Thanksgiving-eve training
Posted by admin on December 5, 2009This is overdue but better I write down what I remember than forget it until it’s brought up again. So what do I recall….
Small class tonight, didn’t stop us from training. We focused on making punches effective. What makes a strike effective? The angle? The force? The direction or point of contact? Is there any aspect of a punch that is not important? There were a lot of questions going through my mind. If I deliver a strait punch without my body behind it, it’s effective. Boxer’s use these all the time, it’s a jab. Jabbing someone in the face or being jabbed is an unpleasant feeling. Even screwing around, if you’ve been hit with even a small bit of contact to a point like the nose, the cartilage presses in, the eyes tear up, and the head can snap back; in any event, you’re sure to get a reaction.
I’m not a boxer. I weight approximately 140lbs, for my jab to be effective it needs to be accurate because it lacks a boxer’s technique and training. A jab might back someone up but you’d be hard pressed to disable anyone with it, or gain compliance. It’s useful but we can do better. When we deliver a punch we use angles, timing, distance, and technique in place of raw power and looping haymakers. We also concentrate the POI (point of impact) largely to the top two knuckles because of how we learn to punch. If you took the base jab, corrected the fist to be vertical over horizontal, you’re now delivery the same amount of force over a much smaller surface area thus concentrating the blow. You’ve now gone from watering eyes to potentially breaking bone depending on the target.
The punch is really quite something to try and master. It seems rather simple and anyone can throw one and if it catches you where it needs to, it can be devastating. I train to punch well, punch accurately, and likewise to avoid them incoming. In a real conflict, if someone is inside what I’ll call your comfort zone, it’s actually pretty hard to make them miss. The timing changes from training to them tracking you so much that you may not have space or time to move appropriately. Good thing we have jodan uke which, when applied correctly, pretty much washes the punch.
We trained the upper block from suinokata with less of a rigid 1-2-3 movement and more flow. We also tried to make the offline movement small to minimize the distance we had to make up to counter.
Later in class we worked on a waza that we had taken a look at previously. I can’t recall which school it came from, but it wastranslated to “living sound” – the name escapes me, Seino perhaps? Previously we started from Kamiuch. The tori has a light touch on the inside hand of his or her uke. A shift by striking into ramon with a boshi causes the front leg to pivot inward. Now weight that leg and move offline to the side. The kick is driven shear to the knee breaking the knee. Finish by driving Ramon into the ground in a circular movement.
We studied this technique again this night and instead of starting with the shifted movement, we held them with a shift by taking ichimonjo with the rear hand guarding the grasped hand of the uke, and the free hand driving into the throat via the thumb. This causes a variety of things to happen. First the feeling of being choked forces the uke’s head away, they can’t see what you’re doing. By trapping the hand against your while you stretch them via the thumb into the throat (think of drawing a bow) this also allows your to move offline and shit their weight onto the front leg. If you take a low ichimonji from here, you can hold them as you have, and kick directly through the knee from the side, breaking it rather easily. You can finish the same way as above. The reason this breaks is that most if not all the weight is on the knee at this point, and the strike delivered is to a joint that does not bend in the direction of the blow. Snap. With the first version we studied, I personally believe there is more room for the joint to bend naturally even if weighted because of the strike delivered to the back. At least that is how I perceived it.
We covered chokes (air,blood) and good defense against them. The average attacker would probably opt for a two handed strangulation technique. While damaging and certainly not to be taken lightly, but placing both hands on your neck, they’ve given you all their weapons. The most direct route to escape is to gain leverage under their arms attacking the elbows and come up destroying all their power and leverage in their choke. A kick to the groin at this point is an obvious target, other targets are the heel against the inside of the thighs, this works very well to open them up and is much more painful than most would give credit.
There is the shirt or Gi choke from standing front position. Take one arm and slide it in past the shoulder and with the other arm, pull the shirt or gi into the first arm baring their neck against your first arm, thus choking them. With most if not all of these chokes, if the chin is down and the arm not secured against the choke point, air and blood are flowing. A good choke will render them out in a matter of seconds.
From behind, a standing “triangle” can be applied. One arm across the should of the person, reach around the front with the other and grab your own arm. Do not let their chin sit in the crook of your arm in front, this does nothing. Instead, think of scissors and bar them in between both arms. You can add to the tightness with a long sleeve shirt or jacket, grabbing opposing sides and squeezing for a quick choke.
Lowering yourself and/or raising your attacker both destroy leverage needed to apply a choke. The triangle choke does not need leverage and once locked in, is difficult to remove before you’re out. The triangle choke, in my opinion is also harder to apply without someone noticing or evading the setup.