Ranting and Ravings
Ranting and Ravings
Patty- Cake in the Martial ARts
Monday, July 27, 2015
I rant against stupidity and fraud. That is what I am going to do this week. If you were looking for something inspiring and positive, go elsewhere.
One of the most stupid things in regard to the martial arts you can run across on the internet is illustrated by the following video.
Since it has knives in it, you can call it, "The Weed Whacker of Death." One idiot makes a single attack and then stands there as the other idiot goes through 7 or more moves, even turning his back on the other guy. The guy who had been attacking just stands there, not moving even a little bit as supposably several slashes are made on his body.
Really, I know that I am not the only person who feels the way I do about them and want these things tossed in a rocket along with Justin Beiber and sent to another galaxy, far far away. Someone needs to take a stand and point out just how lame the morons who put these things out are.
Let us look at another video of someone doing this right.
The above video is totally different. Bob Orlando is a very skilled martial artist and excels at presenting information in a logical fashion. Just the fact that he secures the arm and does what he calls adhesion to the other guy changes everything. He hits more than once for the simple reason that the other guy has no way to fight back or escape. He hits and actually makes contact. He doesn't hit as hard as he could, but there is a bit of a reaction from the other guy, which lets things flow into the next move.
You don't see that sort of thing in the first video at the top.
This doesn't just look stupid, it trains bad habits into the students.
First of all, they are going at speed and pulling their blows in order to not hurt the other guy. So they are training to pull their blows when things hit the fan.
Hitting slowly and having the other guy act like he has been hit is much better. You hit to the groin with a slow blow and obviously not too hard then the guy reacts a bit by bending over a bit like most of us do when we are hit there. Then you blast back with an upward strike to the face as it lowers for a head on (pardon the humor) collision. Rory Miller has pointed out what should have been obvious that no one who trains slow stays slow in a real fight. We speed up when the pressure is on. So practicing slow just trains the sequence. Practicing fast with strikes that don't even touch the other guy trains people to not hit as hard as they could if they only slowed things down. Were they to actually try to hit hard while doing these sequences, the pattern would be interrupted and they would not be able to continue. Instead of smoothly transitioning from one, they would have to adjust what they were doing because the other guy is reacting and moving and they keep having to reset.
All this goes away if you merely slow things down and have the other person make like he is getting hit instead of standing stock still. If you strike to the groin in real life, and the guy doesn't react (it happens) then you stop instead of going into the strike to the head. Stopping is good in this case since that blow is no longer the most logical follow up. It also helps if you do like in Bob Orlando's video and stop the guy from being able to counter attack or get away when you hit him.
If you are in an art where you hurry through a sequence like this, get out. If you teach your students to do this sort of thing, you are an idiot. If you see this sort of thing and are as sickened about it as I am, then please speak up and point out these problems. Far too many students are being led astray by this sort of crap.
Seriously, someone has to stand up and point out just how stupid this is. I know other people feel the same way. I guess it falls on me to give voice to what we are all seeing.