still learning said:
If after your first strike and if the person reacts differently(the way you train for a certain strike) than you will have to adjust. If you have to think about what to do next, you lose the chance to have the advantage.
The hardest part of our training is to continune without thinking and just do it...
I believe this process is accomplished primarily through repetition as you mentioned. Pick any physical endeavor that someone does well and you'll find that 99 times out of 100 it's done well because of repetiton.
In relation to the martial arts even those disciplines that don't practice "techniques" per se do rely heavily on repetiton in their training. Anytime someone mentions "reading" their attacker or opponent it's based on recognizing something they've seen before.
In my opinion this speaks directly to recognizing relative body positions that I spoke of in an earlier post. It's my contention that technique based systems such as Kenpo and Hapkido teach relative body position recognition more efficiently, and therefore more effectively, than other systems. Again, just my opinion, nothing more. There are some that will say that this will lead to the necessity of learning more and more and more techniques, but I believe that learning relative body positions effectively actually speaks against this practice.
If we think of effective self-defense there is really only so much to deal with. On a basic level of attack from the front or rear we're dealing with being inside or outside a right and inside or outside a left. You can take these four options and place them on different planes of height, width and depth, but they are essentially the same. Sometimes we choose, sometimes we don't, but the basic recognition factor doesn't change. When the brain recognizes the relative position the blocks, strikes (hands, feet, elbows, knees), grabs, checks, foot maneuvers, etc. that you've learned through repetition will/should kick in depending on the quality of your training. That being said it may actually be more beneficial to study fewer techniques rather than more, provided they deal with the four relative body positions and that you're always willing to keep your mind open to more possiblities. I think you will find that the "adjustment" process will become so inate that an third person perspective would see no hesitation at all, perceiving just a continuous flow of movement.
Just another voice in the wilderness.
Respects,
Bill Parsons
Triangle Kenpo Institute
eers:: I'm going to have to look into that one. Makes a lot of sense. Isn't it funny how a slightly different phrasing or way of putting the concept to words can make such a difference to how you understand it? Neat.
