Hi All,
I was on a pretty well know martial arts sight the other day.
And the discussion of learning techniques came up. One person was saying
he had a hard time doing his techniques because the other person was
getting too close and jamming him up. I chimed in and told him he had to keep himself at a safe distance from his opponent so he would have time to do his technique. He did not know what I was talking about. I went on to explain in order to do your technique you should try and keep your opponent at adistance of about the length of the opponents leg plus afew inches. When your opponent decides to throw a punch or kick or any other forward movement, he has to take a step to do so. This gives you time to react to whatever he does. Pretty simple right ? He still wasn't comprehending. He had been taught to always move forward. That's basically right except you have to move at the right time! That's why boxers circle an move in and out , to keep themselves from getting hit and close distance to punch. In Kung Fu San Soo we close the distance on our opponent when he moves toward us to disturb his timing and put us in amore advantages position to strike. So we keep asafe distance until he moves, then we move on an angle or other ways to do our technique. That's for another blog entry. So try and use distance to you advantage. If you would like more info. on using movement to your advantage check out my book: the Use of Lines, Angles and Circles in Hand to Hand Combat. HERE
Hope you find this interesting.
Peace ,
Master Jerry Garcia
Kung fu San Soo
