![\"\"](\"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Tai-sabaki-Kanji-300x145.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tai\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Saba\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ki<\/p>\n
Tai sabaki<\/em> \u2013 this Japanese term is used often in the martial arts. It\u2019s usually translated as \u201cbody shifting\u201d by English-speaking karate sensei<\/em>, and that translation is good enough, considering how we use the phrase in teaching. Basically, it describes getting out of the way of an attack and\/or positioning yourself advantageously for an attack of your own.<\/p>\n Fair enough. However, being an etymology nerd, I looked up the actual meaning of \u201csabaki\u201d by itself. I already knew that \u201ctai\u201d means \u201cbody.\u201d Like \u201cbody,\u201d tai<\/em> treats your person as a single physical entity, much as \u201cstudent body\u201d treats an entire collection of individual students as a single entity.<\/p>\n Anyway, the most applicable translations for sabaki <\/em>are \u201chandle,\u201d \u201cdeal with,\u201d or \u201cmanage.\u201d Not \u201cshifting.\u201d<\/p>\n So tai sabaki <\/em>means handling or managing our body as a whole, in terms of its location in 3D space. And what I want to say about this is that, for most martial arts that you may study, you are going to have to learn an entirely new way of \u201cmanaging\u201d your body\u2019s positioning.<\/p>\n Although each martial art teaches \u201cbody management\u201d in a different way, in general these different ways will be complementary, for an advanced student. In other words, if as a karate practitioner I am also learning some aikido <\/em>techniques, the new ways of moving that aikido<\/em> contains should add to the understanding of tai sabaki<\/em> that I have gotten from karate.<\/p>\n However, if you are new to the martial arts, learning the new ways of conveying your body from one position to another is a difficult stage in your training. In karate, we move in ways that are unnatural \u2013 we do \u201cC steps\u201d when moving forward or backwards, or else step straight past the other foot, and we shift our weight dramatically from one leg to the other. We do complicated spins and pivots, and angle or \u201cblade\u201d our shoulders\/hips to one side to gain advantage.<\/p>\n And in Shotokan, we do all of this with legs bent and body low so that we are using leg muscles more, and bone structure less, to support our mass. And if all that wasn\u2019t enough, we glide on the balls of our feet rather than the usual heel-toe way of walking or running! This is completely different from how we ordinarily move about, and even from other sports (like dojo dodgeball :-> ).<\/p>\n At the same time that the beginner is struggling with this radically new way of managing their body\u2019s movements, they are of course also learning all of the basic techniques of punching, striking, blocking, and kicking. It\u2019s relatively easy to teach a beginner to do a punch, a rising \u201cblock\u201d, a front snap kick, and even a downward sweeping \u201cblock.\u201d But when you combine these with this odd way of carrying your body, this is where he or she often starts to feel overwhelmed.<\/p>\n But eventually, as a beginner you will internalize this new way of conveying your body from point A to point B, (or from angle \u0278 to angle \u03b2). Then, you gain a new confidence in yourself and nothing else in basic karate skills will ever be as difficult again. The advanced kata will come to you more easily than Heian Shodan, the first kata, did — apart from the fact that you need to memorize a greater number of steps.<\/em> Various multiple-person drills in which you evade attack and position yourself for attack will flow more naturally \u2013 especially since you will move from more upright, natural postures and not Shotokan\u2019s low stances.<\/p>\n All this is to say to beginners, stick with it! Gradually your body will learn this new way of moving and it will become \u201cnatural\u201d to you. I\u2019m not saying that when you\u2019re at home you\u2019ll be moving around the house in karate stances \u2013 although, bonus points if you do \u2013 but soon you will glide with confidence on the dojo floor and you can concentrate on the perfecting of every technique, stance, and tai sabaki<\/em> movement.<\/p>\n Then you will move on to advanced drills where success means getting out of the way and getting to the best position for neutralizing the \u201cbad guy.\u201d That\u2019s when training starts to get really fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tai\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Saba\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ki Tai sabaki \u2013 this Japanese term is used often in the martial arts. It\u2019s usually translated as \u201cbody shifting\u201d by English-speaking karate sensei, and that translation is good enough, considering how we use the phrase in teaching. Basically, it describes getting out of the way of an attack and\/or positioning yourself advantageously for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146,87,120,1],"tags":[108,131,130,114,101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3959,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions\/3959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}