Cramped in the Trees

This Thursday we did most of our work in a small grove of trees. I wanted to do some of our normal drills but add the psychological factor of being in a tight space. Fortunately almost everyone in our group showed up, so we had five bodies in addition to the trees to take up what little space was left. We began with a simple movement drill. One person uses footwork to casually avoid everyone else as they walk at him. Give the person a little strike or two if they get tangled up in the people or trees. Our group is always eager to give and take strikes--we invariably start hitting eachother towards the end of a drill if we get a little bored. I think the context of our training makes giving and receiving strikes a release--and who doesn't like a free fist massage?

From this walking drill, we advanced to avoiding strikes. Constant movement was emphasized, even if just a little bit, or possibly even if it just means breathing. As the person being attacked, focusing on one person exclusively, even briefly, resulted in taking strikes from everyone else. I forgot to bring shoes, so I had to do the work in flip flops, which required much more relaxation in the footwork to keep them on. In a real scenario I might kick them off as I was being attacked, or perhaps there wouldn't be a need to. Who really knows. At this point, the awareness had to be extended to a greater extent to the trees.

While walking and avoiding my partners using just the footwork, my vision-awareness was only moving in a single plane. Avoiding strikes in addition to using footwork requires the vision-awareness to extend beyond the single plane and into the full range of movement. Not only must the body as a whole avoid the trees, but now specific parts of the body must avoid trees while avoiding punches. I came close to slamming my head into a tree while evading a strike. Fortunately we were going slow, so I was able to yank myself out of the way inches before hitting it. At full speed I definitely would have given myself a good knock.

We finally moved into doing some work in response to the strikes. We were starting to get used to the trees by now, so they weren't much of an issue. We did begin to pick up some speed though and, perhaps intuitively, moved away from the trees. We touched on the issue of handling multiple attackers. Gene suggested I focus a little less on the attackers individually--he saw that I was starting to get hit quite a bit as a result of over focusing. What's interesting is that initially, I was moving pretty well, not focusing too much, and avoiding the strikes with what felt like a pretty good flow. But as I took a strike every now and then (an inevitability with four guys punching at you), my performance began to degrade. I became more attached to the strikes I was receiving, and consequently gave more of a conscious effort to either give them back or to try and not get struck. This resulted in a turn-based focus on each of my partners. I focused on one for a little while, then another, then another, etc. And while this focus would become more intense, I would get struck from the other people I wasn't focusing on.

So towards the end, I had to will myself a bit not to focus on any of them... which was different than how I performed when I first started the drill. When I first started, the work felt effortless. As I took more and more punches, subtle frustration ensued, and I became attached to attacking and being attacked. Fearful is a good way to describe it. As I forced myself away from this attachment, my work became less specific and a little more out of control. I resorted to using more whiplike strike movements with my arms to keep them away. So the fear was still there, but my movement was more fluid, which kept them from coming in and hitting or grabbing me. When I first started, I would let them do whatever they wanted and work with it semi-effectively. I wasn't afraid of them attacking, so they weren't afraid. I would say like lambs to the slaughter, but you might laugh once you've seen me fight. At the end, I prevented them from getting close out of my own fear. That's not to say that the way I worked at the end of the drill wouldn't be effective though. There's a time and a place for it all I suppose, even a spinning back-fist to backflip high-kick combo...maybe.

I will brag on myself a little. Ricky put me in a nice armlock from behind. So I casually took a little step to the side and planted my foot on the outside of his, then tugged a little with my torso. Apparently I only moved my torso about one or two inches with this tug, while Ricky went horizontal. This gave/gives me a chance to explain the concept of body densities. Essentially what happened, or at least what I think happened, was that Ricky was pretty tense in his upper body while locking my arms behind me. This concentrated tension in his upper body left his legs and hips fairly loose and compliant. So I took a little step to the side, not enough to catch his attention, but enough to get his legs off-base. When I tugged sharply with my torso and hips, that must have drawn attention to the fact that his legs were off-balance. So the tension shifts from his upper body to his lower body while receiving the momentum from my tug. The legs, being tense, go flying up into the air (I.e. a board on a fulcrum vs. a bag of sand on a fulcrum, the hips being the fulcrum). I'm sure there's a better way to explain this, presuming I'm even remotely on base with the concept. The basic concept is that the body, in general, will only maintain focused tension in a certain area while doing work (walking, climbing trees, knitting, anything), leaving the rest of the body loose. Often in martial arts or fighting, this gets divided into the upper body being tense while the lower body is loose or vice versa. Anyhow, I'll stop going on about it. Bragging is only an indication that I still suck. I.e. These sorts of things only happen to me at the turn of every third centry. I'll shutup about them when they happen more often. But until then! ;)