Damn it was cold out, but we made sure that we had enough to do to stay warm. We have been going over some basic concepts of fighting, the three most important are Movement, Rotation and balance. We must maintain these in ourselves and limit or eliminate these in the attacker. One of the most effective systems of fighting to do just this is what was taught to YHC as "Trap Fighting". We learned it on the ground to understand it and how to apply the concepts and today we discovered how it can be applied in all fighting conditions.
When we are confronted with a person intent on harming us, most see the fist coming towards us or the arm trying to grab us as the object needing our most attention. And that very well may be, but in order for this person to harm us they must move towards us. Now humans moving requires us to pick up one foot and balance (for a short period) on the other foot as we move. This necessity opens up a large oppurtunity to control both movement and balance. We do this by interrupting or moving the placement of the leg or foot as they step. Or better yet disrupting the integrity of the structure of the leg (foot or knee) when they voluntarily place it within our sphere of influence. Breaking legs is much easier that one would think, especially when we control the balance and weight that they can place on it. Now if we think this is easy, it is not. Especially if we try to do this and nothing else. Fighting is a series of distractions and deceptions. All designed to find or create a weakness or liability in the attacker. So we must force them to focus on other things, such as attacks, pain or movement ,,, so that they will not realise the danger until it is too late. So we must remember to dismantle the body part they give to us during an attack, transition to center line attacks and while this is going on,,,, we disrupt the integrity of the legs. And then we move and repeat.
One of the first things we will notice is that attacking and defending are exactly the same thing. We dont see an attack as something to defend,,, we will now see it as something that was donated to us to use or dismantle. When we are in need of attacking,, we use the same concept. The first thing that we encounter will receive the same focus and techniques as if it was given to us. And this is where Trap Fighting starts coming in to play. We will limit the motion and rotation of the body by "trapping" it. The reason we need to limit rotation in any form of fighting is that power is generated by rotation. If we limit rotation we limit the ability of that person to harm us. But that is another lesson. So as we attack we can trap the leg, arm, elbow hand ( or what ever is available) ,, but what is even more interesting is that when we get good at doing this we can actually direct the body part to where it would benefit us. YHC says it is interesting because at this point we do not have to only react to an attack and respond acccordingly,, we can now create the conditions, liabilities and openings that we want to use by controlling the body (movement,rotation and balance).
Yes, YHC realizes that this is said far easier than done. but the application of these concepts will limit what can be done to us and will give us the advantage needed by creating opurtunities to defeat the attacker. And through repeated practice these moves will become a natural response that requires little effort. This realization was evident when the Pax started realizing that they were doing exactly the same techniques YHC used when fighting them. It was no longer strange and ellusive attacks that were difficult to defend against,, but have now become a natural way to see a fight.
Hopefully the warmer weather will be here soon so we can move into more active situatonal responses.
Thank you for allowing YHC to train with you fine men.
Tick Tock