11.05.05 - Saturday Training

New Items Today:

1. Hapkido Joint Locks

Reviewed other items:

1. Basic Foot Maneuvers
2. Ball & Roundhouse Kicks
3. Orange Belt Form

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Hapkido Joint Locks
Sifu exposed us to some Hapkido joint locks today and they were really cool. There were basically 4 different techniques that originated from various grabs. It was the first time that I had been exposed this type of information since I had started training in Kenpo (aside from the class in California at the WCKC) but the purple belts had seen at least some of this before.

We started out by flexing and stretching the wrists. Suppleness and flexibility are important for obvious reasons. We were then shown the first technique and we broke into pairs and practiced. (I have tried several times to describe these maneuvers but can’t seem to get the descriptions on paper with any level of reasonable comprehension. If in the future I can manage to do this, I’ll add the notes to the technical journal.)

We did this the same way with all 4 techniques. Although there are elements that they all share, I was fascinated by the enormous results of just subtle motions with minor strength. At one point, Alexandra pretty much dropped Sifu straight to the floor while practicing a technique for the first time. She at first accused him of exaggerating but her look changed to astonishment when Bill convinced her otherwise. He took it in stride and made a joke about Alexandra getting that particular maneuver down well but it was still interesting to see that whole thing happen.

I noticed very quickly that everyone in the class responded differently to the various techniques. Some were more flexible than others and as a result could take a little bit more tweaking before tapping out. Another interesting item was the size and strength of their arms. For the most part, it doesn’t matter if you are particularly strong or not if the maneuver is correctly executed. One of the items that Sifu mentioned was that “...if you are muscling the maneuver, you are doing something wrong.”

This session was a lot of fun and I learned a lot more than what I was able to describe here in my journal. I will work at verbalizing what I did in this class and add to this info at another time.