That's the sound of the men working on the chain....gang!

[GouRonin]

Great class on wednesday.

We started off with warm ups where we grabbed foot long, inch links, of chain and started swinging at each other. Now if you can picture this, 30+ guys in a room and 15+ swinging chains at the rest. You really pay attention to what is going ALL around you at all time. If you don't not only will you not be able to evade your opponent's chain but you might walk into the path of someone else swinging a chain.

Then we stopped evading and had to learn how to deal with being hit by the chain but absorbing the force/energy of it. After that we moved on to accepting the strike from the chain but disarming and returning the strike. Vlad showed a neat little variation of how to disarm from being hit with the chain with your leg and then transferring it to the hand and using it like a whip to crack your opponent.

He's promised that next time I'm there if I remind him he'll get us working on single unarmed man vs multiple opponents with knives. Should be fun.

 

[Roland]

2 or 3 years ago one of our instructors went to a camp were Al was teaching chain defenses, he came back, and we had a load of fun with it for many weeks.
We all thought it was filipino Martail arts, have since learned from Martin that it was Sytema.

 

[GouRonin]

It was kinda funny. I asked him at one point how he does a certain strike and why can't I avoid it even when i know it's coming.

His answer. "Because I am better than you."

Of course he told me not to worry as someday I will be better to.

 

[Roland]

True too.
You got to love that guy.
:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:


He may have said better, but not better than him I bet.
:cheers:

 

[GouRonin]

While I consider him to be at the top of his game...he considers HIS teacher to be at the top of his game. A real case of seeing a top practitioner and understanding that even teachers have teachers.

 

[arnisador]

What is the secret to absorbing a chain strike then? Surely you start by trying to dodge it?

 

[GouRonin]

My Grandfather once told me something when we were sailing. I asked him what are the tricks of the trade to being a great sailor were. He told me to forget learning the tricks of the trade, instead, learn the trade. Smooth seas never made skillful sailors.

Having said that, much like any other endevour in the martial arts there is no trick to it. Just hard, hard work.

For the drill that we did there was no dodging. This is why you learned to absorb and deal with the energy of the strike. You might never do that with a knife of course but in this situation we simply went with the energy of the chain to remove it. When the chain is thrown it has a lot of kinetic energy. That stops upon the strike if it hits the practitioner. If the practitioner goes with it and uses the energy of the chain being thrown to remove it from the control of the thrower then he has been disarmed.

This is not to say that there are not other ways, Vlad did show us quite a few. Just that for this excercise these were parameters used.

Hope that helps.

 

[arnisador]

Go with the flow--very arnis.

 

[Roland]

Of course your instructor should always be better than you!


Right??

 

[GouRonin]

Originally posted by Roland
Of course your instructor should always be better than you!
Right??

No. Personally I think your instructor should always be working to make you a better pratitioner than they are. Too many instructors keep their people down. How will an art ever advance that way?

 

[Roland]

I agree with you.
Sometimes your instructor actually beomes your coach instead, but I also think this is something else all together differnet.

There is also the whole evolution thing. Maybe you should become better than your instructor, or maybe just learn faster, because he is giving you the benefit of his experiecne so you can skip some of the mistakes he may have made. He should be showing you the things he knows will help you, and should eliminate or play down those that will not.

Heck, his goal should be to make you better if for no other reason than to help him along in the process. This might be more along the lines we were originally talking about here.