Arm Rubbing Flow Dills

[Jackie Olsen]

http://www.i-jkd.com/contact.html

This is Mark's website. He comes to the Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo area about once per year to offer seminars at Sensei Thompson's or Jon Olsen's dojos.

[Dana Sheets]

Thanks Jackie,

I've send him an email. As a video producer in my regular life I have a great respect for copyright laws...they're what keep me in business. We'll see if he has time to respond to my request though I'm sure he's quite busy. I've asked him for permission to post a short clip from the video once I buy it.

I'd like something that builds up and can translate through stages

step 1 = one arm standing still
step 2 = one arm moving
step 3 = two arms standing still
step 4 = two arms moving
step 5 = start with any of the above and then break the pattern

I'm not going for rocket science or for something that hasn't been done before - but I'd like to come up with something that feels familiar enough to Uechi folks that they'll enjoy doing it and see some connections to their forms training and fighting.

Thanks again to everyone for jumping on board. Many hands make work light.

Dana

[gmattson]

In the China tapes, I remembered playing with the "Tiger" teacher's arm conditioning drill. I found it and made a clip. Hope you enjoy. BTW, he used the "shoken" throught the drill.

http://www.uechi-ryu.com/videos/China_conditioning_drill1.wmv

[Dana Sheets]

Thanks GEM.

This is from my other articles thread. I think it applies here. It is from a history of SPM.

Basic training of this style consists of following the guiding principles such as sink, like a woven rice strainer;legs must have the ability to leap like a frog and maneuver like a tiger; no T stance and no 8 stance; punch straight from the center line and standing beggar style with open hands. The most important aspect of training is known as two man feeding.

Feeding hands is the constant teaching of feeling and sensitivity, yielding and redirecting incoming power with mantis hand methods and simultaneously striking back with explosive force. Feeding hands is known as 'push hands' in Tai Chi but follows different patterns in Chu Gar with a different emphasis. Feeding hands employs circular movement which appears soft and is generated from the dantien as a pent up spring force all the sudden released with devastating explosive power with impact hard as iron.

When feeding hands the emphasis is to never lose contact of the opponent; as long as you can feel the enemy you can control him; this is known as making a bridge.

Feeding hands trains one to become extremely fast and alive, that is, able to react to the enemy's power. The majority of styles don't have This 'live power' and their power is dead power, that is, once an attack is launched there is no ability to change until completely executed or no ability to react to the enemy's immediate counter power.

This feeding hands includes lower limbs as well. Auxiliary training in the style contains rolling iron bars along the arm 'bridges', using the iron rings along the Forearms, training finger strength by special methods of throwing and grabbing sandbags, and use of a medicine ball to strengthen the whole body.

[JimHawkins]

Here's a an example of the single sticking hand drill in WCK called dan chi sao.

http://www.wck-media.co.uk/general/TWC/ ... s_kick.mpg

The emphasis here is different than how I teach this, which is that each "clear" or dissolve, in one case Bong <wing arm> and in the other Jut <downward jerking hand> sets up the next offensive movement. To do that however you maintain facing. The turning done with bong is valid but not best explored with one hand..

That is really the main point of those techniques, <clear/hit> which should be very springy and explosive after working the drill a while.

Still the basics are there.

[John Giacoletti]

I like the high/low timing drills ... which are like one-handed extractions from the vertical portions of Konyo Shipo Uchi Tate Uchi in Hojo-undo.

There's that element of familiarity that you were looking for.

Right high punch
Left shukoken wristblock
Left mid-range punch
Left palm block down

Switch hands and then alternate sides.

Start slowly and build tempo until the drills are automatic. One can also increase the intensity of the deflections.

Once you have a good rhythm going, break off and with the high shukoken wristblock you have the crane beak strike formed for a counter to the clavicle or in the alternative turning your palm to your face forming a hammer fist for a strike to the side of the head.

The down palm heel strike can be morphed into a bushiken counter, fits real nice in the throat or solar plexus.

[Dana Sheets]

Hi John,

That's a good drill and one we've done for years. I believe it was first shown to my teacher by Sensei James Thompson.

What I'm also going for here are attacks and counters that mirror some of the ways attacks happen on the streets. We spend lots and lots of time on straight punches in training to the point that sometimes folks aren't quite as good at seeing a shove, low hook, high hook, slap, back slap, etc. So I'd like to have some element of these in the drills.

At first blush it seems basic - but getting the brain to mindlessly recognize those attacks is something I think can come from the drills.

[Stryke]

http://www.fujianbaihe.com/fujianbaihe/main.html


http://www.fujianbaihe.com/fujianbaihe/ ... slarge.wmv

[JimHawkins]

Thanks Marcus and good stuff Martin! (In case you are reading) Where is that drill from Crane?

So many similarities with WCK.

Excellent points made about the differences in energy between sticking and arm banging as well, re: control of the center!

A couple of things different in WCK sticking is that the elbow from Tan should not generally be allowed to come too close to the body. Our Tan uses forward spring energy to maintain its shape. If the elbow comes too close to the body - this is called 'cho-ku' or jammed - the jammed Tan's center may be compromised.

We typically absorb by either maintaining position and let their force turn us while we maintain facing and forward pressure; Making them loose their facing; At which point you take the center, if they do not quickly adjust by re-facing. If they use too much lateral force you can circle around and down the line as well as in Jao Da or 'circle hit.'

Some other options: Wrap and pull >counter> Bong, used for redirecting and/or letting the Tan go and slipping back to the line. lots of variations are possible and still more with two hands.

Amazing the alphabets are so much the same among these systems.

Everyone I have seen do push hands apart from in Yong Chun balances the forces. i.e. for most systems the name of the game is to keep a continuity of pressure at the point of contact - whether you are doing sensitivity drills in Tai Chi or Wing Chun, or power drills in Okinawan karate or Hung Gar.

However this is not the aim of our push hands!!.

Very interesting Martin. How is this different from what your goals are in the sticking drills?

[martin watts]

Hi Dana,

Jim dropped me a line to say you were interested in this stuff.

This is fairly large clip ( 30 Meg ). At the moment we are working with about 20 little drills to add to the basic cycle that we do. Again these positions are for practicing our San Zhan and basics.

http://www.fujianbaihe.com/fujianbaihe/ ... drills.mov

It is a bit of a random clip done last week after a session. This is NOT something straight out of Yong Chun i.e. it is something we do here based on drills and form positions rather than a verbetim drill from Yong Chun.

If you break down any one part of this e.g. the simple change where the push is taken on the inside, and do it slowly to check the defender is rolling the arm against the atack as oppose to pushing on it, then you get pieces very similar to the Wing Chun single hand Chi Sau. Same with alternating left / right attacks when in contact which fall very quickly into double Chi Sau. This all makes me think if you explore this distance work with an open mins assuming you are in contact you end up doing Wing Chun.

We keep everything quite abstract like this. However I know it is fairly good stuff. I was just in Germany at a Patrick McCarthy seminar. We were doing a lot of hand drills but much more application based. In spite of the abstractness of what we are doing I did not feel out of depth. I very much enjoy and recommend his big group sessions.

Very often the applications teminate in a handful of varieties of positions. I find that by practicing position work even without the application then when you get a chance to cross hands, often you get the advantage simply through moving through the positions without really having application in mind.

I am of the opiniton that we do forms which free the mind completely and allow us to concentrate on our internal tension and attitude nature of the style, and the these push hands things which keep the mind very active trying to keep up often at the expense of the explosive side of the work. Slowly I hope to move the two together.

Hope you find the clip interesting. We are very much hanging on by our fingertips when we play with this stuff. But then again we do finger conditioning so.....

Martin

[martin watts]

Jim

'However this is not the aim of our push hands!!. '

Well.....complex!!....easy to write a lot of words, but it is not really that clear in my mind....

- I know this as I have writting 2 long replies to this email and then deleted them as being not relevant , or just rubbish!! and now my time is up and I have to cook dinner for the kids.

Martin

[Dana Sheets]

Hi Martin! Thanks for dropping by.

I'm a little crazed for the next three days as my office is moving - but if I get a few minutes I'll take a look at your clip.

Speed, power - working for awareness, working for application, working for position...

these are great considerations.

[JimHawkins]

Well.....complex!!....easy to write a lot of words, but it is not really that clear in my mind....

- I know this as I have writing 2 long replies to this email and then deleted them as being not relevant , or just rubbish!! and now my time is up and I have to cook dinner for the kids.

No problem, there's no rush..! Always interested in your thoughts Martin when you have time.. Thanks for dropping by.


Heck there are just so many levels of learning with this stuff I think it may be a problem to pin it down to 'a thing.'

In WCK we think in terms of training concepts both large and small, from hand unity to leaving/returning to the line, to economy of motion. In the big picture this training forces folks to "continue" when one's "attack" is defeated folks learn not to dwell on any single movement and immediately convert adapt and continue in accordance with the opponent's resistance. Working against progressive resistance is a key attribute addressed here for us.

This kind of practice also has the effect of "energizing" what might otherwise be static or 'dead' positions and cultivates a spring like energy that is alive, stores energy and is resilient. There are of course techniques that can express those concepts and we work them side by side with attribute development like speed, explosiveness, power, etc.

In the general sense we are always working to control the center, so we study how to detect when the opponent and how the opponent is leaving the center, which they always are.. As you mentioned this is a general objective and how the opponent resists may be converted into simple center control or center control that transitions to a particular kind of control, attack or finish.

[martin watts]

Might sound a bit cute, but one perspective of hand drills is to find out what they are useful for. You can only do this by playing them.

It is a little tempting to analyse drills like 'oh this is good for.....power...attitude etc etc ' but you have to drive the drills in different directions ( good and variety of direspectful partners required here ) and test your drills against people who do similar work but are stylistically different and then decide why you are doing them.

I think excercises evolve like this>

1. someone gets good at their arts / it took them 10 years to get there
2. person analyses why they are now better than before
3. they get some students and in order to help them discover what it took 10 years of training to find out, teacher develops some specific exercises ( e.g. sensitivity ) to shortcut the training.
4. students become very sensitive etc ....but never as good as the teacher because teacher's analysis was too clinical.

If you look for balance, sensitivity, force, responsiveness, entry, etc you find these in good practitioners of all arts ( Judo good example ) but they have not been specifically trained for. An extensive analysis and set of exercises can lead to a style becoming in bred. I think this has happened in e.g. some WC styles, some crane styles, some karate styles. So these drills are double edged because they are so effective for training ( body and mind ) that IF you end up barking up the wrong tree then you will be very good at barking up the wrong tree - to your cost.

Just a different take on this because we all talk of the benefits of specific exercises but so rarely the drawbacks. I say this because earlier in the post Stryke was saying about Pat McCarthys syllabus shortcutting a lot of time - but I think that is misleading. Pats good people I met had mostly already done the time / this is partly the point of his stuff.

Dana, could you please let me have a clip of you doing some of your drill work so I can see how you are doing it.

Cheers!!

Martin

[JimHawkins]

I agree that the purpose and correct translation to application is important for this kind of training - you have to know where this stuff fits in all its myriad levels. I know where I want to go with it. For WCK sticking represents training a core strategy, which then reaches out into all the other parts of the system. WCK was intended to be trained from the inside out.

But where Marcus might say 'short cut' I would say that these drills, depending on what and how, can make possible what might otherwise be impossible or would take forever to materialize in application.

After all, in CQC the use of eyes is marginal at best because of the inherently large reaction delay of processing visual information.