Keeping Your Wits About You

[klonk]

This picture came up for discussion in a recent thread:


In the foreground, world fencing champion Aldo Nadi is showing really bad shen fa. And yet Nadi was considered the best, for technical form. Here he is in another picture:




The FIRST picture was taken during a duel for blood, with pointed epees. The other was taken to illustrate a textbook. The two pictures don't look like the same man, do they? What's generally thought to have happened is the stress of the duel messed up his world class skills.

My question is, what steps can you take to make sure your skills stay intact during combat stress, instead of dissolving in the heat of combat? I'd feel pretty stupid if all my moves were to desert me when I really needed them.

[everything]

is he trying to go over in the first picture, and under in the second picture, so they have different purposes?

why don't they use a xingyiquan type follow step?

[Wanderingdragon]

How many times, in tournament settins, you see all these beautiful forms warming up on the sidelines and in the halls only to see full out brawling in the matches

[Chris McKinley]

You can't...at least not to the extent of that shown in the second picture. Real combat is too chaotic to preserve pretty, flowery bullshit martial artsy postures. Those aren't your skills anyway. Those are your postures.

In a real fight, you move how you have to move, either to avoid getting injured or killed, or to take advantage of a fleeting window of opportunity to injure or kill the opponent. This is multiplied a thousandfold when real weapons come into play. Moving in such a way as to preserve a choreographed movement pattern will only slow you down and get you dead.

[klonk]

is he trying to go over in the first picture, and under in the second picture, so they have different purposes?

why don't they use a xingyiquan type follow step?

It's hard for me to tell just what he is doing in the first picture. It could be he is trying to do what is shown in the second picture, only he forgot to retract his landing gear. (When you do it right, you pick up the front foot while pushing hard with the back leg.) That is the interpretation I favor, because the movement seems to be forward in intent, but it's hard to say from a still photo.

Or it could be he was trying to recover to this position:



Whatever he's trying to do, it isn't "picture perfect" by any means!

[RobP2]

Yep, what Chris said Who cares what it looks like if it works

[Qin'sEmporium]

Basic movement and skills allow you to adapt in any situation. The master swordman prevails because his skill base is such, that he literally 'perceives' more, both about his own body, and that of his opponent. Free movement then becomes a higher expression of basic skill, rather than its antithesis.

Thank you for an excellent photograph and question.

[everything]

Or it could be he was trying to recover to this position:

It looks like he was about to go off balance forward, or was about to recover to this position. Probably the camera just got a snapshot of a funny transition?

[D_Glenn]

What Chris said x3.


Another thing though is that seeing 'shenfa' is in movement not in still pictures. You should just use the word 'posture' rather than distorting the meaning of the word 'shenfa'. - my 2c


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[klonk]

What Chris said x3.


Another thing though is that seeing 'shenfa' is in movement not in still pictures. You should just use the word 'posture' rather than distorting the meaning of the word 'shenfa'. - my 2c


.

Imagine this is a frame in a movie, not a still picture. What could be in immediately preceding or immediately following frames, that could possibly be correct movement?

In other words, if you see a bent out of shape part, from some mechanism, you know it did not come out of a correctly functioning mechanism. You don't have to see more than that.

But if you prefer, have it your way. His posture here indicates his movement is incorrect (in terms of what he himself taught and explained to be "correct").

[RobP2]

Imagine this is a frame in a movie, not a still picture. What could be in immediately preceding or immediately following frames, that could possibly be correct movement?

He stops the other guy stabbing him?

[Chris McKinley]

klonk,

Doing a bit of fencing these days, I could easily see several possibilities the first moment I saw that picture. Your idea of "correct" movement seems seriously naive. Give me a knife and I'll make the most skilled CMA master in the world look like a klutzy bitch to avoid getting filleted and skewered.

In a real violent confrontation, correct movement is that which either gets you the fuck out of the way from being injured or killed or which lets you take advantage of a window of opportunity to cause the same in the other guy. Period. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. And frankly, it's starting to sound like you not only bought the platinum club membership, you also purchased the extended warranty.

Nadi is either hop-stepping backward while offering a defensive counterthrust to cover his retreat, or he is doing a lunging probe from long-range and is wanting to avoid his opponent's counterthrust to his own lead leg. Either is perfectly logical and tactically wise under the circumstances.

[klonk]

So, Chris, you would say there is nothing anyone can do, to stay closer to his trained skill set, with sharps?

I assure you I have no ideological buy-in to the idea that form is a Platonic ideal. But I'm unsure why it would ever be a good idea to have a foot that far in the air, if he intends either thing you describe. Form follows function.

The angle of the torso, the front foot and leg, the craning of the neck, even the position of the back hand, likewise appear to be at odds with classical form. It is not that classical form is somehow sacred, but it is sold as the mechanically efficient way of doing things. I suppose that could all be a bill of goods, of course. But my question, which I typed large so people would see what it was, is what you can do to fight the way you train. Are there answers forthcoming on that?

Or is that just a silly idea?

[Swede]

In response to everything's question, fencing does use a follow-step a lot of the time. The extended bow-stance-looking-thing is used for a long lunge--kind of going for it all at once when you see an openning. When I fenced, my fencing partner was about 7 inches taller than me and had long arms for his height. I often lunched not only into a bow stance but had my rear foot drag forward with the leg extended (just from the momentum) just to get anywhere near him.

[Swede]

Klonk,

I think you might want to talk to RobP (or his alter-ego, cleverly disguised as RobP2) or look into Systema. I can't call myself a Systema practitioner, but from the bit I know about it, Systema is big on this idea of it doesn't matter what you look like, there is no specific form you adhere to rigidly other than get out of the way, keep moving and do something that works. I think their training methods are based fundamentally on the notion of the the s*** hits the fan, lots of stuff you've worked on goes out the window, so they focus their training on a few things that can be preserved and preserving those elements under incrementally more stressful scenarios.