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The purpose of having principles is of course to make us more efficient and effective and the more we understand them then the more efficient and effective we will be. However, there is another purpose to being fully aware of your principles and Rick Bottomley refers to this as self-correction or self-critic.
When you understand the principles you want to use then you can review what you are doing and see if you are actually using your principles. Often, we think we are but find out we are missing things. When developing the knife defence there was one night when Stan and I listed out and posted on a wall everything we should be doing and the principles we should be using. We then followed the list carefully and fully as we trained and we died over and over again. We stopped and said to each other that we knew the knife defence worked well so clearly when it worked we were not doing what wee thought we were. A closer look created a new list and that worked. It also gave us a list to refer to when the defence did not work because that meant we were missing something – most often a principle.
So, knowing your principles allows you to make corrections on yourself.
Reminder the principles are set out in this spreadsheet:
Let’s take a moment to look at some of what I refer to as the strategic principles. For me this begins with your mind and how you think.
First up for me is “Look to win, not delay loss.”
I consider this a foundational principle for strategy.
Anything self defence related has to conform to this principle for me.
Looking to win does not require you “to win” in what you do, although that would be nice, but it does mean what you do has to gain some advantage and not just recover a defensive position or neutralize the Aggressor.
It can be a simple thing of instead of moving back so you maintain distance you shift to an angle or you move to place an obstacle between you and the aggressor so you can escape.
One comment on moving back to distance yourself, IF you are a kicker and moving back to gain distance place you in the distance you can best use your skills THEN this is looking to win – for you.
When someone shows me a movement or a response to an assault I look to see if that was looking to win or merely delaying loss.
I cannot rule out ever delaying loss but if your mind is set to always look to gains some advantage to lead to win then I believe you will find it far more often than if your brain has been conditioned to accept delaying loss as a strategy.
Just my thoughts what are yours?
Often in learning to strike people miss the other half of the body movement thinking only of the striking side. I think adding a focus on the back can enhance the learning to use the whole movement to strike.
The Back
In Taiji they talk about left right front back and imply awareness is required for all directions. What we rarely focus on however is our back.
There are an excellent couple of Feldenkrais lessons for becoming more aware of your back:
“Backward Standing: Sensing your three dimensional self” by Al Waldleigh consisting of two “Feldenkrais proprioception exercises enhance the clarity and sensations of your backside as you move through space.”
Like all Feldenkrais lessons they seem so simple but subtly they can have a profound affect. Working through both of them you do become more away of your back and you can focus on different parts of your back. The question then is how does this enhance our martial arts?
When we move forward we release and lead with the front of our body. When we move to one side or the other we release and lead with whichever side is on the direction we are going. However if we ay close attention to when we move backwards we do not lead with our back. At best we “push” with the front of our body or we have no focus at all.
Becoming more aware of our back allows us to lead with our back moving backwards or rotating backwards. The effect of this is more than what we expected. Particularly I found in the rotation backwards allowing the back to lead makes the movement faster.
More to come.
I had a friend’s Chinese wife translate the sign (which from an article I thought was in Chinese characters) and she said it translated roughly as Uechi Kanbun’s Fighting School.
I have 19 video clips edited and ready to load to YouTube but it will not let me sign in unless I do the two step verification with a code sent to my phone which went into the lake today and is drying out but may not work. F’ng 2 step process.
This is a response to a question on the additions to NLD: The purpose of the counting backward is to distract the conscious mind so the deeper brain responds to an ambush because the conscious brain will never be fast enough. The purpose of continuing to count down backwards aloud from ten even as you respond is to have the conscious brain still active and functioning even as the deeper brain handles the physical response. The same is the reason to notice how many fingers are held up you can still read and be aware of the surroundings (possible additional assailants) even as the deeper brain again handles the physical and immediate response tot he ambush. The opposite of removing the conscious brain from the situation but rather allowing it to deal with what it is good at as the deeper brain deals with what it is good at.
One knee down / one knee up: our foundation body mechanics =
One knee down = compression of spring
One knee up = stretch of spring.
The beach ball visual is a very good one one as it is a springy sphere – not a visual you get with a springs.
I find the spring ad the stretch. If I bend over I compress my “springs” on one side but I also Stretch my springs on the other side. When the release happens you get the effect of both springs – one contracting and one expanding. Now if I can design a completion of springs in a sphere…. 🙂
