Revelations

Okay, so last night we didn't get to Karate due to baby sitting, but it actually worked out very well as me and James went into the training area out the front of the house and did some training.

The original idea was to use the tanren for a bit and I mentioned doing some pad work.

This is the tanren, by the way, I made it myself from a big block of wood!

Funky, huh, the guy that invented ("rediscovered") Daito Ryu Ajijujitsu swore by this thing, the idea being that you move it around slowly sort of like a sword and it makes you really strong.  Me and James had been using a sledgehammer for the exercises, but this is way harder, weighing in at 10 kilos or so.

Anyway, it's pouring down with rain and we put the awning up and we start doing pad work as a warm up, with me working on punching power.

Now, my punching power has really increased and has gotten a lot better and we discussed that, but then we went off track, as you do when I made the comment, "I don't know why we teach our students to punch, it's hard to do and you're likely to injure yourself."  Now, if we're honest, you are likely to injure yourself if you punch someone in the face: the skull is composed of some of the densest bones around and punching it without gloves on is bad for you, your knuckles and your wrist if you're not aligned correctly.  Hell, even if you are aligned correctly and you punch someone really hard there's a good chance that you'll bust your knuckles.  Self defence wise, punching people in the head is not good.  Punching people is softer areas is waaaay better, but we came to that topic later.

Anyway, I brought up how I felt I could slap way harder than I could punch and we tried it out.  Sure enough I can, because my body's natural force generating mechanisms work really well with that movement; it is easy for me to slap very, very hard, whereas punching very hard takes more energy and focus.

We spent the next twenty minutes working along that principal looking at its use in confrontations, how you would set it up with a simple distraction and then combinations built upon it.  All this whilst keeping in mind the fact that it had to be simple, easy to use and learn and with a high probability of success.  We used pads at first and then put on the wearable kick bag, which gave me and James a chance to go to town and properly generate a lot of force with the slap leading very neatly into elbows and kicks.  Interestingly the slap could also be a knife hand downward strike to the neck.

From there we returned to punching and tried to apply the principals we learnt from slapping to punching, with some success, my punches being a little stronger, but nothing compared to the slap.

We then wandered into Karate territory and looked at the lunge punch, oi tsuki.  Now, when you see it done in kata, you're like, "humm", and I want to show you it but it's damn hard to find the version I'm thinking of on the internet, whilst looking I found this:

Which has got nothing to do with the technique I wanted to show.

It sort of looks like this:

Not as nice as the other picture, I know.

Anyway, it's blatantly a punch to the groin, so we tried it, and then used the pads to see how much power we can generate (we're dedicated martial artists looking to bring you cutting edge self defence developments, but repeated groin shots is a little uh... well, a little like these guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7gnB31NnI) and you can generate a fair bit of force because you're dropping your body weight into the strike and tensing up at the last second, which is the key.

 The body mechanics also make it a great defence if someone grabs you, simply due to the manner in which you move, so we played with that too, and it works.

So, nearly an hour of playing with hitting hard in the rain, and it was time for the tanren, which we did in the prescribed manner, but then James got all Conan and started swinging it around like a broad sword.  So, of course, I want to have a go and it turns out that swinging the damn thing around and riding the movement is a hell of a shoulder and core work out.  So today I woke up in pain.

Funniest bit of the night was Selly putting a bandanna across her face and trying to come out and join us whilst shouting, "I'm a ninja!"

More ninja news tomorrow!