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.