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Click “watch on facebook” and it should open this: https://www.facebook.com/londonwingchunacademy/videos/1277978942244722/
When I have a guy getting aggressive on me that close, my first instinct is to put my hands up on him like I’m feeling the range with my fingers. It’s often called a “fence”. My next instinct is to establish a distance so I have time to react. I don’t trust any block to stop an opening shot from up close, so the objective is to get out of the danger zone, and if he doesn’t let me out, I will smash him if he so much as twitches at me.
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Get a thick section of PVC pipe, maybe two inches thick. Grip it as tight as you can with both hands and start flexing your wrists in opposite directions, while gripping so hard that you can hear little “clicks”. Do this for timed rounds on the clock. I learned this in Shuai Jiao training.
It’s popular to drill a hole in a PVC pipe and put a cord and weight on it, then roll the weight up and down, but the unweighted style is still very effective and portable.You can also exercise your grip by…
-Opening and closing the hands as fast as you can.
-Doing push ups on straight fingertips.
-Wringing out a wet towel by twisting it forcefully for time.
-Doing body rows or pull ups holding the ends of the towel (it’s about as hard as rope climbing).
-Holding isometric wrist extension with claw grip.At my last job, I had to spend a lot of time loading vehicles and moving things around a store. I ended up maintaining a decent horse stance just by doing that, since I ended up lifting boxes in that position all the time to protect my back.
In general, getting in the habit of doing squats or horse stances a lot or sitting on the floor.
Whenever you go for a walk or have to warm up to lift something:
Throw a bunch of slow swinging kicks to front and side, crescent kicks, twist stances (sempok/depok/silo) from the legset, etc. Besides preventing injuries, you’ll get freakishly loose and limber.Punch/kick training:
Any random free time:
-Set a repetition goal for a movement and count up to that number of repetitions. If you want to get good at something, start with a few reps a day, build up to at least 100.
Any time in front of mirror, before washing your hands, etc:
-Spend a minute mimicking the body language and distance control that you use when someone is openly hostile to you. Throw some punches and watch every detail of your reflection. Do you flinch or grimace right before you move? Do your shoulders twitch before your hand fires out? -
The best place to keep up to date is going to be the Vimeo testing group, in my opinion, but here’s what I understand of it, just for another perspective:
Any level can have applications, including level 1. For level 1, you have the applications to every level 1 stance or drill, and for the triangle work. So for example, you might show your understanding of striking mechanics, use of the foot and body turning to get off line, use of entries, inside/outside sapu, inside/outside biset, turning throws and controlling an opponent on the ground instead of releasing him with the throw, etc. With level 3, it’s encouraged to throw in work on the Sera(k) jurus as an extracurricular thing (there was talk of making them mandatory for American style).
Passing without partner applications ranks you as a practitioner. With applications, you advance through the guru course, which is learned by students teaching each other as they go through the videos and work on the material.
If you do level 1 and 2 material together, the applications overlap and can be one segment.
Of course, all of this is also easier if you subscribe to the Vimeo page and join the KTS testing group on Vimeo. There are a bunch of non-public videos that go into more depth on the techniques, along with videos of other students plus Steve’s commentary.
You could go by this for the Malabar style: http://www.malabarkuntaosilat.com/Path.html (I’m not sure if this is up to date. I believe djurus 1-8 are no longer required for Malabar’s level 2 test.)
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“My question is, is this a matter of the individuals’ knife fighting style?”
Seems to me like it’s a mix of that and the individual’s operating environment. Some cultures have things that won’t work in others.
Think of three different eras in self defense training.
One is high middle ages. It’s popular to wear heavy coats, carry long daggers and do wrestling. Knife encounters are going to be up close, hammer and icepick grips to stab through clothing/armor, a lot of the counters will involve a grip on the blade to wrench it from the hand.
The next evolution is Renaissance or post-feudal dueling cultures, and you’d get the former tactics but also long range weapons held in different grips.
Then modern times, you might face any of the former weapon types, but also box cutters and tiny pocket knives. So you could also encounter (or use) “razor” style attacks that carve the up the guy on the receiving end instead of delivering a deep stab. You’d also need defense options that don’t rely on gripping a blade (although long stick-like weapons are still there).
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@Kuntaoer
It might help to establish a tradition of “interim” video submissions to the testing group. Videos that aren’t directly for testing to a new level, but just a show of regular practice and a way to get constructive criticism. I made such a video just to see what people thought of my triangle footwork last year, and it led me to completely change my form. -
The way I understood the videos was that hip power is built into the pivoting movements, but waist turning and whip power are present in the internal movement later in tape 1, and in the waist-turning in the first stance.
So far I’ve interpreted it that there’s turning power with the pivoting of feet, spring power from the coiled stances (djuru 1, satu and the greeting sequence. forgot what the cat-stance is called in Chang style but it has a lot of potential from my experiments), whip-power that’s done with feet in place (waist-turning included), dropping and springing up.
When I do the initial waist-turning and striking improv, I use several methods to generate power. One thing I like to do is sort of like fajin training: I throw strikes where I try and feel the power undulating up my spine, if that makes any sense.
I got into the practice because ages ago, I had seen some video clips of Rick Hernandez and our own Steve Gartin showing their striking skills. The loose and whip-like movement seemed useful so I started building the foundation with practice of the arm swings. I’d simply keep my body so limp that only my spine was holding me up and I’d use very short hip turning and spine motion to turn. When I could turn that into a nice sequence I learned to cast the same type of power into any plane of motion I cared about with a punch, palm, elbow or whatever, but I still have a ways to go to find the potential in this little pursuit. For me it comes down to feeling the “energy”. I could be using all hip, waist, springing steps, falling off a building onto a guy, and it all would work. What matters is that I put in enough kinetic energy to stop the guy without serious harm to myself. -
I’m a beginner to the Guru course, but speaking in general, what I’ve always learned with a knife is that it’s fight first, knife second. Look at some CCTV footage of knife attacks and how fast they go down. All of the unarmed combat skills become essential knife/counter-knife skills. That ability to recognize situations and act decisively, know how to move your body, know how to sense your opponent’s intent from pre-fight to full on ambush.
One of the things that turned me on to Kuntao-Silat was the Swiss army knife versatility of all movements. You do it unarmed and you do it with weapons, and it’s essentially the same movement. You just have to put in the work, persistently, often as possible, and always strive to get better.
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