(no subject)

[robinturner]

A good day -- we did a demonstration of hapkido for the kids at the local school which went off well,
and encouraged about a dozen of them to sign up for a self-defence course we're
going to run. OK, I now have a bruised foot from falling badly, but what the
hell. The problem with performances is that your sense of timing gets speeded
up, so that Philip was throwing us at one-and-a-half times normal speed (I
not?ced the same thing when I used to play in a band -- we'd do a concert
thinking we were playing normally, then we'd listen to the tape and find
everything was speeded up to a ridiculous extent).

I'm really excited about the self-defence course. A problem I have with martial
arts is that it generally attracts the kind of people who don't actually need it
that much, or that those who do need it get scared and give up. I know
in films like Karate Kid you get a sickly kid who
meets a martial arts master and learns to defend him/herself, but in reality the
kind of wimps who really need self-defence training (and I include myself here,
or at least myself as I was twenty years ago) either don't have the confidence
to go to a martial arts school, or get hurt and give up. Of course there are
the internal or "soft" martial arts like t'ai chi (which is my main area of
expertise), but there you have a different problem: most people teaching t'ai
chi are New Age flakes who know as much about fighting as I know about crochet,
and even if you do find a genuine t'ai chi teacher (i.e. someone who can
actually fight), you still need to study for several years before you can put
what you've learnt into practice.


What we're trying to do in this self-defence course is strip hapkido down to a
core of techniques that will work for fifteen-year-old girls against big strong
guys, and, perhaps more importantly, teach some attitude. Most confrontations
are resolved before they get to the physical stage, and the attitude that
wins the confrontation is something like "OK, I don't know how good you are,
and I don't care-- you might be able to beat me, but even if you do, it's going
to hurt you bad." ("Hurt you bad"? -- my English is getting really
Americanised!)

Well, we'll see how it goes, but at the moment I am feeling that comfortable
sense of moral rectitude that comes from thinking you've done "the right thing".
This means that tonight I can forget planning my English courses and drink as
much raki as I want with a clear conscience, heh heh.

Comments

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

No, your English is getting AmericanIZED.

At least you're still learnting things.

talking martial arts

[inignitable.livejournal.com]

Demonstrations, there's four ways I think for demonstrations. Breaking it down into the theory, the steps and options that give fighting it's chesslike tactics and countertactics. High school wrestling practice had this the most. Over and over, step by step we'd go through a move. I got bored with it's mechanical feeling and lost the edge and natural feeling I had when I first started wrestling. The second is sparring with the aim of you and your opponent using this move and a countermove on the mat. This helped me learn jiu jitsu the best, you don't slow down and you can't rely on the other's ignorance. The third examining it in a natural setting like a match. Watching other's spar in real life, or sitting down and watching a recording. This sometimes can be hard to pay attention to because allout sparring is usually done at the end of the session and you're totally spent. The last is a routine. This is good for gaining body memory, such as remembering your current state within a route of positions. Not directly effective but very helpful with learning awareness and form. In Chi-gung this was the only practiced method. In my tae kwon do classes this was a means for advancement, in jiu jitsu you had to challenge those of the rank you wanted to become, a very interesting occaision since it drew in many people of that rank who wanted fresh blood and to establish themselves.

Yeah, I do agree that the people who could benifit most from martial arts are dissuaded from them. But at the same time, some of the same reasons behind this deterrance are also the reasons why they are so susceptible. A non-imposing person is usually physically unfit, they could have gotten fit before and became more imposing without martial arts. The same reasons behind being unfit are probably why they do not maintain an interest in martial arts. Also being intimidated can happen within a dojo or what have you; all these buff badasses can easily give the same impression to a non-imposing person. The can be in one way intimidated out of practicing there.

Stripping down hapkido? If you want to start with the basics stand away from hapkido. Get into things like how people punch and defend punches, kicks, the grappling stances, pulling someone off balance, the goals of wrestling move. Practice those, get them used to the idea of moving around in these ways and the ideas and theory behind it. Then start with basic hapkido with less of a learning curve.

I dunno, I don't really practice anything much but meditation and a little working out. I seem to have trouble maintaining discipline in being fit, let alone a regular program somewhere. After I move back to VA I'm thinking about hooking up with my old Jiu Jitsu group again. Mebbe I'll stick with that goal.

Re: talking martial arts

[solri.livejournal.com]

By stripped down, I mean seriously stripped down. We're going to concentrate first on escapes from grabs, given that most of the time someone attacks a fifteen-year-old girl their aim is likely to be to control her with a view to robbery or sexual assualt, not to kick the crap out of her. Then move on to basic (low) kicks and open-hand strikes (no punching, since unless you do a lot of training, you're more likely to hurt your hand than your opponent). Then maybe some hapkido/aikido-style wrist/elbow breaks and combos.

Also a lot of emphasis on body position, gaze, distancing and so on.