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Understanding Disarms
By Bobbe - Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:40:34 GMT
Originally Posted at: FMATalk
====================
Quote:
You know those cool "vines", "snakes", "strips" and other cool disarms that are so fun to practice? Do you really think you can make them work on somebody who really wants to hurt you? ...somebody who has at least half an idea how to use a weapon? ...somebody who isn't playing your game?
There’s a global shipping company that specializes in helping transport the mythos of this topic. And every employee is a millionaire.
Disarms: They obviously exist. We can write that one off.
They can occur in actual combat, proven fact, so lay that doubt to rest.
Anything else is (and I mean this in the utmost respect) a coin toss. And blind luck plays just a small part of that, que no? There is no such thing as a “predictable” disarm, nothing is engraved in stone.
Disarms are a combination of ability coupled with luck, plain and simple. They are a peripheral skill, but you must train them to a high degree to recognize when one is available to you. Having said that, the training is always worth it. In fact, it is integral to your overall abilities in FMA, because even if you choose NOT to use the disarm, you will miss the window of opportunity because you didn’t know to look for it in the first place. You won’t recognize when you or your opponent are caught in a compromised position, and open for a disarm. Your ability to disarm can be as choppy and unrealistic or as smooth and fluid as you want it to be, depending on how much you train for it.
A practitioner who specializes in disarms actually has a FEW specialties he isn’t telling you about. First, he is a master of closing the gap. He knows he won’t get a disarm off without the distance-critical positioning to do so.
Second, he is a master of timing. He can see when an opening is probably going to occur, and decide if it is worth the gamble or not.
Last and most important, he is a master of sensitivity. Because any high level Eskrimador can tell you that you don’t disarm by sight. You disarm by TOUCH. It’s that tactile ability that beats the eyes hands-down, because the eyes can be fooled. If you train your hands to be smart then they will feed you true information when your eyes cannot. In this respect you have two sources of input during a fight as opposed to seeing only. Also, your attention is scattered when you have to LOOK at everything happening in the window of combat, and the action happens too fast to reach out and grab a stick.
Some here have mentioned that disarms are either incidental or accidental. This is wisdom on a plate. If you keep that piece of advice in front of you in all aspects of your training then you will never be confused.
Disarms require a certain specialized set of circumstances to occur: Proximity, opponent’s balance, timing, position of body and weapon hands, grip, etc. These have to come together at once for the disarm to occur, and they usually only happen within a split second. Now, you can arrange the elements of disarming to be available to you for the chance that your opponent makes a mistake, but this should be approached like salt: You use it lightly over the a broad area, not dump a mound of it on one side of the plate. That is to say, you can’t favor a technique, that’s not what fluidity is. To specialize in an area is to rely heavily on it, to place importance on it when it isn’t the answer to everything, and that opens the door to trying to force the fit into every combat situation. If you have “a favorite disarm” or only one way of doing things then you will be tempted to use that method for EVERYTHING. You will invariably try to use it when it is least needed or applicable. This is always a mistake, even if the disarm works. Some disarms only bring the opponent even CLOSER to you, within striking range. This spells disaster when you are still caught in the momentum of the strip, with no ability to recover fast enough.
The vine in particular has a certain amount of torque needed to pull it off, and one of my favorite counters for it is to simply abandon ship. I let go of the stick and charge forward, firing off a volley of punches into my opponent’s face while he’s still turning back into me from the amount of for. I usually get too close for them to mount a good defense with two sticks in their hands, and always force them to retreat while leaning backwards. If you train to realistically access exactly what a disarm achieves and when it’s the right answer for a situation then you will not voluntarily put yourself into a compromised position in order to try for a slim chance at a disarm when simply striking the target was the clear solution.
Experience creates reality in combat, and sometimes it's a false perspective. A person who successfully achieves a complicated 9-move disarm on an unskilled opponent can create a reality where the unrealistic disarm is perfectly validated. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea of realism in training: What are you accepting as a realistic scenario in your mind? If you are getting good results from a compliant, unskilled beginner in Eskrima, that’s no standard of measurement. How well do you do against a master? Can you maintain that level of skill? If not, what will you have to change in order to GET that good?
This is an old lesson, but so few grasp it today so it bears repeating:
Not EVERYTHING will work on EVERYBODY EVERYTIME.
Just because you couldn’t pull off a disarm doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work for YOU right NOW. There are a hundred reasons why this is, and understanding any one of them might make the technique come together for you.
Subsequently, just because you can make something work consistently doesn’t mean that everybody can do the same, and you shouldn’t expect it of them. Master Chris Petrilli can pull off disarms that I will never in my life even attempt due to his size and pain threshold. Look at his picture and you’ll see what I mean, the man has arms like a damn tree trunk. So my disarms and tactics will be different than his.
Lots of people teach disarms without simultaneously teaching the tactics and tricks it would take to catch the opponent in that position in the first place. This gives rise to the mythos that disarms can occur so effortlessly because so-and-so did it in a seminar. Again, this is unrealistic and teaches a false logic. A disarm is never your FIRST choice in a fight, it’s part of the whole package.
Also, there are some things that are, in my opinion, just ridiculous to try to disarm. There are some situations that disarming plays no part of and you shouldn’t try to force the fit. Somewhere on this forum I read about trying to disarm two Ginuntings. To me that’s just bad strategy, and a skilled player knows the defense for such anyway. As I said earlier, the disarm is never the FIRST choice, and it’s not planned, although it’s part of the plan. If you wade into combat going for a disarm then someone has horribly failed you in your training. A good Eskrimador knows his weapon, and the uses of it. You won’t get that close to a guy with a Sundang.
Look at disarms like beartraps: You can’t lay them everywhere, but for that little patch in the clearing there is one area that is dangerous if your opponents steps into it. If he does, great! You’ve got your opening.
If he doesn’t, your efforts weren’t in vain. You just have to do something else. The beartrap is still there.
Read More...
------------------------------------
FMATalk.com Post Bot - FMA Feed
By Bobbe - Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:40:34 GMT
Originally Posted at: FMATalk
====================
Quote:
You know those cool "vines", "snakes", "strips" and other cool disarms that are so fun to practice? Do you really think you can make them work on somebody who really wants to hurt you? ...somebody who has at least half an idea how to use a weapon? ...somebody who isn't playing your game?
There’s a global shipping company that specializes in helping transport the mythos of this topic. And every employee is a millionaire.
Disarms: They obviously exist. We can write that one off.
They can occur in actual combat, proven fact, so lay that doubt to rest.
Anything else is (and I mean this in the utmost respect) a coin toss. And blind luck plays just a small part of that, que no? There is no such thing as a “predictable” disarm, nothing is engraved in stone.
Disarms are a combination of ability coupled with luck, plain and simple. They are a peripheral skill, but you must train them to a high degree to recognize when one is available to you. Having said that, the training is always worth it. In fact, it is integral to your overall abilities in FMA, because even if you choose NOT to use the disarm, you will miss the window of opportunity because you didn’t know to look for it in the first place. You won’t recognize when you or your opponent are caught in a compromised position, and open for a disarm. Your ability to disarm can be as choppy and unrealistic or as smooth and fluid as you want it to be, depending on how much you train for it.
A practitioner who specializes in disarms actually has a FEW specialties he isn’t telling you about. First, he is a master of closing the gap. He knows he won’t get a disarm off without the distance-critical positioning to do so.
Second, he is a master of timing. He can see when an opening is probably going to occur, and decide if it is worth the gamble or not.
Last and most important, he is a master of sensitivity. Because any high level Eskrimador can tell you that you don’t disarm by sight. You disarm by TOUCH. It’s that tactile ability that beats the eyes hands-down, because the eyes can be fooled. If you train your hands to be smart then they will feed you true information when your eyes cannot. In this respect you have two sources of input during a fight as opposed to seeing only. Also, your attention is scattered when you have to LOOK at everything happening in the window of combat, and the action happens too fast to reach out and grab a stick.
Some here have mentioned that disarms are either incidental or accidental. This is wisdom on a plate. If you keep that piece of advice in front of you in all aspects of your training then you will never be confused.
Disarms require a certain specialized set of circumstances to occur: Proximity, opponent’s balance, timing, position of body and weapon hands, grip, etc. These have to come together at once for the disarm to occur, and they usually only happen within a split second. Now, you can arrange the elements of disarming to be available to you for the chance that your opponent makes a mistake, but this should be approached like salt: You use it lightly over the a broad area, not dump a mound of it on one side of the plate. That is to say, you can’t favor a technique, that’s not what fluidity is. To specialize in an area is to rely heavily on it, to place importance on it when it isn’t the answer to everything, and that opens the door to trying to force the fit into every combat situation. If you have “a favorite disarm” or only one way of doing things then you will be tempted to use that method for EVERYTHING. You will invariably try to use it when it is least needed or applicable. This is always a mistake, even if the disarm works. Some disarms only bring the opponent even CLOSER to you, within striking range. This spells disaster when you are still caught in the momentum of the strip, with no ability to recover fast enough.
The vine in particular has a certain amount of torque needed to pull it off, and one of my favorite counters for it is to simply abandon ship. I let go of the stick and charge forward, firing off a volley of punches into my opponent’s face while he’s still turning back into me from the amount of for. I usually get too close for them to mount a good defense with two sticks in their hands, and always force them to retreat while leaning backwards. If you train to realistically access exactly what a disarm achieves and when it’s the right answer for a situation then you will not voluntarily put yourself into a compromised position in order to try for a slim chance at a disarm when simply striking the target was the clear solution.
Experience creates reality in combat, and sometimes it's a false perspective. A person who successfully achieves a complicated 9-move disarm on an unskilled opponent can create a reality where the unrealistic disarm is perfectly validated. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea of realism in training: What are you accepting as a realistic scenario in your mind? If you are getting good results from a compliant, unskilled beginner in Eskrima, that’s no standard of measurement. How well do you do against a master? Can you maintain that level of skill? If not, what will you have to change in order to GET that good?
This is an old lesson, but so few grasp it today so it bears repeating:
Not EVERYTHING will work on EVERYBODY EVERYTIME.
Just because you couldn’t pull off a disarm doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work for YOU right NOW. There are a hundred reasons why this is, and understanding any one of them might make the technique come together for you.
Subsequently, just because you can make something work consistently doesn’t mean that everybody can do the same, and you shouldn’t expect it of them. Master Chris Petrilli can pull off disarms that I will never in my life even attempt due to his size and pain threshold. Look at his picture and you’ll see what I mean, the man has arms like a damn tree trunk. So my disarms and tactics will be different than his.
Lots of people teach disarms without simultaneously teaching the tactics and tricks it would take to catch the opponent in that position in the first place. This gives rise to the mythos that disarms can occur so effortlessly because so-and-so did it in a seminar. Again, this is unrealistic and teaches a false logic. A disarm is never your FIRST choice in a fight, it’s part of the whole package.
Also, there are some things that are, in my opinion, just ridiculous to try to disarm. There are some situations that disarming plays no part of and you shouldn’t try to force the fit. Somewhere on this forum I read about trying to disarm two Ginuntings. To me that’s just bad strategy, and a skilled player knows the defense for such anyway. As I said earlier, the disarm is never the FIRST choice, and it’s not planned, although it’s part of the plan. If you wade into combat going for a disarm then someone has horribly failed you in your training. A good Eskrimador knows his weapon, and the uses of it. You won’t get that close to a guy with a Sundang.
Look at disarms like beartraps: You can’t lay them everywhere, but for that little patch in the clearing there is one area that is dangerous if your opponents steps into it. If he does, great! You’ve got your opening.
If he doesn’t, your efforts weren’t in vain. You just have to do something else. The beartrap is still there.
Read More...
------------------------------------
FMATalk.com Post Bot - FMA Feed
