I have recently coached my students of Cambridge University Kickboxing Society in a Varsity match against Oxford and then the University Kickboxing Championship in Canterbury (Kent – UK) and I had the inspiration to write this post because of what I have seen: most people have little or no guard and, for my standard, are simply asking to be beaten up.  Both during Varsity fight and the Uni Champ, with over two hundred fighters, it was very rare to spot people that were holding a decent guard, lasting even for just a single round.  Let’s analyse the facts.

Copyright and courtesy of Duncan Grisby

When in a contact fighting situation you are often at a short distance with an opponent who has a single goal: hitting you in every area allowed, in order to score as many points as possible.  This simple rule applies in the same way to boxers, any kind of kick boxers and any practitioner of other striking martial arts like karate or tae known do.   Having a poor guard can undermine the quality of your attacks because you become way more vulnerable to your opponent’s attacks or counter attacks and have painful consequences.

A guard position imposes the fighter to control where her hands and arms are while she is performing other techniques with her legs or ensuring that at least one hand is in the right position, close to the head to protect it from opponent’s strikes, while the other is striking.  Instinct and balance doesn’t suggest keeping the guard in place: it’s easier to stand if you spread your arms when kicking.  At the same time a martial artist is supposed to be a controlled and trained person that can suppress and control her instincts and use her training for the best performance.  What best performance?  Once you run out of evasive footwork, proper use of distance and active blocks I hope we all agree that a decent guard is the only defence you have against an attack: the only shield to protect your head, face or part of the body.  If you can strengthen some part of your torso and chest with serious conditioning and abdominal exercises the same cannot be said for the face and the head.

Copyright and courtesy of Duncan Grisby

To some extent it is difficult for me to understand how and why people that teach kickboxing (in these cases) are spending long time at practicing conditioning, decent combinations of punches and kicks, ring strategy and so on without spending enough time to concentrate of keeping a decent guards all times.  However well your guard is trained it will perform worse when under great pressure.   When ever I am coaching a fighter more than 50% of all my suggestions are about keeping and closing the guard: that minimised her chance of being hit and she reduces the number of points scored on her and the risk of KO while she can save energy and be ready to strike back.

It’s more important to win 1-nil than 10-9: in the latter case you scored 10 points but 9 were scored on you.  Keeping a good guard will ensure to minimise the number of times your opponent scores on you.

Posted under educational, theory

While a book cannot teach you a martial art it can explain concepts that sometimes could be lost or not necessarily explained in lessons.  Putting in writing certain concepts will force the author to think them through and be very specific about them: this is a typical example.

Why Wing Chun Works

If you move across styles and train various styles of Kickboxing, Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Tang So Do and Kung fu you will realize that, more or less, kicks are kicks, punches are punches and stances are stances.  More emphasis here or there but you can see a common line of evolution and many commonalities.  When you talk Wing Chun you hear concepts like sensitivity, touch reflexes and central line and that can be a bit disorientating.  That’s why when I found this book and read the introduction in a local book shop I bought it and read it in a short time.

The book

Why Wing Chun Works had a great influence on my martial art experience and I like to go back to it and read a few paragraphs every so often.  I was so intrigued by the reading it that at the end I decided to send an Email to the author, Alan Gibson, and invite him over for a seminar that I organized.  That was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration and friendship.  This book was entirely written by Alan and based on his personal experience and discovery of this art of which he is a prominent representative in the UK and internationally.  This was the first experience of Alan Gibson writer: he wrote and produced himself this first edition in 1998: it is spiral-bound and with hand made drawings.  The book had several editions after this one and recently Alan released “Beginning Wing Chun” that is an improved version with some extra material.

Description

The basic style described here describes the Ip Chun lineage and it is based around the principles of pivoting around the central line.  Wing Chun is not about learning systematically and rehearsing situations like: if this happens do this, if that happens do that and so on. It’s about absorbing, at subconscious level, subtle movements that allow to react, attack and defend in a continuous action.  All “techniques” are described as “concepts”: each concept applies to various situations.  The book also describes how Wing Chun principles such as straight line attack and economy or motion can be applied to problem solving and other aspect of life, not necessarily related to martial arts or to fighting.

What I like of this book

If you are a total beginner of Wing Chun or you don’t know what it is this is a great guide to discover the art and its many principles.  If you are already practicing it can be a great help to understand the various concepts at a deeper level, having time to think about them while away from your usual practicing venue.

Conclusions

Why Wing Chun Works should be in every martial artist’s library: no matter whether you are a Wing Chun practitioner, a curious or simply passionate about martial arts. Don’t expect to learn Wing Chun by reading it but you can definitely improve your thinking around various techniques and, ultimately, refine them.

If you would like to buy this book, or other interesting ones, please have a look at our book store that contain a little collection of the books I read so far.

Posted under book_review

I have recently been commenting a post titled: Are You Smart Enough to Fight a Monkey? I found very interesting the different points of view of various people that contributed with their comments (23 at the time of writing).

I would be interested in other people’s opinion about this topic.

Posted under blogging, self defence, theory

Posted under self defence, theory

I have just read this great post on Ikigaiway and started writing a comment: when it became too long I though it was a good idea to write my own post.

Most striking martial arts, being them bare handed like Karate, Wing Chun or Tae Kwon Do or weapon based like Iai Jitsu, Iai Do and Kobudo, use forms (Kata in Japanese) as a way or classifying various groups of techniques.  Forms are usually increasingly difficult and they can be part of grading.

Forms, in any martial art, is meant to be a way of collecting a number of techniques, arranged in logical sequences, with to 4 main purposes in mind:

1. solo practice, to allow the practitioner to keep training without an opponent;
2. having a kind of comparable scale among different practitioner at similar level;
3. practicing and rehearsing logical sequences of techniques that eventually should be applied to real right
4. collecting techniques that otherwise might be lost in teaching over various generations of students: let’s not forget that until a few decades ago video recording or filming was not as practical and affordable as it is today and a book has lots of limitation is showing dynamic 3D actions.

In the first video shown in Ikigaiway post the young lady moves a lot, she is very acrobatic but most of what she does is not useful, if not dangerous,  in a fight.  The second video is more realistic: question here is: “if you push somebody away with a powerful yoko geri (side kick) what it the probability that his face will be there to be hit with an elbow?”

I am convinced that a form is (supposed to be) a fight against imaginary opponents that the practitioner attacks or defends against.  Somebody practicing a form should always ask herself:

• “what is this (particular technique) for?”
• “would it really work?”
• “what about if a real opponent appeared now in that position?”

If the answer to any of these question doesn’t make too much sense than what you are practicing is not a practical form and, while it can help working out fitness, balance and flexibility, it will not ultimately help your fighting skills.

Posted under styles, theory