Project 16 is my attempt to finding the core principles, which lay the foundation for Koryu Uchinadi (or any other functional martial art for that matter!) as taught to me by Hanshi Patrick McCarthy. As the name indicates, it’s a project, a work in progress, but since I’ve so far found it very helpful for my own students, I wanted to share it with other like-minded people. With Hanshi McCarthy’s approval, Project 16 also became part of my studies for the Kyoshi license.
The emphasis in Project 16 is on self-defense oriented two-person drills, but I have also looked into the sport aspect of martial arts when designing some of the drills. From a practical point of view, the idea is to help the learner build functional spontaneity, just like in Koryu Uchinadi in general. In other words, no matter what position in a fight you find yourself in, you are able to respond and take required action (escape, restrict, counter-attack…). A more ambitious goal for the serious practitioner is to gain a complete understanding of the technical aspect of all empty handed martial arts. Of course there’s a lot to learn, and therefore I’ve tried to squeeze as much technique as possible into a package that is as compact as possible.
Project 16 helps to build a broad base for any empty handed martial art, and at the same time it is a valuable tool for helping students to find their own favorite ways of doing things. Functionality is of course important, but in the long run, performing techniques in a way that promotes health is even more important. Project 16 is also about this.
The name “Project 16” occurred when I started to study and systematise body dynamics and how to generate power in KU kihon. Eventually I ended up with 16 different combinations. Inspired by McCarthy sensei’s teachings, I went on to look carefully at hand positioning, in other words how the defender’s hand can be in relation to the attacker’s hand when in contact. If the attack is right handed and to the upper level, you can find yourself blocking or redirecting the attack with your left hand or your right hand. You can be either on the inside or the outside. Of course the same goes for attacks to the lower level and/or if the attack is with the left hand. This leaves us with 16 different options. Quite interestingly, if both hands are involved, there are also 16 possibilities! After discovering this, I just had to pick the (to me) 16 most important joint locks, strangulations, kyusho and tuite etc. from Sensei’s drills (adding a few favorites of my own). For the ancient Chinese other numbers were important, I became obsessed with the number 16!
I felt 16 is a reasonable amount, relatively easy to remember, but still enough to “cover the whole body”. In some cases I had to limit myself to eight techniques, but repeating the drill on the other side made it become 16.
For lesson planning 16 is a good number, as it can be divided with 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1. Let’s say during a semester that covers about 30 training sessions, we want to teach the students about joint locking (among other things). For the first 16 weeks only one joint lock is learned per week, of course with many variations and from various positions. The next eight weeks, the repetition starts by focusing on two joint locks every session. The next four weeks, each session covers four previously learned joint locks and so on. The drill of 16 techniques is learned during the first 16 weeks one step at the time, and it works as a tool for the student so he or she more easily can remember the core principles. In other words the two-person flow drill, renzoku futari geiko, is like a kata but done with a training partner. It is not fighting in itself, rather concluding the lesson already learned.
Ante Brännbacka
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