Systema Torso Pressure Points: Angles of Attack

[middleway]

try this. get a 5 to 7 kg weight .... and throw it at good speed into your training partners chest. ask how it feels.

Its pretty simple mechanics really IMO ... dont know what the fuss is about. Its simply emparting all the weight of the striking limb into the surface. It is different to some ways of hitting but is found in other arts. Daito Ryu has a way of releasing with gravity thats very similar.

However when you watch Mikhail or Vlad striking they do tend to have something going on in the body too.

With Vlad there is a wave happening in his striking. from 1.45 here. this then gets condensed when he is moving quick. Just from my observations and feeling his strikes. This is becoming less and less apparantly in his later videos and his striking is starting to look more like mikhails ... but its still 'wavey' to my eyes.




With mikhail there is a 'through the back power' happening in the main (which we also see in some xing yi striking) You can also see he is using his body here. Its not happing from just the arm regardless of what is said. If you completely ignor mikhails arm and the guy being hit and just watch the body it is clear, there is a power across his back and a pulse sort of force from his scapular as well as his whole body turning. In some of the strikes its very subtle and short but its always there.



This is entirely from an outside of systema perspective from watching these two guys move and attending a couple of seminar. But i think its pretty clear stuff.

I think once you 'get' how to put your force into the surface this is all familier stuff no matter what art. The idea of just the arm hitting is a little bit of a smoke screen IMO and appears to just be an initial fase of the method. I think systema have a good way of teaching how to give the force of your strike to your opponent using the 'only arm' thing but the general principle is there in other arts. The thing is it is usually attached to other parts of the complete picture of the idividual arts like 6 harmonies etc.

Cheers
Chris

[GrahamB]

hmmm... how strange... it's almost like you're meant to work this stuff out for yourself....

[Ian]

try this. get a 5 to 7 kg weight .... and throw it at good speed into your training partners chest. ask how it feels.

Its pretty simple mechanics really IMO ... dont know what the fuss is about.

exactly.

The idea of just the arm hitting is a little bit of a smoke screen IMO and appears to just be an initial fase of the method.

just want to point out that there are several different types of strikes in systema. arm only strikes seem to attract the most outside attention, but really there are pulsing strikes, full body strikes etc etc

[Andy_S]

Chris:

I diasgree with your analogy. I have not got an arm-shaped 5-7 kilo weight...but I suspect that if I threw it (from arm's length rather than from across the room, and with minimal wind up or body torque) the result would be unimpressive. In fact "throwing it" is not really what we are taling about here, as these guys are not "throwing" from a guard or a wound up position, they are launching their strikes from in close.

But good comments re the vids

[Andy_S]

SNIP
As for the arm only punches thing I have a theory. The other say I was hitting myself in the arm with a stick. (Yea I know I sound brilliant now ) Well I noticed that I was basically stopping the stick after it made contact with the surface. So I decided for the hell of it to basically let my arm go limp while holding the stick so it would fall on my other arm, let me tell you what it hurt a lot more. I think it is related and basically means that the one armed stopping shots involve getting the arm moving and then completely relaxing while keeping the alignment of the arm or hand and letting the arm continue like a falling limb or shot arrow.
SNIP

Glad you worked it out, but I was taught the idea of relaxing and hitting through the target on my first boxing lesson

[RobP]

There's a great resource at http://stevewildash.blogspot.com/

This is by a guy with considerable EMA experience who started training with me 18 months or so back. He's bascially blogged every training session with thoughts and ideas, so there's a huge amount of info about how we train

cheers

Rob

[kenneth fish]

Those of you who were at my last seminars in Maidenhead may remember we did some work in this area from a CMA point of view. There are about a dozen good, easily accessed points on the torso, neck and legs where you can drop a person with relatively little force - I teach these in my women's self defense classes because I know from experience that they work.

Regarding the "solar plexus" - you are not actually accessing the nerve plexus (nor are you "paralyzing the diaphragm"). The strike at the angle shown forces an arrow shaped bone, the xiphoid process, against the diaphragm. The xiphoid has a number of significant attachments - to its anterior surface there are slips from the rectucs abdominis and the aponeurosis of the external and internal obliques, to its inferior surface there is attachment to the linea alba, and its posterior aspect has attachments from the anterior portion of the diaphragm. Impact to the xiphiod will initiate a spasmodic contraction to the diaphragm.

Graham - this is the bone that you are referring to - it is to be avoided doing CPR as it my break off and enter the pleural membrane or even lacerate heart muscle.

Angle of attack is very significant for all of the points in question - but this is not very much of a challenge, as the locations, once one is familiar with them, pretty much dictate the angle.

[ashe]

Very enlightening dr. Fish!

[DeusTrismegistus]

SNIP
As for the arm only punches thing I have a theory. The other say I was hitting myself in the arm with a stick. (Yea I know I sound brilliant now ) Well I noticed that I was basically stopping the stick after it made contact with the surface. So I decided for the hell of it to basically let my arm go limp while holding the stick so it would fall on my other arm, let me tell you what it hurt a lot more. I think it is related and basically means that the one armed stopping shots involve getting the arm moving and then completely relaxing while keeping the alignment of the arm or hand and letting the arm continue like a falling limb or shot arrow.
SNIP

Glad you worked it out, but I was taught the idea of relaxing and hitting through the target on my first boxing lesson

I have always been taught to relax and hit through the btarget as well, but I am not sure that this is the same. With my own little experiment there was no muscle involved (actually there was doing it the first way but not the second) it was simply dropping the weight of my arm. Maybe its is the same, I don't know yet, might be worth experimenting on your own with though.

[I am...]

A big part of Iron Palm training is teaching the body to do just that: Let the hand fall through the opponent, completely relaxed.

Edit - I had meant to add, more on topic, that angle can make a huge difference as well, as can whether the opponent is off balanced, whether you send the strike through, or into the opponent, etc.