day 165: more sparring & jian shu

concepts:

• closing the gap

forms:

• tournament prep-sparring
• tournament prep-jian shu
  

this is another short post, since we followed the same format as last Sunday, doing sparring rounds and jian shu rounds.

tournament prep-sparring

i had 2 sparring rounds today, with the focus on following up from my observations from last week to work on dealing with larger opponents. i ended up having some insightful conversation with Jay and Phunsak regarding the ways you face a larger opponent.

the general idea is to close the gap and engage, but the question (and certainly my problem to date) is how to do this. the tactics are to use movement and timing to find and exploit angles and openings. but again, here too, the issue is how you do this. i ended up getting a number of pointers from Jay and Phunsak as to just how this is supposed to be done, and what you should be trying to do once you have managed to engage.

both of them also pointed out that it's a fallacy to look at a person's physical dimensions and automatically issue judgments as to who has an overall advantage. rather, the reality is that each person has certain advantages in certain areas in certain conditions, and hence each person has different sets of tools given a particular set of conditions. in which case, a good fighter uses those tools to maximum effect and minimizes those the opponent has an advantage in.

this was pretty useful for me. it's the kind of training and experience i think is necessary to really learn how to employ a martial art...and the kind you don't get just practicing forms or techniques, or talking about objectives and principles. you can't really learn how to defend yourself unless you actually learn how to use your martial art.

tournament prep-jian shu

we spent the rest of the day doing mock rounds of jian shu, practicing the formal calls and hand signals. we also went through several hypothetical scenarios to evaluate how the rules would work. after that, we went to lunch.