Drills for Unsoku and Unshin

There are a lot of things that make jis­sen a fun and chal­leng­ing game, but the biggest thing that makes jis­sen dif­fi­cult is that we must make our move­ments respond to those of our oppo­nents. I’ve cov­ered how to prac­tice the indi­vid­ual unsoku and unshin move­ments else­where — these drills are designed to teach you to move around some­one else.

Stimulus/Response Training

There are four main fac­tors in using unsoku and unshin that we can train: tim­ing, dis­tance, strat­egy, and tech­nique deploy­ment. In most of the fol­low­ing drills, we will work these fac­tors by build­ing the abil­ity to use unsoku and unshin as a response to var­i­ous stim­uli (of which an oppo­nent could be one example).

First, I want to men­tion that, though these drills may look very basic and begin­ner­ish, they can also be extremely pow­er­ful prac­tices for advanced stu­dents. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but espe­cially the slow free-moving drills will reveal lay­ers of sub­tle con­trol poten­tial in even slight turns of the feet — that is, for advanced students.

Whatever your cur­rent skill level, you will get as much out of these fun­da­men­tal unsoku drills as you allow for your­self. I don’t have to tell the top stu­dents to take every move­ment as an oppor­tu­nity to improve their skills, but the not-bad-but-not-yet-great stu­dents should really pay atten­tion at this level, as these fun­da­men­tal com­pe­ten­cies are often the weak­est links in their skill sets.

Partnered Preset Unsoku

This is the most basic of basic part­nered unsoku drills. In the most com­mon ver­sion, both part­ners face in oppo­site sides of kamae and move across the court using a boxy ko-soku and ten-soku com­bi­na­tion. The goal is to build speed and side­step dis­tance while match­ing your partner’s tim­ing and posi­tion. Of course, other unsoku pat­terns can be used as well: try So and In, Ka and Gen, and Hensoku.

Free Unsoku Within Area

In this drill, both part­ners are free to move as they like, with two stip­u­la­tions. They can­not touch, and they can­not leaved a bounded area. The are can be made in var­i­ous shapes, and more part­ners can be added. The goal is to move quickly with­out vio­lat­ing either of the two rules.

You can also cre­ate vari­a­tions in which part­ners attempt to force each other out of bounds by their unsoku.

Free Unshin Within Area

Many stu­dents never get com­fort­able using unshin in jis­sen, and I believe this is because we usu­ally prac­tice unshin in straight lines with plenty of space for “safety.” After a while, it’s impor­tant to teach stu­dents to per­form unshin move­ments near obsta­cles and peo­ple so they can gain the aware­ness of their sur­round­ings as they move. Spatial aware­ness in four dimen­sions is a vital skill in mas­ter­ing jis­sen, so I came up with this “con­fined unshin” drill. There are tons of pos­si­ble vari­a­tions, but here’s the most basic prac­tice we often employed at Georgia Tech:

Mark off an area and get every­one to stand inside. For what­ever period of time, every­one has to move con­tin­u­ously using what­ever unshin they like. They must not stop mov­ing, touch other play­ers, or leave the marked area. You can spec­ify which unshin stu­dents are to use or allow them the free­dom to adapt as they wish. Ironically, the first option often becomes the more-difficult.

Slow Free Unsoku/Unshin in Full Court

in this drill, the idea is to get used to using unsoku and unshin together while fac­ing a part­ner. Speed, com­plex­ity, etc. can be built gradually.

Slow Tag Jissen

In this vari­a­tion, both part­ners are free to move as they like and attempt to tag their oppo­nent. It’s usu­ally best to spec­ify a par­tic­u­lar tar­get area (shoul­der, foot, back), but either hand may be used. Of course, this drill should begin slowly and build in speed as the play­ers gain con­fi­dence. The game can also be played in a con­fined area, and I’ve even had stu­dents form teams with var­i­ous player “positions.”

Free Unsoku/Unshin - Attack on Signal

In this drill, one part­ner deliv­ers sig­nals to which the other must respond appro­pri­ately. The sig­nals can be any­thing: words, hand­claps, whis­tles, ges­tures, etc. The respond­ing part­ner moves freely in unsoku while the sig­nal­ing part­ner deliv­ers cues. At the cue, the first part­ner must deploy some pre­de­ter­mined attack­ing movement.

Eventually, sev­eral sig­nals may denote sev­eral attack responses. There are plenty of options for build­ing up the com­plex­ity of this drill. Use com­mands like jump, duck, and roll, or call tech­nique names.

Avoidance on Signal

This drill has the same set-up as the pre­vi­ous one, but this time, the respond­ing part­ner has to defend rather than attacking.

To begin, the respond­ing part­ner has to dis­tin­guish between only two cues, one for inside fukuteki, and one for out­side fukuteki. After a while, other types of fukuteki can be added, as can jumps, unsoku pat­terns, or even attack tech­niques. Complexity and speed build gradually.

Slow Avoidance of Prop

At Tech, we call this game “don’t get hit by the guy with the stick”, and it’s always a lot of fun for at least one part­ner. Bryan and I learned this game from John Okochi, back when it was still OK to hit stu­dents with a shi­nai. Now, it’s appar­ently abu­sive and dan­ger­ous, but our stu­dents don’t seem to mind. If you think swing­ing shi­nai at each other is too “hard­core” for you, by all means, use some­thing else. The American honbu has padded sticks, and in Japan, we often swing our belts. It doesn’t mat­ter what the prop is, so long as you build the game properly.

We begin this game with the “stick­man” kneel­ing. This pre­cludes much reach­ing and seems to make defend­ers a lit­tle more com­fort­able start­ing out. Defenders make kamae and prac­tice respond­ing to three sig­nals on each side. The sig­nals and responses (from left chu­dan) are: jump over low swing, fukuteki away from left-top swing, fukuteki away from right-low swing.

After build­ing basic com­pe­tency, we start to mix up the “attacks” and grad­u­ally increase speed. Then we start mov­ing around a bit…

Free Unsoku with Avoidance of Prop

This is the mov­ing ver­sion of the stick game. Stickman chases the defender around the court, deploy­ing low swings, high-to-low swings, and low-to-high swings at will. The defender’s job is to use unsoku to move and “don’t get hit by the guy with the stick” using jumps and/or fukuteki. Speed, fre­quency, and vari­ety are your inten­sity mul­ti­pli­ers here, and they have to be care­fully con­trolled to ensure grad­ual escalation.

When stu­dents get good at this game, we add two more “sig­nals”: a straight thrust and an over­head down-smash. The cor­rect response to either was best summed up by Mr. Miyagi, when he said “Best defense for punch — no be there.”

Free Unsoku with Avoidance of Prop and Counter

In this ver­sion, the defender is encour­aged to counter any attack with a punch.

Two Sides to the Story

You may have noticed that many of the above drills are one-sided, e.g. they tend to train only one part­ner at a time. Of course, any of them can be adapted to be sym­met­ri­cal drills in which both part­ners are active. In the sig­nal drills, for exam­ple, one part­ner attacks on a whis­tle, and the other part­ner attacks on a handclap.

I didn’t include too many spe­cific exam­ples, nor did I write out every pos­si­ble vari­a­tion; these are just a few broad frame­works for cre­at­ing your own drills depend­ing on the needs of your own train­ing. These can also be com­bined with the other drill tem­plates pre­sented else­where on Taido/Blog.

Baby Steps

Any of these drills could be con­sid­ered prepara­tory for kobo or jis­sen prac­tice, either as a teach­ing step or a warmup. The allow stu­dents to learn to make deci­sions quickly and move accord­ingly using var­i­ous types of stim­u­lus and move­ment. Importantly, they are all sans-technique, which makes them less stress­ful than jissen.

Having the pre­knowl­edge that their part­ners will not just punch or kick them, stu­dents are free to play and explore and learn at a com­fort­able pace. Once stu­dents have gained this basic con­fi­dence and com­pe­tence, they can get more out of their kobo and jis­sen practice.