Agreed. The same goes for my 2" step-back. Used against someone over-reaching, it messes them up. They either over-extend (even more) and are easily toppled, or they get frustrated at missing and change tactics. With someone who knows how to make contact, a 2" step just means they hit me while I'm moving backwards, and maybe knock me down easier.
People do strange things with words sometimes. I'm pretty sure we can all agree on that thought.
Yes. Being knocked down remains in the "not fun" category. And, with someone who knows what they're doing, that 2" slip back just invites the barrage that Drop was talking about elsewhere. Another "not fun" thing to experience and have to deal with. But then, neither is eating a superman punch because you (meaning I) assumed I could cover it up on my way in.
Yes, it was. I completely agree. Then I figured out that, if I was just off the line that they were attacking me on as I moved in, I could often smother them for a second before moving back out. Once my slow-witted self realized what was happening, I started to stay "in" there longer and longer.
This is one of the things I've been trying to move to earlier in students' development. It's fairly common in my experience for an NGA student to mostly use retreating motions until about halfway through the kyu (colored belts) ranks. I've increased the early focus on learning how (and when) to enter.
I don't know how Hapkido is organized, so this may be part of the difference. NGA is organized in formal "Techniques" (in quotes, because it's an arbitrary delineation). As a student learns a Technique, he also learns variations of it ("Applications"). Those Applications may be different from instructor to instructor. Many Techniques have both entering and exiting (to group them broadly) Applications. Most students simply stick to the exiting versions for a couple of years, rarely using the entering. Part of this comes from the teaching form used (nearly all are exiting movements), which students tend to practice more than any single variation. I've put more emphasis on the entering, both as a strategy/tactic, and in the teaching forms (I've changed several), to give students more practice on this aspect.
In our basic kata, we don't give them the option... we set it up so that they have to move forwards, "because that is where the kuzushi is..."
). But if he is using proven techniques or kata from another style(s), and as would seem so, he is making them effective, he might just have something going for himself, whether what he does works for anyone else or not.
The way "techniques" are taught in NGA, there's a "Classical Technique" (what I call the "Classical Form" or "teaching form"). It starts from a specific attack, uses a specific response (entry, block, parry, slip, etc.) and a specific technique. As such, it's a form (in my book), even though it's only one technique, because it's designed to be replicated fairly exactly by each student, in order to practice the technique in question. Alongside those, we train "applications", which are the variations of the technique (where the "technique" is the finishing point), and how we get to them can vary broadly by circumstance.
