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LFP

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

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.

1 comment:

OLX Portugal said...

Bom dia,

Existe algum endereço de email para onde lhe possa enviar uma proposta de parceria?

Sei que o blog não é actualizado há muito tempo mas mesmo assim gostaria de lhe enviar essa proposta.

O meu email é o wmktpt@gmail.com

Cumprimentos,

João

Luis Franco Preto

  • A) University degree in Sport Sciences
  • B) Certified Fitness Trainer by International Sport Sciences Association
  • C) Certified Youth Fitness Trainer by ISSA
  • D) Certified Endurance Fitness Trainer by ISSA
  • E) Author of "Jogo do Pau: The Ancient Art and Modern Science of Portuguese Stick Fighting" by Chivalry Bookshelf
  • F) Certified Tennis Coach by the Portuguese Tennis Federation
  • G) Certified Basketball Coach by the Portuguese Basketball Federation
  • H) JdP Instructor at seminars in Bremen, Lisbon & Geneve 2003
  • I) JdP Instructor at seminar in Geneve 2004
  • J) JdP Instructor at seminar in Zurich - 2005
  • K) JdP Instructor at 7th Annual WMA Workshop (2006)
  • L) JdP Instrutor at HEMAC - Dijon 2008