One night after a rather exhaustive workout at Master Shimabuku's dojo, I and several other students were drinking tea. In the course of conversation, the instructor, Master Shimabuku's second son, Shinsho, was telling me how he had once threatened to kill an attacker with one punch. As he told me this, I smiled. When he asked me why I was smiling, I told him that I didn't think that anyone could kill another with just one blow.

 As I spoke, I was thinking that if there was one thing that American karate had taught me was that you couldn’t kill with one strike. I mean, who’s strong enough to do that? Who could generate that kind of power? Didn’t kickboxing show us that this was impossible, that the "one-strike kill" theory was just a myth?

Almost in reply to my thoughts, Master Shinsho struck me twice. With his first blow, a nukite (spear-hand thrust), he temporarily paralyzed my arm; with the second blow, my leg. At that moment, I realized that there are some people who can kill with one strike! I asked Shinsho, who was now standing and laughing, how he did that. He replied that his power came from chinkuchi, and that he would show me more the next day.

The next day I found out that only three Americans before me had ever been taught chinkuchi. Out of the three, only one at that time had mastered it: Bob Bremer from Florida. Master Tatsuo Shimabuku swore by this man's abilities, and acclaimed him as the best Isshinryu fighter in the world. Not long after hearing of Bremer, I saw in a karate magazine where he had beaten Parker Sheldon for the championship of a big tournament in the South. The article mentioned that Bremer's movements looked slow until they suddenly locked in place with devastating power. This came from chinkuchi training.

Well, what is this chinkuchi? I should first say that the word is unique to Okinawan karate and has never been officially defined, not even by the Okinawans. Chinkuchi is both a way of training, and also what is achieved when one reaches the main physical goal of karate, which is to be able to block and counter simultaneously with killing power. It’s the way the Okinawans achieve power through karate-do. This "power” (chinkuchi) is developed by striking with:

 (1) Proper tensing

(2) Proper breathing

(3) Accompanying each movement with what I call "mental control"

Tensing: In karate when we strike, we initiate a movement by swiveling our hips. This swivel creates a shock wave which travels through our arm/ leg, passes through our striking surface as we lock into place, and is then transferred into the target. This power flow, in order to be effective, must be accompanied by such things as:

(1) Being loose until the moment of contact

(2) Proper breathing

(3) Mental control (I mean, allowing your ki to flow through the movement)

This method of proper body tensing is an ingredient that must be mastered for a person to have chinkuchi in a movement.

Proper Breathing: Every Isshinryu student knows that a kiai is a shout of spirit. It’s used because:

(1) The body's striking movement is always stronger when one exhales properly.

(2) It has the capability of momentarily stunning an opponent.

(3) It tightens the abdominal muscles as one strikes, thus protecting against a counter blow.

What few students know is that breathing like a kiai should accompany every strike in karate (either a silent or audible one). In other words, before every block or attack combination one should exhale from the diaphragm. This is what I call "proper breathing." A further description of proper breathing would be an article in itself.

Mental Control: The third aspect of chinkuchi and the most important (and least understood) is what I call "mental control." This is known in other martial arts as qi, ch’i, ki, inner power, the spiritual aspect of karate-do, etc. This mental control, coupled with proper tension and breathing, gives the karate masters chinkuchi, additional power. Perhaps the best article that I have ever read on this mental control was in an article in Official Karate magazine several years ago by Howard Taque from New York. In the article, he defined qi, ki, etc. as a form of "self-hypnosis." For more information on this, see the aforementioned article.

This aspect of Okinawan power training (chinkuchi) is virtually unknown, I feel, by our Isshinyu sensei today. Last year in speaking with an Isshinryu hachidan (8th Dan), I asked if he had ever heard of chinkuchi. He said that he had heard of it from Mr. Bremer (mentioned previously), but our conversation revealed that about all he knew of it was the name. You might ask why this is. The answer is simple: Master Shimabuku could not speak English very well, so it was impossible to communicate the idea of chinkuchi to the Americans who studied with him. All of the Americans that I know of who were taught chinkuchi studied with Shimabuku’s second son, Shinsho, the only one who could speak English well.

But now the question is: how do students train? The answer in a nutshell is: all differently. Some achieve power in their techniques by using strength and weight in their movements, much like a boxer. Some try to incorporate tensing and breathing, but they have only a vague notion of how they should breathe and tense. Truthfully, only a few Isshinryu sensei that I have seen, American or Okinawan, know how to achieve power in any way, right or wrong. This chinkuchi is taught to the beginning Okinawan student, but because of communication problems, has never been taught to most Americans.

Well, allow me to end this article with the following story that I recently read in Black Belt magazine. It illustrates graphically what can be achieved through chinkuchi…

One day, an old man walked into a dojo in Hawaii and saw the students hitting the makiwara (striking practice board). He watched as they continued to strike the makiwara the ‘American' way, with little power, and he began to smile. The old man's smiling annoyed the students, and they asked hirn if he would like to try his luck at striking the board. The old man said "Okay," took his stance, and threw his punch. It broke the makiwara completely in half. It seems that this old man had been one of Gichin Funakoshi^ts first students. Master Funakoshi, the Okinawan master who founded Shotokan karate, had obviously taught him chinkuchi.