Repetition Beast
By Haydn Ellis, founder of Brutal Training

For nearly three years I have been coaching one of Australia’s top karate point fighters Gines (ji-nesh) Satchi. Our initial work was to prepare for light contact point based karate tournaments. The work we did was based on technique, speed, strategy and frame of mind. Over time it became clear that Gines was more suited to harder contact fighting, since he had shorter limbs and was getting pulled up for ‘excessive contact’ too frequently. This is not to say that he didn’t have some great results in the lighter contact ranks.

Gines began fighting in harder contact karate tournaments under the ISKA banner only recently. He qualified to represent Australia at the world titles in Orlando, Florida between July 2nd and 4th this year (http://www.usopen-karate.com/).

There were 10,500 competitors competing over all divisions in the tournament. Gines weighed in at 144lbs, his weight division being 149lb or under.  His first division was ‘continuous fighting’.  Of his 6 fights Gines won 5 of them. In his first bout his opponent received a standing 10 count while his second fight was one via stoppage with leg kicks. He ended up finishing 4th in continuous out of 43 competitors.

The next day he competed in point fighing; in the same weight division. There were 56 competitors in his division. He won his first fight 6 points to 1. His second fight he one 4-0, then had a bye. In his fourth round he came up against the US number 1, at the end of the 2 minutes it was a draw 6-6, so it went to golden point. During the time extension, the fighters just stalked each other, waiting for each other to engage and make a mistake. But then the ref told them they must engage. In the first two instances when they engaged, the calls from the corner referees went either way. In the third instance the US guy got in just ahead of Gines. He finished 5th in his point division.

This was Gines’s first world title competition and he had only been fighting full contact point karate for a short time. He sent me the following email before he departed for the US.

“This pic is of my garage wall. Each chalk mark represents 100 of a technique. So one block can equal 500 reverse punches, or 500 roundhouse kicks. I kept this tally from our last session, which was about a month out from heading over to the states. The H&E 100% means each technique I threw needs to have 100% heart behind it, and must be 100% efficient. It acted as a reminder for me. The count doesn’t include training sessions at karate or at Muay Thai. It was the stuff I did on my own. I think the count is roughly at 25,000. I thought I would send it to you in case you wanted add it to any article regarding repetition or something along those lines.”

The secret to success is in the chalk marks.

H