My take is that most of the techniques I’ve learned so far don’t work well if the opponent also knows the technique. After a couple of lessons I could subvert most attempts at locking me with just holding my structure. It’s fun, and extremely useful knowledge. If people try to use strength rather than angles, the potential for injury is quite high. I think of it as a useful adjunct to my normal training, just some additional options if, as you say, an opportunity presents itself.
I can definitely see why many would find this to be the case.
But that's usually because of their approach to Qinna. For example, if someone's plan is to grab someone's wrist, many simple-minded folks will just directly reach out their hand and grab the opponent's wrist.
The opponent will then think: "Oh! He wants my wrist! I won't let him!" So, they tense up and resist, making Qinna either infeasible or too sluggish.
And then people think that Qinna doesn't work because their training partner sees it coming, is familiar with the technique, and has developed the habit of nullifying it since it has been done to them so many times.
But there's a more advanced approach. It's a more clever approach. That approach is something like this:
If I want to control someone's wrist, I may target the elbow first.
If I want to control the elbow, I may target the wrist first.
If I want to control the shoulder, I may target the elbow first.
If I want to control your torso, I may target your shoulder first.
Unlike the simpleminded approach that directly targets the joint you had in mind, this approach is far more clever and tricky because you are targeting the neighboring joint as a setup for the actual joint you want to target. You are also messing with the opponent's psychology.
If someone has a guard up protecting their face and I apply pressure against their wrist, the opponent's natural reaction might be to resist me. By resisting me with his wrist, his elbow is vulnerable. If I push against his elbow, he will resist me at that point. But then his wrist may be left ignored. Humans are terrible at focusing on multiple things at the same time, and there's a physiological aspect at play where tensing one area seemingly causes another area to be vulnerable - both physically and mentally.
Humans are incapable of resisting in every single direction simultaneously. It's very hard to resist left and right at the same time, and should they choose to stiffen up completely, either some other area of their body is left unattended or they are ill-prepared for getting hit.
Because the joint I target may not be the actual joint I want, it's much harder for the opponent to know what I'm planning to do because I am messing with their head and toying with their intention.
In my experience, through this approach, Qinna has a much higher success rate even though the training partner is already familiar with the techniques. There is a tricky strategy at play where you are both controlling where their mental attention is allocated and where they are resisting you. You trick them into resisting how you want them to resist. And if they choose to not resist, your job is even easier.
