Saturday, February 5, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
On The Need To Be Ambidextrous
© COPYRIGHT 2010 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sword and Pen – December 2010 Issue
[Reprinted With Permission]
www.americancombato.com
www.seattlecombatives.com
WE have said it many times before, and it is a truth that bears repeating frequently: Any form of competitive match “fighting” or sporting contests actually train you to do the wrong things, as far as self-defense and close combat is concerned. There is nothing wrong with sporting competition per se, but you are making a huge mistake if your interest is in personal combat and defense skills, and you believe that you can attain your objectives by becoming a competition fighter.
Remember Bruce Lee? Remember the Bruce Lee fad? One of the notable things
about Lee’s teaching is an excellent representative example of precisely how
misleading it really is to confuse that which prepares a man to spar and to compete, versus that which prepares a man to engage an enemy or an adversary in close combat.
Bruce Lee introduced the idea of the STRONG SIDE LEAD in a fighting stance. Unlike the boxer’s weak hand lead, Lee advanced the idea that leading with your strong side made the most sense in serious self-defense (as Lee erroneously imagined “serious self-defense” to be). The truth is, of course, that the practice of consciously leading with either hand or side makes sense only when referring to competition and to sport. Otherwise, for personal combat in self-defense, the idea is nonsense.
If the speediest and most natural position from which to face an approaching
stranger is your left side, then a left side “lead” position makes sense. If the speediest and most natural position from which to face an approaching stranger is your right side, then a right side “lead” makes sense. And here, of course, when we refer to a “lead” we mean in that which we call a RELAXED-READY STANCE — i.e. off-angled, facing the individual at a 45-degree angle — we most certainly do not mean any sort of formal and obvious “fighting stance” per se.
YOU CAN CANCEL A SPARRING MATCH OR CONTEST IF THIS HAPPENS, BUT
YOU JUST MIGHT BECOME A MORE LIKELY TARGET FOR ATTACK! IN A
SITUATION WHERE ONE ARM IS IMMOBILIZED, YOU MUST BE ABLE TO USE
YOUR OTHER ARM T MAXIMUM EFFECT IN AN EMERGENCY!
Being steeped in the absurdity of “competition-as-preparation-for-combat” it is certain that many will not comprehend in the slightest the idea that a fighting stance per se is not needed for self-defense. This is because only two possibilities exist as far as self-defense is concerned:
1. You will be aware of the troublemaker’s
approach, or
2. You will not be aware of his approach.
If you are aware of the approach of ANY STRANGER you will (if properly trained) assume a relaxed-ready stance. You will be off-angled, distanced just outside of arms’ reach - where you will stay - and your eyes will remain on the stranger’s face, as your own hands rest unobtrusively at your own sternum level. Whether your left or right side “leads” will of course depend upon which side most expediently faces the stranger at his approach. Now, you are ready. You will maintain your relaxed-ready position, and you will keep yourself properly distanced until or unless this stranger initiates aggression. If he does, you will ATTACK, and you will keep on attacking until he is no longer a threat. No assumption of any other “stance” is required. In relaxed-ready you are in as excellent a “fighting stance” (and you telegraph NOTHING) as you would be in if
you were in the most exotic “martial arts pose” imaginable.
If you are not aware of the approach of anyone who attacks you, then he will get his initial action in against you, at the very least (assuming that he does not kill, cripple, or knock you out). While such a predicament is not always or necessarily hopeless, it isn’t good. You will be able to cope with such a situation if — and only if — the attacker’s action fails to neutralize you and if you are capable of generating an effective counterattack. But you will certainly not attempt to assume a “fighting stance” after an attack against you is launched, and you have been seized, struck, or rushed.
Is it really that simple? Yes.
There is NO correlation between close combat and self-defense and competition or sport. None. Nada. And one of the great myths (perhaps cons would be a better term, in some instances) is that notion that there in fact is such a correlation, and that if one wishes to be ready to defend himself or handle an enemy in hand-tohand combat then he’d better become some kind of a contest fighter.
When people face off for a contest (or for a “fight” per se, which only morons agree to) then and only then do they utilize “stances”. And only then might it make some sense to suggest that a “weak side” or a “strong side” lead is more or less desirable for the encounter.
BEING “RIGHT HANDED” OR “LEFT HANDED” AND ASSUMING A “FIGHTING
STANCE” THAT REFLECTS THAT PREFERENTIAL METHOD OF EXCHANGING
TECHNIQUES MAKES PERFECT SENSE IN BOXING, KARATE, AND IN ALL FORMS
OF PHYSICAL CONTEST AND SPORT. BUT THIS IS A MISTAKE IN PREPARING FOR
PERSONAL DEFENSE OR UNARMED CLOSE COMBAT.
But back to ambidexterity.
No hand-to-hand combat student can afford to have a weak side. Preparation for real world personal combat requires that both hands/arms/elbows/legs be equally capable of generating decisive force — and that they be equally able to render accurate and speedy actions under the stress of an emergency situation.
There is a corollary to the above: No hand-to-hand combat student can afford to have a strong side! If you do feel that you have a “strong side” then you will be influenced accordingly in how you attempt to manage a confrontation. This is an unnecessary impediment to simply attacking and destroying, and in serious self-defense and close combat you cannot afford ANY impediments.
Remember that the first awareness you might have that you are in fact under
attack is a sudden injury to, or immobilizing seizure of, your “strong” arm. Then, consider how your ability to resist and your personal confidence at the moment might be affected. But if you are ambidextrous and function with equal efficiency and strength on both sides with all four limbs you will stand a greater chance of effective retaliatory action.
You may have something in your “strong” hand at the time of an approach.
Obviously, if what is in your hand is a weapon, and if you are holding it properly so that an attack can be initiated by employing it, you will not likely be attacked or approached in the first place (except perhaps by a police officer!). If what you are holding is an object that can serve as a weapon, then you will be obliged to employ your “weak” hand to assist in what you do with that improvised weapon. If the object in your hand will not serve as a weapon, then you will throw it into the adversary’s face if you are attacked, and your followup will likely be with your “weak” hand. Should the weapon/object be in your “weak” and not in your “strong” hand, then you will want to have the ability to use that weapon/object with the same authority as you would, had it been in your “strong” hand.
You cannot afford to have this “weak” and “strong” hand dichotomy
operating in a potentially hindering way against you in any emergency! You want both hands/sides to possess the speed, strength, and capacity for accuracy, so that regardless of whether you are unarmed or armed, and no matter how you may be approached or suddenly find yourself confronting anyone, you are ready.
The attainment of ambidexterity in developing close combat and self-defense
skills is not difficult. Mainly, it is something that you must simply be aware needs doin.
Left-handed people, in our experience, tend to be much more naturally capable of using their right hands well than are right-handed people able to use their left hands. Still, except in the rarest of cases, both left and right-handed individuals need to address the matter of cultivating what we call “bad side proficiency” when they come to training in this subject.
The following suggestions should be helpful:
• Obviously, never fail to practice any technique or action on both sides when you learn them and when you train in developing them. At the very least do an equal amount of training on whichever side and for whichever limb initially tends to be weaker than the other.
• It is very often helpful, especially during the first six to twelve months of training, to devote more time and effort to whichever is your weaker side. It does not follow, by the way, that because you are right-handed you will therefore be “right-legged”, etc. Some people do initially favor, for example, their right hand and their right leg (when hand striking and when kicking), but some people do not. If you find that your right-handedness is accompanied by left-leggedness, do not feel that you are abnormal. You are quite normal, as people do tend naturally to vary in this regard.
• During your daily activities consciously make yourself use whichever hand is your “weak” hand. Carry things in your weak hand. Open doors with your weak hand. Turn on faucets with your weak hand, and turn them off with your weak hand. Lift things with your weak hand. Etcetera.
• Until you feel ambidextrous with any given action, do more repetitions of it with the side that lags behind. This will not be necessary for very long. However, it is a truly valuable way to speed up the process of ambidexterity in combative skills development.
• A most valuable training method is to allow yourself only the use of your “weak” hand and arm when drilling in counterattacking and attacking techniques. This forces you to rely upon what would normally be your weaker side, when training in skills that normally allow you the use of both hands.
• If you have access to a chinning bar, practice simply suspending your weight while holding onto the bar with your “weak” hand. This is an excellent strengthener.
• Going through a normal training class or practice session, use a light (2-1/2 or 5 pound) ankle or wrist weight on your “weak” side limb. Caution: Do not do this more than once a week.
• Aside from the attacking and counterattacking (i.e. “self-defense”) techniques that you must drill in, remember always to train both sides when working on the assumption of a relaxed-ready stance, moving in the relaxed-ready stance, and when executing the various evasive steps (“taisabaki”) of side-stepping, pivoting, turning, etc. that play a critical part in reacting to many forms of physical aggression.
We also want to mention this: Insofar as weapons — stick, fighting knife,
tomahawk, handgun, shoulder weapon — are concerned, it is surprisingly easy to develop ambidexterity. You will see this for yourself as you learn and train, and as you are introduced to the use of weaponry, in the course of your combatives development. We mention it now to round out this discussion. It is mainly with unarmed skills that the matter of developing both left and right sides equally requires serious attention and merits concern by teacher an by students.
Sword and Pen – December 2010 Issue
[Reprinted With Permission]
www.americancombato.com
www.seattlecombatives.com
WE have said it many times before, and it is a truth that bears repeating frequently: Any form of competitive match “fighting” or sporting contests actually train you to do the wrong things, as far as self-defense and close combat is concerned. There is nothing wrong with sporting competition per se, but you are making a huge mistake if your interest is in personal combat and defense skills, and you believe that you can attain your objectives by becoming a competition fighter.
Remember Bruce Lee? Remember the Bruce Lee fad? One of the notable things
about Lee’s teaching is an excellent representative example of precisely how
misleading it really is to confuse that which prepares a man to spar and to compete, versus that which prepares a man to engage an enemy or an adversary in close combat.
Bruce Lee introduced the idea of the STRONG SIDE LEAD in a fighting stance. Unlike the boxer’s weak hand lead, Lee advanced the idea that leading with your strong side made the most sense in serious self-defense (as Lee erroneously imagined “serious self-defense” to be). The truth is, of course, that the practice of consciously leading with either hand or side makes sense only when referring to competition and to sport. Otherwise, for personal combat in self-defense, the idea is nonsense.
If the speediest and most natural position from which to face an approaching
stranger is your left side, then a left side “lead” position makes sense. If the speediest and most natural position from which to face an approaching stranger is your right side, then a right side “lead” makes sense. And here, of course, when we refer to a “lead” we mean in that which we call a RELAXED-READY STANCE — i.e. off-angled, facing the individual at a 45-degree angle — we most certainly do not mean any sort of formal and obvious “fighting stance” per se.
YOU CAN CANCEL A SPARRING MATCH OR CONTEST IF THIS HAPPENS, BUT
YOU JUST MIGHT BECOME A MORE LIKELY TARGET FOR ATTACK! IN A
SITUATION WHERE ONE ARM IS IMMOBILIZED, YOU MUST BE ABLE TO USE
YOUR OTHER ARM T MAXIMUM EFFECT IN AN EMERGENCY!
Being steeped in the absurdity of “competition-as-preparation-for-combat” it is certain that many will not comprehend in the slightest the idea that a fighting stance per se is not needed for self-defense. This is because only two possibilities exist as far as self-defense is concerned:
1. You will be aware of the troublemaker’s
approach, or
2. You will not be aware of his approach.
If you are aware of the approach of ANY STRANGER you will (if properly trained) assume a relaxed-ready stance. You will be off-angled, distanced just outside of arms’ reach - where you will stay - and your eyes will remain on the stranger’s face, as your own hands rest unobtrusively at your own sternum level. Whether your left or right side “leads” will of course depend upon which side most expediently faces the stranger at his approach. Now, you are ready. You will maintain your relaxed-ready position, and you will keep yourself properly distanced until or unless this stranger initiates aggression. If he does, you will ATTACK, and you will keep on attacking until he is no longer a threat. No assumption of any other “stance” is required. In relaxed-ready you are in as excellent a “fighting stance” (and you telegraph NOTHING) as you would be in if
you were in the most exotic “martial arts pose” imaginable.
If you are not aware of the approach of anyone who attacks you, then he will get his initial action in against you, at the very least (assuming that he does not kill, cripple, or knock you out). While such a predicament is not always or necessarily hopeless, it isn’t good. You will be able to cope with such a situation if — and only if — the attacker’s action fails to neutralize you and if you are capable of generating an effective counterattack. But you will certainly not attempt to assume a “fighting stance” after an attack against you is launched, and you have been seized, struck, or rushed.
Is it really that simple? Yes.
There is NO correlation between close combat and self-defense and competition or sport. None. Nada. And one of the great myths (perhaps cons would be a better term, in some instances) is that notion that there in fact is such a correlation, and that if one wishes to be ready to defend himself or handle an enemy in hand-tohand combat then he’d better become some kind of a contest fighter.
When people face off for a contest (or for a “fight” per se, which only morons agree to) then and only then do they utilize “stances”. And only then might it make some sense to suggest that a “weak side” or a “strong side” lead is more or less desirable for the encounter.
BEING “RIGHT HANDED” OR “LEFT HANDED” AND ASSUMING A “FIGHTING
STANCE” THAT REFLECTS THAT PREFERENTIAL METHOD OF EXCHANGING
TECHNIQUES MAKES PERFECT SENSE IN BOXING, KARATE, AND IN ALL FORMS
OF PHYSICAL CONTEST AND SPORT. BUT THIS IS A MISTAKE IN PREPARING FOR
PERSONAL DEFENSE OR UNARMED CLOSE COMBAT.
But back to ambidexterity.
No hand-to-hand combat student can afford to have a weak side. Preparation for real world personal combat requires that both hands/arms/elbows/legs be equally capable of generating decisive force — and that they be equally able to render accurate and speedy actions under the stress of an emergency situation.
There is a corollary to the above: No hand-to-hand combat student can afford to have a strong side! If you do feel that you have a “strong side” then you will be influenced accordingly in how you attempt to manage a confrontation. This is an unnecessary impediment to simply attacking and destroying, and in serious self-defense and close combat you cannot afford ANY impediments.
Remember that the first awareness you might have that you are in fact under
attack is a sudden injury to, or immobilizing seizure of, your “strong” arm. Then, consider how your ability to resist and your personal confidence at the moment might be affected. But if you are ambidextrous and function with equal efficiency and strength on both sides with all four limbs you will stand a greater chance of effective retaliatory action.
You may have something in your “strong” hand at the time of an approach.
Obviously, if what is in your hand is a weapon, and if you are holding it properly so that an attack can be initiated by employing it, you will not likely be attacked or approached in the first place (except perhaps by a police officer!). If what you are holding is an object that can serve as a weapon, then you will be obliged to employ your “weak” hand to assist in what you do with that improvised weapon. If the object in your hand will not serve as a weapon, then you will throw it into the adversary’s face if you are attacked, and your followup will likely be with your “weak” hand. Should the weapon/object be in your “weak” and not in your “strong” hand, then you will want to have the ability to use that weapon/object with the same authority as you would, had it been in your “strong” hand.
You cannot afford to have this “weak” and “strong” hand dichotomy
operating in a potentially hindering way against you in any emergency! You want both hands/sides to possess the speed, strength, and capacity for accuracy, so that regardless of whether you are unarmed or armed, and no matter how you may be approached or suddenly find yourself confronting anyone, you are ready.
The attainment of ambidexterity in developing close combat and self-defense
skills is not difficult. Mainly, it is something that you must simply be aware needs doin.
Left-handed people, in our experience, tend to be much more naturally capable of using their right hands well than are right-handed people able to use their left hands. Still, except in the rarest of cases, both left and right-handed individuals need to address the matter of cultivating what we call “bad side proficiency” when they come to training in this subject.
The following suggestions should be helpful:
• Obviously, never fail to practice any technique or action on both sides when you learn them and when you train in developing them. At the very least do an equal amount of training on whichever side and for whichever limb initially tends to be weaker than the other.
• It is very often helpful, especially during the first six to twelve months of training, to devote more time and effort to whichever is your weaker side. It does not follow, by the way, that because you are right-handed you will therefore be “right-legged”, etc. Some people do initially favor, for example, their right hand and their right leg (when hand striking and when kicking), but some people do not. If you find that your right-handedness is accompanied by left-leggedness, do not feel that you are abnormal. You are quite normal, as people do tend naturally to vary in this regard.
• During your daily activities consciously make yourself use whichever hand is your “weak” hand. Carry things in your weak hand. Open doors with your weak hand. Turn on faucets with your weak hand, and turn them off with your weak hand. Lift things with your weak hand. Etcetera.
• Until you feel ambidextrous with any given action, do more repetitions of it with the side that lags behind. This will not be necessary for very long. However, it is a truly valuable way to speed up the process of ambidexterity in combative skills development.
• A most valuable training method is to allow yourself only the use of your “weak” hand and arm when drilling in counterattacking and attacking techniques. This forces you to rely upon what would normally be your weaker side, when training in skills that normally allow you the use of both hands.
• If you have access to a chinning bar, practice simply suspending your weight while holding onto the bar with your “weak” hand. This is an excellent strengthener.
• Going through a normal training class or practice session, use a light (2-1/2 or 5 pound) ankle or wrist weight on your “weak” side limb. Caution: Do not do this more than once a week.
• Aside from the attacking and counterattacking (i.e. “self-defense”) techniques that you must drill in, remember always to train both sides when working on the assumption of a relaxed-ready stance, moving in the relaxed-ready stance, and when executing the various evasive steps (“taisabaki”) of side-stepping, pivoting, turning, etc. that play a critical part in reacting to many forms of physical aggression.
We also want to mention this: Insofar as weapons — stick, fighting knife,
tomahawk, handgun, shoulder weapon — are concerned, it is surprisingly easy to develop ambidexterity. You will see this for yourself as you learn and train, and as you are introduced to the use of weaponry, in the course of your combatives development. We mention it now to round out this discussion. It is mainly with unarmed skills that the matter of developing both left and right sides equally requires serious attention and merits concern by teacher an by students.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)