SKK Half Moon.......why?

[DavidCC]

If you are basing off your opponent with your hands via a grab for a take down and c-stepping through his leg or legs, wouldn't the structure of your stance be of less importance?
Sean

If you do in fact mean something like osoto gari (see post 38 above), the videos and pics I have seen of JUDO guys doing this does not use a c step at all. the hips are aligned to 11 or 1030 even, the right leg comes straigth through the gap and goes straight back to 430 taking other guys right foot with it.

 

[Doc]

haha actually you missed mine

our combos, for the most part, depend on specific reactions on the part of the other guy, right? "punch him here, his body does this, that allows me to do that". Not all of them, #6 of course does not LOL, but many do.



SO my point is,

the attacker's reaction to our actions will be different depending on if he is punching or pushing, even though outwardly the attacks appear very similar.




Lets look at #7. This is what we do: wghen you perceive the incoming punch, hop or step to 730 into a left flamingo, deliver a right side thrust kick to floating ribs.

if you are pushed, you cannot do this technique. It's too late. You can regain your balance and do it against his next attack... maybe...

attempted push - if he has his arms 'loaded' (elbows back, hands up by the chest, palms facing forward, weight shifted forward in anticipation of resistance) and you hop to 730 for the kick, he has plenty of time to track your movement and adjust his attack. At the moment he initiates the push (loading his arms) he is probably already MUCH closer to you than he would be if he was going to punch. In reality I think it happens way too fast and too close to head off an attack like this.

So while "arm extended" is a common shape wiithin a push and a punch, they are far from the same attack and deserve to be addressed with different responses.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, I only know that the parts I do understand Dave, make sense to me.

 

[Doc]

If you do in fact mean something like osoto gari (see post 38 above), the videos and pics I have seen of JUDO guys doing this does not use a c step at all. the hips are aligned to 11 or 1030 even, the right leg comes straigth through the gap and goes straight back to 430 taking other guys right foot with it.

The reason the "C-Step" is Not used in grappling arts, is because the physical demand is functionality first in "Rondori." The "C-Step" leaves you open for a counter takedown.

 

[JTKenpo]

haha actually you missed mine

our combos, for the most part, depend on specific reactions on the part of the other guy, right? "punch him here, his body does this, that allows me to do that". Not all of them, #6 of course does not LOL, but many do.


Agreed, reactionary positioning.


SO my point is,

the attacker's reaction to our actions will be different depending on if he is punching or pushing, even though outwardly the attacks appear very similar.

This is where I disagree. If hit him in the groin I don't believe it matters if he attempted to push or punch.


Lets look at #7. This is what we do: wghen you perceive the incoming punch, hop or step to 730 into a left flamingo, deliver a right side thrust kick to floating ribs.

Pretty similar. Difference for me being I step back and execute a right knife block to the arm followed by the side kick.

if you are pushed, you cannot do this technique. It's too late. You can regain your balance and do it against his next attack... maybe...

Again I disagree. In American Kenpo they have many push attacks and in my opinion they can all be converted to defend against a punch and vice versa with punch defenses.

attempted push - if he has his arms 'loaded' (elbows back, hands up by the chest, palms facing forward, weight shifted forward in anticipation of resistance) and you hop to 730 for the kick, he has plenty of time to track your movement and adjust his attack. At the moment he initiates the push (loading his arms) he is probably already MUCH closer to you than he would be if he was going to punch. In reality I think it happens way too fast and too close to head off an attack like this.

In a confrontation why would you allow someone to get that close and close the gap? Not to say all attacks start with confrontation. I understand that people walk up unprovoked and do stupid stuff all the time.
So while "arm extended" is a common shape wiithin a push and a punch, they are far from the same attack and deserve to be addressed with different responses.

All I'm saying is give it a try. Have your training partner give you a shove, I believe you will be able to get off any of your # combos.

Or don't thats cool too.

 

[Hand Sword]

As practiced Push and punch defenses can translate to each other. An extended arm is an extended arm. I was speaking in terms of reality. A push will land, then you'll react. An attempt at a punch has a different flow, (unless a sucker punch) which allows you to "set up" and deal with it. Pushes are quick, and in close, usually during a verbal exchange of some sort. It will be very rare that you'll be ready to "catch" an attempted push as it comes and treat it like a punch attack.

 

[Hand Sword]

OK so, from what I've gotten some have kept it, some have dumped it. Those that do it, how do you functionally use it and for what reasons behind that use?

 

[Danjo]

OK so, from what I've gotten some have kept it, some have dumped it. Those that do it, how do you functionally use it and for what reasons behind that use?

From the way we used it in Shotokan, the mid-point of the c-step was when everything would contract, sort of like coiling a spring, and then explode out in the second part of the movement. The problem is that it doesn't seem to have much applicablilty in a real life situation. Also, at the mid point, when the feet come together, it would leave you with very little base, so someone with good timing could use that to their advantage.

 

[14 Kempo]

One could argue that no matter what the movement, a foot must come up off the ground to make that movement, and somebody with good timing will have an advantage at that given moment in time. One foot in the air, no matter the width of the stance from which the movement began, has the base of the width of the foot that remains on the ground. Do we them conclude that you must not move to not narrow your base and therefore become vulnerable?
Half-mooning, feet come together as one passes the other. Shuffle stepping, feet come together before switching to the other foot. Twist stance, feet come awfully close together for that moment in transition. Lifting the foot to kick, single foot as a base. Where does it end.
We could tear apart just about any movement. Does this mean that everything we are taught that has movement is incorrect? Or is it maybe that we don't take the time to understand the movement and jump to conclusions. What I'm getting at here is the devil's advocate of sorts. Each movement has its strengths and weaknesses. Training and experience will play a major role on where, when and in what circumstances with which to use a particular movement. IMHO

 

[Doc]

One could argue that no matter what the movement, a foot must come up off the ground to make that movement,

That would be correct sir.

and somebody with good timing will have an advantage at that given moment in time. One foot in the air, no matter the width of the stance from which the movement began, has the base of the width of the foot that remains on the ground.

Well sir that is only if there a lack of understanding of "how" footwork is executed. Most do so from a "disassociated perspective" and that leads to a lack of structural integrity in the body as a whole. If foot work is executed properly, neither upper or lower body stability is compromised. That is the whole reason for my condemnation of the "c-step" movement.

Do we them conclude that you must not move to not narrow your base and therefore become vulnerable?

No, we must move properly.

Half-mooning, feet come together as one passes the other. Shuffle stepping, feet come together before switching to the other foot. Twist stance, feet come awfully close together for that moment in transition. Lifting the foot to kick, single foot as a base. Where does it end.

As I've often said, it is "how" you move your feet relative to each other and the pelvic girdle, and upper body that will determine whether or not structure and stance viability is proper.

We could tear apart just about any movement. Does this mean that everything we are taught that has movement is incorrect? Or is it maybe that we don't take the time to understand the movement and jump to conclusions.

You are correct here sir. The truth is; the "concepts" are valid, however few know how to execute them correctly.

What I'm getting at here is the devil's advocate of sorts. Each movement has its strengths and weaknesses.

Excellent point, and you are unequivocally correct. All physical movement is dedicated to a specific activity, and therefore is vulnerable to weakness to any physicality not a part of the intended action. This is normal. When you are "walking" straight ahead, even light physical contact or a laterally "bump" will knock you off your stride rather easily, or worse. That's normal human physics.

Training and experience will play a major role on where, when and in what circumstances with which to use a particular movement. IMHO

Correct again sir. The trick is to be taught properly "how" to execute these movements with maximum structure so it maintain efficacy with regard to the dedicated activity, regardless of whether you engage at the intended height, width, and/or depth.

When utilizing footwork, it shouldn't matter if you cannot complete the foot movement. You should be structurally sound when you begin, and maintain that anatomical congruency through the entire movement to its conclusion.

I have routinely demonstrated this by having students stand on one leg in the middle of a movement, and yet they are difficult to move. And even when they are overwhelmed by the mass of an attacker, they simply return to the previous position with no loss of structure or stability, and stop the body momentum of the assault.

This is not something special, it's just performing footwork and movement correctly. You are right again. Training is everywhere. Proper training is not.
I used to have a sign of my office door that said;

The Doctor is in.

Answers: $10.00
Correct Answers: $1000
Dumb Looks: Free

Excellent observations on your part sir.

 

[DavidCC]

In American Kenpo they have many push attacks and in my opinion they can all be converted to defend against a punch and vice versa with punch defenses.

I have seen many very heated arguments on this topic among AK guys of all ranks. But "can work" is a vague. Is treating a push like a punch better than doing nothing? sure is. Are the better solutions? Yes.

In a confrontation why would you allow someone to get that close and close the gap? Not to say all attacks start with confrontation. I understand that people walk up unprovoked and do stupid stuff all the time.

That's a good question. Before I give you some reasons someone might be that close, I should ask: if my reasons are not sufficiently convincing, will you stop training against attacks which can only be launched from very close range?

All I'm saying is give it a try. Have your training partner give you a shove, I believe you will be able to get off any of your # combos.

Or don't thats cool too.

You mean a really good shove, the kind that makes you have to take 2 or 3 steps before you rgain control of your balance?

Do you do technique from the range you are at when you regain balance or do you start firing off strikes while still trying to recover?

We spend time doing this drill:

stand with your eyes closed in a natural stance, arms folded. Partner shoves you hard with both hands towards 6. Don't fall down. Come to a stable stance with a guard.

So, you know, we shove each other a lot. Probably more than most...

 

[DavidCC]

Quote:
What I'm getting at here is the devil's advocate of sorts. Each movement has its strengths and weaknesses.
Excellent point, and you are unequivocally correct. All physical movement is dedicated to a specific activity, and therefore is vulnerable to weakness to any physicality not a part of the intended action. This is normal. When you are "walking" straight ahead, even light physical contact or a laterally "bump" will knock you off your stride rather easily, or worse. That's normal human physics.

ever seen a Frank Soto video?

If you knew all of the ways to do this, nobody could touch you and it probably wouldn't even look like you were trying

 

[Touch Of Death]

If you do in fact mean something like osoto gari (see post 38 above), the videos and pics I have seen of JUDO guys doing this does not use a c step at all. the hips are aligned to 11 or 1030 even, the right leg comes straigth through the gap and goes straight back to 430 taking other guys right foot with it.

Well I was never taught the half-moon but it seems that once you are at contact manipulation it could be usefull, but I'm not real clear on the half moon stuff anyway. I'm sure its done better in Judo.
Sean

 

[JTKenpo]

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I have seen many very heated arguments on this topic among AK guys of all ranks. But "can work" is a vague. Is treating a push like a punch better than doing nothing? sure is. Are the better solutions? Yes.


[/color]
That's a good question. Before I give you some reasons someone might be that close, I should ask: if my reasons are not sufficiently convincing, will you stop training against attacks which can only be launched from very close range?






You mean a really good shove, the kind that makes you have to take 2 or 3 steps before you rgain control of your balance?

Do you do technique from the range you are at when you regain balance or do you start firing off strikes while still trying to recover?

We spend time doing this drill:

stand with your eyes closed in a natural stance, arms folded. Partner shoves you hard with both hands towards 6. Don't fall down. Come to a stable stance with a guard.

So, you know, we shove each other a lot. Probably more than most...

Heated arguments, no couldn't be. I'm not saying your training is deficient only offering an opinion that works for me, nothing more nothing less.

 

[DavidCC]

Heated arguments, no couldn't be. I'm not saying your training is deficient only offering an opinion that works for me, nothing more nothing less.

me too bro

 

[SK101]

Just my two cents on the subject. there are two areas to cover halfmooning and half moon stance.

starting with the stance it is designed to allow all 4 limbs to attack easier than a defensive stance such as the side horse stance. Disadvantage compared to a closed up stance like side horse or back stance in the korean system is more targets are available to the attacker. If you want more protection you used a closed up stance to attack with more options the open type of stance such as half moon.

half moon stance has the advantage of being able to pivot from a stance facing 12:00 to a stance facing 9:00 if right leg is forward or 12:00 to 3:00 if left leg is forward. from a closed type stance you .can't do that transition so easily. I.E. someone swings a rt. side club you step forward with the right foot and pivot to 9:00 strike bicep and wrist. you can immediatly pivot to 12:00 and strike the color bones with driving shutos. If I were in a closed stance for the block I would have to step instead of just pivoting.

there is advantage and disadvantage on about everything. Generally there is much less right and wrong than it appears.

 

[SK101]

Now my two cents on halfmooning -

It is the footwork in SK that is generally used to teach DMs/Combos. Having 1 type of footwork and 1 dominant form of attack, right straight punch, allows students to pick up a technique quickly as their attacker isn't varying on each punch in. after the student has some rank then the punch in my opinion should be dozens of different ways as the student should be able to now vary the technique based on variations of the attack. Memorizing DMs is also much faster when you have 1 major way of attacking as you don't have to memorize how to attack on each technique.

Half mooning backwards is also only a teaching tool. It is to teach a student to shift there weight 50%/50% as they move. SK has much more focus on weight being centralized rather than shifting most weight to the front leg to maximize power. Advantage faster mobility, disadvantage if your weight is centered there is less power than if most weight is on the forward leg during a strike. When SK does place most weight to the front leg it is on the side leaning or front leaning stances. These are much less common in the official material. It shows that the Masters focused more on Fluidity than absolute power on a strike.

Halfmooning back is eventually removed as a student goes higher in rank. the question in most SK schools is when do you remove it. My view is at green any technique that half moons back is slide back. there is no self defense advantage I am aware for half mooning backward besides learning to shift the weight evenly.

half mooning forward on the other is to either to go around obstacles, around legs, or to hit the inside of the leg. If your not doing 1 of these 3 than to the best of my knowledge there is no purpose except to learn to shift the weight in the 50/50 way.

Someone said on the posts there is no hip rotation on a half moon stance. There is almost always hip rotation, rising, or falling available on
every movement. the begining of Kata 1 is learning marriage to gravity. the beginning of Kata 2 is to teach the potential to rise and drop. Pinan 1 the hips swing out on every block then return forward and on the straight punches reverse direction as soon as your foot reaches its destination and you have hip rotation on the strike. If the rear heel comes off the floor to allow more rotation the stance mearly changes from a half moon to a tiger stance. This would be done if you are striking with the rear hand.

 

[SK101]

This has been touched upon in other threads. Originally all the attacks were different, as they are in American Kenpo. I believe the thought process should bring us here and just as we look deeper into forms we do that with combos as well. To speculate why the half moon step was introduced to combos as attack I would have to say to simplify things. Bring it to the lowest common denominator so that people didn't have to learn 100 different attacks for 100 different defences. Again speculation, I wasn't there. So if you have been in the game awhile and have done these techniques a thousand or more times you should be comfortable enough with them to branch out for the attack. For better or worse there were changes made in the system to make it more "user friendly". The nice thing is that we all have free thought, so if you don't like the half moon there is no one going to show up and force you to train with it or teach it or like it.

What your saying makes absolute sense to me. If you look at a DM you should be able to see a cross hand wrist grab or an overhead club simply by varying mainly initial footwork and the initial block. Often a non straight punch attack is easier to do on a particular DM than the actual way it is initially taught. Having one attack method is a very easy way to get the student to memorize than take them into different attacks once the coordination begins to develop. Saying you have to make it as realistic as possible may be no different than saying you should teach words before letters, because people say words more than they say letters. It is whatever takes the student from point A to B in the least amount of time. Confusion or lack of coordination plagues almost all students in the beginning and if you have one with the coordination early than you can fast track their training by employing higher rank training methods early on if they are ready from day one.

 

[SK101]

Do your self a favor and add pushes. It answers many questions, like the trapping on #16.

there is version of 16 with an inverted side kick instead of a front ball kick which makes the technique easier in my opinion and is the exact positioning oddly as one of the little monk statues. I think the front ball kick version gives you more range if your defending against a taller opponent, but for me I find it harder to perform than with the inverted side kick.

One of the SK masters was confronted outside a movie theater. The attacker started poking his chest with his pointer finger. he used the twin tiger's mouth break from 16, which makes alot of sense someone poking a finger is locking or almost locking the elbow. It seems alot easier to me to break an extended arm that way than try to catch one although I find when you kick the shin with the inverted side kick people leave the arm out while they catch their balance.

 

[SK101]

our combos, for the most part, depend on specific reactions on the part of the other guy, right? "punch him here, his body does this, that allows me to do that". Not all of them, #6 of course does not LOL, but many do.

It is principle not technique that is King in SK. If you have to have the attacker do a specific thing then you must have a technique for all possible variationa or at least the ones that are more common. If you take a technique and explore the what ifs and the principles than how the attacker attacks is less relevant. How they attack is always rellavant. If we take it to an extreme and so what if are attacker is a better martial artist than we are than obviously our defense probably won't work, but in my humble opinion we train for the guy who is going to mug us in an alley not what happens if a shaolin monk attacks me in my studio for no reason.
In my opinion most people will have an easier time making it through life without taking a beating by having alot of humility and a fair amount of MA talent rather than a huge amount of MA talent, but little or no humility.

 

[SK101]

Lets look at #7. This is what we do: wghen you perceive the incoming punch, hop or step to 730 into a left flamingo, deliver a right side thrust kick to floating ribs.

Pretty similar. Difference for me being I step back and execute a right knife block to the arm followed by the side kick.

if you are pushed, you cannot do this technique. It's too late. You can regain your balance and it against his next attack... maybe...

this is true. One of the primary principles for the version of 7 you are executing is evasion of an attack. If you are pushed you can't evade it since that would be the equavalent of saying how do you do 7 if they already hit you with the punch. the principle isn't possible so you need a different principle or evade before they push you. Let say it is a right push aiming at your right shoulder. Maybe you step with the left toward 6 or 6:30 then pivoting side kick or perhaps another DM would be more efficient off of an attempted push. If they do push step back with the side you are pusher on and hit with the opposite hand willow palm as their push is feeding the energy of your strike.