After a successful and well-attended Task Fighting 3 course, Shindenfight courses 1-6 were launched in March 2011.

Whoa whoa, just stop!

Task Fighting, Shindenfight - what's going on? Is the Shindenkan training students to learn to fight? Hhmmmm, both yes and no. We are not teaching our students to fight - everyone can do that to a greater or lesser extent. We are teaching our students the difference between a realistic fight (street fight) and an unrealistic fight (a fight filled with rules). In other words, we teach our students to deal with real-life struggles. The matches where there are no rules and where you are met with strength if you show weakness. We teach our students how a girl of 45 kg. can avoid being hit by a 90 kg man. that attacks with the same pace as a olm bull.

The Task Fighting 3 course is a course that teaches students to relate to real-life fights and at the same time see the difference between it and sports kumite. The Shindenfight 1-6 course is a natural extension of TF 3, where you dig deeper and go into more detail regarding realistic combat. What is realistic combat and how do you learn to fight in realistic combat if you are afraid? These questions can probably be answered by the participants, but in this article I want to be nice and tell a little about how it all came together.

In a realistic match, you don't score points when you hit and there is absolutely none rules for where you may and may not hit. Realistic combat is full contact and can result in serious injuries – sometimes, unfortunately, even death. Therefore, you must also learn to take care of yourself. Which is not so different in other of life's challenges.

In Shindenkan, we have a principle that says you must avoid getting hit. Which is one of the first things our students learn. Since it is not always easy to avoid being hit and since during the Shindenfight course we did not want to spend time waiting for ambulances all the time, it was a "must" that the participants used protective equipment. That is gloves, mouth guards, chest armor or vest, leg guards and a helmet for those who wanted this. Despite this padding, it was not possible to avoid injuries and I am also quite sure that the participants found out the importance of the protective equipment. It is not for decoration, nor to hide behind. It is a guard ring that should reduce the damage if you do not make your defense correctly. Despite this message and despite the fact that all protective equipment was reviewed, injuries still occur when you fight as we did on the Shindenfight courses.

The damage statement is as follows:

• A knock-out that resulted in a concussion with a duration of approx. 2 weeks.
• Two broken toes.
• Several lacerations on the feet that resulted in a massive consumption of sports tape and plasters.
• A fiber burst in the calf.
• An injured shoulder.
• And probably also one or two bent ribs.

In addition to the above-mentioned injuries, there are also injuries that cannot be completely avoided, such as bleeding and "belly breathers" that pull out teeth and other small bumps.

Part of the equipment was voluntary to start with, but the participants quickly found out that it had to be mandatory. Maybe they should just learn to take care of themselves instead of J

When you look at the damage tally from the outside, you might think that the participants were a collection of 20-25 year old hormone pumping boys who needed to get rid of some energy. But no, the participants were a mix of teenage girls and boys, grown men in their 20s and 30s, and grown men and women 50 and over.

Like so much else in Shindenkan, there was room for everyone on the course. The participants also had different approaches to the course. There were those who, after the TF 3 course, would no longer be afraid to fight, There were those who thought they knew how to fight properly, but who quickly found out that realistic combat was actually scary and something difficult to deal with , and then there were those who were simply curious to learn more about themselves. They wanted to see what a realistic fight really is for a fish and if they could do it or if they would run away screaming like another squealing pig. As an instructor on the course, I must say that everyone did fantastically well. Many boundaries were moved and there were more people who had "aha" experiences and insight into the fact that taking care of yourself is actually not that difficult. There were actually also those who found that the best thing was to acknowledge that the wheel and the deep plate had been invented. The content of Shindenfight is not rocket science, it is 1000 years of knowledge and experience on the battlefield that has been passed on.

When we in Shindenkan teach our students to fight, it is done through what is called "The schooled approach" to fighting. This means that they must learn about fighting in what we call the 4 stages of kumite.

Combat, and especially realistic combat, is not something you just do on a Sunday afternoon with one hand on your back. It is attitude, acceptance of the real world, and training of technique that is simple and effective. If you want to build a solid and strong house that can withstand storms and other severe weather, then you start by building a solid foundation and build on top of this step by step. In Shindenkan, we do the same with pretty much everything. Combat is absolutely no exception. If you don't start with a solid foundation and build on it step by step, you never learn to fight a realistic battle.

Rules in combat = limited combat – No rules in combat = unlimited combat.

Eventually we also have to recognize that if you don't learn to fight correctly, you will get beaten up - and these can be extremely effective beatings that you can run into. Therefore, we also train with the principle that the more full contact in the dojo, the better manage on the street. Because it is better to get the beatings under safe and controlled conditions in the dojo than to get them the hard way on the street.

A realistic fight is rarely one against one. It is often one against many. Which is another reason why we build our students with a solid foundation. And also something you don't learn in sports kumite. In a realistic fight, you are forced to be 100% effective, in other words, you have to hit the right places, otherwise there is no effect = no realism. This applies both in defense and attack.

Another part of the realism is also that big men of 90 kg attack small girls of 45 kg. A size difference that can cause great damage if you don't know how to deal with that size. What do you do if a freight train is coming towards you. Do you try to stop it or do you move? Are you cool or smart?

Yes, dear reader, the answer is right there - if you can see itJ

There is of course also the fact that young men and women assault older men and women. Also an element you as a Shindenkaner have to deal with. In fact, the oldest of the participants was well over 50, but he had the attitude and focus of a 25-year-old. Which just says something that you can if you want to.

As most of the participants quickly found out, realism is something that you have to deal with concretely. It may well be that it is ugly and does not smell very good. But if you don't recognize that the world may not be as you see it, then you can get a serious shock if one day you are confronted with realism in a serious way. Isn't it better to deal with the ugly things and recognize that they exist than to just close your eyes and think that it will never happen to you.

This is precisely what made the samurai such good warriors. They recognized that they could die and they dealt with this risk. Which meant that they were not mentally affected by this and thus could fight freely. And as you can read on our website, we train in Shindenkan a system that has its roots directly in 1000 years of knowledge about the samurai's struggle on the battlefield.

So isn't it all connected by a common thread?