1) This forced me to stop using my legs as a primary attacking tool.
2) Forced me to focus on my secondary attack tools. Hands.
3) By forcing instability on my legs to make me pay attention to my stances even more so out of necessity.
4) Realizing how underdeveloped and useless my upper pair of limbs really were.
5) Being frustrated by this, and began looking for ways to improve this situation
At first, I began thinking about my hands specifically and individually, just like I used to view my legs; merely as cannon tubes for launching balls of flying fists. This approach leads to development of powerful kicks, but little else; technique, speed, accuracy, and smoothness (logical progression of combinations) all suffer as a result. So in reality, while this thought process may lead to breaking lots of boards, it useful in very little else. About as useful as a comb to a monk. Recently, I had begun looking at my kicks as a full body motion, with my arms, shoulder, torso, and head all playing a part in the kick, and each being put in that position during a kick for a purpose, either defensive or for balance.
I then applied this thought to my hands.treating each jab, each punch, each block as a full body motion, recruiting every muscle and gram of mass to achieve the intended goal; giving purpose to every cell in my body in each maneuver. In short, making every cell in my body earn it's rent in every motion I undertake. This lead to a little experiment I did on saturday in open training.
Repeating the simple combo of Jab Jab Reverse.
1) I punched the bag as hard as I could. Noting the sound and motion of the bag.
2) I then punched the bag as fast as I could, disregarding power. Noted the sound and motion of the bag again.
3) Lastly, I punched the bag again, but this time, I disregarded everything except to focus on leading every move with my hip, and allowing my shoulders to follow, and my arms to follow my shoulders, and hands to follow my arms; while consciously focusing on not adding power nor speed. Noting again the sound and motion of the bag.
Without ever considering it, I had always assumed that I would get the most power out of 1/2. This proved to be the most wrong I could have been. Turns out the results, from best to worst, ended up being 3, 2, 1. By a huge margin. Also, if I were to be honest with myself, #3 I could do for a very very long time, 2 and 1 I would tire extremely quickly as well.
Which brings me to the next thing I "discovered". I have been practicing Da Mu Hsing and Kempo I repeatedly, focusing on all the things like ending my hands at the same time as my feet, twisting of the hands at the last second, good stable stances, placing and thrusting each limb with intent, and just practicing with focus and mental intensity as much as possible. What I had found was that in each move of each form, I found I had a checklist of 10+ things to remember for each motion. This got inefficient very quickly; however, not knowing anything else I continued to do so this way.
We had recently had a class focused on 2 handedness in our forms. which was followed by a class focusing on slide stepping, and stable stances. Which I then also focused on in my own practice of my forms. Somehow, I came to a different thought. What if, hypothetically speaking, I forgo thinking about the timing of each limb and step independently, and focused on one thing? This thing being, LEADING EACH MOVE WITH YOUR HIPS. When I tried this, instead of leading each move with the forward stepping foot, or the hand that was about to block, or the fist about to punch, I found something peculiar. Without thinking about my previous checklists, I had automatically done most of them. This, this was incredible, and efficient! Also, a nice by product of this is that I have my body weight behind each block, instead of just my shoulders, and I can have solid, intentional blocks and motions, without being exhausted by the end of only 2 repetitions of each form. This is a huge breakthrough!
With this, knowing that a decently solid punch can be thrown with such efficient use of effort, it seems that it takes 3x the amount of energy to kick than it takes to punch, being that my legs are much heavier. So it seems silly to be kicking constantly. Perhaps legs should be for standing. Unless there are those rare openings that just ask for a kick.
So I'm going to use my stubby upper limbs more. Now the question becomes what shall I make them do?
i like the blogs!
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