Patreon - Colin Wee Author

While working on the Patreon articles supplementing Application 3 in Breaking Through: The Secrets of Bassai Dai Kata, the first article A JDK Perspective on Kata, Human Variability, and the Insight of the Pioneers drew parallels between our insight into kata analysis, the human condition in combative exchanges, and the life circumstances of martial art pioneers.

The article attributed our increasing insight to years of watching how students assimilated our training and how their decision‑making preferences emerged during exchanges. With that discussion in mind, I went searching for photos that might represent that period of time, photos that would capture the moment when everything changed.

The photos I stopped at were of JDK Black Belt Joshua Lay, then a 4th kyu student during his grading in 2014.

JDK BB Niaal Holder refs one of the many sparring encounters Josh had to endure that day.

They were taken at a turning point for Josh, and they mirrored an event horizon within JDK that eventually led to the JDK Method. But more importantly, they marked a turning point for me as an instructor.

Up until then, Josh struggled with the syllabus. Everything we presented seemed not to match his learning style. He attempted techniques and applications, only to completely forget them the lesson after. Yet a switch occurred for him at 4th kyu, when we introduced a type of randori we call Superlight, a slow, collaborative, and most importantly, free‑flowing exchange in an ultra-safe environment.

We had a total of seven practitioners come to play.

Something clicked. When he realised we weren’t trying to force him to remember specific moves, but to understand concepts, things happened all at once: the read of distance, the control of the opponent, and the essence of a tactic just came together. From there, it became easier for him to feel what was happening and then make sense of the process flow we needed to see.

Up until this point, JDK had gravitated to using patterns as a syllabus for about ten years. We had not yet embarked on my book project, which would become a five-year adventure. But the adoption of Superlight closed the loop for us. Deconstructing kata, varying the technique, and applying tactics in two-person drills were our fledgling efforts in celebrating traditional form. Superlight was what allowed us to test our assumptions in a dynamic situation. The feedback it provided allowed us to gauge the worth of our ideas. Distancing. Angles. How to stitch tactical elements together. Everything.

JDK BB Niaal Holder’s BB Grading in 2011 where he had to push through ‘The Gauntlet of Pain’

Two years before these photos, in what I thought was a stroke of genius, I set up a challenge for my then senior student Niaal Holder’s black belt grading. At one point during the grading, I had all our students stand in a corridor holding body shields and kick pads, and made him fight his way through the gauntlet while they actively tried to stop him.

Without thinking too hard about it, I felt it was only right to introduce a challenge for Josh that would match or exceed Niaal’s grading, you know, just to be fair. An email was sent to a few friends who headed up different martial arts schools, asking them to send a few volunteers to help.

Fortunately, my friends trusted me and had enough faith in what I wanted to achieve. On the day, I was absolutely delighted to have seven strapping black belts from Okinawan Karate, Chinese Martial Arts, Muay Thai, and Taekwondo backgrounds come to spar Josh.

Josh was still required to tick off his grading components, so we split the sparring into three parts, allowing everyone to see how he was faring while being brought to the edge of physical exhaustion. We also factored in time so our guests could spar each other too, ensuring they’d leave with good memories from the session.

Joshua Lay in his 4th Kyu Grading demonstrates either Yulgok or Hwarang. Look at the exhaustion on his face.

With my instructor’s hat on now, I’ll just come out and say it: there’s a time and a place to push yourself. Something like this doesn’t necessarily need to be in a grading. I conceived the initial “Gauntlet of Pain” because Niaal had been plagued by self-doubt, and believed a black belt test had to be a brutal trial by fire. To have such a test for a 4^th kyu purple belt was not necessary.

The entertainment was, without a doubt, next level. They each knew what we were trying to do, were aware that safety was a priority, and they all allowed themselves to play. By ‘play’ I mean they engaged in a competitive yet collaborative manner, and that allowed everyone to show off the best of their training. I was blessed to have spectated that day.

And looking back now, these photos do more than capture a grading. They capture the moment when I was happy to let go of some of JDK’s early hard style assumptions. The moment I realised that pushing students to the max: testing their endurance, their pain tolerance, their ability to “survive” wasn’t the acid test of how good martial arts were really taught.

Josh Lay 4th kyu grading 2014 as he demonstrates applications from his patterns.

The pioneers didn’t build their systems around impossible hardship. They built them around sensitivity. Around strategy. Around safety. Around understanding how humans behave under pressure.

These photos show the moment I let go of my own hubris and finally understood that.

And those themes of human variability, the emergence of natural movement, and the advocacy of sensitivity and strategy are explored across the three articles from my Patreon’s coverage of Application Three.

Breaking Through Application Two, Full Article Series:

Breaking Through Application Three, Full Article Series:

📸 Sandy Lim

Bio: Colin Wee is a Singaporean author, martial‑arts instructor, and cultural historian whose four‑decade practice spans Asia, Australia, and the United States. Known for his analytical approach and deep tactical insight, Colin blends historical research with lived experience to illuminate the human stories behind martial traditions. He is the founder of Joong Do Kwan in Perth, Western Australia, and serves as Secretary of the Australasian Martial Arts Hall of Fame (see About the Author).

You can get a copy of Breaking Through: The Secrets of Bassai Dai Kata from Amazon or directly from the author at Ingram Sparks.

I’ve recently launched a Patreon account so I could return to the applications seen in Breaking Through: The Secrets of Bassai Dai Kata. I wanted to share the deep dives into my ongoing research on traditional martial arts, including expanded photo sets, application breakdowns, and long‑form reflections that don’t always fit neatly into a standard blog post.

Since the launch of the book, we’ve had lots of great video from seminars and workshops. These are perfect to supplement the static photos in the book, and Patreon members get to see applications direct from the events we’ve held to celebrate the book.

The article below is one of the free pieces featured there, presented here in full on this blog. Patreon supporters get access to the extended series this article belongs to (see the links below), along with access to premium content and behind‑the‑scenes material from my current projects.

Right after a sparring session a few years ago, one of the black belts approached me and asked where I’d learned the hand skills I was using in our exchange. “Was that Wing Chun?” he asked. “Actually, it’s Traditional Taekwondo.” He didn’t believe me.

For nearly two decades my school and I have been analysing traditional martial arts patterns. This wasn’t reverse engineering, that is we weren’t trying to make old movements fit modern preferences. It was functional analysis aimed to reconstruct historical skills, or at least imagine what they were designed to achieve.

Take Bassai’s three middle‑block sequences. Our goal was never to justify the pattern. We wanted to absorb the technique phrase into our working vocabulary so we can use, test, and refine its tactical worth.

Is that a block, a strike, or a double strike – Colin at AMAHOF 2022 small

To explore the technique, we stand in front of an opponent who throws a slow attack, which we deflect. Then a slow combination, which we also deflect. As our ability improves, the difficulty of the attack increases. Eventually the two‑man exchange approaches full speed, and we can then move testing into an unscripted combative exchange. This is not done at full pace; both partners move proportionately to the other. This free‑flowing and ultra-safe environment lets us study whatever technique against a live opponent, and helps with the ongoing functional analysis.

This unscripted exchange has shaped our pattern analysis more than anything else. We’ve learned that every slice of motion can be used to deflect, cover, or strike. With a wide-ranging remit, we take aspects of the middle block, for example, using it to deflect a straight cross, and drill it, running variations upon variations. We do the same with the knife‑hand guarding block, the twin‑fist block, even an elbow strike. Eventually techniques blur and blend, becoming simply the read of distance, timing, angles of entry, and the expansion of your physical structure to connect with the opponent.

After my first book, I found myself writing a story set in 19th‑century Ryukyu, during the Japanese subjugation of the islands. The cultural pressure and financial hardship pushed former bureaucrats to develop a new training system called karate. As I researched the personalities and consolidated the historical canon, I began to understand how deeply Chinese martial arts, culture, and food influenced Ryukyu. That pushed me to study Chinese‑based systems and expand on the basic concepts I’d explored in my first book.

As opportunities arose to explore Chinese‑based systems, I found concepts that immediately clarified gaps I’d carried for years. The idea of fajin, and the broader principles of internal energy manipulation, offered powerful analogies for kinetic chaining and kinesthetic movement. They revealed how leverage, structure, and intent could be directed through the body to destabilise an opponent.

If you’re curious what this looks like in practice, I demonstrate a basic soft‑style leverage application in this clip: Hard-Style Meets Soft Style: Ryukyu Karate Applications You’ve Never Seen Before (2:44-3:21).

Even a basic understanding of soft-style principles have given me a deep appreciation of how muscle control, structure, and intent could be used to destabilise an opponent. Hard‑style training had always hinted at these dynamics, but here they were expressed cohesively, with a precision that made the underlying mechanics unmistakable.

Q. Is there a counterpunch in the technique, Mr. Miyagi? A. Ask drum

Behind-the-scenes at photoshoot for the book

With the middle block, the external training is still useful as it trains the practitioner to run interference on the opponent or weave through their defences. But inside the movement there could be more: the soft-style relay of waveform energy from the ground, through the body, into the opponent.

The middle block could be dismissed as arms waving in the air. But the hands should be waving, and transmitting the ground force travelling through the body. When the middle block connects, you’re sending that entire waveform through the opponent. Do you send it as a vertical pulse? Do you shake the tree? Do you float him while striking? Do you sink the energy so his hips collapse?

Or has the opponent trapped your limb, and you’re using the middle block to disrupt his centre of gravity before countering with a blitz?

When that black belt asked if I was using Wing Chun, he wasn’t wrong to see something unfamiliar. What he saw wasn’t a different style, it was the result of twenty years of digging beneath the surface of my own tradition. The forms gave me the entry point, but the real lessons came from what was there before the form: the centreline control, the kinetic chaining, the soft‑style leverage, the waveform mechanics that had never been spoken of aloud. I certainly didn’t set out to reinvent anything, and I never chased other arts to fill a gap. I simply followed my practice until it led me here, to a place where the form is no longer the destination, but a doorway to the lessons it always meant to teach.

Breaking Through Application One, Full Article Series:

Breaking Through Application Two, Full Article Series:

You can get a copy of Breaking Through: The Secrets of Bassai Dai Kata from Amazon or directly from the author at Ingram Sparks.

Category: Patreon

The Moment I Let Go of Hard‑Style Assumptions

Evolving the Middle Block from Hard Style System into a Soft Style Artform [Free Patreon Article]