I was demonstrating a move to my students today and I had a slightly difficult time executing it. The move was basically an armbar to a backwards throw, changing the opponents momentum from one direction to another. At first I thought that perhaps it was the size of my students who are larger and stronger than others I have worked with. But then again, I’ve worked with a wide range of shapes and sizes in my own training and haven’t had problems with this technique. After watching a few of my student try to execute the technique as well as some trial and error, I came to the conclusion that this had worked in the past because I wasn’t teaching it, I was practicing it. The subtle difference being that when showing the technique to students, one generally tends to be gentler and slower than when practicing the same technique. Since this technique really depended on an opponent’s reaction to the armbar and their tendency to want to go the opposite way as a reaction to it, there was a need to make the armbar slightly painful. This elicited the right reaction to make the technique flow and make it effective. At some point in the future I’ll write about the need for realism in practice through sparring and senario evaluation, but even outside of these types of training, executing a technique to a level of discomfort is not only crucial to you learning how the technique will execute in more realistic circumstances, but also make you more adept at executing the techniques. While I think it is important for students to go slowly at first with a cooperative partners, there are benefits to a slightly opposing partner and execution of technique with controlled speed and power.

One of the unfortunate aspects of learning/training is that we learn the movements of the upper body separately from the movements of the lower body. So we learn to block first then step then punch and rather than treating these as one fluid set of movements, we are drilled into executing three separate moves for three specific purposes… 1) eliminate the immediate threat, 2) close in, and 3) Counter. Until I started teaching and watching my students, I never realized that for a long time, I executed things as distinct steps with distinct purposes. While these distinct steps may work perfectly well in a real-life situation, what they tend to do is add time to the completion of the end goal, eliminating the opponent–every distinct maneuver adds a small amount of time, a split second, that gives the opponent an opportunity to think and react. When the body moves in unison, when the step is block, step and counter are happening almost simultaneously. The step is not only to get closer to the opponent but is angling the body to block while allowing the other hand to counter. The step isn’t distinct but part of the block and counter.