The Kufferath Obi

I received what I consider a very great honor recently, one that greatly humbled me. I had received an email that morning from Leslee Kufferath, daughter of the late Professor Sig Kufferath, one of my favorite people and a great, great martial artist. Leslee asked if I would be at my dojo that night. I said I would. She stopped by and, to my surprise, presented me with The Kufferath Obi, a specially embroidered black belt and a beautiful certificate. I was apparently the 7^th to receive this very special award. I want to thank Leslee for this great honor.

Her father, Professor Kufferath, was a very special man. He had been a personal student of legendary Hawaiian jujitsu master, Professor Henry Okazaki. One of Professor Kufferath’s dojomates was Professor Wally Jay, who we recently lost. Professor Kufferath was one of the first to receive our USNKA Living Martial Arts Treasure Award recipients. He was a kind, gentle, very down to earth man who had the warmest, most wonderful smile. I always enjoyed the time I was gifted to spend with him.

I’ve mentioned this before but it is one of my favorite stories and when you get to my age, you will likely see the great insight within it. At 68, it always puts things into perspective for me.

Professor Kufferath paid a visit to his native Hawaii to spend time with some surviving friends. He was in his mid-80s at the time. He and an old buddy were walking the famous and very popular Waikiki Beach, where many beautiful young women lounged in the sun in their bikinis. Professor Kufferath looked at his buddy and said “What I wouldn’t give to be 70 again.” Every time I start feeling old, I smile when I remember that story and feel fortunate to have what I do. It reminds me to treasure every single day.

A couple of months ago, Leslee hosted the Professor Sig Kufferath 2011 International Martial Arts Symposium in honor of what would have been her father’s 100^th birthday. Martial artists came from all around the world to honor this great man. I was fortunate to be included among those who taught workshops. If she ever does it again, be sure to attend.

How to catch an arrow – Part III

My call from LA stunt coordinator Ray Anders was to ask if I would appear on a TV show called The John Newcombe Show, hosted by one of the top tennis players at the time, John Newcombe. He wanted me to catch arrows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I said I’d give it a try.

It was an overcast day. It had rained recently so the ground was damp and a bit muddy in spots.

The place they had set off for me to catch was among the trees. My archer was to shoot from under another tree, around 45 feet away. The arrow would have to travel across an open, significantly brighter section of lawn before passing under another tree, where I was to make the catch.

Had they asked me to do this later on, when I had more experienced with such things, I would have told them no or made them move to a different location. But I was new and thrilled about the prospect of appearing on a national show, albeit a minor one.

The problem with the site was the arrow went from shadow into light and back into shadow again. Our eyes are marvelous things that can make many amazing adjustments. But tracking something moving rapidly from dark to light to dark again isn’t one of them. Our irises can’t open and close that quickly, leaving either the darker or the lighter sections harder to see. As it turned out, the lighter section dominated everything, like trying to shoot a photo of someone indoors with bright sunlight flooding in from a window behind them. The image of the person will appear very dark.

The same occurred here. I always focused on the tip as, to intercept one, my hand had to start its movement the instant the arrow started forward. Apparently, I would subconsciously calculate an arrow’s trajectory based on the angle of the shaft as it left the bow. This would direct my hand upwards or downwards, or whatever, to be in a position to intercept it.

Here, the arrow started in relative darkness, making it almost impossible for me to see its tip. So I was behind right out of the gate. When it crossed the open patch, I could track it easily. But then, it went dark again just before it got to me and I had to try to intercept it based solely on its trajectory and speed within the middle section. Making things even worse, I was standing in mud and my footing was not great.

In spite of all that, I managed to catch one for them. But it wasn’t as clean a performance as I would have liked. In the end, I think I only managed to grab about one out of every ten shots, as I had done the first day on the beach.

Turned out, this was significant. Ray asked if it was possible to increase my catch rate. They were shooting in film in those days. So it was very expensive to shoot high speed film on all those misses. That became my focus and forced me to change the way in which I caught.

I’ll talk about that next time and the surprise I got when appearing on my next show.

How to catch an arrow - Part II

Sometime in late 1964, after getting back from Korea and discharged from the army, I opened my first official dojo, California Karate Academy, in my hometown of San Jose. I soon opened a branch in the nearby coastal town of Santa Cruz.

Movies at the time showed martial artists as possessing magical powers. They could leap over high walls, rip hearts out of bodies, and the like. I was searching for something I could do to garner attention for my dojos but wanted to keep it within the realm of the possible.

At the time, three reportedly true stories circulated in karate circles about martial artists. The first was the ability to wrestle and/or kill a tiger with their bare hands. (If I remember right, this was something Gogen “The Cat” Yamaguchi once reportedly performed.) The second was the ability to catch a bullet in their teeth. (There was a German guy on TV who did this. There was, of course, a trick to it, which was later revealed.) And the third was the ability to catch an arrow in midflight. (I first heard of it in one of Sensei Oyama’s books.) Of the three, the latter seemed the least foolhardy.

Early one overcast morning, my brother and I met one of our Santa Cruz students on a sheltered beach. My brother planned to shoot arrows at me, mainly to see if it was do-able. I had always had good speed and reflexes but this was totally new territory.

My brother, Bob, paced off around 40 feet. While my student filmed everything on old 8mm film, Bob shot a series of arrows. I stood back and just watched the first couple of shots to see if the speed was within a realistic range. It seemed to be. With each shot, I moved closer to the catch spot we had marked in the sand.

On around the fifth shot, I was standing just outside the catch point and managed to touch the arrow’s shaft with my fingers as it flew past. I stepped into the catch point and deflected the next couple of shots. But I found I had a problem, I couldn’t get my hand to close fast enough. Arrows would leave the bow and slip through my hand before I could get it closed. I had them within my grasp but couldn’t quite grasp them. I was so close I felt it could be done. I don’t remember how I overcame the hand closure problem but managed to catch the tenth arrow.

People were starting to gather nearby so we left. I was afraid someone would get hurt, as there wasn’t anything behind me to stop the arrows.

In the early 70s, while I was an undergraduate student at Stanford, one of my advisors in the film department heard about the arrow thing from one of my students. (My advisor, Bill Zarchy, had trained some in the martial arts and come by my dojo.) He acquired the use of a high speed camera for a few days and asked if I would let him film me at Felt Lake behind Stanford. I agreed. So Bill filmed arrow catches at 500 frames per second. (Regular cameras at the time shot at 18 frames per second so this was at extremely high speed.)

Leslie Miner, a producer at KQED, the San Francisco branch of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), saw the clip and asked if she could interview me. From the interview and outtakes from the footage Bill had shot at Felt Lake, she produced a short feature entitled “The Arrow Catcher,” which ran many times on PBS over the years.

One of the people who saw it was Ray Anders, who was an LA stunt coordinator. Ray contacted me. He said the arrow catch was among the five most dramatic stunts he had ever seen and wanted to book me for a show he was working. Ray soon became one of the industry’s most successful and opened many doors for me. I’ll talk next time about appearing on my first TV show and almost losing an eye.

How to catch an arrow

I’d like to record for posterity my answer to the question I’m most asked – “How’d you get started catching arrows?”

It was something I did first in the mid-60s. In the 70s, others heard of it and I was featured on the major TV networks, in magazine articles, and in personal appearances. I was praised on several occasions and viciously attacked once in the national press for something I never said, did, or claimed. An arrow went through my hand. And one almost took my eye.

Let me begin by making two important points: First, it is extremely dangerous to attempt to catch an arrow at any speed. Most eye losses are reportedly due to low speed, blunt force impact. This means any arrow shot at you, or even thrown, holds the potential to cost you your sight! Don’t try it. I was extremely lucky not to lose an eye and I was generally very careful.

Second, almost anyone can catch an arrow. If I held an arrow in my hand and tossed it at you, most of you could easily catch it. But if I shot it at you from a high powered hunting bow at relatively close range, no one (not even I during my prime) could catch one. The question is not if you can catch an arrow or not but, rather, at what distance and speed. The critical issue is its elapsed time (ET) – the amount of time it takes to get from the bow to your hand. The shorter the ET, the harder it is to catch.

If you do a Google search, you will find a number of people claiming to catch arrows. And there’s nothing wrong with that. As I said, anyone can do it.

A number of arrow catching clips are posted on YouTube. (None of these are mine as I’ve not posted any.) Some of these clips document something challenging. However, most do not. In some, the arrows are clearly traveling very slowly or from a long distance, which gives the catcher a great deal of time in which to react. But it’s sometimes hard to tell distance and speed in some of these, which are the two critical factors. How can you tell? Well, a telltale sign of low speed and/or extreme distance is the angle of the arrow at the catch point. If the arrow is angled downward, towards the floor, it was traveling very slowly when caught, making the demonstration meaningless.

I would like to point out another couple of important facts that generally get missed: First, catching arrows doesn’t indicate possession of any mystical or supernatural powers. And, second, arrow catching per se has nothing whatsoever to do with being a competent martial artist. It can demonstrate superior speed and reflexes but says absolutely nothing about the catcher’s ability to efficiently and effectively defend himself against an actual attacker.

In coming posts, I’ll be discussing what caused me to first try it, what enabled me to catch arrows, specifics about the task, and some of my more interesting experiences. Thanks again for reading.

Can you name these two fighters?

Can you name the two fighters in the above photo?

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part IX

Many years ago, I had just gotten home after teaching one night at the dojo. I clicked on the TV but wasn’t paying much attention to it. The late news came on and I caught a glimpse of someone I thought I knew, being led into court in an orange jail jumpsuit.

It was the breaking story and turned out to be who I was afraid it was, a martial arts instructor who everyone had known for years and liked. He had been charged with molesting one of his teenage students. And they were expecting to possibly find more victims. (The details are a bit hazy after all these years so I’m hopefully remembering things correctly.)

According to the news, he had held regular sleepovers for his students at his house. He would apparently serve alcohol to underage people at these events. While the teenager who reported him was drunk and asleep, the instructor fondled him. Turned out, however, the teenager wasn’t as drunk as the instructor thought. He woke up to find himself being molested.

The Boy Scouts of America has a “No One-On-One” policy. No adult associated with scouting is allowed to meet one-on-one with any scout at any time, for any reason. Unless they are the scout’s parent, they are never allowed to sleep alone in a tent with a scout. They are not allowed to pick up and drop off individual scouts in their cars. Another adult has to always be with them when they did any of these. Obviously, they would not be allowed to have individual scouts for sleepovers, or if it’s a group function, never be alone with any scouts during a sleepover.

The same should apply to us as martial arts instructors and anyone who works for us or teaches at our schools. Always teach in public or in a place that is visible to the public. Leave doors open to public view if you’re meeting with a student or teaching a private lesson or have someone with you. Don’t room with individual students while at tournaments, etc. All of this is, of course, just common sense. But as I mentioned before, commonsense isn’t always so common. Be careful.

Thanks for putting up with my humble ramblings.

Kenny Kuch Team Photo

This is the team photo I mentioned in my post on Kenny Kuch. Kenny is the fighter on the left. (Next to Kenny is Jeff LeValley. In the middle is Casey Elliott, a very tough leftie. Both Jeff and Casey were among my early black belts.)

Kenny Kuch

I was interviewed recently by a martial arts magazine. They asked me to supply a bunch of photos for the article. While searching through my boxes for shots I hadn’t posted before, I came across a team shot, taken at some long forgotten tournament. Fighting on our team was Ken Kuch, who everyone called Kenny.

Kenny Kuch (left) and Tom Sadowski, one of my first black belts.

Kenny Kuch was not one of my students. He was one of Sensei Ron McCausland’s, his top black belt, in fact. He and Ron ended up having several things in common. Kenny had had a very challenging fight at the same nightclub where Ron had worked as a bouncer, which I talked about in one of my previous posts. And, like his sensei, Kenny died far too early.

I first met Kenny when he was a colored belt and living in Sacramento, where Ron had his dojo. He was one of those people who put everything he had into everything he did. He was a tough fighter, even back then. You could see immediately he would become a great martial artist if he stuck with it. And he did.

Size wasn’t one of the things he had in common with Ron. Kenny wasn’t very big when I first met him. He was relatively short and almost skinny. To better prepare himself for the street, he asked Ron if he could get him a bouncer job at the same nightclub where Ron worked. They were glad to have him. Almost everyone who met Kenny, liked him immediately. He had a big, infectious smile and an easy, playful manner that always cheered everyone up.

One night he had to deal with an especially rowdy club customer. The man refused to leave. It escalated into a fight, which ended with a roundhouse kick to the customer’s head. The man went down. As Kenny was keeping an eye on him, to see if he planned to continue, Ron yelled “Look out!”

Kenny turned his head just in time to see a knife slashing straight for his throat. He leaned back, away from the blade. Instead of his throat, the knife sliced across his deltoid muscle on his upper arm and cut clear across his chest, clear to the bone. The slasher scrambled through the crowd and outside, where he got away.

When the police interviewed Kenny soon after the incident, they asked for a description of the slasher. Kenny told them he had no idea as it had all happened so fast.

Kenny spent a good deal of time in the hospital. The damage done by the cut took hundreds of stitches and a couple of surgeries to repair. It took months, maybe an entire year, for him to heal.

The next time I saw him, he had a huge scar across his arm and chest. But he had been doing a lot of weight work and stepped up his karate training. And, as a result, he had bulked up tremendously. When I asked him about his increase in size and more intense training regiment, he just said he didn’t intend for anything like the slashing to ever happen to him again.

Ron soon moved to LA in order to train again with Soke Kubota and Kenny followed him down. He trained in LA for many years before his untimely death last year.

The following is not based on anything Kenny ever told me directly or I know for fact. It is based only on what I heard from others who knew him better than I did. And knowing Kenny as I did, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.

According to the story, Kenny had actually gotten a good look at the slasher or had seen him before and recognized him. He had told the police he couldn’t describe him because he didn’t want the guy in prison. He wanted him on the street, where he could serve justice to him himself. Friends said he had intentionally bulked up in order to be able to better punish the man when he tracked him down. As I said, I don’t know if this part of the story is true or false or, if true, if the guy ever got what he deserved. But part of me hopes so.

Kenny Kuch was a great guy and great martial artist who left us far too early. He was a bright spot in a sometimes very dark world.

I'll be getting back soon to our discussion on Instructing Children in the Martial Arts. Thanks for reading. 

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part VIII

One of the first things that generally alerts me to a possible sexual abuser is a lot of touching. This is also one of the behaviors identified by the Boy Scouts of America in their youth protection program.

Several years ago, I observed an instructor who focused a lot of extra attention on the adult women in his classes. He never, to my knowledge, turned his attention onto anyone underage. But his approach, in my estimation, was very similar to that used by those who groom children, so it can perhaps serve as a model of the kinds of things they might do.

He always began with a lot of touching. He would start by stroking or touching women’s arms in ways he never touched any of the men. He would rotate their hips for them with his hands, supposedly to show them proper mechanics. He would re-tie their belts. He would straighten their gis – pull the tops down, etc. If that didn’t raise any red flags, he would almost lovingly smooth the wrinkles out of their gis with his hand, massage their necks and backs, and so on.

In correcting students on the dojo floor, I think instructors should avoid touching anyone, but especially underage students, on any inappropriate body area or in an inappropriate manner, regardless of the gender of either party. Inappropriate body areas might include those on, near, or around the hips, buttocks, genitals, lower stomach, and upper half of the thigh for males and these same areas plus the front and side chest and upper stomach areas for females.

As mentioned earlier, how an instructor touches his students can also be inappropriate, even if away from the areas noted above. Students should never be touched in a sexually suggestive manner on any part of their anatomies.

It’s important we all bear in mind that the behaviors we’re discussing are not just for our use in identifying potential abusers so we can better protect our students. Many people are aware of these behaviors and will also use them to determine if we are abusers. So we all need to be constantly on-guard against performing any of the behaviors we will discuss ourselves or risk making people suspicious of us.

I’ll soon get into other behaviors in coming posts. Thanks again for reading. And please feel free to share any of my posts with others. The more people who join us here, the more input we can generate and the greater the educational value we'll all receive. So please spread the word!

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part VII

When a well-known martial artist was recently arrested, I received a private message from someone who knew the details in the case. He told me the instructor had been arrested for “Child Grooming”. This wasn’t a term I was familiar with, so I looked it up and found the following definition in an e-article on the website, Families.Com:

“Grooming is a process of desensitization that predators use on children to prepare and trick them into accepting sexual abuse. Once the predator has gained the child's trust and confidence, they use everyday behaviours, like telling an inappropriate joke, a touch on the upper arm that lingers a little too long or a kiss on the lips to test whether your child is likely to tell on them. If the perpetrator is satisfied that your child won't tell, the predator moves onto other forms of bad touching. If the child still doesn't tell, then the abuse continues along the continuum of abuse from non contact, to contact and often ending with penetration and sometimes even homicide.”

(You can read their entire article on the subject at the following link: http://mental-health.families.com/blog/the-grooming-process-of-a-child-sexual-predator)

I was very familiar with its definition, as I had taught parents and children for almost 30 years in my fixed-length StreetWise and SafeChild programs to recognize and resist anyone who attempts to “groom” them. I just didn’t know there was an official name for it.

It’s important we all know how to recognize sexual predators in order to prepare ourselves, our children, and our students to avoid their advances. But instructors also need to be able to recognize such behavior in anyone, including members of our staffs, who come into contact with our students.

I’ll soon be getting into the signs that can enable you to better recognize sexual predators and the types of behaviors they follow to “groom” their targets. Thanks again for your continued support.

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part VI

One more warning story.

An instructor/friend who was well-loved by his students was teaching karate after school one day at an elementary school. A group of former students (older girls who had moved on to the middle school) were on campus for an event. They saw him teaching and ran into the classroom, where they gave him a big group hug.

By chance, a school administrator was walking past the classroom around the same time and noticed what was happening. She continued on but passed by again on her way back to her office a few minutes later. The girls were still hugging the instructor, as sort of a joke. But the administrator felt it had gone on too long and the instructor was soon fired. He tried to appeal the firing but was unsuccessful. The school’s position was it had raised a question mark about him in school administrators’ minds and they had no choice but to do whatever was necessary to make sure their students were not at risk.

This is what scientists call a Type I Error.

There are two types of errors one can make in this type of situation, Type I and Type II. A Type I Error is where an innocent person is erroneously determined to be guilty and sent to prison. A Type II Error is where a guilty person is erroneously determined to be innocent and set free.

Our society has determined that they would rather run the risk that a guilty person be set free (Type II Error) than an innocent person be sent to prison. So our criminal justice system is structured in such a manner as to better prevent Type I Errors than Type II. (It doesn’t always work. Innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. But we likely let far more guilty people walk than lock up innocent ones. And that is the intentional bias of the system.)

When it comes to the protection of our children, however, schools, parents, and people in general almost always lean heavily towards preventing Type II Errors (that a guilty person will be allowed to walk free) – believing it’s better to send away an occasional innocent person than run the risk a guilty one will be allowed access to our children. This is the exact opposite slant of our criminal justice system.

This was what school administrators applied in the case mentioned above. And it will likely be what will be the case in most similar situations you encounter. When in doubt, no matter how slight, they will let you go, pull their children out of your program, or file charges.

I have become very careful about physical contact with students. I don’t hug students unless 1) I know them and their families very well, 2) it’s appropriate, 3) not done often, and 4) in a public setting, where other people are there. When students hug me, I make sure I keep it brief. I will say something comforting or funny to them and step back, separating us. Many children today need affection, as they may not be getting it at home. So I never want to hurt their feelings or do anything to make them feel even worse. But we need to protect ourselves.

A classroom teacher once told me she never initiates a hug with a student. She only returns them when a student hugs her, as children do on occasion. This is good advice for all of us.

I’ll stop for now but have another couple of issues to discuss before we move on to other more positive matters.