Dynamic Punch

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby Trick on Wed Sep 30, 2020 1:02 am

klonk wrote:If you can make strong contact out of a charging punch, very well, but there is still this problem, your momentum makes you vulnerable to an adversary's counter. Getting hit as you advance is "using the opponent's force against him," in Asian parlance. If someone does that to you, you made a mistake. You will know it at once.

In other words, you leave yourself no room of error if you charge in with a punch. If he deflects you and counters, you just got hit with the force you were bringing to him, plus any tip he cares to pay for your effort.

As I understand you have been into Shotokan karate previously ? A style which Much emphasis on “one strike one kill” which to be successful requires a good sense of timing whit a “no doubt” mind, since doubt makes hesitation which will most certainly lead one to be the one outtimed....In the “Xin/Brain” thread one poster mentioned wuxin/mushin which hold an important place in Japanese budo(and of course in CMA too)
The dynamic punch charge gif the OP posted, I can imagen serves to train the no doubting spirit
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby Quigga on Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:09 am

"Empty yet fully alive Spirit", giving one's doubts, fear and worries to God without falling prey to apathy and entitlement... I think every culture strives for the same state, just worded differently.
When enough stress is applied and the person has enough resilience to hold onto their bearings, many report naturally occuring celerity and an unknowing clarity of mind....
The real challenge is to maintain that state of being without the stress. Accepting death without hesitation or regret in every moment is key to many warrior cultures, Samurai too IMO.
Of course you need to already have died for this to work, maybe once, maybe more times... Death is just a subjective experience, like eating or shitting...Would you be called immortal if you live while already being dead? I don't know. There certainly are lesser and greater immortals.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:36 pm

Trick wrote:
klonk wrote:If you can make strong contact out of a charging punch, very well, but there is still this problem, your momentum makes you vulnerable to an adversary's counter. Getting hit as you advance is "using the opponent's force against him," in Asian parlance. If someone does that to you, you made a mistake. You will know it at once.

In other words, you leave yourself no room of error if you charge in with a punch. If he deflects you and counters, you just got hit with the force you were bringing to him, plus any tip he cares to pay for your effort.


As I understand you have been into Shotokan karate previously ? A style which Much emphasis on “one strike one kill” which to be successful requires a good sense of timing whit a “no doubt” mind, since doubt makes hesitation which will most certainly lead one to be the one outtimed....In the “Xin/Brain” thread one poster mentioned wuxin/mushin which hold an important place in Japanese budo(and of course in CMA too)

The dynamic punch charge gif the OP posted, I can imagen serves to train the no doubting spirit


I think it was Funakoshi who wrote that the idea is you should have no doubt that one technique will settle everything. There is a hint of subtlety here: It settles the matter win or lose, and I would say that charging in heedlessly is a good way to lose.

The xu xin/mushin mind is an astonishing thing, but you give it its best chance to work well if it has watched you train in sound techniques. You give it tools to work with when you do that. A banzai charge, fearless without a plan beyond being fearless, is not a good plan because it is not a plan at all. We get the word "berserk" from the Scandinavian version. It may be that berserk is wu xin in some sense, but it is not good wu xin. Good wu xin is refined by technical accomplishment.

I am not saying that persons illustrated or discussed in this thread are berserk or without excellence of technique, only that the mistake I point to clearly exists, so one should be careful not to make it. To train a running punch so that it becomes a refined skill must be quite challenging, becase some aspects of your attack are defined, and you are committed to them, a step or two before you reach your target. You are acting in the moment, but the moment that is the decisive one has not quite arrived yet.

I say "must be quite challenging" because I have not given much attention to training the running punch, myself. It seems to me an attack strategy offering many pitfalls. If your opponent rightly reads what you are doing an instant before you arrive, the least humiliating reception you can expect is a foot sweep. He has other options including deflecting and a counterstrike, or deflecting by means of a counterstrike, or redirecting and throwing, or redirecting and pushing. I am not a good enough martial artist to suppose I am clever enough to deal with all that, even when I am not thinking.
Last edited by klonk on Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby johnwang on Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:07 pm

klonk wrote:To train a running punch so that it becomes a refined skill must be quite challenging, becase some aspects of your attack are defined, and you are committed to them, a step or two before you reach your target. You are acting in the moment, but the moment that is the decisive one has not quite arrived yet.

You may think about this a bit too complicate.

When you attack and your opponent retreats, you have 2 options, you either

1. stop your attack, or
2. continue your attack.

If you choice option 2, you will need a good footwork. The running punch is just to develop that footwork.

Old CMA saying said, "If you punch, I'll run you down. If you kick, I'll run you down. If you do nothing, I'll still run you down". It's easy to say. It's hard to do. To be able to do "run your opponent down", you will need to develop the dynamic punch footwork. That means you have to advance faster than your opponent's retreat.

A student of mine wants to train Sanda with me. The 1st principle that I'll teach him is to "run his opponent down".
Last edited by johnwang on Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:18 pm

marvin8 wrote:
Image


In this example, the fellow getting clobbered is already unbalanced toward his heels and is, in essence, defenseless already. The attacker is looting a castle that has already been breached. That differs from charging against a castle well defended, the proverbial forlorn hope.

ETA: Kuzushi isn't only Judo.
Last edited by klonk on Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby Trick on Thu Oct 01, 2020 12:17 am

klonk wrote:
Trick wrote:
klonk wrote:If you can make strong contact out of a charging punch, very well, but there is still this problem, your momentum makes you vulnerable to an adversary's counter. Getting hit as you advance is "using the opponent's force against him," in Asian parlance. If someone does that to you, you made a mistake. You will know it at once.

In other words, you leave yourself no room of error if you charge in with a punch. If he deflects you and counters, you just got hit with the force you were bringing to him, plus any tip he cares to pay for your effort.


As I understand you have been into Shotokan karate previously ? A style which Much emphasis on “one strike one kill” which to be successful requires a good sense of timing whit a “no doubt” mind, since doubt makes hesitation which will most certainly lead one to be the one outtimed....In the “Xin/Brain” thread one poster mentioned wuxin/mushin which hold an important place in Japanese budo(and of course in CMA too)

The dynamic punch charge gif the OP posted, I can imagen serves to train the no doubting spirit


I think it was Funakoshi who wrote that the idea is you should have no doubt that one technique will settle everything. There is a hint of subtlety here: It settles the matter win or lose, and I would say that charging in heedlessly is a good way to lose.

The xu xin/mushin mind is an astonishing thing, but you give it its best chance to work well if it has watched you train in sound techniques. You give it tools to work with when you do that. A banzai charge, fearless without a plan beyond being fearless, is not a good plan because it is not a plan at all. We get the word "berserk" from the Scandinavian version. It may be that berserk is wu xin in some sense, but it is not good wu xin. Good wu xin is refined by technical accomplishment.

I am not saying that persons illustrated or discussed in this thread are berserk or without excellence of technique, only that the mistake I point to clearly exists, so one should be careful not to make it. To train a running punch so that it becomes a refined skill must be quite challenging, becase some aspects of your attack are defined, and you are committed to them, a step or two before you reach your target. You are acting in the moment, but the moment that is the decisive one has not quite arrived yet.

I say "must be quite challenging" because I have not given much attention to training the running punch, myself. It seems to me an attack strategy offering many pitfalls. If your opponent rightly reads what you are doing an instant before you arrive, the least humiliating reception you can expect is a foot sweep. He has other options including deflecting and a counterstrike, or deflecting by means of a counterstrike, or redirecting and throwing, or redirecting and pushing. I am not a good enough martial artist to suppose I am clever enough to deal with all that, even when I am not thinking.
I don’t see the running punching as in the op’s gif as an combat strategy, but as an forward spirit practice(while not loosing ones head), I may be wrong since I’m not familiar with longfist boxing.
However as I mentioned Shotokan karate previous(which I think you’ve mentioned training in?). From the very beginning one practice Oi-tsuki-full step forward lead punch, this is the attack constantly done in the various sparring exersices trough the first couple of grades. One learn to not be headless while lounging forward.
In the first “taikyuku”(Taiji) katas And the first Heian kata sequences within those forks contain three full step lead punches consecutive done at an specific rythm, a non headless forward charge is practiced..
Those methods are not specific combat tactics, but learning to keep ones head and composure while launch into attack with correct timing.......(.the one strike one kill, comes from the fencing school Jigen-ryu, which funakoshis teacher Asato and Itosu was well versed in and their teacher Matsumora was higly skilled in(head of the royal guard) )
Last edited by Trick on Thu Oct 01, 2020 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby wiesiek on Thu Oct 01, 2020 12:42 am

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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby marvin8 on Thu Oct 01, 2020 8:34 am

klonk wrote:If you can make strong contact out of a charging punch, very well, but there is still this problem, your momentum makes you vulnerable to an adversary's counter. Getting hit as you advance is "using the opponent's force against him," in Asian parlance. If someone does that to you, you made a mistake. You will know it at once.

In other words, you leave yourself no room of error if you charge in with a punch. If he deflects you and counters, you just got hit with the force you were bringing to him, plus any tip he cares to pay for your effort.

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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Sat Oct 03, 2020 4:52 pm

Hi, Trick!

I have the greatest respect for Shotokan, in most ways. I have not been involved for many years, but I am sure I gained a great deal from practicing it in my teens and twenties. Everyone who practices Shotokan is in good shape and posesses a keen fighting spirit.

What caused me eventually to drift away is a certain disconnect between theory and practice. The joke I tell is that these guys really know how to put the bunk into bunkai. The joke is obscure if you do not know the word in American slang and also the term in Japanese. "Bunk" is American slang for nonsense, the opposite of "debunk." "Bunkai" is kata analysis with the aim of finding the practical application of the techniques.

Your interpretation of three thrust punches in a row is not bunk, necessarily. It may be, just as you say, a matter of emphasizing the spirit of attack. But in one of the Heian kata (I have forgotten which), there are three consecutive knife hand blocks as you advance. What shall we make of that? I think the point, of either the punch version or the block version, is to teach you to transition from side to side, to "change your lead," boxers would say, in a smooth and efficient manner. I cannot think of a likely self-defense scenario where three identical punches in a row, or three identical blocks, would be useful.

Thinking about the karate bunkai problem (and Shotokan is not the only karate school with this problem) led me to look further, and it seems to me that Chinese martial arts often suffer under a similar disconnect between forms and function. I conclude that any kata or form or taolu or whatever has an expiration date. A form ceases to be useful with the deaths of the senior students of the fellow who made up the form. After that, it is too late to tell for certain what was intended.
Last edited by klonk on Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Sat Oct 03, 2020 6:38 pm

Marvin8,

Thanks for the examples of tagging the opponent on his advance. I speculate that stories of kung fu masters, of years long past, barely moving their hands and having their opponents fall, are really only exagerated reporting of the effectiveness of hitting someone who is advancing.

In fencing it is called a time thrust. In boxing it is called you a chump.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:10 pm

Trick wrote:[...]From the very beginning one practice Oi-tsuki-full step forward lead punch, this is the attack constantly done in the various sparring exersices trough the first couple of grades. One learn to not be headless while lounging forward.[...]


Executing a single lunge punch is less dangerous, in the sense of being easier to get right, than punching out of a running charge. There is still the danger of being counter-punched on your way in. But the dynamics of the situation are simpler than if you were doing it on the run.

As a way to close the distance while attacking at the same time, you are probably not going to find anything better than oi-tsuki, but that does not mean it is altogether good. It has the defect I've noted already. There are effective counters to it in the same kata we are discussing.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:17 pm

More about the karate bunkai problem: My reasoning is that I do not want to be feeding my xu xin/mushin mind with techniques I do not clearly understand, or worse yet, understand wrongly.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby Trick on Mon Oct 05, 2020 4:02 am

klonk wrote:Hi, Trick!

I have the greatest respect for Shotokan, in most ways. I have not been involved for many years, but I am sure I gained a great deal from practicing it in my teens and twenties. Everyone who practices Shotokan is in good shape and posesses a keen fighting spirit.

What caused me eventually to drift away is a certain disconnect between theory and practice. The joke I tell is that these guys really know how to put the bunk into bunkai. The joke is obscure if you do not know the word in American slang and also the term in Japanese. "Bunk" is American slang for nonsense, the opposite of "debunk." "Bunkai" is kata analysis with the aim of finding the practical application of the techniques.

Your interpretation of three thrust punches in a row is not bunk, necessarily. It may be, just as you say, a matter of emphasizing the spirit of attack. But in one of the Heian kata (I have forgotten which), there are three consecutive knife hand blocks as you advance. What shall we make of that? I think the point, of either the punch version or the block version, is to teach you to transition from side to side, to "change your lead," boxers would say, in a smooth and efficient manner. I cannot think of a likely self-defense scenario where three identical punches in a row, or three identical blocks, would be useful.

Thinking about the karate bunkai problem (and Shotokan is not the only karate school with this problem) led me to look further, and it seems to me that Chinese martial arts often suffer under a similar disconnect between forms and function. I conclude that any kata or form or taolu or whatever has an expiration date. A form ceases to be useful with the deaths of the senior students of the fellow who made up the form. After that, it is too late to tell for certain what was intended.
Thanks for the bunk explaination(the American version), the Japanese version I knew about 8-)
Yes the knifehand block you think about are in Heian nidan(the second Heian kata/form). And yes common bunkai are often bunk, even the most common bunkai of an single ‘knife hand block’ or any of the other “blocks” hold some bunk(if consider them to actually have function in combat, one have to look deeper into them).

Anyway , the three knife hand blocks you think of are actually just two while “charging’/stepping forward, the rhythm and eventual explanation of them differ from the sequence of “lounge”forward punches found in the first Heian form as I mentioned
Last edited by Trick on Mon Oct 05, 2020 4:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby Trick on Mon Oct 05, 2020 4:11 am

marvin8 wrote:
klonk wrote:If you can make strong contact out of a charging punch, very well, but there is still this problem, your momentum makes you vulnerable to an adversary's counter. Getting hit as you advance is "using the opponent's force against him," in Asian parlance. If someone does that to you, you made a mistake. You will know it at once.

In other words, you leave yourself no room of error if you charge in with a punch. If he deflects you and counters, you just got hit with the force you were bringing to him, plus any tip he cares to pay for your effort.

Image

Image

For sure one of the main things of he dynamics punching exercise shown in the OP gif postedis to developer smoothness and sharpness in ones forward charging moves..
Last edited by Trick on Mon Oct 05, 2020 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dynamic Punch

Postby klonk on Mon Oct 05, 2020 5:00 pm

In one or other of the tiresome Japanese martial manuals I read, I think it was the Hagakure, a young man was brought before a shaman who could, by divination, detect cowardice in advance. The youth whispered, "If you detect cowardice in me, I will kill you with one blow!" (Iken hisatsu spirit). All of that is circular nonsense. At least, it demands close evaluation after Pearl Harbor, which is Japanese martial sprit writ large. If your iken does not hisatsu, you are toast.
Last edited by klonk on Mon Oct 05, 2020 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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