10.15.05 - Saturday Training

New Items Today:

1. Visualization (NLP)
2. IKCA Kicking drill
3. Backfist drill
4. Backfist & Blocking drill
5. Concept: Sparring Strategy

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Kicking drill
2. Techniques
3. Orange Belt Form

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Visualization (NLP)
After some stretching and light warm up, Marty started the class of with some visualization and an anchoring technique that is frequently taught in the NLP circles. From experience, I know that this technique will work but requires reinforcement, especially in the beginning. I’m sure Marty is aware of this but he didn’t mention it in during the session and I don’t recall anyone asking questions about it. We’ll see what future sessions bring.

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Kicking Drills
We went through the kicking drill again that we had learned a couple of weeks ago. It was much more fluid this time. :-) Bill also introduced us to a new drill, the IKCA kicking drill. It goes through several kicks and stances and generally gets you moving in a forward linear motion. Bill mentioned that of its many purposes, one was to get us in the mindset of pursuing an attacker through a series of kicks, which works particularly well with sparring. It’s a pretty cool drill but is going to take some practice to make it smooth.

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Backfist Drills
After kicking around for a bit, we donned the hand targets and took turns practicing backfist strikes. After practicing with just a plain backfist to the target, we discarded the targets and paired up. With this next backfist drill, the idea was to strike with the backfist, eliciting a block in response, and then moving in with a lunge punch to the newly exposed ribs of our partner. Of course, this mimics a similar movement to Returning Serpent, which we practiced later. There were two key things that Bill mentioned to me during this drill; the first was to be sure to break the wrist so that the knuckles lead the punch. The second was to ‘sell’ the punch. Even though the intent of the drill was to have the backfist blocked, in a real scenario the punch should be ‘real’ and ‘intended’ for a target. I’m not sure why it is so difficult for me to practice on another person in this frame of mind. I don’t have any problem beating the snot out of my heavy bag but I am always pulling back with live people, too much so. I’ll work on it some more.

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Concept: Sparring Strategy
Bill spoke for a few minutes on this topic. He began by discussing the idea that if you don’t have an inclination of what you are going to do prior to taking action, you tend to be in a defensive position instead of being on offense. He also spoke some about proper position and recognition of relative body positioning when responding to a threat. If you move back to avoid a strike instead of intercepting it with a block or otherwise moving to the inside of the attacker, you can lose valuable time and possibly the advantage in the fight, depending of course on the relative skills of both you and the attacker. The thought of “not moving East when you want to go West” came to mind, even though this is in a different context. It’s the same basic principle extended. Anyway, the point was to be immediate and spontaneous in our actions in order to maintain the edge during the fight.

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Techniques
We reviewed all of the techniques we have learned to date, but spent a majority of the time with the latest technique we have learned, Returning Serpent. There were some very specific things that were pointed out to me regarding this technique:
.- Sit in the stance
.- Keep my head up
.- After the initial backfist, the right hand comes back and up to the left ear
.- Focus on the pressure points and targets
I’m still working on getting this technique smoothed out. I know that the power of the lunge punch, and even the second backfist, comes from the stance changes and the torque they produce. For some reason, the flow of this change is eluding me. It is getting better with practice, but it’s not there yet.

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For next week:

• Practice all of the techniques we have learned to date
• Practice the Orange Belt form, paying especially close attention to the stances