Jan 01 Dennis Jones – Kicking for the Street

This interview was published in February 2007

Steve Rowe talks to Shi Kon Martial Artist and Night Club Doorman Dennis Jones 5^th Dan

SR Hi Den – I think ‘kicking’ would now be an interesting topic.  How have you ‘used your legs’ in confrontations on the door?

DJ A good question – apart from the obvious uses like walking, use of the legs can prove to be very important!   If you’re skilful enough you use them constructively, you can get into the ‘best position’ to deliver your best ‘shot’.  By using your legs correctly you can also frustrate someone else who is ‘lining you up’ to deliver their best shot.  Step forward, to the side or away and your legs get you in and out of the action – even if that means running away!  But if you use your legs to step into a solid punch – you’ve got a big problem!

SR So you use the legs for timing and distance, but what about the ‘popular art’ of kicking?

DJ It was the kicking in ‘karate’ films that made me want to take it up. Being a young schoolboy boxer I wanted to learn how to kick.  I needed the kicks to go with my punching and around April 1973 I saw an advert in the newspaper for a local karate club.  There was a write up about the club and next to it was a black and white picture of my then future instructor doing a reverse hook kick. He was posing with a sixteen year old boy who was attacking him with a knife – or as the paper put it: ‘Sixteen year old (student’s name) attacks (instructor’s name) with a knife’.  The instructor is shown blocking the downward stab with his right arm using jodan uke (head block) with his right leg resting on the attacker’s shoulder and his heel buried into the back of the student’s head.

SR Okay…

DJ I was young and impressed.  I also remember the arguments I had at work about using high kicks on the street – the innocence of youth eh?  A friend of mine still has the newspaper cutting and showed it to me recently.  He also had another one which showed the Chief Instructor being held in a rear forehead hold.  It was a typical wrestling move, the sort of thing that was on the television every Saturday afternoon in those days.  It looked like the photographer just told them what he wanted and like most people – they complied.  The media controls public perception of the martial arts and like the fashion industry they serve up what they think people want. 

I can’t now criticise the technique that was shown in that newspaper.  It was just nice to see the pictures again, the memories and feelings of those days came flooding back. 

I’d seen a few Kung Fu movies and when I started karate I really wanted to learn how to kick.  At the time the films coming out of Hong Kong were badly dubbed and apart from ‘Enter the Dragon’ they sounded quite camp to…can I say camp?

SR As long as you mean ‘…in an exaggerated way for effect!’

DJ Of course that’s exactly what I mean…Anyway to a 16 year old it seemed like all they did in films was kick the crap out of each other and I wanted to be a real ‘badass kicker’, which according to Jim Kelly, one of the main characters out of ‘Enter the Dragon’, meant that I wanted to be really good.  I aimed to become the best in my club!

SR And did you?

DJ …become the best kicker; yeah maybe.  In those days I had no trouble jumping up and kicking the ceiling.  Even when I first started door work I use to mess around doing that.  I had good kicks and had no trouble holding them out at head height, front, side and back.

SR So the films got you started in karate.

DJ Yes the ‘Kung Fu’ series and Bruce Lee films.  I remember seeing ‘Fist of Fury’ around October or November 1973 and it really got me excited.  I remember my mum saying he was good for Chinese people and she was right.  You have to look at the history of China to full appreciate the impact and sense of pride he gave to a lot of Chinese people. 

The first karate training session I went to was during the summer of 1972.  Now this was about a year before I started training properly.  Also about the same time I watched a training session given by ‘Harada Sensei’ from the Shotokai style.  At the time I think he was teaching at Aylesford paper mill.

I was on a diet of Kung Fu movies – the one’s with all the sound effects like pieces of wood hitting each other!

SR I remember them…

DJ … at the time I thought it was real.  I remember hitting two lamb bones together to try and make the same sort of sounds! 

SR I don’t think anyone under the age of 45 will have a clue what you’re talking about.

DJ They would if they watched any Kung Fu film that came out before Enter the Dragon.  Anyway I remember thinking that’s what it sounds like when two highly trained fighters fight.  So I had this image but it started to wane after my first karate competition a Crystal Palace in 1974.  The competitors didn’t look or sound like those Kung Fu fighters in the films.  And a short while later I saw a programme, on the television, about the Hong Kong film industry and in the dubbing studio they had some sound technicians hitting a couple of lumps of wood together.  Another of my childhood myths destroyed by the truth – mind you – it took a while for it to sink in because I didn’t like that truth!

SR Filming is far more sophisticated today.

DJ I enjoyed the more current film ‘Crouching Tiger’…but back in the early 70s the excitement and hype about karate was unbelievable.  Anyway I wanted to be a kicker and the style I was doing encouraged that.  The stretching was full on and we spent ages at the start of the session working on our flexibility.

SR Stretching could last at least and hour in those days of three hour lessons.

DJ…The exercises were as I recall, quite brutal..  The endless bunny hops and any other exercise the instructor dreamt up in hope that you wouldn’t be able to do them.  The purpose was to mess you up physically and mentally;  having softened you up, the instructor would then find it easier to give you a bit of a beating – ‘fighting spirit’ they called it back then.   We’d call it bullying today!   I can remember all the Japanese words we used and even now when I count by numbers in training (which I believe is not the right way to train students but ok for a large group of beginners) I still count in Japanese!

The idea of the flexibility training was to get you as ‘flexible as a ballet dancer’, swinging either your right or left leg vertically in the air!  A lot of forced stretching was used.  Often the instructor would get students to work with each other and you’d end up with some guy standing on your legs in a stretch or forcing your legs apart!  It was similar to a scene I remember seeing in the film ‘Budo the Art of Killing’ where a Sumo wrestler rather nastily pulls a young student into a full stretch position that obviously damaged his tendons and muscles.  It looked like the big Sumo guy enjoyed hurting the youngster who screamed in pain….’Fighting spirit’ has nothing to do with that kind of training, it’s more like the Sumo wrestler just hated the student or maybe the student didn’t do the big guy’s eggs properly for breakfast that morning!

During the time I was a white, blue and yellow belt we always locked our knees when we kicked.  It ‘looked good’ in kata and whilst marching up and down the dojo in three-step practice fighting (sambon-kumite) and demonstrations.  Around 1976 the kicking changed because Japan sent over a teacher and he spent a lot of his time teaching Go-Geri (5 kicks).   Basically we went from locking out our knees swinging our legs around doing both front and reverse high round kicks.  We spent the next four years doing these exaggerated high kicks.  At the time they looked great – but looking back I think the style I was doing was trying to make karate into an enjoyable ‘kicking’ sport   I think the ‘Master’ had his eye on the Olympics.

SR…There was a lot going on back then.  The Olympic had boxing, which is about the hands.  Wrestling and Judo, which is about grappling so I suppose it became obvious to a number of people that there were no ‘kicking competitions’ in the Olympics at that time.

DJ I could get my legs up high though not Olympic high…but my kicking ability was going to be useful later on.  Steve, do you remember those karate demos where one guy with a knife would attack another guy.  He’d thrust out with a blade and as quick as a flash the defender would knock it aside with crescent-kick block (mikazuki-geri-uke).

SR..Yeah…

DJ I religiously practiced that kicking block.  I practised it with a bent knee and falling forward stepping down hard and sometimes soft with my foot coming down on the floor gently.  I became good at it but never knew what I was doing it for – however, I knew it wasn’t really to parry a knife attack!  But about 14 years ago, around 1992, myself and my team were dragging these guys out of a nightclub who’d been fighting.  I had one in a headlock ran him towards the fire exit – I then booted the panic bar on the fire door.  I did it all in one movement using a well practised crescent-kick block and with a bent knee which I then extended!  Thinking about it – I  realised that for the last ten or so years I’d been opening fire doors with mikazuki-geri-uke!…Similarly both riding horse stance (kiba-dachi) and full kneeling position (seiza) appear to have no value in a fight, however, I found a use for them and like the crescent-kick I didn’t realise what I was doing even though I’d been using the ‘techniques’ since the early 80s.

SR  I guess that will have to wait for another month Den… But good that you found a use for those ‘obscure’ kicks… maybe you should do a course on Bunkai Jutsu!

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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