Part of the training that we did in white crane, was to have someone stand in the middle of circle, the other would circle them.
At some point, they would rush in with an attack, the one in the middle of circle was supposed to clap the moment they picked up it,
thus stopping the attack.
The object was to disguise the movement in such a way that the other could not see it and was unaware of it even though they were looking directly at it and understood what the drill was for. The whole point of the drill was to train this...For both people.
But some of Mr. Long's students were street gang members, and a few of them had developed really interesting and unique ways of using White Crane. As usual, I was pushed into sparring with pretty much anyone who walked through Mr. Long's door, and one of the most interesting of his "older" students was a gang member who had a very tricky way of using the Crane style.
I was warned about this in advance by Ron, so I had a little knowledge to start off with, but when we squared off in the middle of the room, he had a very modified version of the crane horse... so modified that you would never know he was taking up any kind of ready position.
He had a way of moving back and forth that was hard to follow, and completely disguised what he was up to. And he was kind of magical in the way he could draw your attention over "here" then slip quickly into a crane postion and attack you over "there"
that was really hard to track.
"mike staples"
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There were people who could close the gap before a person could clap even looking directly at them while they did, just was there were others that one could not approach with out them being aware of it.
This was part of training awareness, like many things is a combination of all senses not just one.
Our eyes are designed to pick up certain types of movements, colors and shapes.... All of which can be enhanced through training depending on usage and need. Its said that those living in the rain forest can see things that those living in cities can not, and those living in the rain forest might not have any way of seeing something that they see in a city thats to far out what they would normally see...Each with training can change this.