Last night Mr Steinman had us all lined up doing warm up drills and stretches.
"I tried on a white belt the other night while nobody was around. I probably shouldn't be telling you guys this. Man! That messes with your head!" He told us.
"Almost like trying on women's underwear..." I mumbled (before I realized that implied I had tried women's underwear). He cracked up. This came up when one student ended up at class without his belt. "Let's see if you can do what you're supposed to know without your belt on." Mr Steinman said, "Oh, you can do an extended outward block without it. I think you'll be ok." There is a lot of tradition, symbolism, and almost superstitious practice surrounding the martial arts belt. You don't let it touch the floor, you don't wear it outside the dojo, it represents your knowledge and skill, etc. So it's kind of funny to joke about somebody losing their knowledge or ability to perform when they don't have their belt. This school even has students move their knots to the side, unless testing, out of respect. I've never seen that before.
My latest struggle involves what Kenpo calls the "marriage of gravity". The term doesn't really make sense to me. It refers to using the settling of your body weight to add power to strikes and blocks. For example: when you kick, and then place your foot down, your body weight settles back into a stance. At the instant your foot makes contact with the ground and starts to bear your body's weight, you punch or block. It's like suddenly bending your knees on a bathroom scale and watching the needle jump up for a fraction of a second. For that fraction of a second, your weight, or pressure on the ground, is more than if you were standing at rest. It allows for harder punches and more solid blocks. So maybe you are "marrying" your slight downward momentum (and the halting of that momentum) with natural gravity.
Anyway, my struggle with this comes from my Tae Kwon Do training in Harrison. In TKD, to get the absolute most power out of this concept, they drop the body weight heavily and lunge forward slightly at the same time. This combines downward and forward momentum at the same instant. It truely does generate a lot of power. In fact, while taking Freestyle Kenpo in Jonesboro, I applied this while practicing power punches with other students. Weight drop + visualizing a target behind the target + forward body momentum = power. The guy holding the shield pad said, "Eric, I don't know what you're doing, but I can feel it! You are hitting harder than anybody else." In American Kenpo, however, the forward body momentum, created by a step forward or lunge, is not utilized because it creates a vulnerability and has the potential to throw you off balance. Someone could use your forward momentum against you. Several beginning techniques use a neck chop at the end where this settling of the body weight is used for power. I keep lunging, or "falling into it" as Mr Steinman calls it. I naturally emphasize the forward motion because of previous training. But when I watch him demonstrate, he settles DOWN, and hardly moves foward at all, even when stepping down forward. His shoulders stay directly over his hips and he does not lean. Seems to me this would reduce power, but greatly increase solid balance and speed up recovery from offensive moves. Since Kenpo is more about overwhelming speed than power, it fits. Don't get me wrong, he just flicked the back of his open hand at my solar plexus and nearly knocked the wind out of me when I wasn't expecting it. He generates a lot of power along with the speed, as a 3rd degree black belt should.
So I have to work on settling down, and not following my foot forward when I step down from a front kick, AND not reaching for the chop. When I practiced on a person, their neck is a lot closer than I imagined, so you don't need to move forward. As Mr Steinman puts it, "When you kick them in the groin, they will graciously present their neck to you by bending forward." Where self-defense is concerned, Kenpo appears to be an "all or nothing" style. Jujitsu has moves that allow you to restrain an opponent without injuring them until you can determine whether their intent is to kill you or simply harrass you. I don't want to kill the guy five times before he hits the ground if he's just being a jerk. So Kenpo requires more mental judgement. If things have progressed to the point where you need to use it, then you are in real trouble and you need to disable your attackers quickly.
Outside of self-defense, it is just a blast to practice! We were doing warm up drills last week, led by a higher ranking student while Mr. Steinman worked with a couple of his upper ranks in a back room. I happened to see him through the partially open door. He looked just like the cartoon Tazmanian devil! A whirlwind of feet, elbows, and fists! And they were shooting every direction around him! Very impressive.
When we were leaving, two the highschool students were discussing drivers ed and complained about how hard parallel parking was. Mr. Steinman said, "Yeah, there's definately a science to that." And he started describing it just like he teaches karate, talking about 45 degree angles, etc. "And then you get the car in a neutral bow stance..." I said. Rainheart added, "Yeah, but the right, back wheel has to be in a cat stance!" Too funny.
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