Shana Moore wrote:
I'd like to hear people's thoughts on whether training and sparring/combat in general should incorporate lots of movement and being quick on your feet or conservation of movement?
Obviously, this depends on the circumstances, but in a training scenario where you have more control of the situation....which do you focus upon and why?
pros/cons?
If a train is coming you need more movement than if a bullet is coming..
Seems obvious, but many will use the same amount of motion, in similar cases during training to avoid either kinds of energy..
There is simply the motion needed to maximize effectiveness and efficiency--any more is a waste of time and energy.. Loosing time can result in failure, as can running out of energy..
But there are all kinds of motion. You have body motion, moving the whole body some distance... You have the use of the tools and changes from one tool or action to another. Efficiency is especially critical when changing from one tool or action to another. The real truth is that if you can double your efficiency you can double your speed..
Physical speed is only one attribute.. If you cut the motion in half the time to execute happens in half the time or is twice as fast.. In these cases how fast (physical speed) you do it becomes much less critical to success.. This can be applied to anything that moves or changes its shape. On the macro side you have whole body motion.. On the micro side you have very small changes in path or size of circles that a tool makes..
If you have a circle that is 15 inches in diameter vs a circle that is 3 inches in diameter how much faster is that smaller circle? Quite a bit. In fact, it's much faster than can physical speed make in terms of its superiority.. IOW doubling physical speed for example doesn't really happen let alone tripling it or better.. You will never get twice as fast as you are now... However, you can get twice (or more ) times as efficient in terms of use of motion. So what if it could mean that you could become effectively 2 or 3 times faster or more? This is a great opportunity to realize the hidden power of the softer side of the art..
There are infinite applications for this kind of speed multiplication--take a look at anything that uses motion or effects change in position, angle, shape.. How can that action become much more efficient and therefore significantly increase its effective speed?
Less is way more here..
Feel free to address specific problems or examples for refinement.