Revisiting Hikite: The Human Body, Nakayama’s Vision, and the Revolving Door.

 

Posted by ADAM CARTER on JUL 20, 2025

Revisiting Hikite: The Human Body, Nakayama’s Vision, and the Revolving Door.

(Approx 2 minute 50 second read)

Much of today’s karate comes from the modernization that took place in the early part of the 20th century. Instruction by prominent sensei from the 1960s shaped what many still teach today.

One such method – which I’ve written about extensively – is hikite. – Not again.

Yes, again. Why? Because there’s still so much nonsense surrounding it. People need to think for themselves instead of staying stuck in a time when nobody knew any better.

I remember back in the 1970s being told that you must pull your arm back just as fast as you punch in order to generate maximum power. We did it without question, and it did feel powerful.

And here’s the problem – it does feel powerful. Pulling that arm back sharply does something that tricks you into thinking you’re hitting harder. But it’s an illusion.

So what’s really happening? When you yank your arm back, you tense the muscles through your back and shoulders. You brace your core. The recoil creates a sense of “snap”. It feels strong – but that feeling comes from stiffening the body, not from the pulling hand adding force to the punch like some hidden gear system.

The real power comes from the whole body working together – proper structure, breathing, good body mechanics, and correct timing. This is called the kinetic chain: from the legs, hips, core, shoulders – not just the arms alone. And all of this happens without wasting a free hand doing nothing useful.

Someone very experienced in the martial arts with whom I have a high regard for, recently compared the body to a revolving door – if you push one side, the other side swings round too. I was quite shocked when I read this, to be honest. The human body doesn’t work like this. Comparing us to a revolving door is simply wrong.

There is a well-known diagram in Nakayama’s Dynamic Karate (1966), you can see it here – the human body shown like a rigid system of gears and levers turning on a single axis. It’s easy to see how that image stuck – but it’s not how our bodies actually work.

Yes, we have a spine – a central axis. But unlike a revolving door, each side of the body can work independently.

I don’t need to pull one arm back to push the other forward. It’s a flawed idea – and it’s easy to prove.

Try lifting a dumbbell with one arm powerfully. You don’t need to yank the other arm back to do it. Throw a ball forcefully – same thing. Push a door open with strength – no need to pull the other arm back at all. The list is endless.

That free hand – the hikite – should be doing what it was meant to do: controlling your opponent. Grabbing, pulling, unbalancing, clearing a limb, opening a line for your strike.

Pulling the hand back to the hip in kihon or kata should remind us of that principle – but somewhere along the line, people forgot the point and focused only on the motion.

They taught the how without the why. So now we have generations of people snapping their fists to their hips without ever thinking about what they’re supposed to be doing.

This is what happens when karate is treated like a performance art instead of a method of self-defense. The form survives, but the function is lost.

If you want proof, look at any footage of real life applications. You’ll see hands grabbing collars, wrists, hair – pulling heads down into knees, twisting arms, dragging people off balance. That’s hikite.

It’s not about pulling air. It’s about pulling something.

So yes – here I am again, writing about hikite. And I’ll keep doing it until more people start questioning what they’re doing and why.

If you want your karate to make sense, don’t accept what you’re told at face value. Test it. Feel it. Ask yourself: does this match how the human body actually works – or is it just an idea from a book written over sixty years ago?

It may feel more powerful to pull your hand back – but feeling and function are not the same thing. If you want real power, put that hand to work on what it was meant for: your opponent.

Written by Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo