Fedor’s Combat Sambo Casting Punch

Explanation of Fedor’s looping punches:

 

push/pull with no grips

I’ve been playing around a bit with push/pull with no grips in judo as a crossover from push hands and it seems to help quite a bit. Some taiji folks in push hands look down on gripping as if it’s some crude thing but minus the attitude problem it’s very practical as a means to develop antennae type “sensitivity” in every other part of the body besides the hands. If you can develop a “stickiness” so that, say, your forearm blends and leads your opponent just a little bit, it’s harder for your opponent to detect. This method seems to be helping me in gripfighting because I can try to “enter” in a smoother, more undetected way through a smaller, shorter-period opening. That element of surprise and deception is key. It can also make you seem faster. This requires “tinjin”. If you can do this tinjin, and stickiness, you can try to “follow”, then turn that into “blending” then “leading” (in as real-time and short a period as possible) … then hopefully that turns into kuzushi to get back to the judo terms and the throw. Ideally people would practice push hands or similar drills this way and not just to an off-balance point but after they have practiced fully, they could sometimes just go to the kuzushi/uchikomi point. That seems much more effective. Then it’s clear why one might do a “pattern” like roll back to push. After a while you want to do an almost imperceptible rollback and immediate push so that if a bit of leading (pulling) doesn’t work, immediately shift to pushing. I can see this possibility clearly now and can do it slightly. Just a matter of 10,000 more hours of practice time.

 

Ankle weights to find hip joint

Read this tip on RSF – to put some light ankle weights on to make sure you rotate your entire leg from the hip joint. I am having some trouble doing that on one side and sure enough, doing this carefully seems to help. In other news, I also got a better heart rate monitor recently from my brother so doing a little cardio is more likely to happen since it’s a little more interesting now. I can see my average and max HR and probably some other stats once I’ve figured them out.

 

Tendon loaded more eccentrically

A simple, inexpensive fix for tennis elbow – tendon can be more loaded eccentrically (negatives) rather than concentrically. Wonder if I can adapt this technique. Will be trying it.

 

pilates bridge and bjj triangle

Tried a pilates class today.  At first, it was only ok. Most of it wasn’t too new. Breathing? Check. Neutral pelvis and spine? Check. No problem. Most of the students had trouble with just those two areas so it’s understandable they’d cover them for an entire class. However I was starting to wonder if I’d actually learn anything on day 1.  The last thing we did got interesting. It was sort of a glute bridge but the instructor said not to use the glutes at all. After a while, I could sort of get it with my left glute. Right glute? Stuck! It couldn’t relax at all.  Later, I went to jiu jitsu class and had trouble bridging up for a triangle, so getting this awareness of which muscles are involved is surely going to help. I’m pretty sure a lot of my trouble on the ground is due to poor hip mobility. Right now I just want to get rid of the tightness in my right hip and glute. I need to be able to do this movement with only one foot as post. Maybe the class will get more interesting.

 

capoeira kungfu parkour and soccer

Promotional vid for FIFA Street 3 – link shows the making of bits and the in-game results

 

Creating a circuit

Lately I am playing around with sinking/rising in push hands and basic form work. I’ve tried changing it primarily to a horizontal circle in order to oversimplify it. It’s sort of like creating a circuit. If force comes in on one side, some of it can be borrowed, sunk, and channeled in a circuit to come out somewhere else, back to the other person. It’s a different feeling from “if pushed, pull” or a circle throw, more as if a wave passes through the body in a circle, really, spirals.

As if standing in wuji then the taiji diagram happens in the body. Also as if one just gets out of one’s own way and it just happens – sort of doing without doing. Less like exerting to punch a bag or kick a ball. More like riding a skateboard or sailboard and just reacting and letting forces transmit to the right location automatically, but a push, strike, throw movement might come out of that. Of course it’s muscle but no muscling. Actually and seemingly paradoxically it makes things seem easier. Getting the hang of it, mentally, it’s easier as well. At a stuck point, there is usually mental double weighting, not just physical double weighting.

I am also trying to get a vertical circuit going, probably similar to what wujimon talks about here in a review of a Chen Zhonghua workshop . Ideally I want these circuits and spirals to happen at the same time automatically, like a gyroscope so the other person can’t listen to force easily and may be more easily off-balanced (“I know you but you don’t know me”).

In form work, this gets more subtle and it’s possible to focus on energy creating the movement, and that is cool in and of itself, but this is more difficult intent work, and the feeling is hard to merge back into even simple push hands. I think working on this internal/external connection is the key to real improvement, though, at least for push hands and simple moves. Adding it to complicated movements seems ridiculously difficult. That may be yet another reason to keep things simple. Focus only on the root taiji idea, not 8 trigrams or 64 hexagrams or 100+ postures, etc.

 

Counter intuitive posture improvement

I was reading about this on RSF and it wouldn’t have made sense to me before, but it certainly does now. Notice the great posture of the ladies in this photo and how relaxed they seem despite supporting heavy weight:

Holding an object like that on the head leaves no choice but to stand up straight with nice relaxed posture. Any deviation such as slouching or leaning will make things difficult. I tried it with just a light book and sure enough, instantly I made a few helpful, automatic, small adjustments. I removed the book and the feeling was still there so that I only have to use “intent” to have the right feeling of a string pulling the head up gently.

 

Sinking energy gives rising energy

BK Frantzis mentions that sinking energy will produce rising energy but not necessarily the other way around. Never heard that as far as I know. Tried it out. Felt like a physical rebound and an energetic rebound. Not quite simultaneous rooting and expanding. More of a change from one to the other. Conjures up the taiji diagram. Borrowing force and spiraling yang down to yin and back up to yang. Pretty much it.

 

The Machida Era is Here

Wow. Not sure what to say. Lyoto Machida made another top mma fighter look like a complete amateur. It felt like watching a great all around athlete who’s dabbled in wrestling and boxing vs. a true martial arts master.

Lots of extraneous movements from Rashad. Hopping. Shoulders dipping. Solid stance and no wasted motion from Machida. Blank facial expression just like Fedor. Then suddenly a kick. Right back to impenetrable karate stance. Stillness in motion. Another kick. Some punches from Machida land at will. Back to stance. Rashad tries some swings which look good but fall into thin air as Machida is suddenly not there again. Machida almost gnp’s for the win at the end of round one. Round two, more of the same. Finally, a straight left rocks Rashad, right after Rogan is talking about how karate is supposed to a “one punch ends the fight / is the killing blow” kind of traditional art, and the other guy says if Machida win, people will start signing up for karate again. Machida pounds him out to get the KO. No question fight of the night and most entertaining from Machida so far.

They said Rashad is always underestimated but just like in the Thiago Silva match, we couldn’t see his skills on display whatsoever. The Dragon is just too elusive and too masterful.

Way better match than anyone could have anticipated. I think there’s no one left who would deem Machida “boring”. To his credit, Rashad was gracious in defeat, saying he’s finally on the other side and so he has to smile and take it like he gives it out and keep looking forward. He said Machida was very crisp and he just wasn’t tonight.

Rogan: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Machida era is here.” Machida is the new UFC light heavyweight champion. Machida thanks everyone and yells “Karate is BACK!”.

Probably temporarily avail rd 1:

rd 2:

A few stories:
LA Times has a nice photo of the end
Bloody Elbow good description
Yahoo writeup
Newsday story
Post Fight Interview