How to relax while striking?

[hkfuie]

Any golfers? It's kind of like taking a nice smooth practice swing. Then when you go to hit that little white bastard, you tighten up, ruin that smooth swing and shank the ****ing thing into the woods... :lol:

Exactly, Kreth! Reminds me of the saying, "Spar like nobody is there, do your forms as if someone is really there."

Reading your post reminded me of this. The struggle is to make them both exactly the same!

It's the mental/emotional/ego part of the game. Love this thread! So many great ideas!

 

[hkfuie]

it's a little goofy, but i have different visualizations that help me. if i'm boxing, i imagine my arms are snakes. snakes are so fast because they are loose & fluid. for kicking, kreth's comparison to golf is dead on, though i picture my kicks more like a baseball bat. i mean i literally imagine my leg is a giant baseball bat that i'm swing at somebody. in my grappling class one time my students made fun of me because i said "when you're pummeling, your arms should be like smoke; always looking for holes to pass through". well, it makes sense to me, damnit.

jf

Smoke?

LOL!

Makes great sense to me, too!

 

[hkfuie]

slow down... and imagine a wave of water rolling along under your skin from the shoulder or hip outwards. Make the wave motion exaggerated, it prevents you from tensing the muscles and making a nice smooth roll. As you get more comfortable with it, the wave gets smaller and smaller.
Breathing exercises help too. Consciously focusing on breathing tends to take the focus off of other muscles. Breathe in on the approach, out on the impact, or breathe in during the entire technique, then do the technique again while breathing out. play with breathing while moving and sparring/fighting.


In my experience, I have found that the more tense folks are afraid of failing, either at the technique or drill, or being a disappointment to the instructor. Whether this is subconscious or not is not for me to say. They seem to take it as a contest. By working at a greatly reduced speed and power, they are forced to take that competition out of it, and relax.

just my two pence, YMMV.

Championmarius, I value your post at more than 2 pence...maybe even up to 2 cents! LOL (dorky joke...disregard it).

I appreciate your water under the skin visualization. I am going to borrow it.

Also, I agree with what you said about the tension being about fear. Back when I was learning this, for me it was about being in control and trying to be perfect. You have given me a couple more ways to look at it.

I think this subject is a perfect example of how martial arts has been a huge impact on my life. Learning to let go of controlling every little thing, learning to trust self, learning to trust my training, learning to let things happen all these things have had a huge impact on my life, bigger than self-defense!

It's about more than punches and kicks, eh?

 

[DavidCC]

Learned an interesting drill from a Systema guy.

2 phases

phase 1 - stand in a natural stance with one partenr holding each of your wrists. for the duration of the drill - 30 seconds to a minute - you will hold one arm as rigid an unmovable as possible. At the same time the other arm will be completely relaxed and will not resist at all. The partners then try to move your arms in random motions. The parterns must give you feedback when they feel the wrong thing (no tension or tension). Do both sides (2 iterations through phase 1)

phase 2 - on your back, 4 partners, one on each leg and each arm. Similar to phase 1, but now including the legs. Start with all of one side beign tense or loose; then swtich and go diagnonal - left arm and right leg tense for example. 4 iterations of phase 2 (RR/LL; LL/RR; RL/LR; LR/RL)

your brain will squirm like a toad. Try to not use your mind, just let the body do it...

 

[K-man]

Learned an interesting drill from a Systema guy.

If you want to see power hitting watch the top systema guys deliver a punch. Another person to check out is Russell Stutely in the UK. In these instances the body is totally relaxed until the moment of impact. They use a wave motion to develop momentum which culminates in a devastating delivery.
An earlier post referred to Goju punches being delivered from carriage. I have never yet seen anybody in a fighting situation launch a punch from, or return to, carriage. We train it and it is in the katas but in reality it would be too slow. The significance of carriage is, I believe, the portrayal of grabbing your opponent and pulling him in close, to enable you to deliver a more forceful blow. Normally we fight with both hands in front protecting us. Therefore we need to learn to generate power from the hips and to do this we need to stay relaxed.

 

[Joab]

What has worked best for me is to slow down my technique until I feel comfortable with it and do it in a smooth motion. I was trying to do it to fast before I was comfortable with it. When I took group classes I always wanted to keep up with the class, which was impossible as a beginner. This also made me tense, not relaxed. Now I'm training solo, as they don't offer American Combato in my local area of Delaware nor any combative system from the Fairbairn-Applegate close quarter system tradition that I like, so solo training is all I have the opportunity for in terms of the moves I like to practice. And going slow and gradually moving up in speed was taught in W.E. Fairbairn's classic "Get Tough!" manual, what can I say, I'm a slow student, takes me awhile to put into practice such a common sensical idea.

At any rate, thanks again for everyone who contributed to this thread, what works for me is going slow and gradually increaing speed, not worrying about speed, focus on doing it smoothly, competiting with no one except myself.