day 40: lei tei training (part 5 - 6/17/07)

concepts:

• footwork
• guard
• spacing
• speed

agenda:

• sparring

the lei tai session was as little bit shorter today (Sunday), since Phunsak was absent and Sifu had his wife's birthday. in addition, class was quite a bit smaller, with only 4 students (most of the baji students were missing, making only 3 bagua students and 1 baji student).

Sifu said this didn't matter, since today was scheduled light sparring sessions. he said that the tournament was now only a month away, and that it was time to start commencing light sparring. light sparring is less than full contact, with opponents not seeking to launch full-scale assaults, but rather engaging each other enough to make contact with blows. it is, however, still painful and capable of resulting in injuries.

the normal lei tai rounds are 90 seconds. Sifu said that light sparring is less intense than full-contact, and so light sparring rounds need to be longer to simulate the conditions of fatigue and exertion produced from full-contact fighting. for today, we limited the rounds to 2 minutes, although Sifu said that in the past he's had light sparring rounds going as long as 5 minutes. he recommended that we do this to build up the fitness levels required for full-contact matches.

we set up the light-sparring in a round-robin series, so that between the 4 of us each person had the opportunity to have 1 round against each of the other 3 people (i.e., each of us got to participate in 3 rounds).

Sifu instructed us on how to bow at the beginning, what size ring (actually, a square) constituted the fighting area, and then told us that if we weren't sparring that we should be observing and gathering constructive comments on the fighting form of those who were sparring.

this was, to say the least, an eye-opening experience. Sifu and Phunsak had commented on how different it is to apply techniques within a combat situation as opposed to class instruction or practice, but there was no real way to understand what they meant until now. while not full-contact, light sparring still provides enough speed and uncertainty to give a taste of the chaos of a free-form fight.

for me, the surprise was not the physical speed--that, if anything, seemed the least of worries. what was more eye-opening was the mental speed, as well as the complexity of thoughts; within the match, you have to track your opponent's positioning, read their intent, plan a defensive method, formulate your own offensive maneuver, disguise your actions, and position yourself without making yourself vulnerable. this is in addition to managing fatigue, working with the pace of the match, estimating your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and then exercising the reflexes to respond to their movements.

another aspect was the fact that actions are not always made alone or sequentially. in fact, they often aren't. punches, kicks, blocks, grappling are frequently launched in combinations and made simultaneous with each other. some are meant to mislead or distract your attention, others are meant as the main strike, and still others are meant as follow-up attacks or counters to your potential counter-moves. this means that there is not only speed of the actions you see, but also deception.

managing all these factors involved a lot of mental effort in terms of performing calculations quickly for a complex, dynamic scenario.

my rounds went in sequential order against Richard, Jonathan, and Jay, marking matches against progressively larger opponents. each one presented different approaches and tendencies. Richard, who has additional martial arts skills in judo and brazilian jiu-jitsu, used his shorter height to try and enter underneath me and grapple or throw me. Jonathan, with his baji and long-fist background, used his slightly greater reach to hit me from long range and then close for follow-up throws. Jay, who is taller than Jonathan and has experience in Northern Shaolin, used his range to keep me at a distance while maneuvering me into range of his kicks and subsequent punching combinations.

having never done anything of this sort before (at least not at this level...i just don't see junior high parking lot fights as being very comparable), i found myself devoting a lot of my concentration to adjusting to the environment of fighting conditions. i found myself a little unsure as to what to do on offense, and getting hit a few more times than i would have liked on defense.

following my matches, everyone--including Sifu--made their comments, which i can compile as follows:

• footwork--Sifu said this was a big problem of mine. Phunsak had pointed it out in a previous lei tai session, but this time Sifu demonstrated what i needed to do to fix it. Sifu said the reason i kept getting hit was that my footwork was very even (with footsteps of equal distance), very rhythmic (with a constant stepping rate), and very consistent (with a constant motion along a circle). Sifu said this made me very predictable. Jay noted that this was why he was able to land so many kicks to my quads and mid-section. Sifu said to correct this i needed to change the distance of each step, adjust the rhythm from slow to fast, and think of random angles relative to the opponent. he said that this was an aspect of bagua that was not entirely consistent with the forms (i.e., that in forms there may be even, rhythmic, and circular stepping, but that in fighting everything needed to be random)
• guard--Jay pointed this out, and Sifu concurred: my guard was too low, leaving my head exposed for strikes. i recognized this, as there was 1 moment in the match against Jonathan when he would have been able to connect with a full roundhouse hay-maker to my head if he'd followed through...and which he didn't because it was a light sparring session. i need to keep my hands up.
• spacing--Sifu, Richard, and Jay all pointed this out to me. my spacing is still inconsistent. Jay noted i kept following my instincts to step away from a kick, which was dangerous since it sometimes actually placed me in the optimum sweet spot of the kick. Richard noted that i needed to understand spacing relative to smaller versus larger opponents--against smaller ones, you can exercise greater spacing to keep them at a distance and use your reach to your advantage, while against larger ones you need to get past their reach and try to close the distance. Sifu said that i needed to vary my spacing, and randomly switch between closing versus retreating, attacking versus defending, sliding sideways versus shifting vertically.
• speed--Sifu noted this as well, that i needed greater speed in my footwork. he actually said we all needed this...and not just speed, but speed over a duration of time (as in an entire round). he said sometimes you'll encounter an opponent who can maintain high intensity of an extended period of time, and we need to be ready.

Sifu also made some additional points in general about the nature of martial arts:

• form versus fighting--Sifu said that when he was younger, he had thought forms were near-useless, because they frequently were nothing close to the types of movements performed in combat. he said, however, that as he became older he adjusted his opinion, and saw that forms are not meant to teach fighting, but more to serve as a training tool to help remember techniques and recognize their principles. as a result, forms were expected to be fixed in terms of their movements, but they should always be accompanied by the further expectation that they could (and should) be modified to match the conditions in a fight
• quantity versus quality--Sifu said that the speed and uncertainty of a fight placed a premium on being able to perform techniques quickly and effectively. this means quality of technique. he said that this is why--if given the choice between knowing many techniques poorly versus a few techniques well--it is better to know a few techniques well.
• experience--Sifu said that seeing this was a first time in sparring for some of us, that we were having to adjust to a new experience along a steep learning curve. he said this is natural. he warned that the only way to really train for fighting is to get experience in fighting. solo practice is not enough, and forms are not enough. he said that to really use a martial art as a fighting art, we have to learn to use it in a fight.
• sixth sense--Sifu said that one of the most important elements in a fight is being able to adjust your attention from a point to general awareness. he said concentrating on a point is dangerous, because it allows the opponent to surprise you with an attack from another angle. on the other hand, you don't want to have too general a focus, since it allows you to pick up distractions leading you away from the fight. Sifu said that we need to acquire the skill frequently displayed by swordfighters: the 6th sense, or 3rd eye, that allows you to see and read your opponent's moves to an extent that it appears you can sense their actions before they actually happen. Sifu said we can develop this, simply by switching back and forth from focusing on a point to focusing on our peripheral vision, and then being to reconstruct the details between the 2 from memory with our eyes closed--he noted this was a technique taught to the presidential bodyguards in Taiwan.
  

after finishing the rounds and reviewing comments, Sifu called the day to a close and we packed up and left. he noted that we'd continue to do more sparring, since the lei tai tournament is now only a month away and we needed to develop our speed and skills. he told us the next lei tai class would be next weekend.