Learning the attacks - Step two

Now, placing the students in pairs, instruct one to use his staff as a target in order for his partner to practice the strikes.

This is done the following way:

- The person holding the staff as a target holds it by placing one hand in each extremity;
- Then, the staff is placed in 7 different positions as shown bellow (repeat positions 2, 3 and 4 on the opposite side);

- The person striking should start by extending his arms and letting the hands almost join and, using this stance, position him or herself at a distance from the target that has him / her reaching the target with the forward extremity of the weapon (sensibly one palm). This means that the distance shouldn't be measured by the waiting guard stance, or else the distance will be too close (and the strike will either be finished with the elbows flexed or striking the target with the middle of the staff);

- Then, the person striking should be instructed to target the middle of the partner's staff and with a perpendicular strike (in relation to the target), thus striking with a vertical descending (rebate), horizontal (redondo), oblique descending (enviesado) or oblique ascending (arrepiado) for each of the drawings placed above.

This strategy will create a context that, according to the target's position, a specific type of strike is solicited, thus inducing one to initiate the strike's rotation to the opposite side of the target and, simultaneously, placing the forward extremity with the desired angle.
Therefore, this will allow practitioners to execute the strikes while understating their application and having the strikes flow in a natural way (which will increase combat effectiveness).

Don't be a robot executing biomechanical actions

(acting by thinking of your body's and the staff's positioning).

Be an actor.

A person in a specific context, going through emotions that produce goals.

Focus on the outer environment (the opponent), thinking of tasks / goals

and letting the body act, almost by instinct.

Finally, by placing yourself in the correct striking distance at the beginning of the drill, perform it without stepping actions. Use this training step to focus on the strikes while getting familiarized with the striking distance (bigger than the waiting guard stance) in a static situation. In the next step you'll be introduced to the stepping actions.

LFP

PS - When applying the same drill for the baton, I recommend that the target be a staff for safety reasons. In a future blog we'll also cover some differences between the staff's strikes and the baton's.

Learning the attacks - Step one

In learning the strikes I recommend that one starts by holding the staff with the hands together (not overlapped and with the dominant at the back and in the thinner extremity) and place them (and the staff) above the head (with the staff pointing directly upwards).

From this position, they should let the staff drop forward and downward on one side (the non dominant side first) and, after a few repetitions, on the other side. This will promote a circular motion by the staff in which it travels downwards in the second half of the circle, when going forward (a descending strike).

After practicing this drill on both sides, repeat the beginning position, but this time let the staff drop backwards. This will produce a circular motion that sends the staff upwards as it goes forward (an ascending strike).

Note that in these two first drills the arms are kept flexed at all times (meaning that they don't extend forward in the second half of the circle made by the staff), as they are just drills to get the fell of how to execute rotational actions with the staff and not actual strikes.

LFP

Desciption of the rotational attacks

To learn the rotational attacks on the dominant side*, one can start by learning how to position the staff for each attack.

*we'll use images simulating a right handed executor. However, for left handed people the principles are the same but on the opposite side. Starting from a waiting guard position with the staff on the dominant side, pointing forward at the waist's height and with the hands at shoulder distance, the strikes are initiated by lifting the arms and letting the forward hand approach the dominant hand slightly (leaving a distance of one to two fists between them).

At the same time, the staff should be positioned in a manner that allows for the execution of the rotational attack one desires (vertical descending - rebate, horizontal - redondo, diagonal descending - enviesado, diagonal ascending - arrepiado).

This means that for the oblique ascending (arrepiado) the hands are risen near the jaw with the staff pointing upwards and inward (like a roof of a house).

For the horizontal (redondo) the hands are risen just above the head with the staff parallel to the ground.

For the vertical descending (rebate), the forward extremity of the staff is dropped (almost pointing towards the ground) at the same time that the hands rise just above the head.

Finally, for the oblique descending strikes, the previous two strikes are conjugated, having the staff pointing just a bit downward (with the forward extremity at shoulder height).

From these positions, the front hand should put the staff in rotational motion, by giving it a slight pull (and relax afterwards as the staff rotates using the dominant hand, which is placed at the back, as the center of the rotation).

The same principles (limbs and weapon positioning are applied for the strikes on the non dominant side.

On the next article we'll cover strategies for developing these actions together with space management skills.

LFP