Chris Parker
Grandmaster
Step one. Find an instructor. Learn what "parrying" is in the system they're teaching you. Then learn what a solo drill for such skills would be. Then practice.
Note closely step one...
Note closely step one...
Solo Training
- Thread starter marvelous65
- Start date
In FMA some people make a tool called a decuerdas. It's basically a pvc cross that you strike with a stick it rotates around and you've got to work use of the left hand and head movement, but it's a tool for stick training.
LibbyW
Orange Belt
Again, somebody saves me some typing.
I would only add, when it comes to genuine martial arts, something beyond Tae Bo exercises and cardio kickboxing, two people can do what looks like an identical thing to the untrained eye, except one person will be doing it completely wrong and it will be completely ineffective.
In decades of teaching I have taught a LOT of students who came to me with less than experienced instruction, self instruction or books and video instruction. In many cases I could name the book they learned from based upon continuity and flow errors the book was not capable of relating to them. In other examples I could name the video they practiced from because weight distribution or proper distancing errors.
These aren't really advanced things, but without an instructor who actually knows the system these errors will never be corrected and you will never end up with genuine martial arts. At best you might achieve an effective looking mimic that lacks any real substance.
Now several of the students in question were very dedicated, they just simply had not found adequate instruction. They attempted to learn what they could from the sources available to them. And while they could kick "head high" their kick had no chamber (which meant they were fully committed as soon as they moved and could not adapt to changing situations) and they typically telegraphed horribly and were severely limited when it came to targeting and power.
So if they had trained for a couple years, it would take me almost half as long to undo ingrained habits and reteach them the correct basics. In a real sense, they did more harm than good. Their time would have been better spent learning two stances, two blocks, two punches and two kicks correctly and doing nothing else for two years.
Books, youtube videos and similar things have one thing in common, they don't tell you when you are doing something wrong and they don't correct your mistake. It's bad enough when you have a teacher that isn't fully qualified. It's even worse when the student tries to become the teacher.
You can learn some things by trial and error, but that is a tough way to figure out what works and there is a better way because the trial and error process has already been done hundreds of times by thousands of people and you can just learn correctly from somebody qualified to teach.
I could put up a solo training exercise on youtube that contains the major elements of parrying, trapping, entering and closing. You might even learn something. But what I can't do, is fix your errors over the internet. Nobody can.
