First, we should recognize that the attacker was demonstrating a variation of the attack while the attackee was executing a half-hearted response. The attackee was going through a few motions to set the stage for a particular lesson, and its not surprising that he wasn't doing it full bore in his defense. Consequently, the change in attack made it appear as though his version of DS wouldn't work.
But, on the execution of DS, I would offer the following which may or may not have been brought up in the discussion that day.
1) The right arm lost the bracing angle slightly. This is a common mistake when people "cock" the hand back for the knife hand strike. This leaves only the lead deltoid to withstand the attacker's mass should it keep coming, which it did here. Its just no competition in this case, the incoming mass will dominate that single muscle group with absolutely no problem. What appears to happen here is as the arm was extended for a strike, it was snuffed up by Clyde's shoulder as he dove in. Also, if you pause the clip on the block, you see that it tracked the arm well past where an inward block belongs, and started moving downward, further exposing the deltoid.
As I understand it, Ed Parker talked about rounding the corner and elongating the circle. In DS, we have an opportunity to round the corner, and the corner in this case being the intersection of two paths of action, the block and the strike. Keeping in context with the "attack the attack" premise, the purpose of that right hand is to deliver a stunning strike to the neck, collar bone, etc. It should hit with a full bracing angle supported by the mass landing simultaneously with the landing of the front foot after the kick (graviational engagement). The the inward block is simply an aligned motion to the opposite side of the outer rim, clearing the debris of the incoming arm prior to its tracking of the offending arm into the neck.
So, maintaining this bracing angle may or may not have thwarted that takedown, depending on the integrity of the neutral bow. What a bracing angle would have done - whether snuffed by the attackers shoulder, chest, neck, or whatever - is maintain the defender's control over his own Outer Rim. He may have been driven back, or the attacker may have slipped to the side, but the bracing angle would remain their to maintain his critical space.
2) A "snap" kick will work only so well here. It might crush the genitals into supporting tissue, yes, but the leg must act as a battering ram to displace the hips. When we practice this, the target with the kick is the pelvic girdle. The genitals are just tissue covering our true target - the skeleton.
3) I personally have issues with first stepping back to then rotate into the neutral bow, primarily because of the time it takes. This is a very common practice, and for that reason I may come across as being off my rocker. But, bracing angles and control of the Outer Rim should be achieved instantaneously at the onset of violence, even a spinal response.
As an illustration, examine the amount of time it takes to get from a natural standing position to a neutral bow, in any direction. Now put someone in front of you who really knows how to shoot in, say at your legs' distance from you. Try to hit your neutral bow in time to establish a base before they're on top of you. Its not easy. Now compare that to the time to raise your arms up to essentially two bracing angles. You'll likely find that your arms simply get there quicker, and even though you can be blown back, you can still maintain control of your Outer Rim.
Its interesting to observe that its quicker to bring a fortified defense of your your Outer Rim than it is to establish your neutral bow. Also, the primary driving force available to you in the natural standing position is rotation.
All in all though, I still don't see this as a DS gone bad. Again this DS was executed half heartedly because there was a lesson going on, and it could have been that the scene previous to this clip was a series of slow motions for illustrative purposes. He may have done the same thing here, only the attacker bumped it up unexpectedly. All of the sudden, its posted on the internet and all the world thinks this is how kenpo moves, or that this is how that particular practitioner moves all the time. Its not fair to the defender to intimate that this was representative of his true response.
Anyway, good discussion. I look forward to more.
Cheers,
Steven Brown
Universal Kenpo Federation
