Last night my head instructor gave us a wonderful conceptual lession about how we all operate in 3 dimensions.
He talked about how the body can only operate in 3 ways in the marital arts. There is depth/lateral movement, rotational/width based movements, and there's height movements which I've come to understand as a combination of the other 2 on a different plane.
We learn our defense techniques as we practice, and a lot of this is choreographed to grant us basic concepts, but as we grow in the martial arts we need to learn to apply these techniques in real world situations. In the American Kenpo system you can learn a defense technique like "Delayed Sword" and just learn the choreographed basic technique, but last night in our advanced class we recieved an assignment to execute delayed sword and then figure out a finisher to it if the technique were to fail or not be as effective as you expect it to be. There were a lot of different techniques executed after that last knife hand chop to the neck. We saw varience based on people's backgrounds and cross training, all of which were interesting and some more effective than others.
Then Sensai talked about efficiency and how (with practice) you can predict what the average Joe on the street will probably do and, utilizing a different type of force than the attacker is throwing your way, you can effectively and efficiently block, deflect or redirect that attack.
We ran through the defense again after he finished explaining this and the modifiers and extensions were much tighter and more efficient the 2nd time around.
Sometimes concept is more important than pure technique.
He talked about how the body can only operate in 3 ways in the marital arts. There is depth/lateral movement, rotational/width based movements, and there's height movements which I've come to understand as a combination of the other 2 on a different plane.
We learn our defense techniques as we practice, and a lot of this is choreographed to grant us basic concepts, but as we grow in the martial arts we need to learn to apply these techniques in real world situations. In the American Kenpo system you can learn a defense technique like "Delayed Sword" and just learn the choreographed basic technique, but last night in our advanced class we recieved an assignment to execute delayed sword and then figure out a finisher to it if the technique were to fail or not be as effective as you expect it to be. There were a lot of different techniques executed after that last knife hand chop to the neck. We saw varience based on people's backgrounds and cross training, all of which were interesting and some more effective than others.
Then Sensai talked about efficiency and how (with practice) you can predict what the average Joe on the street will probably do and, utilizing a different type of force than the attacker is throwing your way, you can effectively and efficiently block, deflect or redirect that attack.
We ran through the defense again after he finished explaining this and the modifiers and extensions were much tighter and more efficient the 2nd time around.
Sometimes concept is more important than pure technique.
