Hand Striking Disarms!

[Brian R. VanCise]

Okay I try to incorporate into almost every class a drill with the idea being to disarm the opponent with a strike to their hand/wrist with your stick or blade. Typically I will use some padded sticks (the cheap ones with plastic cores, they hurt) and have IRT practitioners practice striking their partners hands sometimes once, sometimes twice and sometimes more to get that disarm. We also couple this with eventually working to the off hand and then striking other areas as well. What drills do you use to incorporate this concept into your training?

 

[Cthulhu]

We'll do a lot of targeting drills with one person wearing heavy gloves (lacrosse/hockey) and the other person targeting the hands with rattan, from largo range.

Cthulhu

 

[arnisador]

We'll do a lot of targeting drills with one person wearing heavy gloves (lacrosse/hockey) and the other person targeting the hands with rattan, from largo range.

We do a lot of that at the JKD class where I study. It's good, but sometimes it feels (from an arnis point of view) that it's almost to the exclusion of other approaches, like closing the gap.

 

[Wes Tasker]

We do alot of "ranging" footwork to get out of the way and hit the hand. What's important, to me anyway, is that the footwork gets you out of the way of the strike and puts you in a position to hit the hand and get out of the way of the opponent's weapon if your hit looses it from their hands. A big deal if you're doing sword vs. sword.

-wes

 

[robertlk808]

I usually practice them while sparring and when teaching new students. The LAMECO system also has some great gear that can be used for practicing targeting the hand.

 

[arnisador]

Ah, that looks like a useful training tool!

 

[robertlk808]

Yeah I believe Guro Marc Denny uses it in a video and even Datu Worden used it at a camp or two. Ive even gotten to wear it once at a camp and it can take some good hits, it is a good way for a practitioner to practice hand shots with a little bit of power.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

I usually practice them while sparring and when teaching new students. The LAMECO system also has some great gear that can be used for practicing targeting the hand.

Those are good and definately give you the opportunity to work with rattan in a fairly hard hitting manner!

 

[Cthulhu]

We do a lot of that at the JKD class where I study. It's good, but sometimes it feels (from an arnis point of view) that it's almost to the exclusion of other approaches, like closing the gap.

We definitely don't excluse closing to medio, corto, and even "extra" corto range. It's important to know how to fight from largo (which often seems to be missing), and how to target something meaningful from that range, rather then just banging sticks all the time.

arnisandyz has done a lot of confounding drills involving moving through the ranges. Confounding to me, at least.

Cthulhu

 

[arnisandyz]

LoL...nothing confounding about the range change drills. What it is... is that people have "favorites." Someone is really good at largo or someone is really good at corto so when an opportunity to strike comes at a different range than what is favored, its often overlooked and we find a way to get into our favorite range, sometime forcing it rather than taking whats given.

 

[Cthulhu]

Why you gotta dog me in public?

But yeah, the drills can help people like me who like to try to force things into a preferred range.

Cthulhu

LoL...nothing confounding about the range change drills. What it is... is that people have "favorites." Someone is really good at largo or someone is really good at corto so when an opportunity to strike comes at a different range than what is favored, its often overlooked and we find a way to get into our favorite range, sometime forcing it rather than taking whats given.

 

[arnisador]

Yeah, I'm guilty of that too. I like to be waaaaaay inside. Is there a range closer than corto (short of grappling)?

 

[robertlk808]

Is there a range closer than corto (short of grappling)?

Um.... possession?