Face punches

Shihan Hiroshige Tsuyoshi

Shihan Hiroshige Tsuyoshi, Fuku-Kancho (Vice Chairman) Kyokushinkan, is the instructor in Japan known for training the most champions, among them names such as Midori, Yamaki, Kazumi, Tsukamoto and Takaku.

As part of a movement by Kyokushin-kan to regain the superiority that Kyokushin Karate enjoyed before the death of Sosai Mas Oyama (and then subsequently lost in the years that followed), Kancho Royama, Shihan Hiroshige, and others are working to reintroduce multiple elements of Kyokushin training that were taken for granted during the early decades following Mas Oyama's synthesis of Kyokushin, only to be eroded in following years due to the booming popularity of tournament style fighting.

For example, in the days of Oyama Dojo and in the early days of Kyokushinkaikan, punches to face and kicks to the groin were commonplace in dojo kumite. One early uchi deshi of Kancho Royama, Shihan Okazaki, told this week how when he was one of the first uchi deshi under Kancho Royama it was his job to pick up teeth during dojo kumite so that they would not be lost. Of course Shihan Hiroshige stressed in his introduction to his face-contact seminar that this type of training is not for everyone in every dojo situation. Even in the early days, he explained, entire dojo populations of 100 students were reduced to less than ten following just one such full-contact face punching kumite session.

It is vitally important, however, Shihan Hiroshige stresses, that Kyokushin Karate regain the reflexes of face punch defense that Kyokushin fighters once had but then began to lose once tournament style fighting became popular and face punches were eliminated in the name of safety. This can be done, he insists, in a relatively safe, fun way by introducing certain face-punching drills designed to develop these reflexes while avoiding injury among those in the dojo who aren't interested in full-contact face punching kumite.At this week's seminar, Shihan Hiroshige, introduced several such drills:

Here, students wearing protective equipment simply practice evading punches to the head in one-minute sets, first one jab at a time, then one punch at a time, and in later one-minute sets, two and three-punch combinations.

After drilling only avoiding face punches, Shihan Hiroshige then instructed us to add kicks so that the defenders could then practice evading both head punches and kicks to the legs and body at the same time.

Nobody in this training tried to knock his partner's teeth out or break his partner's nose. Rather this was an introduction to a first step towards regaining one element of superiority that Kyokushin karate once enjoyed at a safe, "all dojo members can do it" intensity.

We were also told, however, during this seminar that work was being done to introduce Kyokushin competitions in Japan in which full-contact face-contact is allowed. This would be, however, an experimental and supplementary competition held concurrently with competitions of traditional Kyokushin rules only for those fighters who choose to train for them.

Shihan Hiroshige does not suggest that we are going to make any kind of dramatic change overnight. He only suggests that in order to regain Kyokushin's eroded superiority, face punch defense reflexes must be reincorporated into Kyokushin training. Accordingly, we can expect a gradual reintroduction of such techniques over the years to come.

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