The Water, Circle, and Power Principles Can Lead

 Any Martial Artist to Victory! 

By Steve Petermann 
 

  Out of the corner of my eye, in the reflection of the mirror, I saw Rudy grab the bamboo training sword. As a lower belt, he had no reason to pick it up, and since only he and I were in the training hall...

  Turning as he swung, I slid in, enveloping him and the sword, wrapping my arms around his. Using his energy from his missed swing and adding a little of my own derived from twisting my hips, I redirected his power and sent him tumbling across the mat.

  As he came to rest, Rudy's mischievous smile turned into one of incredulity. I stood there amazed. "Wow, this stuff works!" We said at the same time.

  Fortunately, I had seen Rudy smile during the swing. Unfortunately, I saw it too late to stop his wild ride. He admitted that he had intended to give me a surprise whack with the practice sword. Neither he nor I knew that his prank would lead to our deeper understanding of the principles of hapkido. 
 

A Matter of Principle

  Hapkido is a Korean martial art whose name means, "way of coordinated power." It includes more than 3,500 self-defense techniques -a veritable mountain of moves to memorize. Consider this: Even if you were to practice 100 techniques a day, you would still have 400 to go at the end of even the longest month. Only by focusing on the principles of the art can you practice the techniques efficiently and effectively.

  Hapkido is composed of three main principles, the water principle, the circle principle, and the power principle. Although not every technique exhibits all three, all techniques uses at least one. 
 

The Water Principle



  Water has many properties that can influence the way you act and react. By imitating it's yielding nature, you can improve your evasion and envelopment skills. If you yield to your opponents attack, you will sustain little or no damage should he strike you. In a game of tug of war in which power opposes power, the strongest person will win. However, if one side let's go unexpectedly, the other one will tumble into a heap. Likewise, when your opponent pulls or pushes in a fight, the best option may be to simply yield.

  Yielding, however, does not just mean "letting go" or "backing off" -although they are components of the concept. Successfully yielding for the purpose of evasion and/or envelopment it enables you to avoid the opponent's attack and pulls you in position to respond effectively.

  A distinctly different property of water is it's ability to overwhelm. That is illustrated by the force exerted against your abdomen when you do a belly flop into a swimming pool. The ability to overwhelm is important because the goal of self-defense is not so much to avoid a single blow as it is to neutralize the threat. When you apply force to neutralize a threat, your action should have a psychological and a physical impact on your attacker. In other words, it should overwhelm him. That will minimize the amount of physical injury required to convince him to desist, and will expose you to less danger than in a traditional give-and-take encounters.

  Water also embodies the quality of persistence. If you train hard in any art and still believe you are not improving, you should recall the persistence of water. Although the change it effects on stone may appear agonizingly slow, the results are dramatic. Just as a continuous drip will bore a hole into the hardest stone, continuous practice will eventually penetrate even the hardest head. 
 

The Circle Principle



  The properties of the circle and the way objects move along a circular path can help you expect the unexpected and develop smoothness of motion. They can also teach you how to generate power without resorting to lateral or vertical movement, which is important when you overcome your opponent's resisting body.

  The distance traveled by an object with a short rotational radius is less than the distance traveled by an object with a longer rotational radius. Therefore, the circle principle teaches you to redirect a straight punch or kick into an arc, thus off-balancing the opponent. By turning yourself (the hub of the wheel) as quickly as possible, you force him to try to run around the arc traced by your arms or legs (the end of the spokes of the wheel). When he fails to do that, he falls.

  When the opponent falls, he does not continue in an arc; rather, he takes off in a straight line away from the impact site. This property of circular power that redirects a force tangential to the arc can help you defensively, too, by reducing the effect of blows you cannot avoid. When an opponent's strike lands on you and you are rotating, the force will be spread over a wider area and part of it will be cast off. 
 

The Power Principle

  In the beginning of your training, you may think ki (internal energy) refers to only your own power. Later you learn that it also includes your opponent's power and later still you will discover that it includes the world's power.

  Hapkido deals with the application of all those powers in terms of inertia. Power has the property of facilitating motion. Inertia, however, exists in both moving and resting bodies.

  Power as described by the power principle is not strength. If the strength of your body were the sole determination of self-defense ability, all training would revolve around building muscle. However, smaller and weaker people who learn the power principle can avoid or redirect an opponent's power and successfully defend themselves.

  To harm you, an opponent must exert energy. His exertion tires him, and directly resisting his efforts tires you. However, when you minimize your expenditure of energy and attempt to use the energy expanded by your opponent, you gain maximum effect with minimum efforts. In this way, you can outlast your opponent if necessary, and you can more easily overcome differences in height and weight. Once you learn the power principle, you will never fight alone; you will always have your opponent helping you. 
 

Combining Principles

  By combining two or more hapkido principles, you can achieve great things. For example, using the circle principle in combination with the power principle, you can encourage your attacker to move quickly in one direction. Uncontrolled inertia may cause him to topple, but if you change direction, the original inertia will be amplified by the change and the application of the opposing energy. When that combination is used against a joint or to increase the damage of a blow, the result can be overwhelming.

  The application of the three principles can extend beyond the realm of self-defense and into your personal life. When you study hapkido, you embark on a course that will hopefully put you in harmony with yourself, with the world around you and even with your attacker. You will strive to be like a large body of water -calm on the surface but with sufficient depth for love and knowledge. By adopting the properties of a spinning circle, you can deflect personal attacks and failures and stay focused on completing all that you begin.