke is a person who is used as a show piece to demonstrate the effects that a particular technique will produce, and more often than not this involves huge amounts of pain. Knowing this, the general populace of a class will usually go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being picked as Uke, not this soldier! I’m always the one sitting there with a willing look in his eyes that just screams “Me, me, pick me!”

Now you could be excused for thinking that I’m just some perverted sick puppy who enjoys pain, but in reality if truth be told I absolutely detest pain with a passion. So why do I so readily make myself available for continuous torture? The answer is simple and one which I’ll refer to a quote from Master Rick Moneymaker in the Dragon Society International’s “Torite Jutsu Reference Manual”,

“Hearing about a technique a thousand times is not as good as seeing it once. Feeling a properly done technique is equivalent to seeing it a thousand times.”

I passionately believe that you can never be taught Martial Arts. You can hypothesize and theorize about it intellectually, but in doing this you will always sit on the periphery and never grasp the true depths of the arts.

Talking about Martial Arts is like trying to explain the taste of Ice cream to someone who has never experienced it. You can describe its qualities saying that it is cold, sweet and creamy, but this really does little to describe the sensation of actually eating it. If someone were to watch you eating ice cream they would have a better idea of the experience, they can actually see the texture but not feel it and the flavour is still far beyond anything they can comprehend. The only way to understand how ice cream tastes is to take a big spoonful and stick it in your mouth; the same is true of Martial Arts.

By watching an Instructor performing a punch you merely seeing how the punch should be thrown, you still don't actually have any idea of what delivering a punch actually feels like. What your Instructor has given you is a visual reference from which you can now try to replicate the punch. Your brain now knows how the punch should be delivered and will go through a process of negotiation with your body to make it move in the same manner. This is when you begin to understand what it is like to actually perform the movement. Your Instructor will then come along and point out where you are going wrong and you start process of teaching your body how it needs to move.

At this stage many Instructors rely on verbally highlighting needed corrections, I personally prefer a more tactile approach. I could spend hours verbally pointing out the importance of keeping the elbow tucked in the punch, explaining that it will be stronger and can transfer the energy more efficiently. Or I could spend ten seconds making you push against me with some resistance which will cause your brain to go “Click”! As I said before I do not believe it’s possible to be taught Martial Arts, instead think that we discover them through personal exploration and discovery, guided by our Instructors.

I am very traditional in my views of studying the Martial Arts and believe religiously that to truly understand the way requires hands on tuition; the experience should be a deeply personal one. Unfortunately in this day and age of sixty students per Instructor with the main concern being the handover of currency as opposed to the transmission of information, most students feel fortunate if they can actually see their instructor. Their understanding of the Martial Arts can be compared to that of the person who salivates whilst watching someone actually eating it, second hand experience and a pale substitution of for the real thing!

So why does this explain my desire be put through the meat grinder at every given opportunity? Easy, as Uke I’m fully experiencing the flavour of the Martial Arts. Although I fully admit that there are times when I’d rather be eating ice cream!