Narrowly specific targets

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

Narrowly specific targets

Postby klonk on Thu Sep 28, 2017 1:51 pm

Lately I read "The Lamb Method for Police Baton." You can find it online. The author, a street cop, has two targets you are to aim at, the collarbone, and the knee. He shows several ways of attacking them to disable your opponent. (This was written in 1970, when breaking a few bones was considered a less brutal alternative to beating somone over the head with your nightstick until he no longer resisted arrest. Different times for sure.)

I also saw on Youtube some Michael Janich knife work, in which he shows his "master technique" which consists of three targets to cut, the tendons on the inside of the forearm, the biceps-triceps above the elbow, and the quadriceps above the knee.

In both cases, the tactics are structural attacks on the mechanical workings of the body. In both cases the idea is to wreck the opponent's ability to use his arm and to take away his mobility.

This much specificity about how you are going to take out your assailant is a bit of a departure from the long litany of attacks upon various targets I learned in Asian martial arts, some of them attacking the chi. :D What I want to know is whether this narrowly focused and anatomy-based approach seems sound and useful, and whether adapting something like it to unarmed self-defense seems sensible and feasible.

Thanks!
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby Steve James on Thu Sep 28, 2017 5:42 pm

What I want to know is whether this narrowly focused and anatomy-based approach seems sound and useful, and whether adapting something like it to unarmed self-defense seems sensible and feasible.


Imo, it's the only feasible approach to "combat," but it has to be modified for sport. I also think that, afa cmas, it's integral to qinna.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby zrm on Thu Sep 28, 2017 7:08 pm

A kyokushin guy once told me that "every point is a pressure point if you kick it hard enough". But yeah, I guess its always a balance between setting yourself up to attack a specific points and over restricting your own options.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby MaartenSFS on Fri Sep 29, 2017 6:18 am

I agree with this approach. Attacking specific targets, however, only works if you can hit them at all to begin with.. Same with Qinna...
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby wayne hansen on Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:58 am

The yang style two man broadsword set attacks these same specific targets as does much FMA knife work
It does not mean other targets are out of bounds just less efficient
I was teaching some tulisan knife work a while back
One of my students was a chef and the other a surgeon
The chef went to the applications that severed the joints
The surgeon went for the arteries and vital organs
Both were covered in the structure of the art
I learnt a lot from these two students on how to apply the art but it was there in the art to start with
Always have a target and make it simple
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby klonk on Fri Sep 29, 2017 12:52 pm

Officer Lamb presents seven sets of direct strikes, feints, and combinations that get you to the two targets. He calls these sets "phases," but they look a lot like martial arts form work.

I have no doubt that focusing on just two or three targets requires you to think a good deal about how you are going to reach those targets in various circumstances, and practice until taking those shots has a high probability of success.

I have previously endorsed the idea of specializing in a few martial techniques, and I suppose it is logically related to narrow down your target list as well.
Last edited by klonk on Fri Sep 29, 2017 1:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby klonk on Fri Sep 29, 2017 4:14 pm

So then, both the Lamb nightstick method and the Janich knife defense have as their point and object

  • Disabling an arm
  • Disabling a leg

Aside from not getting seriously injured doing it, that is the whole scope.

There are unarmed combat ways to do these things. I am mostly a striker, so I think at once of hammer fisting the collarbone and kicking the knee.

But I have seen grapply chaps do some ingenious things with torsion holds. There is a BJJ rolling kneebar that I personally do not know how to do, but I can see that it is perfectly ingenious. Of course, armbar submissions are newaza bread and butter.

Qinna (which my olden era Wade-Giles habits cause me to write as chin na) is something I have seen few people get right. I have seldom seen myself get it right, come to that. But it seems that standing qinna has promise for at least part of the project at hand.

There may be other approaches. So, if you were setting forth a plan to disable arms and legs using unarmed techniques, what would be in the plan?
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby BruceP on Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:05 am

klonk wrote:
There may be other approaches. So, if you were setting forth a plan to disable arms and legs using unarmed techniques, what would be in the plan?


Not so much a plan as what's been observed as intentional and incidental in lots of conflict within varied contexts; eyes and lower tibia (just above the ankle) are quite vulnerable and fairly easy to hurt.

Finger jabs aren't very difficult to practice, and targeting the inside of a lead-leg with the various low-kick contact points is within most peoples' abilities.

Standing on a foot is also easy to train and can be pretty versatile in terms of effect, magnitude, and result.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby RobP3 on Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:34 am

Depending on their function / operation certain professional groups usually work purely on a few specifics. So one team I was told, work "eyes, throat, balls" as SOP. Others may specialise in teamwork, various restraint methods, etc. This is all outside the UK. Police training here is woeful from what I've seen.
My Grandad was a London copper back in the day, for truncheon work they primarily worked upper arm and thigh. For more extreme situations it was collar bone and head.
If you are training for specific situations, it makes sense to mould your training to those situations. Granted there are many additional factors in play in some, official guidelines, the fact everyone has a camera, etc. But work needs to be effective.
I showed my (police officer) cousin a few things. She used one to subdue and restrain a subject much larger than her, without injury to anyone. She received a warning for using an "unofficial technique"...
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby Steve James on Sat Sep 30, 2017 5:52 am

A good hunter doesn't just shoot at his prey. Afa human prey, the targets are the same. I think the problem is that in ordinary life, it can be criminal to attack them. For Leos, it often comes down to whether it's legal to be lethal, since it takes skill or technique to control an opponent. A person can be taught to kill in a few minutes because humans are vulnerable.

Anyway, when I mentioned qinna, I was not limiting it to joint operations. But, imo, it's all about understanding human anatomy and physiology.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby klonk on Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:22 pm

Steve James wrote:Anyway, when I mentioned qinna, I was not limiting it to joint operations.


I tend to think of it in those terms. I am far too polite to say that the tien hsueh aspect is nonsense. Face, rice bowl, whatever.

After all, there are many things I do not know. My experience is limited, only half a century of finding out everything I could, and of course there is a Jim Crow problem too: Laowai outdoor student.

I will say that it is unusual for anyone to show convincing joint locking skill at real-world speed. That, I was told, would be too dangerous.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby Steve James on Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:53 pm

I will say that it is unusual for anyone to show convincing joint locking skill at real-world speed. That, I was told, would be too dangerous.


Imo, if the goal is control, then joint-locking can be effective. Breaking or disabling an arm is also possible. However, this is all about context. If the goal is to defend oneself by injuring the opponent, then joint/limb control is just the prelude to strikes.

Anyway, every body has weak points, and certain points are more likely to be or have been injured.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby klonk on Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:34 pm

Yeah, well, if that is all the advice I get I'm going back to what any sixteen-year-old Golden Gloveser knows. See? Ya punches them so fast they don't punch you so fast.

Whatever.
Last edited by klonk on Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby fuga on Sun Oct 01, 2017 3:27 pm

If you are looking at armed self-defense (which is what your initial examples are), I would tend to think, depending the whether the weapon is blunt/sharp or long/short, that the primary targets will either be the head/neck or the weapon hand.
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Re: Narrowly specific targets

Postby Bhassler on Mon Oct 02, 2017 8:10 pm

I think the key is not in the strikes themselves but in the setup. I would look towards boxing combinations and WWII combatives to see how they structure their attacks so that the opponent is forced to respond in such a way that it brings the target to your weapon naturally. Feeding crane seems to do this pretty well, also.

I would say not only is the specific targeted approach feasible, but that it or something similar is actually the seed of martial arts as a whole. It starts with something very simple and practical and then grows with generational experience and evolving circumstances to become the comprehensive and/or diluted systems we see today.
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