FIST LOGIC, VIDEO

EXPLORING {the?} FORCE.

The "D" Man

 

An important consideration is that the body does not truly absorb force

When we discuss force/energy we tend to use words such as flow, kinetic linking, even going so far as to say that force/energy flows along the Kinetic Chain, for instance from foot, through knee to hip, to spine, to shoulder, to arm to hand.

As convenient and often used, even by yours truly, as this approach is it is full of holes.

The idea/concept of the kinetic {or kinematic} chain is a great place to start but our body is not a chain and force/energy does not flow like water through a hose.

It would be more accurate and easier to understand if we see it as a “Chain Reaction”, an impulse that passes from one link/location to another sequentially along an obvious path.

If we use light as an analogy instead of seeing force as a solid beam of light similar to a flashlight we would do better to see it as an ultra-rapid series of pulses, like a quasar, that we perceive as continuous.

I am by no way an expert in this type of thinking, I did not go to Uni’ or ‘Med’ school, I am a moderately researched layman that approaches the work with a specific and personal agenda, Martial Art.

If we think ‘Chain Reaction’ as opposed to ‘Chain’ it opens up the possibility that sections of the body, such as the lower section that contains our foot, our calf, our thigh, the hip, the pelvis can be an individual chain that is self-contained.

This body section could now operate as a link and cause a ‘Chain Reaction’ with another body section such as our torso which itself can be seen as a self-contained chain.

The torso could now react with our arm, another self-contained chain.

The following may appear as a bit of a sidestep but remember issuing force and accepting force happen at the same time instantaneously.

An important consideration is that the body does not truly absorb force, at least not in the way we often speak of it, as a global/whole-body occurrence taking force at the arm and transferring it to the floor.

Our body absorbs contact force by transferring that force to local muscles where contractions in the opposite direction neutralise the force.

It would be more accurate to say that we join with the force instead of absorbing it.

This joined force is transferred to the next body segment and the pattern is repeated, a series of local phenomenon, not a global/whole-body event.

This is, of course, a conceptual approach, but one that has very practical applications if we do our Forms with this consideration in mind, it opens up many new dynamic possibilities and a deeper understanding of how to make our Forms come alive.

The mental method I employ is that my body is made up of three independent segments.

 

Segment 1. The legs and Pelvis.

Segment 2. The torso, which sits inside the pelvis.

Segment 3. The Arms, that hang from the torso.

 

If we consider a step and punch from this perspective.

When the legs move the pelvis the torso goes along for the ride at the same velocity in the same, usually linear direction, this is a very important point to keep in mind.

The torso is not involved in the legs moving and as such is free to make its own movement, which is usually lateral rotation, the upper body pivots to face the target.

The arms are not involved in the rotation of the torso so they are free to make their own movement, which in the step and punch would be linear, straight to the target.

 

THREE SEGMENT METHOD. from WC INCa’s on Vimeo.

 

 

All movement creates power, and as we know acceleration increases power.

Acceleration it is not only going faster, this is an aspect of acceleration, positive acceleration, slowing down is also acceleration,  negative acceleration.

Acceleration is a change in velocity.

If we change the direction of the movement of our torso from the direction of the movement of our legs or change the direction of the movement of our arms from the direction of the movement of our torso we are changing the direction of the velocity and creating acceleration.

This is very much the model adopted by throwing sports.

It is known as sequential acceleration and results in successive force summation.

For force summation to be successful we also need sequential stabilization of body parts, which I find easier to understand with the three-segment method.

Force Summation is a big post waiting to be written.

 

WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESS, PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?
FIST LOGIC, VIDEO

RETURN FORCE REVISITED.

The "D" Man

 

There is no reason for us to doubt acting defensively, no reason to attack an incoming attack

 

Before digging into how to develop a method/system for setting our body up, setting the frame up, recognising the kinetic chain that we will employ for efficient and effective movement we would do well to remember the most basic things about force.

I am referring to Issac Newton here and not Yoda.

Here is a clip from Saturday mornings training with Costas and his son George, two of my senior students, if you are not at this level of understanding it might be difficult to see what is going on but I assure you the guys are not investing overt physical effort.

It is super important that our partner’s resistance is static, passive and not dynamic. If one partner’s force increases the resistance must stay the same as it initially was.

When our partner’s resistance is static he is not adding anything to the system/event, the only energy in this system/event is our energy, what we feel as resistance is, in fact, our energy/effort, returning to us per Newton’s third law of motion.

Understanding that there is always an equal and opposite reaction and that this exercise is about applied force and its return we can flip the exercise so that one partner has already extended his arm and the other partner is trying to push it back.

From a ‘Force’ perspective, everything is the same as the previous exercise only our perception of ‘who is doing what’ is different.

It is this aspect of our understanding of the force that will take us forward, a useful mental trick is to imagine that we engage our partner to push ourself away and not push him away, even with a fully extended arm.

Working with this idea of pushing ourselves and not our partner we find that we get different result from the same input.

If we push our partner, the return force pushes us, if however, we push ourself in this situation then the return force pushes our partner, the crazy thing here is that they are both the same physical actions.

Trusting in the science there is no reason for us to doubt acting defensively, no reason to attack an incoming attack, which is something we see everywhere, the return force that our opponent creates will attack his attack for us.

Think of a bike rider running into the back of a parked car.

 

 

Issuing force or accepting force are the same action, it is only our intention of what we want to occur that changes the outcome, depending on our ‘Intention’ our body will initiate different actions independent of our thinking.

This is the reference to ‘self splinting’ it is a bit too much to add this subject to this post so I will clear it up at a later time.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, WORK TO YOUR STRENGTHS.

 

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?
FIST LOGIC

SPARRING WITH STRANGERS.

The "D" Man

 

The first thing we need is honesty, just with ourselves.

 

A couple of my students recently had their first experience of sparring with strangers, we were guests at a local Karate Dojo.

From the outset both of the boys were nervous, to be expected, and it was clear that they did not get control of their nervousness as the evening progressed.

I cannot say that I was surprised, they did not have the tools.

Like many people early in their training they discovered that they had been training the wrong aspect of the art.

The big question is whether or not they will see this and change the direction of their involvement, or deny it and look for easy answers, or even worse abandon the quest altogether.

Many people in the Martial Arts play at their style instead of training it, always looking for the next technique, the next easy answer.

In Western Boxing, there is a well-known saying … “Boxers don’t fight, they box”.

It is an intrinsic part of the “Sweet Science”

What this refers to is being in control mentally, remaining composed and patient, allowing our training to find the answer, staying responsive and not becoming reactive.

Thinking not brawling.

The day after our visit one of the guys texted me to ask for extra help with his sparring, this is encouraging because it shows a desire to continue and get better.

The thing is we do not get better at something we are not very good at by just doing more.

If we are drowning do we think the best answer is more time in the water?

In sparring or fighting, there will come a moment when for whatever reason our head is empty, we are all at sea with no ideas, a place that even crusty old sailors dread.

This is where the difference becomes obvious between those that have trained and those that only played.

There are no answers when our head is empty.

But how do we train to keep our head full?

The first thing we need is honesty, just with ourselves.

Why was our head empty?

Where was our training?

Most students spend the majority of their time training the physical aspect of their style, they think this is what sets their style apart from the other styles.

But of course, it doesn’t, a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick, attacking or defending, no matter what style we train it’s the same idea.

Learning these things is playing at fighting.

Training is the thinking behind the style.

Sparring is no more than an opportunity to make physical our styles Martial Mentality in a situation that is not completely in our control, so to improve at sparring we need to improve our Martial Mentality.

But what does this mean, Martial Mentality, and how do we improve it?

Depending on the style, Forms or Kata help us understand what our body is meant to do from the perspective of that style.

What we learn in Forms or Kata are where we go to when we do not know where to go.

Where do we stand, how do we move, what is the overriding plan or approach specific to our style and how do we reactivate it?

How does our body feel when we are still?

How does our body feel when we are moving?

How does our body feel when we are doing things correctly.

This is our ground zero that we return to when we lose the plot.

Knowing how our body should feel when it is working correctly will make it obvious when we are working incorrectly, even when we are under pressure.

It is usually easier, and far more useful, to identify what we are doing wrong than it is to identify what we are doing right.

However robotically doing Forms or doing Kata is not the answer, they become pointless dances if we do not understand the thinking behind them, we end up playing Forms or Kata instead of training them.

We end up back in the water.

Research is essential if we wish to sharpen our Martial Mentality, firstly our style of course but it should not only be our style, understanding why other styles do what they do is equally important.

I am writing this before I have had a chance to talk with my guys about how they lived the experience, that will be this evening, I am looking forward to it.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, WORK TO YOUR STRENGTHS.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?
FIST LOGIC

FORMS, KATA, WHAT ARE THEY?

The "D" Man
LOW BONG SAU AND PRESSING PALM.

 

Was the ‘Don” doing Forms or Kata?

 

At the end of the last video, I said we would dig in a bit deeper into some ideas around moving and understanding the connections in our body/posture/set up.

Before we can do that we must have some kind of consensus about the Wing Chun Forms.

This is no big deal, nothing new, we are just setting up some reference points that make sense to ourselves, no need to inform YouTube about the Great Leap forwards.

I want to start this off by talking about Don Bradman, more than likely the greatest Cricketer / Batsman of all time.

He {the Don} attributed his outstanding ability to the fact that as a child he adopted the practice of hitting a golf ball against the house wall with a cricket stump, hour after hour, day after day week after week.

Focused, deliberate, repetative, consistent.

Are we really to believe this was the seed of his greatness?

If that was the case with a wall and a little patience we could all do it, all become like the ‘Don’.

Or could it be that he was born great and this practice just allowed him to realise his potential?

I like this idea because it allows me to not feel so bad about myself and the fact that I am a pretty ordinary cricketer.

There is a belief, amongst the believers, that Forms are the heart of any Martial Art, that they contain all of the pertinent information for that style.

Form begets Function.

As the people involved in this, Martial Artists, do we think that this is a reality or is it just an M. A. version of the ‘Don Bradman’  story?

The human body has a limited range of motion that it uses to accomplish everything we do.

If we compare actions such as posting a letter, taking a book from a shelf, putting a key in a door lock, paying for a drink, pointing out a direction even ringing a doorbell { dare I add scratching your butt}?   The action is essentially the same.

As Kung Fu tragics, we could say that Don Bradman’s cover drive was just a low Bong Sau and a pressing palm.

Keeping this in mind do we not find it odd that every Traditional Chinese Martial Art has a Form or several Forms that are individual and only suited to that specific style?

I know I do.

Throwing a cricket ball is no different than throwing a baseball.

Or a brick now I think about it.

In my M.A. back story I have, to a certain extent, studied 3 Chinese Martial Arts that all have very different Forms,  Bagu Zhang, Xing Yi Chuan and Wing Chun Kuen, in particular, Buagua Forms are very different, Xing Yi is not quite as weird, and because of familiarity Wing Chun’s Forms appear somewhat normal.

Something they all have in common though is that none of the Forms are useable in any kind of practical way.

They all need to be adapted to the situation, and in doing so all become something else, something very similar.

{As a boy did Don Bradman need to change things when he visited at his aunties house?  Did he play a completely different game at Lords than at the S.C.G}?

Interestingly this is not the way with Japanese Arts that instead of Forms have Kata, shadow boxing sets that can be used exactly as trained.

As a young man, I trained in Judo, BuJutsu, and a little Jujitsu, everything was meant to be used the way we played out the Kata.

When we think about Don Bradman, the golf ball, the stump, the wall, what do we feel?

Was the ‘Don” doing Forms or Kata?

Does it even matter?

After all, we are not the “Don”.

But then again, neither are we any of the numerous long-dead heroes of Wing Chun.

 

Forms, Kata, Chi Kung, Kung Fu is there really any difference?

 

In a previous post when I was talking about Qi Kung and Kung Fu I was implying the notion that they are simply different sides of the same coin as are passive Forms and active Kata.

Are we even interested? 

 As it turns out what we are interested in is the result of the work.

Forms as a practice unto themselves are completely useless, it is only as a viewing platform that they create any value.

In this light, do we need to view them from the dynamic of defence or from the dynamic of attack, in the application, it is only attacking that will fulfil the needs at hand.

The work is always in the attacking, this is the puzzle we face, often only defending can create the time and space to attack.

I.M.O. defending is always and only aimed at setting up an opening to attack.

I do not think that defence can be deemed successful if all it does is prevent the Bad Guy from hitting me.

The defence is not the work, it is a precursor to the work, just as Qi Kung is a precursor to Kung Fu.

In practice, as Forms lead on to Function, they pretty much morph into Kata.

There is a balance between the two states that needs a clearly defined transition point or everything fails {to me this is the ‘very heart of the Dummy training and I will go into it on another occasion}.

Any transition, as the word implies, is always about movement.

The very best fighting advice I have ever heard did not come from Mike Tyson despite my admiration of the guy’s attitude, it came from Mr.Miyagi.

In the original Karate Kid, he said:  “Best defence, don’t be there”.

Nothing about Form, nothing about Kata, nothing about Karate or Wing Chun just the IDEA of moving out of the way.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?
FIST LOGIC, VIDEO

MOVE OR STAND STILL?

The "D" Man
MOVEMENT AND SEPERATION

 

Wing Chun is Boxing, that is what Kuen means.

 

Yet another Kung Fu Master has been humbled by an M.M.A. Fighter in China, here is a LINK to a video commentary on the event by the China-based professional fighter and trainer Ramsey Dewey, it is well worth watching, Ramsey never just puts people down,  he is polite, knowledgable and impartial.

One thing that always sticks out like Doggy Meat Bags to me is the almost complete absence of anything like dynamic or just plain old strategic movement by these Masters, this one just stood still while the M.M.A. Guy picked his spot, stepped in and turned his lights out.

Over the years I have had many conversations with Martial Artists who believe Wing Chun has no footwork, I would play with them and at least hold my own only for them to claim that I was using my old Boxing training and not Wing Chun.

Haters are going to hate no matter what we show them, but then during training at my Sifu’s school training partners would make the same accusations, I.M.O. this was just them trying to find excuses for not moving.

Wing Chun is loved by lazy students if we are honest.

Wing Chun is Boxing, that is what Kuen means.

Surely in the light of so many Kung Fu / Wing Chun hopefuls falling in a great big pile of doo-doo, we would do well to explore the similarities of what we do and what other styles or sports do?

Something we should all realise is that no part-time Martial Artist, living or dead,  would last long against a full-time professional Combat Athlete and we do ourselves and our style a disservice when we pretend that they would.

The following 2 videos are part of what I teach my students, some if not most of the information you may recognise if you watched my posts on throwing the discus and Wing Chun.

 

 

 

 

I advise all of my guys to get on Youtube and watch some Olympic Level fencing, Ice hockey, Speed skating, even a few episodes of ‘Come Dancing’, pretty much anything lively and to try to recognise movements that they use that could easily be from one of our Forms.

 

Movement is just movement, if you are in trouble the only wrong move is to not move.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?

 

 

FIST LOGIC

KUNG FU IS FAKE, SO WHAT?

The "D" Man

 

Sparring should not be seen as fighting, it should be seen as an opportunity to build more trust in what we do.

 

Ben Judkins in his excellent blog ‘Kung Fu Tea’ recently wrote about the current trend in debunking Traditional Chinese Martial Arts as fake, here is a link to an article that is well written from a man that does his homework and it is well worth reading.

But this is not what I wish to talk about in this space.

In a couple of days, I am taking two of my students to spar with a local Karate School, this is their idea, not mine and I salute them for it.

This post is mostly for them, but there is something here we would all do well to consider.

We have been preparing for what may come on Thursday evening, but we have no idea what that might be, and it has been raising some concerns in my guys.

More than once they have commented that what we do does not appear to work.

To avoid partisan argument let’s just say O.K. Kung Fu is fake and it doesn’t work.

So what?

Compared to others in the Wing Chun community my way of teaching is very physical, almost hard, everything we do is from the MARTIAL aspect of the style and not from the ART aspect.

We train to fight.

So it may surprise you to hear me say ‘So what’ to the claims of fakery.

I am in my mid-sixties and in that time I have had quite literally hundreds of fights.

I started boxing at 7 years and have been active in one style or another since then, Boxing and Judo were my deepest involvement until I took up Wing Chun, competition is a large part of both Boxing and Judo, hence the number of fights.

My formative years in Liverpool in the U.K. where full of violence, not that anyone saw it that way, in the post-war world solving differences with your fists was considered the natural way to sort things out, the semi-mystical Biemo of Hong Kong rooftops was happening all over Europe in all high schools and youth clubs.

I am not in any way boasting when I say I have had so many fights, it is just a statement of fact, anyway it would only be boasting if I said I won them all.

I most certainly did not.

So I have had a lot of fights, in the ring, on the mat and in the street, this was over many years, in these fights I used more than just a few Martial Art Styles and in general none of them where the right tool for the job I was involved in at that time.

None of them worked the way I hoped and expected them too.

That is the point.

Let’s take a parallel view.

I did an apprenticeship as a Chef where I was lucky enough to receive very good instruction in very good hotel kitchens from very good tradesmen and I learned my lessons well, I was at least as good as any of my contemporaries.

Over the next 20 years as I moved from 5-star hotel kitchen to 5-star hotel kitchen, from city to city from country to country my excellent training was never quite enough, there was always a steep and instant learning curve to be endured.

I have no reason to think that this would not be the same in other industries, other trades, other professions.

Most of us know from personal experience that this is, in fact, the case.

New job = new problems.

What made us into decent perhaps exceptional tradesmen was our ability to take our somewhat inadequate training and find a way to make it work in this new environment.

How else can knowledge evolve if it is not tested to breaking point?

How often is it that it is only once our training has been broken and we improve, repair, reinforce what failed that it works at all.

No two fights {or jobs}  are ever the same, even if our training is spot on for the first it will not suit the second or third.

It should be a total ‘no brainer’ that going into a fight with some training, any training, even the wrong training is better than going into a fight with no training.

It is easier to trust in something we know than it is to just hope things go well.

The hidden strength and power of training in the Martial Arts, any style be it, Wing Chun, Judo, Boxing or Karate is that we learn how to trust what we know.

If you do not trust it why would you ever choose to use it?

I was trained to cook in the French tradition, when I worked in Italy I cooked Italian recipe´s in the French manner, it raised a few eyebrows but the results stood up to the taste test of an opinionated Italian Executive Chef, I worked in Spain, Africa, Greece and had the same experience.

Ironically I had the biggest problems when I worked in France, it is a lot easier to poke holes in something you know deeply, think that you own it somehow, just like in Kung Fu, Form can be seen as more important than Function.

In Italy and the rest how it tasted was of more importance than how it was made.

Fighting is not about style, fighting is not about training, usually, it is decided by luck, but as Gary Player pointed out to a snarky spectator that accused him of making a lucky shot, “the more I train the luckier I get”.

Sparring should not be seen as fighting, it should be seen as an opportunity to build more trust in what we do.

We should not approach it with the thought of how do I stop my opponent from doing his thing, but rather how do I find a way to do my thing.

In life, it is trusting ourselves and what we have that gets things done.

 

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, WORK TO YOUR STRENGHT.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?
FIST LOGIC

THE DUMMY AIN’T FOR DUMMIES.

The "D" Man

 

What does the dummy have in common with a human being?

 

To a certain extent when we play on the dummy, we are involved in one man Chi Sau, or at the least Chi Sau with a very stiff and static partner.

Do we approach it with the same outlook as we approach Chi Sau?

A great many people play the dummy at a high pace and high physicality, taking pride in the speed they dance around it and how loud the sound of their contact.

One constant in all of our training should be, indeed must be, asking ourselves…

“What would need to happen for me to need this action being performed in this way, in this space”?

All training is task-specific, all training is preparing us for an event that is at least similar to what we are doing in that training.

What is the dummy doing that we are dealing with?

What does the dummy have in common with a human being?

We should consider these questions seriously and deeply.

It is all too easy when playing on the dummy, or even when playing Chi Sau, to get sidetracked into thinking that this action {or FORM} is teaching us something just by being there and just by us doing it.

It does not, it just becomes a game.

There is an inherent danger in all FORMS that are done in the same way with the same thinking day after day, that is when we turn on the auto-pilot and turn down the thinking, they become nothing more than dancing, or just standing still.

The physical orientation we have to the dummy, or our partner in Chi Sau, is nothing at all like the positions we will encounter if we face violence.

Unless the Bad Guy is a complete moron, he will not choose to stand anything like chest to chest, it is unlikely he will engage both arms, it is more likely that his actions, his choices, will make sure he is not in that place of vulnerability or weakness.

Not ours or our training.

If he is a moron and just walks into our punches we do not need our training to deal with him, if that is the guy we are training to face dancing around a tree probably is enough.

Dummies don’t move, people do, how do we all resolve this dilemma and come up with something useful from all that dancing and drumming?

One IDEA, and it is just an IDEA, a method to bring about a different way of looking at the dummy and Chi Sau is to focus on the transitions.

To become aware of how the dummy stops our movement as opposed to thinking that we hit it, and what we do next.

If we are facing violence and the Bad Guy can stop our movement we are a split second away from getting done in, if we are not aware of this ‘stopping’ and cannot transition from that phase to another phase in the shortest possible time it is game over.

Looking only at how we move in and make contact with the dummy is bordering on arrogance and disrespect for our opponent, this type of attitude very rarely ends well when facing a real person.

Is it practical to develop this type of attitude?

Make easy contact with the dummy, feel it stop you, observe the return forces and what they are doing to your shape and balance {this aspect alone is worth the time}, explore the best and most effective way to regain your shape and balance, then move.

Be stopped, observe, decide, transition. Rinse and repeat.

Learn the FORM, but seek the formless.

Learn it all, then forget it all.

Learn The Way, then find your own way.

 

WHAT KIND OF DAY IS IT FOR YOU?