Go With the Flow

Last night's drill required me to teach James how to kick properly Wing Chun style. It was definitely less of a drill and more of an open form approach to going through different fight ranges.

Out fighting
- Close the gap between you and your opponent (gap meaning the distance between where you can physically contact)
- Visually look for openings by looking for areas their hands aren't, where their weight is distributed, what stance they're in, etc...
- Maintain your structure, spring, and isolation as you move in
- Angle your attack so that when you move in, you've put further distance between yourself and one of your opponents sides (so move to the right or left to lower the threat of one of their arms/legs)

In fighting
- now you're in punch/elbow/knee kick/etc range of your opponent
- once you've closed the gap, stick to your opponent by keeping your intent/spring/forward energy on your attacker's center and keeping yourself balanced and straight up and down
- attack through your center-line to defend yourself and stay offensive
- never stop moving around your opponent (why would you want to ever face your opponent straight on when you can attack their back?)
- imagine the end of your center-line as a fulcrum that you rotate around your opponent with

Grapple (head grabs/arm bars/knee control/etc...)
- once you have adequately moved your structure into your opponent, there are soooo many options.
- depending on where your arms/legs end up when you move into your in fighting, you can move your opponent by using leverage, grabbing their head, dropping your weight, headlocks, ankle breaks, knee kicks, arm bars, etc...

While talking to Mike at work, a great way to describe how your spring should be applied towards an opponent was discovered.  If your opponent were incorporeal while also being a source of gravity, then throwing an object at them would go through them, then come back at them from the other side. It's not complete, but it's a good approach.

In other words, if you were to punch your opponent without being blocked, you would essentially move your hand through your opponent, effectively knocking whatever you hit back. (i.e. the head/torso/etc...) then your hand would reset to where it belongs, but not without being tugged on by the gravity of your opponent, which in turn pulls you into them again.  This is chain punching 101 all the way up to grand master.  The spring is so hard to understand in motion, and even harder to put into practice. Always applying energy toward your opponent is so counter intuitive to what is instinctual to our survival.

Also, I got a dummy made of steel.  It belonged to Ed Hart, which was Bruce Lee's 2nd student.  Does that mean Bruce got a shot at it? I would like to think so :) Kung Fu artifact gives +1 to learning.