Kangeiko

Growing up in Uchida Sensei’s dojo, kangeiko was always one of my favorite Taido tra­di­tions. Everybody came to kangeiko, even if they couldn’t make it to prac­tice very often dur­ing the rest of the year. It was always like a fam­ily reunion. And the work­out was HARD.

We always started at 6am, and the floor would be freez­ing. We started by warm­ing up thor­oughly and run­ning through all of the fun­da­men­tals. Lots of punches, lots of kicks. Then we’d prac­tice each of the Taido kihongi and, after that, hokei. Despite the cold, every­body man­aged to get up a good sweat by the end of it.

Then we would all line up and, one at a time, sit with Sensei and exchange New Year’s greet­ings: “Akemashite omedetou goza­imasu. Kotoshimo yoroshiku one­gai shi­masu.” Then we’d drink sake (if you were under 21, it was “just a lit­tle…”) and clean the dojo.

I hear that American Taido kangeiko is a much dif­fer­ent affair now. That’s cool. Things change, and noth­ing is so per­fect it can’t be improved.

I don’t know much about the tra­di­tions of Taido dojo in other coun­tries. Do you do kangeiko in Europe? How about Australia?

In this arti­cle, I’m going to give a lit­tle back­ground on what kangeiko is, where it comes from, and how it’s prac­ticed in Japan.

Kangeiko History

According to “ancient tra­di­tion,” kangeiko is held early on a Saturday morn­ing in January. All stu­dents (even those who are unable to prac­tice often) con­gre­gate at the dojo for the osten­si­ble pur­pose of begin­ning the year with good spirit in train­ing. Everyone works out, and the focus is on kihon — the basis of fancier skills.

Following the prac­tice, the stu­dents greet their teach­ers and wish them a happy new year (“ake­mashite omedetou goza­imasu”) and ask the favor of con­tin­ued tute­lage in the new year (“koto­shimo yoroshiku one­gai shi­masu”). The deal is sealed with a Japanese hand­shake — bow­ing and drink­ing sake.

Then, every­one par­tic­i­pates in the osoji — big clean­ing. Students and instruc­tors take pride in main­tain­ing their prac­tice space and equip­ment. And then there’s break­fast and more drinking.

That’s the kangeiko I remember.

Meaning and Origins

Kangeiko is a Japanese word made up of three char­ac­ters and means “cold train­ing.” Why would one want to train in the cold? The con­cept is a type of tough­ness train­ing — forc­ing one­self to per­form under dif­fi­cult or even painful con­di­tions. In the­ory, this strength­ens the “fight­ing spirit” by help­ing us find our true lim­its and qui­et­ing the inner-weakling that keeps telling us to give up.

This idea of sub­ject­ing one­self to harsh treat­ment in order to strengthen the resolve owes to the influ­ence of Buddhism (in Japan, any­way). Ascetic monks would choose the cold­est days of the year to set an exam­ple and demon­strate their piety. Apparently, some ded­i­cated samu­rai bor­rowed the prac­tice and began sub­ject­ing them­selves to intense train­ing on these days as well. It even­tu­ally became a tra­di­tion in Sumo.

Judo adopted the prac­tice, and as a result, most mod­ern Japanese mar­tial arts have some sort of kangeiko tra­di­tion. In Japan, many pro­fes­sional sports teams hold a sort of kangeiko, and even some large cor­po­ra­tions have “kangeiko” for their executives.

Kangeiko's Importance as a Martial Arts Tradition

In gen­eral, kangeiko has a rep­u­ta­tion in the mar­tial arts of being a seri­ous chal­lenge. There are all sorts of sto­ries from “the old days” about extremely tough (and often stu­pid and dangerous)kinds of train­ing that var­i­ous dojo have put them­selves through in the name of strength­en­ing their spirits.

Martial artists love telling sto­ries about how tough things used to be. My father summed up the ten­dency nicely: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” These sto­ries are often more roman­tic than real­is­tic, but I think they serve a pur­pose. I look at these “leg­ends” like a chal­lenge — not nec­es­sar­ily to dive into a sub-zero lake and do 10000 punches in my frozen uni­form — but to occa­sion­ally engage in prac­tices that bring me closer to my limits.

Which is really the whole point. You don’t have to do fifty hokei in your under­wear on the cold­est day of the year. But as mar­tial artists, we do have to push our­selves to over­come stress. Since this can be uncom­fort­able, many groups rit­u­al­ize the chal­lenge as a tradition.

Kangeiko is just a tra­di­tion. It’s serves the same pur­pose that other tra­di­tions do: rein­force group iden­tity and group val­ues. Severe train­ing is also worth­while, but it’s not nec­es­sar­ily the most vital part of kangeiko.

Two Kinds of Kangeiko

There are basi­cally two schools of thought on what kinds of things kangeiko should entail: the hard core GUTS! school and the more aus­tere and sub­dued school.

GUTS!

“Guts” type train­ing is what we usu­ally asso­ciate with “tough guy” schools. An exam­ple of a hard core kangeiko might start at 5am with 1000 punches and 1000 kicks before mov­ing on to work rou­tines and spar­ring. Maybe it would also include a few hun­dred push-ups and sit-ups.

Of course, all of this is done in an unheated dojo, which is almost the same as doing it out­side. Traditional Japanese archi­tec­ture doesn’t include much in the way of insu­la­tion. Martial arts dojo tend to have as much win­dow as they do wall, and though we may use fans dur­ing the sum­mer, find­ing a heater is extremely rare.

Some schools actu­ally do train out­side — run­ning a few kilo­me­ters or even train­ing tech­niques on the frozen ground. Just this past week, I saw a news report about a karate dojo in Osaka that waded into the har­bor and did some punches in the freez­ing water.

Apparently, only a cou­ple of them suf­fered from hypother­mia. That was prob­a­bly because it was a pub­lic­ity stunt, and the stu­dents were only in the water long enough for the cam­era crews to cap­ture the event. Of course, it the old days, they would have stayed in for longer…

The con­tent of “guts” type train­ing is less impor­tant than the inten­sity. The idea is to push our­selves until we don’t think we can go any fur­ther, and then to go fur­ther. Your mus­cles say “no,” but your mind com­mands “yes.” Through pain and exhaus­tion, you find that your true lim­its lay well out­side your usual com­fort zone.

Doing this kind of train­ing sucks. But it’s great.

Pushing past our per­ceived bound­aries builds men­tal tough­ness. It’s great for remind­ing our­selves just what we’re capa­ble of (as opposed to what we enjoy). The body can’t han­dle this kind of thing too often, but doing it a few times a year can help push us to the next level mentally.

A hard core kangeiko is guar­an­teed to “make a man out of you,” unless you’re a woman.

In dojo that have an extremely intense kangeiko, stu­dents some­times have to rest and recover for up to a week or even longer before return­ing to train­ing. If train­ing injures you, it’s no longer train­ing — it’s pun­ish­ment. Forcing your body to the break­ing point is not “guts,” it’s stupid.

Balancing chal­lenge with insan­ity is the art of this kind of training.

Another Approach

A lot of dojo aren’t so much con­cerned with being tough. They prac­tice for sport and recre­ation. Dojo with a lot of older adults and chil­dren aren’t going to con­vince many stu­dents to show up for a phys­i­cally intense work­out. Instead, they fol­low a more sub­dued approach.

Just as with the hard core dojo, most “nor­mal” dojo will focus their train­ing on basics. They may do a cer­tain num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions of each kihongi, but the pace is usu­ally rel­a­tively slow. Usually, few words are spo­ken, and each stu­dent is left to con­sider how to per­form each rep­e­ti­tion bet­ter than the one before it. This can some­times go on for quite a while.

Even with­out breaks, this kind of train­ing is not going to make any­one pass out or vomit. The phys­i­cal inten­sity is low. but it’s not easy. In fact, it can be just as intense men­tally as the hard core style is phys­i­cally. It’s just a dif­fer­ent kind of intensity.

The objec­tive is to prac­tice with total con­cen­tra­tion. Instead of div­ing into freez­ing water, you’re try­ing to sub­merge your­self in each tech­nique. The chal­lenge is to get inside the tech­nique, and that’s some­thing you can only do with a lot of effort and repetition.

The first few rep­e­ti­tions may be kind of rough as you get warmed up. Then you’ll fall into your typ­i­cal habits for the next few. Doing the same tech­nique even­tu­ally starts to get bor­ing, so you start try­ing to move faster and stronger. As you tire, you’ll begin to shift your empha­sis to clean, effi­cient move­ment. After doing fifty or so in a row, you notice that your last rep­e­ti­tion was far bet­ter than the first.

Training like this helps refine your tech­nique and calm your mind. After work­ing through a vari­ety of tech­niques in such a man­ner, you’ll find that you feel very calm and relaxed. Though you’ve prob­a­bly been sweat­ing pro­fusely, you won’t feel very tired.

This state of ease is the per­fect time to reflect on your progress and goals for the next few months of train­ing. You may take time to con­sider the 5jokun or oth­er­wise think about what Taido is to you and what you hope to get out of it.

This is a more per­sonal kind of train­ing, even though it’s per­formed as a group. Each stu­dent is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing their own inten­sity and focus. The results are often sim­i­lar to the more-extreme style of train­ing: it can help push you into the next level men­tally. It’s a dif­fer­ent way of reach­ing for the same goal.

Taido Kangeiko

Of course, since kangeiko is an “ancient mar­tial arts tra­di­tion,” it’s an impor­tant part of the spirit of a dojo. In fact, it’s such an impor­tant part of Taido tra­di­tion, that most clubs in Japan don’t do it. Some do, but it’s def­i­nitely not the norm.

Those dojo that do have a kangeiko tend to fol­low the sec­ond blue­print. A few uni­ver­sity clubs may do killer work­outs, but most dojo will do less extreme train­ing and work on increas­ing the men­tal intensity.

None of the dojo I’ve been a mem­ber of in Japan have had a for­mal kangeiko. Instead, we just resume train­ing in the new year as usual. But sev­eral Japanese clubs have posted blogs about their kangeiko train­ing this year, and none of them went swim­ming in their dogi…

What's Your Kangeiko Like?

By this time, many of you have already had a kangeiko at your dojo. Maybe it was sim­i­lar to one of the pat­terns I dis­cussed above, or maybe it was some­thing totally different.

The most impor­tant thing you can get out of kangeiko is to give it your best and start off the new year of train­ing with a pos­i­tive atti­tude. Beyond that, take it as a chance to push your­self to the next level by chal­leng­ing your body or your mind with more inten­sity than usual. Being out­side your com­fort zone will help you grow as a mar­tial artist.

If you’ve had any inter­est­ing kangeiko expe­ri­ences you’d like to share, please post them in the comments.