When I was at Bob Whites in Southern Cal, we had BB there who was Santa Ana PD. Big guy; solid basics, strong hitter. On a bus, in the aisle, bad guy tries a straight knife thrust jab at our boy. He goes into 5 Swords, even though 5 Swords is not taught as a self-defense technique against a straight knife attack in narrow surroundings. He gets the block and the chop off, but the palm-heel hits air. Why? Bad guy down from the chop.
good example of an effective use of a tech, as taught. The fact that the fight was over before he completed the tech doesn't mean it was wrong, or that he made a mistake, or that the tech wasn't a good idea. In fact, the tech was such a good idea that only a portion of it was necessary to be effective. The fact that 5 Swords is against a punch and not a knife is immaterial, in my mind. He saw the similarity in the attack, and responded appropirately.
Taking the extreme, he would have had to apologize to the bad guy while waking him up, hand him back the knife, and ask that he comes at him again so he could use one of the EPAK "lance" techniques that was a more proper fit to the attack. However, his skills and abilities...target tracking, defensive perimeter, weapon/target accuracy (both inward block and outward chop), his study and rehearsal to put his mass behind his weapons using directional harmony...all these are basics skills, honed through rehearsal.
Technically, he did it wrong...
I understand you are illustrating the extreme, but even so, I just can't look at it this way. He didn't do it wrong. He applied a tech to a different, but somewhat similar situation, and it worked. That's not wrong in any way. It's creatively right. and once again, it's an example of a tech utilized as taught, regardless of the fact that the guy was holding a knife instead of throwing a punch.
Realistically, he got home that night to his family.
and that's what matters.
In EPAK, particularly, many of the techs go on ad nauseum...20 moves, strung in a row. To me, that's time spent on planned failure that COULD have been spent polishing basics and applied principles, so that the bad guy goes down the first couple times you hit him.
yes, and we have some of those as well, and I always had a bit of a problem with them. Seems to me that you can't realistically plan beyond 3 or 4 shots, because it's unrealistic to expect things to stick to plan that far out of the starting block. In those cases where the tech goes on for so long, I think it's just a case of perhaps getting carried away in designing the tech. Or I guess another way to look at it is to take the individual moves/strikes from these techs and see them as individual possibilites. But in the context of one super-long tech, I don't think it's so realistic.
On KT, one guy yanked a quote from me for his sig line that perfectly states my thoughts. Basically, if the fight ain't over after the first couple of moves, your basics stink, and you hit like a little girl. Obnoxious, I know. Not meant to provoke, but to shine a light on the importance of training for success in the delivery of force multipliers in basics.
D.
I agree with this. I think the mistake that lies in the design of the superlong techs is in thinking that it's a safeguard in case something goes wrong. I think that is absolutely not true. The very fact that you can go from the one strike to the next assumes that everything has gone the way you planned, so that he is positioned for the next strike. But if this is true, then the fight is already over. If everything had gone perfectly and you actually land all 17 strikes, the guy ought to be nothing more than a lump of jelly. But if something actually goes wrong he won't be where you expect him to be, you won't land those other strikes and you gotta do something else. The tech didn't plan for problems, it assumed you will turn him into jelly, and that's not realistic either, at least not in a sane world.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, with regards to the 5.0 commercial and the throat stomp. We gotta remember that these arts we practice come from a different era and different society when and where real destruction of a human being in self defense was not frowned upon so much as it is now. In that regard, some of it is outdated. Society is different now, and we view violence and the appropriate response to violence in a different way. What was acceptable and even necessary 300 years ago is no longer so today, because of our law enforcement and court systems that we now have. But the martial arts as we practice them have not necessarily been updated in that regard.
To illustrate an extreme example, we could look at the traditional weapon arts, like the katana, or Chinese jian and dao, or spear. These are archaic weapons that we cannot readily carry on the street, and there is a next-to-zero possibility that we will ever use one of these to defend our lives. Yet many of us still enjoy training in these, even tho we haven't found a way to update them to make them acceptable for the street in today's society.
It may be the same thing in kenpo, and we see it in many of the other arts as well. The Philippine arts were mentioned, because they practice a lot with knives. It's pretty hard to try and go "half-way" with a knife. If you pull that knife to use it, I think you ought to expect to kill the guy. Same thing with a gun, and a gun is acceptable in our society for self-defense, given some legal guidelines. But if you pull that gun to use it, you expect and intend to kill the guy.
Well, why not with your bare hands and feet as well? The thing about the hands and feet is that it is possible to pull back and go "half-way" if you feel it's appropriate. But if you only train for the half-way, then you won't know how to go to the extreme, if that proves to be necessary. If you practice big movements, you can always modify and go smaller. But if you only practice small movements, you won't be able to adjust and go big if needed. Same thing here.
Once upon a time, the ancestors of the arts that we practice were meant to be used to maime and kill as quickly as possible. In that era, and in those places, people needed to defend themselves. They often could not rely upon the police or the legal system to protect themselves or their families or their village. They were on their own, so they devised effective methods to maime and kill, and they did it when necessary, and probably often even when not necessary. Life was different then, and life was valued differently.
We still have these elements in our arts, and we should not forget that. It's not always appropriate today, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate these elements from what we do. I don't intend to give up my swords or spears or archery equipment, just because I'll never use it to defend myself. It's all part of the bigger picture.
Maybe the presentation in the commercial was a bit odd or arguably inappropriate, but that doesn't mean it should be eliminated from practice.
That's my thoughts, anyway.
