Before I go onto how boxers generally utilize this skill, I’ll do an overview of peng/elasticity.
I’ve made blog posts about Peng before, about the natural elasticity in the body that internal martial arts practitioners use as one of their primary skills and characteristics. It’s what they use to cause people to go flying with a bouncing expression of force, particularly in Chinese martial arts. If one observes carefully, the sensation is that of a person launched from a spring. It’s obvious what it is.
Many also use it to generate power in punching, though usually the punch is also well…kind of a shove more than something that would knock you out. It’s useful however, as it steals balance which makes it easy to hit someone with boxing/conventional strikes or knocks them down to control or stomp.
Steven Morris doesn’t call it Peng and probably would be upset I’m even comparing what he does to traditional martial arts, but he refers to this power as well, this elastic spring like quality.
But unlike giving the guy an impressive shove, he uses it to generate powers in hitting, but his application of peng is using it to create whips and flurys instead of the off balance or pushing nature seen in internal martial arts.
This is not unique to Morris however, other strikers will use a similar ‘whip’ of the body to create these strikes by locking and springing the tendons to punch or kick, though MOrris is one of the few to use it as a whole body thing, from root to branhc.
How boxers consistently use Peng.
But I have had only a two people relate this natural elasticity in a way that combines striking and foot work.
Most people use it to shove or push, to strike and take balance, or to create flurys.
But how many use it to break distance and explode? How many use it to change direction?
My Taiji teacher in particular had a background in karate and often sparred full contact, and he often noticed a sink and rise of the knee would charge the tendons in his leg(Ankle and achielles in particular) and he would explode forward breaking distance to land a strike, and expanding on said strike for more power or off balancing.
Thing is though, he did it through a turning or a step back to charge it. It was thinking about his movement I realized that boxers and SOME point karateka utilize through a different method of charging the tendons of the legs to create movement and power.
They do it by locking the ankle or even whole leg in place, then landing on it by shifting weight one side or the other, the leg constantly springing from one. The explanation for this is momentum, the fighter is constantly in motion and therefore able to act faster and react faster. But many trainers don’t mention that this is only on small reason it works, it also bio mechanically makes you explode without much muscular effort. If this is done right, cardio should only be partially strained from the pendulum, and the muscles of your leg not at all.
Personally I could not do it the way my taiji teacher does, by compressing the ankle by a backwards step and exploding forward. But I noticed I could do it with a side to side motion. I can’t cover as much ground as him to explode forward, but it’s more than a muscular motion, and my ability to move to the side is better then if i drop backwards.
Either way, it doesn’t matter how you do it, just that you do it. Different ways of doing this help your fighting in different ways. Mine makes me cover ground laterally, the way my taiji teacher does it covers ground forward/breaking distance.
It was first exposed to me as a distance breaker.
But while it was introduced as a way to break distance and move explosively, it does much more than that, and boxers once again use it much more than the pendulum bounce.
Not only is good old crazy Mike Tyson slipping punches, but his movement is charging a spring into each of his leg, and thus making his punches that much more damaging. I alluded before many martial artists use elasticity to enhance strikes, but this one kind of puts it together with movement of the feet using the springs as a platform on the ground.
Tyson isn’t just shoving a person off balance with a strike or push, nor is he using small whips to create flurry’s.
He’s creating
Karate people do it less as a pendulum bouncing from foot to food, and more as a ‘bounce’.
But to quote Jesse Enkamp, you don’t jump up and up like most martial arts do, but continuous bounces down, down down. I usually enjoy Jesse’s videos, but I rarely get better principles or technique’s, but this video is actually pretty good at teaching a variation of peng and elasticity for movement.
If you can’t or don’t want to use the swinging of the head to spring the leg side to side like Tyson…
Or if you don’t want to bounce from one leg or the other like the lady boxer in the gif above…
You can simply stand in one place and drop down down down as Jesse shows, and then let that spring propel you forward or add edge to your strikes. Point karate has done some damage to karate as an art, but I take this application of Peng, of elasticity to be a plus.
And the thing is, depending on your talent, ability and method of movement, you can use Peng/Pendulum to charge your body in countless ways.
What I outlined above isn’t the only methods to recruit elasticity in your footwork. It’s just the most common.
Some of the best of all time did their own thing with the concept.
Ali, Domnick Cruz, Ali again and Willie Pep.
Now in my opinion Taiji and internal arts are some of the best ways to use the bodies natural elasticity in combat. My taiji teacher learned to move the legs and whole body through taiji, and so has my uechi-ryu teacher.
But most don’t really teach this at all. They may imitate it, but don’t recruit the right body mechanics.
But the fact is, most Taiji, Hsing I, Pa kua and other internal martial arts types don’t use it like that, it’s generally either piece meal or done as pushes and off balances.
But boxing specifically is one of the few arts that actually teachers how to use this in a holistic method of movement and striking within their art. The pendulum tends to be hammered in, and if a boxer is doing it wrong, it becomes very obvious very quickly to the coach since they can’t attach any tools to the movement.
Hell to be fair, I don’t think even most boxers even realize what they are doing, they just do it.
Ninety percent of martial arts or combative schools have rules when they fight, especially when doing pressure testing or sparring.
Yes even your school with eye pokes and groin kicks. You all train with rules whether you know it or not.
My school we could tap the groin if someone had a cup, and indicate eye pokes. But if you soccer kicked someone’s cup full force, you’re going to get in shit, same with jabbing your fingers hard in the eyes. The rules are loose, but they are there, especi
Krav Maga will teach all sorts of dirty stuff, but it’s never practiced under pressure, never when someone is resisting. The few Krav Maga schools that spar certainly don’t full on groin kicks or dig fingers into eyes, throat punch. If they did, the insurance would go way up and the rate of injury would be much higher.
The fact is every martial artist whether focussed on counter assault or sport combat does drills, and drills are seperate from sparring in that they are limited, they have rules. Sparring has rules as well for safety or to conform to success in the sport.
Even the army that does Milling has ground rules. Someone gets knocked down doesn’t get kicked, they don’t let the guys head butt each other, no elbows. But they are going as hard as they can.
I won’t even say rules are a bad thing. If you want to work on your skills to take someone down or throw them, you remove all striking. If you want to limit ground work, you create a time limit for the ground. If you want to learn to fight off your back, don’t reward pins.
Boxing has many rules, but boxing will teach you to wreck the crap out of most people, same with werstling. The rules isolate a skill to take it to the highest level possible.
Yet even as I say rules are a good thing, it’s always good to keep in mind how they limit you, and more important than how they limit you is how they shape your preferences.
I showed one of my students today Daido-Juku Kudo, which allows almost every form of striking. He said they look spazzy compared to Muay Thai or boxing.
But remember my article about headbutts changing everything? Elbows and headbutts being allowed changed Daido-Juku. Where they have conventional defense on the outside, but when they are in the inside they don’t cover much, they slip while striking not in isolation. Why? Becausue when you can start head butting and elbowing, it cuts through everything and stuff becomes way more bare basics on one level, and then on another level the subtle mechanics and movement becomes more complex.
Kyokushin for instance looks like two guys doing rock-em-sock-em robots. But they are doing subtle shifts of their body to absorb and mitigate strikes and to deliver them. You allow head punching and bare knuckles like Daido-Juku with these guys and it will well…look like Daido-Juku.
People have often made the same comment about Lethwei, how it looks more crude and basic than Muay thai which seems more refined and complex. But like I wrote in the previous article, a great deal of that goes out the window when head butting alone is allowed, the clinch causes less stalling and makes it harder to halt midrange striking.
And so often Lethwei looks like the above. As Steve Morris would point out, it would resemble army milling.
The guard is good to know, but ever wonder why in most of history people valued the pin more than the guard? It existed in grappling in some form, but it was never emphasized other than BJJ.
Because if people have a basic grasp on riding the guard or passing it, it make the guard a far less comfortable place to hang out. In BJJ it’s neutral territory. But in any ruleset with striking is allowed, it’s just stalling while your opponent gets shots on you.
That doesn’t mean the guard is not a position to master, you better be good at it, because if your guard sucks, you’re in for a hard time when someone wants to pound you from above.
But BJJ schools often like to stall or just sit there.
Khabib has gone on his back in his old fights, but his guard is active. He does not like to stall with it, he’s constantly attacking. He’s not comfortable there, so he is very proactive.
EVen if you get rid of rules, or tailor make them, the rules inside your training space dictate the manifestation of your fighting the most.
The thing is, the way you train can reflect exactly how you fight, assuming your training reflects the natural reactions of the body when violence happens.
Sometimes the rules we dictate can be so utterly unnatural, that the way we train absolutely falls apart the moment adrenaline begins pumping, when real fighting happens.
I could make excuses for the video above. Some points i’ve made before in a different context. As I said before, many drills will show up in real fighting, but it’s so subtle you can’t tell what’s happening, as many drills train “Micro moments” as Rick Wilson says, and Steve Morris also talks about how many practices come from snapshots in a fight.
All of the above is true.
But the fact is I’ve done enough Tai Chi to know the way they practice, and the way they show and expect application looks absolutely nothing like the above(I can’t speak for white crane, I don’t do it)
What makes Tai chi so good to study can often make it your worst enemy in a fight. Vertical posture, sinking, flowing and adhering are all great skills. But they push it as an ideal that must remain throughout the fight, rather than knowing that violence forces us to move and do things that are far from the ideal mechanical principles, and the principles apply by simply finding them in imperfection.
Now what do principles have to do with rules? Well sometimes drills are stopped or broken when principles are violated (as often they should be) and the rules of the drills are to embody the principles as much as possible.
There actually is no problem with this, but usually people go from training drills in the most perfect manner right straight into fighting, where either they fight completely different from how they train, or fight so much like how they train it’s awkward and they get murdered.
Progressions are the key, careful progressions. Not just the level of resistance, but even the progressions of the rules. Things need to be allowed to fall apart little by little, and success is measured by salvaging it, and seeing how much of the structure and principles remain under pressure under natural reactions.
What does all this have to do with rules?
Simply pointing out that not only do rule dictate how you fight, but also how rules can often hinder what is natural, and make your fighting bad if you don’t use progressions that get to natural pressure and natural fighting.
The fact is, rules are not just a thing in combat sports or forms of sparring. It’s how you even do what you do. It’s every limitation or terms dictated in every technique repetition, under every time you do a drill. And yes when you spar or fight.
The famous words uttered by good old Nathan Diaz.
You do what you train, if what you train actually shows up in a fight. You do what the rules make you do.
Many MMA fighters with a wrestling base will shoot in when hit or overwhelmed instead of covering, and if you’re wrestling is good, it’s not a bad thing. Unlike the weird kung-fu fight above, wrestling calls on using natural human movement, reactions and physiology. ANd the rules reward a take down.
SO guess how wrestlers manifest themselves in a fight? They go for the take down. Or if they are in a bad position they…go for the take down.
In sport BJJ when someone is about to pass your guard or submit you, you hold them in closed gaurd to orient yourself. It’s very similar to what covering is used for.
And because BJJ largely rewards jumping guard and pulling guard that this is what most of them do, and guard is natural despite what people say, bears do it when fighting and gorillas. That’s right, for all the posts I make bashing BJJ guard pulling, I’ll say it’s a natural movement.
But come from a sport where closed guard is not rewarded, and people do something else when taken down.
What if when you’re taken down, the rules rewarded something else other than holding guard?
That’s some fine wrestling right there, and it was his ‘panic response’ due to years of fighting under wrestling rules. Scrambling when being taken down instead of going for the guard. If he did BJJ rules he would probably go to guard.
Stephen Thompson did kickboxing, but also years of point karate, and his natural instincts in fighting is to avoid getting touched no matter what, but to be able to ‘touch’ his opponent. As a result he values mobility and ‘in out’ over all other methods of striking. THe rules he trained under dictate how his fighting will manifest. He does train all sorts of rules, but the habits of point karate are there, and in the way Thompson uses it, it’s not bad.
That’s Muay Thai legend Baukaw.
Notice how compared to stephen Thompson, he and his opponent will literally walk right into the pocket and throw strikes. There is no in and out. The ruleset in Muay THai rewards pocket exchanges, and therefore Baukaws style manifests like that.
Everything we do about training is about rules. We set parameters of drills, and those are basically rules. We set safety or goals for sparring, and to conform to those are rules.
Even something like military milling has rules, no one is allowed to block, it specifically brings out a specific purpose.
You can train for a street fight, and maybe in a real life violent altercation you will totally be unleashed, doing things you would never do in practice or in the right. Some people have done that.
But still, habits are formed in the training hall, and those will influence us. Even ignoring the conventions hammered into us during practice is a deliberate act, something to consciously do more than unconscious at times. Even if it’s a moment of recognition that all habits must be broken.
Oh surprise, surprise. People with ADHD have sex and they get into relationships.
So what is it like?
Well I won’t divulge too much information about my personal life, I need to honour my wife and her privacy.
But I can talk about research and random ADHD people I have talked to, and how ADHD symtpoms manifested in their relationship and sex lives.
HOW WE MEET PEOPLE: THE GOOD
Like anyone else, we fall in love due to many reasons, often attraction. People with ADHD are no different, we see someone sparkly in our eyes and we are drawn to them, maybe it’s worse with us because the mind of someone with ADHD is one constantly seeking novelty. Our minds are lacking stimulating chemicals like serotonin, Dopamine and other things. The eratic hyperactive behaviour and brain blanking is a result of a brain seeking stimulating things in their environment to get the body to get the body to pump these chemicals, hence hyper focus, thrill seeking behaviour, and changing attention when they are bored.
If someone does not enjoy sexuality yet has a libido, they will be interested in sex, and sex will be stimulating because they need it, their libido gives them a focus. If they see a pretty man or woman, they will notice them.
But that isn’t surprising, that’s just everybody, even some a-sexuals can appreciate aesthetic beauty.
Thing that makes ADHD people different is we can be obsessive, and it doesn’t even have to be people we are attracted to, the attractive part just makes it more likely to happen. I’ve had conversations with girls I never found attractive but because we clicked so well, I absolutely fell in love with them and thought a great deal about them. I would move so fast in a relationship, even try to get married to them. Part of my quick proposals was a cultural issue I had to deal with in my home life, but it didn’t bother me because I really had these powerful feelings for these woman I thought were gross, because we clicked, and because we clicked I didn’t care. Everyone in a relationship has a honey moon phase, and the ADHD person’s honey moon phase is turned up to the maximum.
When novelty wears off:
So you’re probably thinking that because ADHD people seek novelty, that when the emotional high and sexuality is no longer stimulating, we break up or we cheat.
Sometimes that is true. I know two guys with ADHD who were chronic cheaters.
But the vast majority of them seem to be highly loyal to their spouse or girlfriends, infact people break up with severe ADHD people often before the novelty wears off, because so many people who have ADHD really bad can be annoying, hard to live with, and often a ‘burden’ on society.
If anything, because ADHD causes both a biological and environmentally generated fear of rejection and abandonment, we tend to hang onto our spouses desperately, because we honestly think we can’t do better, and we remember our lonliness without them. THe two guys I know that cheat all the time are very good looking and very charming, woman come to them like candy. But not all people with ADHD are like that, most are normal.
Yet while we can be so damn loyal, we still lose novelty. We may become more emotionally distant than we were before, more interested in our T.V. show or cell phone than returning calls or sitting down and talking. We might zone out or lose interest in sex.
On the ADHD facebook groups, many people mention how they are in polyamorous relationships, infact I was shocked how many woman with ADHD were poly, with open relationships and marriages. The men were less likely to be poly in their responses, but they expressed they would like to be poly. It’s easier for a woman, even an ‘average’ looking woman to attract multiple sexual partners than an average man, an average man has to work hard to get one partner, much less many. It’s just easier for woman to attract men.
But regardless of the gender differences, both were surprisingly open to poly relationships, and many straight up did them. The woman that were polyamorous said it restored sexual and emotional novelty in their lives, without cutting out a husban or a boyfriend they deeply love who stood by them through thick and thin. Just because you don’t find your partner interesting does not mean you don’t love them. I love my parents but I can’t really have a conversation with them, yet there is love.
Now as a Muslim I can have four wives, but my first and probably only wife would kill me if I brought home some Khadija or Yasmine. So I can’t do polygamy, and I would never sabotage my relationship for that.
But I will say, my wife gets frusterated that I can simply be content to sit around watching anime with her than having some intense conversation like we used to have. Sometimes we still talk about stuff, I trust her impliccably, and she’s tolerated living with me, and I am not easy to live with. But that freshness is not there.
Yet I would argue that the quality of a relationship should not be measured by how stimulating someone is, because even if you don’t have ADHD, people grow bored. Things get mundane. You notice faults.
People with ADHD especially can often screw up and mix up love with hyper focus and stimulation, and then after it’s gone we stay with people because we’re afraid of being alone, because we piss off so many people and we’ve been misunderstood and abandoned so much.
Yet sometimes we arn’t staying with our partners over a fear of abandonment, sometimes we realize that the novelty and stimulation we felt when we first met someone is amazing, the crazy marathon sex is amazing.
But we know we will ultimately get bored, and if we arn’t repulsed or upset by the person once the excitement is done, why leave them? You still trust the person you are with, you feel safe with them, and you know they have your back. Is that not enough to stay married to them?
I WANT TO TALK ABOUT VAGINAS
Well actually probably more sex in general.
Novelty means we can be very exploratory during sex, trying and doing things most people would be too shy to ask or uncomfortable with, just anything to keep it exciting. Sometimes you can lose focus during sex, in one ADHD message board a girl talked about how her brain would randomly go on different topics while she slept with her boyfriend, or even her orgasms would trigger memories. The whole ‘squirrel’ thing about ADHD exists.
But on top of it all, is someone that probably will be very experimentative, and if they have hang ups, it’s possible there are some cultural issues or even trauma in the past.
One woman I am personal friends with had an open relationship to keep sex exciting for her, she loved it. She had to end the open relationship because she got all the attention, but no woman came to her husband, and it hurt his feelings so she stopped. She clearly loved her husband enough to take his feelings in consideration over sexual excitement. Thing is though, she also told me that she demands more from her husband, she constantly wants to try new things and do it often.
That brings up a problem, because what happens if you’re a sexually experimentative ADHD dude or girl and you want things badly your partner just isn’t comfortable giving you?
What if your a man, and want to try sticking it up your girlfriends butt, but you’re well endowed, while you’re partner is petite?
What if you’re a woman that wants cunnilingus but your husband isn’t into that? Or you want your partner to bruise you or slap you? Because I’ve met woman who talked about being into that sort of thing. I can tell you right now I could never hit my partner hard enough to mark them.
Once again, I’m sure this is a reason so many ADHD people become Poly, but not every partner is okay with that.
So how to deal with it?
The issue is, you communicate and compromise. ANd if some things can’t happen through compromise, there is always imagination.
(This is based on a facebook post, so the editing is bad. Usually when i go over something a few times, it’s way more polished looking.)
I’ve honestly given up on complaining about media not being woke. I noticed most of the biggest activists for social causes will complain about some media being problematic, but then enjoy other media just as, if not more problematic and not even think about it. The fact is sometimes really cringe stuff can create drama in writing, and one reason stories are enjoyable is because characters are flawed, they are not always tolerant and ethical, and the world they live in may just be utterly terrible. It seems impossible to create drama without some problematic ideas coming about.
Berserk is a good example of that, I have two friends who are male feminists that absolutely love Berserk. BUt that comic has woman getting gang raped lots, drawn all curvy and highly sexualized. Even though it’s framed as a trauma, the framing of the pictures is similar to hentai. Thing is though, Berserk is just soooo good. It’s such a good story, even with rape being exploitive in how it’s drawn and framed, you get the idea it’s horrible, the whole world is horrible, and it adds stakes to what the characters have to deal with. The characters, the intense fight scenes and tension with every battle, the characterization all make it so easy to ignore the very blatant exploitation elements in the story. Infact if the rape scenes were not over the top, it would not match the highly violent and sexualized world that exists in the comic. It would have a different feel. I dare say the exploitation even makes it better, which I don’t even want to say, because socially it’s not good for society.
Game of Thrones is another example, lots of woke people love it. But both the books and movies are well…using violence against woman to the point it’s a trope. But so many people love it. Remember all the white feminist hillary supporters talking about how awesome Daenerys was? Clearly they enjoyed and watched the show and books despite the fact so much of it is written with a male gaze, and using rape casually.
I honestly don’t blame them. It’s okay to critisize your media, I do it all the time. But at some point you have to just…ignore it. Otherwise there is so little media to enjoy.
“But wait Adeel. What about *insert highly woke franchise*? That show/movie/book is perfect!”
Well remember Josh Whedon? Socially left people used to love him, people said his stuff was the most positive toward woman and minorities. He was used as an example for how to write woke media. Yet today people look back at much of his work, and find problematic elements of it, such as the trope of normalizing INCELS(Dr. Horrible) mistaking male gaze as sex positive feminism(Lots of stuff including Fire-Fly) reducing a woman’s value to her reproductive ability(Age of Ultron) and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure people complained about. It didn’t matter that at the time it was almost perfectly woke, it was an example of progressive story telling and depictions of woman. Yet today it is his protrayl of woman which is criticized. At some point media will fail to evolve it’s social views to societies.
Star Trek was always seen as a progressive franchise, but we know there are episodes in TOS and TNG that have not aged well like the time Troy got pregnant with a space baby, and everyone was concerned about the womb, or Kirk and how he treated female characters.
THe fact is, even if you find a piece of media that is ‘perfectly woke’ chances are you miss things that will only come out in the future. So let’s just write and enjoy media, and hopefully not promote anything overtly hateful.
She-Ra and Stephen universe are perhaps the most woke shows made in recent years, so damn woke that even before the full season came out, the anti-social justice skeptic crew on youtube took one look at it and hated the very concept of them as pushing a woke agenda. And yes, both shows are very very gay, very very woke. But they are still very good and enjoyable shows
(I loved She-Ra, I couldn’t get into Stephen Universe)
Thing is, even these shows have yielded criticism from the very same communities they wanted to represent. The most notable is the showrunner for She-Ra apologizing for a slavery joke, which is understandable. But she also got in heat for how she protrayed certain LGBTQ aspects. Now I am not LGBTQ so I totally missed where she’s offensive, but she apparently got in shit for screwing up female representation and representing autism, even though the so called autistic character never came out and said they were autistic.
Stephen Universe got slammed for showing how some of the main Gems behaved, how the white Gem would take a more ‘submissive’ role to the ‘ethnic’ gems when merging. I saw one article ranting about portraying woman of colour as aggressive while white woman as dainty. Personally I found I had to squint to notice this, it isn’t some big huge thing.
Now remember the two shows I’m talking about, they were slammed by the right and anti-SJW skeptic sphere for how woke they are. And STILL people were finding faults with them, and these are recent too, they aren’t so old that they existed in far more bigoted eras.
I write.
There are problems in my writing, I have grammar issues and spelling, though people like that I have a style, a voice.
That’s good.
But a big thing I struggle with when writing is the fact that I wanted to make sure I didn’t offend anyone, didn’t cross any taboos unintentionally. ANd it got to the point I would throw in characters or change aspect of characters that are uninspired or do nothing for the story just to meet some sort of quota for representation.
My writing became less smooth, and I hesitated a great deal.
I noticed as long as I’m not being overtly hateful, just simply writing a story and characters the way you want produces a better story, without worrying about representation.
That isn’t to say we shouldn’t use representation when appropriate, or that it makes a story worse. Sometimes representation makes a story better.
So before I talk about where represenation can hurt story telling, I want to get into where it works.
When representation works.
Not only was Azeem’s character cool in Prince of Thieves, but yeah it was good to see Muslim representation. ALso the way he came to England was pretty feasible, it was seamless and didn’t require too much of a suspension of disbelief. Google didn’t exist back then, the way they showed islamic prayers was really off, and it portrayed Azeem with the ‘fatalistic muslim’ stereotype. Yet I’ll say I’ve met Muslims that act like Azeem, and he was shown as intelligent, resourceful and tough. You can tell Morgan Freeman had fun playing him, and the writers had fun writing his role.
Sense 8 was a show written by a trans woman, so it’s no surprise they had a trans character, and lots of sexually fluid people.
But the show explains the connections they have cross over skills and even desires, and much of the characters reflected the cultures that produced them. That’s not to say there is some BS, as this show didn’t advertise itself as an action movie, yet we have a skinny Korean woman beating up muscle bound men with single shots instead of some creative fight choreography. But that’s not a problem with representation, more how the action was organized. The story with the trans character was making a political statement, but it also genuinely created tension. It wasn’t some random story of transphobia that had no consequences to the general plot or world, the transphobia in this genuinely threatened and shaped the trans character. It was good representation, I genuinely cared about the character and her problems.
Apollo and Midnighter are basically super-man and batman rip-offs if you’re harsh, or analogues if you’re more gentle minded.
Thing is though Midnighter is kind of cool. He’s gay as fuck, but he’s really cool, his preferences are just one of many aspects of his character and it’s fun to see.
Apollo as well is basically SUperman. This story could even be seen as what would happen if Super-man and batman were a couple.
But it doesn’t just use that premise to say “LOL what if gay” it actually adds to the dynamic and trust between the two of them. There is a reason this comic series kept going along side Bat-man and Superman despite essentially being a copy.
But now lets talk about where it doesn’t work
This show was actually good, I liked it.
It was supposed to be a speculative fiction version of Victorian england with steam punk elements involving Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
Thing is though, while I know england has a very old black community, we have two characters that are sisters. At first I thought they were adopted or raised as sisters, but it’s strongly implied they are blood sisters. One is an asian actress the other is white. They cast all sorts of races in victorian england for all sorts of characters.
Modern day England is very multicultural, but at the time this is supposed to take place it isn’t. Yes it’s a fantasy/sci-fi story, but the whole rustic mood is ruined. It seemed like the only reason it took place during the industrial revolution was because they wanted an excuse for abject poverty and classism more than the setting itself. They could have just put it in the modern day, and had Sherlock Holmes and Watson equivalents.
The next on the list is Super-Girl. It has a trans character.
Thing is, I noticed trans friends on my facebook don’t really talk about this character, no one cares or seems to idolize them.
Because her transness is incidental. Not in the way that gender is just one facet of a complex character, no. This character constantly invokes their trans identity.
But the plot generally does nothing with her. She’s just a love interest for Brainiac, but his reactions to her are more interesting than this character herself. Despite her being Trans is something often brought up, most characters don’t react to her being trans other than one episode about trans phobia where villians and people we don’t give a shit about and will never again see again. No character has to wrestle with their bigotry. They don’t have to address trans issues in the show, but the fact they highlight this part of her identity constantly makes it strange no one else cares.
The plot sometimes has her have premonitions to bring up some tension and relevance toward her, but she really isn’t a defining character.
Super-Girl is a successful show, but people remember Kara’s character, not this one.
THE ELITE really gets to me, because the Muslim Character not only is there to be the ‘ethnic one’ but it follows the same tired trope.
When she wears hijab she’s timid and scared. She takes it off and she’s open and rambunctious and cool.
Well if you want to do a token Muslim character wrestling with a western identity, make her dynamic well before she takes the Hijab off. Show the headscarf issue as complex in the cultural context. Even if the show runners thought the Hijab is oppressive, show that perhaps Muslim woman can wear something patriarchal by choice but still have complex character beats, often liberated in other ways. I’m not even asking them to be pro-Hijab, just show people can be multifaceted with them.
There are many woman who take the hijab off or never wear it, and they can be very socially liberal or repressed.
There are girls that keep the hijab on and are very individual, they have a spark.
There are woman who take it off, yet will defend the shit out of the right to wear it.
It’s the tired old “The Muslim character must always be wrestling with conservative culture, there is always a cognitive dissonance”
Yes there is always cultural dissonance, but it’s not the only thing in their lives.
Sometimes girls who wear hijab do normal things, they aren’t always repressed. Most hijabi girls I know were less repressed than me if they grew up in a western country.
Same problem as the Irregulars, but the Irregulars could at the very least get away with random asians being the sisters of white girls and the daughter of a white Sherlock Holmes and his wife.
Bridgton even tries to lean into it’s setting and historical period regarding woman’s rights and abortion etc.
Yet somehow a noble family are a bunch of black folks, and no one gives a shit at all.
Yes this show is about hot people having lots of sex and great sex scenes woman appreciate. But you know, why bother with the social commentary then if historical accuracy doesn’t matter? Why bother even talking about social norms of the era?
Then again this example I could be talking about maybe is a bad one, because people loved this show, they didn’t care at all.
So maybe it’s just me.
Oh Boy. This example brings my point home.
Now GIRLS Is not my show, once again it’s a critical hit like Bridghton mostly among woman. Thing is though, I don’t see problems with it, it serves it’s function well.
But despite the fact critics and fans alike adored this program, people complained there was a lack of black representation in the show.
So to placate them, Lena Dunham basically threw in a random black character, and surprise surprise, people realized the inclusion was forced and didn’t like it.
I don’t blame Lena Dunham for this, she was literally hounded by woke fans to throw in a black character.
Lena Dunham even apologized to Donald Glover about his role in the show. Now Lena Dunham has her faults, but somehow it’s her fault that the black character was bland and included in a weird way? Writing is an emotional expression, it’s about inspiration. Good writing often happens when you want to actually do it. Well she didn’t want fucking Donald Glovers character, it was a purely executive decision.
The funny thing is, whether representation works or does not workdoesn’t matter as much as putting something in because you want it to be there. And that is why representation does or does not work.
In many of the examples where representation worked, it’s clear the writers actually really wanted to put it there, it was part of their inspiration, their desire to tell a story. Lana Wachawski is a trans woman, and you see in the way she wrote trans characters in sense 8 that she really cares about this aspect of identity in the story. Azeem in Robin Hood had mistakes with his inclusion, but it added a spice to the movie, you can tell the writers were having fun.
Mean while with the examples where it doesn’t work shows some desire to pander or meet a quota more than actually expand or develop a story. In Super-girl the writers barely cared about the character they created, you can tell with how little the character actually had, how little substance. In THE ELITE the Muslim character either exists because they wanted to make a statement about religiously conservative families or they wanted a story of a culture class. Either way they really screwed up in the research, and if you care about a character, research would have been done and they would have understood how a Muslim family would be like. The worst offender is what happened with GIRLS and Lena Dunham’s forced inclusion of a black character.
If people write letters to show runners or complain about a lack of representation in an otherwise very good show that isn’t in anyway hateful, who cares. Don’t force anything, let the representation come organically.
And in the case of the ELITE please actually research and talk to people of the community you’re trying to represent.
So agan, I started with Karate, but my teacher didn’t train in a traditional way, or rather he never felt bound by it. So we head butted.
And I got pretty good at it, I think we all did.
But the focus of the training went toward purity of motion than focussing on a single skill, and that’s okay, the whole school benefitted from a focus on fighting with a purity of motion.
Most of the MMA training I have done has not involved headbutts, and so it took a backseat in most of my martial arts journy.
Fast forward to now during COVID, I am a patreon of Steve Morris, and Morris has been posting a great deal lately about head butts. How to set them up, where people are open for them, how to do them.
Most importantly he emphasizes how it dramatically changes the nature of a sport, especially in close quarters.
I was already doing lots of close quarters fighitng and dirty boxing with my students, so I figured ‘Hey lets start head butting too’ and I threw it into the practice, both rough work and flow drills.
And the moment head butts are introduced, the stalling so often seen in MMA and Muay Thai clinching is gone.
Morris points out that Lethwei looks rougher and different from Muay thai, and he attributes this to head butts. It’s one rule change different fro Muay thai, and yet it dramatically changes things.
And I noticed that too, how much the clinch changes. I might get hit more, but I am not stalled or trapped like before. Defense is fluid and very brief. THere is no holding someone in over under and feeding shots.
When head butts come, only the neck tie is an easy defense when someone is in position, and the neck tie cannot be direct, it must move to the side, or the head butt will come through.
Suddenly the tai clinch is more like a wrestling collar tie at times, posting at an angle to feed knees or punches.
You will still use the same tools. You will still body lock, under hook, over hook, neck tie.
But head position now is even more important than ever, and stalling will get you killed.
Look at the picture above. I posted it firstly because I can’t find a gif of people stalling in over under. But it doesn’t matter, because you’ve all seen this in every combat sport. In boxing they hit over under, stall until the ref breaks it up. It happens in muay thai where they throw knees, often to no effect.
And you see it in MMA. People just holding each other, stalling and stalemating.
But where you don’t see it, is Lethwei, combat sambo and Kudo. They will get over under clinch position, but no one stays there. Someone is always getting hit. Even if the headbutt does not land, it causes motion and energy.
The head butt also radically changes unconnected fighting like striking in mid range.
Once distance is broken, covering and parrying becomes very transitional, it’s not a fully committed strategy. Morris rightly points out that army milling represents greatly what many assaults resemble, and Lethwei? Lethwei greatly resembles army milling when there are exchanges. The genocidal bastards in Myanmar often don’t commit to a big defensive strategy, it’s often marged with thier attacks. THe head butt kills the stone wall covers, the heavy parrying style of a long guard disappears with hand fighting to head butts. As a result they are constantly throwing punches, elbows and yes headbutts. Of course head butts.
If you want me to shorten the hell out of this blog post, all I have to say is that headbutting makes stalling very hard.
Guess where else headbutting kills stalling?
The guard. Above is Khabib ruining someones plan of stalling and holding in closed guard.
We all saw old school and even new school BJJ guys score points and then just hold people in their closed guard until they make a mistake.
Mark Coleman back when Headbutts were allowed, used to frusterate the hell out of BJJ players by just framing on the arms, pinning, and dropping headbutts.
Above Khabib does it in someone holding and stalling in closed guard. There are a number of clips of Khabib headbutting the shit out of people.
So want to skip this whole article?
Head butts make stalling very difficult everywhere but long range striking or weapons.
Okay so even now I like Goku much better than Vegeta. I like his fighting style better and his combat and skill feats. I even like his personality better, because I just like a nice guy over a douchebag.
Yet I find Vegeta is much more popular than Goku, and there is a reason for that. The reason is character writing, something Akira Toriyama is hit and miss with regarding his beloved franchise.
It comes down to this fact: From the very beginning of DragonBall, Son Goku does not evolve very much. He’s a little kid that becomes more worldly and learns some more, but his core character never changes until he grows up, and even that is more him being a little serious, just a little. Goku is still a goofball.
And then Goku is the main character for Dragonball from the 1980s all the way to modern times, and he still has not changed in all those years. He’s the same personality, the same damn character. The fact I still like him and many others is actually incredible, it shows how much traits of being laid back and likable can make people ignore static writing.
Meanwhile Vegeta starts off as a complete irredeemable prick when he is first introduced, to a redeemable prick that is needed to beat the big bad. To a chaotic neutral anti-hero, to a villain again, then to a straight up hero.
And then even in DragonBall super in the modern era, Vegeta evolves even more. We see him give up his love off fighting for his new daughter, something Goku can’t do despite his children.
People like Vegeta more, because not only did he become the defacto secondary main character, but he’s the only one of the main character that still changes.
The changes Goku gets is minimal, other than the writers making him more and more stupid in the new series. Goku was naive and ignorant, but he had a sharp wit. The new series makes him outright dumb.
But just having an unlikable character constantly evolve can make you like them more than a likable character that is static.
My karate/combatives teacher Rick Wilson talks a great deal about how Empty Space and understanding it is largely a foundational principle in understanding combat.
It seems like common sense at first. BJJ says when you’re on top you take space, when you’re on bottom you create it. When you’re putting a submission on you take space, when you’re escaping you create it or move for it. In wrestling you take space to take balance, and you create space to avoid someoen taking your balance.
Yes it is simple. Infact thinking of this concept actually simplifies other principles and concepts in martial arts.
But the complexity is on how broad it is, to find it, to see it.
For example, creating space on the ground is used to escape. But it’s more than framing, you need to frame and go somewhere, usually someplace that is empty, and some spaces are better than others. To know this one must understand space.
On top one must take space away, but they must understand exactly where that is, and how it feels to take it.
A wrestler must know exactly where they need to wrap and how, need to be sensitive to every bit of space to take it, and the person defending or countering a takedown must sense every little place that it exists.
It’s not enough to see space, take or create it. There must be a fundamental understanding of it, we have to know it. To get all isosteric, you have to feel it, make it a part of you. Body mechanics do not work well if one does not know where space is. If you want to smash through the structure of a strong well balanced person, you must know how to hit into space, knowing where space is involves using body mechanics to move yourself.
But I want to focus on how empty space explains the concept of controlling the distance. In striking arts distance and range are essentially holy grails. People talk about range and understanding it in the same way as internal martial artists will talk about chi/ki energy. The difference is, controlling the distance at least has some quantifiable qualities that can be observed. But knowing how two people who understand distance and range can beat each other with it gets more isosteric. It’s seen as so complex it’s almost mysterious.
People do know footwork is a key to controlling range and distance. Afterall, if you can move faster and better than your opponent, you can move through space better, and thus control it better. Same with having more reach, you can occupy it much easier.
But that’s the thing. It actually is nothing more than that, the person that can read distance and simply occupy it better with footwork and their tools is the one that often has the advantage when there is space.
It’s no different than a wrestling taking up space in a body lock, but instead of double underhooks and body locks, you’re using the speed and precision of your jab to fill the space. You’re footwork helps you move through it in a relationship with your opponent, and your jab or whatever strike you’re using simply takes control of it.
You control it by being able to move through it better than your opponent(Footwork) and you take control of it with your weapons.
Machida here uses his movement to manage it. Then uses the kick to fill it, and since Belfort doesn’t react or do anything with his own tools in space, he got knocked out.
With weapons it’s even more pronounced. Maija Solderholm talks in her first book how most duels often end with a mutual kill or mutual injury. Not something history records because it sucks. The best duelists never got hurt, never got hit.
But one reason mutual kills are so common is the best thing to do is move through space and occupy it with your weapon. So many people pre-emptively strike that the other guy does it too. So they both kill or injure each other.
But one of my first blog posts was about a strong defense so you can freely focus on attacking. Well it was Maija that motivated that, and the better your defense is, the easier you can stop someone from taking control of the space with their weapon, without you getting hit by it.
Still sounds complicated, but that’s all it is. Moving through space and occupying it with movement and an attack. You keep someone from using their weapons to control the space with your defense, and your defense helps you keep attacking without dying or getting hit.
That’s the basic concept.
Thing is though, there are so many ways to understand space. I truly think people should read my teachers book. Because I’m his loyal and rebellous student who loves the guy.
And also because it actually examines the concept of space as a singular topic.
Thing is, even if you read this book, you’ll still have questions, and still perhaps not entirely understand it. I’m still wrestling with it, and I read the book (Does not help my working memory is terrible. ADHD is known for that)
Thing is though his website is available and he’s easy to contact.
And even if you don’t want to do that, let the book get you started on the concept.
My teacher doesn’t like teaching this, because it’s not winning it’s prolonging loss.
But I’m not going to come at this from the perspective of ‘should’ or ‘should not’ do.
But rather I want to say ‘what does covering indicate?’
Chances are, if you’re covering or blocking in a fight, in that specific moment you are losing or in bad position. It doesn’t mean you’re losing the whole fight, only in that moment you are. I am both speaking from my own experience and observation. When I or others are doing well, they often are slipping, parrying, palming, bobbing and weaving strikes. Their defense is often as my Taiji teacher would say , attacking while evading. They are dictating the pace, they are acting and not reacting, for action always beats reaction.
But when I have covered or seen others do it, often the speed and intensity of the strikes is too overwhelming to parry, slip, attack or counter. When I’m in this situation I am trying to reorient and not just stand there and get hit in the face. Now if you have a strong chin, you can probably ignore covering and just start brawling, like milling in the army. Hell from a self-defense perspective that surprisingly isn’t a bad idea considering how violence expresses itself.
Steve Morris was the first one to point out the self-defense value of army milling on my radar.
But other than milling, you probably will cover if paniced.
The question is, do you want to make a habit of this? Do you want your first reaction to be to cover the moment aggression is used on you?
My answer is no, you do not. If you can hit them the moment you see a pre-attack cue, do that. Don’t block of cover. If they already attacked, attack them while they are attacking(Sen no Sen) if you are behind the eight ball, parry or redirect and attack. Covering should not be your first choice.
Because as I said, you may eventually end up winning the fight, but in that moment you’re losing, you’re vulnerable. And in that moment it can easily end.
The problem with covering is, while you want to avoid it, it ‘happens’ depending on what or who you are dealing with. But you’re on the edge of being knocked out when it happens.
Only cover if you truly truly lose perception, and only do so to get your perception back. You certainly don’t want to stay there. Make distance and run, or go in and clinch. Or better yet, crash in. In the clip above is Mohammad Ali. He rarely ever covers, he usually uses distance, head movement and rolls, and when that fails he usually uses extended frames to block or parry(Similar to George Foreman but not nearly as obvious)
Yet even though Ali avoided covering like the fucking plague like most strikers do, he still ended up having to cover. What was the rope-a-dope? It won him the fight, but man was it risky. People forget Ali had one hell of a chin, and that was one reason it worked so well for him. And this was without take downs, so foreman couldn’t exactly double leg him or dump him like in Muay Thai.
What do we do with this information?
One thing is to make covering more of a last ditch effort, not a primary strategy to deal with strikes. Build up your pre-emptive or interruptive strikes, head movement, rolling, parries and palming more than covering. You don’t want to react, you want to act, and even your defense should be an ‘act’ rather than a reaction.
The second thing to do is to turn covers into absorptions or crashes as much as possible. The crash in particular is good, because it’s active and pro-active, often leading to a better position and pushes the pace. Petyr Yan is very good at this, he will cover, but use it to control distance and gain ground.
Notice how Petyr uses the block almost as a bait to ‘bounce’ off of Aldo’s punch to counter and land? His mindset is aggressive. It’s good to have strong defense, because you want aggressive, attacking defense. That’s what being able to block or slip ten punches does, it allows it to be very easy to focus on attacking. It caused a ‘break’ in Aldo’s Rhythm, a pause. It made him react instead of Yan.
There are better examples of using covers to crash and break than this one, but I can’t find any GIF images related to that.
The next best thing to do if you have to cover is to absorb. Once again Petyr Yan shows covering doesn’t mean your losing, if you use to create opportunity.
Firstly he attacks the punches yes, but he also rolls with it a little bit. This continues the momentum of the punch, causing it to slightly over extend, which causes Yan to take over a little bit and begin throwing his own combinations.
But sometimes you can’t crash or absorb when you’re caught off guard or overwhelmed.
And then you’re just covering and hoping you can get your bearings.
Why should you learn to cover and stone wall? Not because it’s ideal, it isn’t. Almost anything else is better. Not just in boxing but especially MMA and combat sambo, because if you’re covering while a blitz is coming, you’re probably getting double or single legged. And in a street fight that’s getting slammed on concrete.
No, you learn it because sometimes it happens, and it happens because the only alternative is to get cracked in the face.
A friend of mine did Muay Thai with a well decorated guy, and he said that his Muay Thai coach said, “If you’re covering, you’re not doing good.”
I like striking. I started out with it. I think for a slow fat guy I’m pretty good at it. I certainly love dirty boxing, Okinawan karate is a close quarters fighting art, and unlike most Uechi-Ryu schools that give lip service to close quarters combat, we actually did close quarters combat, with head butts and thai clinch and all that. We did flow drills and actual
But here is the thing: My dirty boxing got much better when I started doing MMA clinching, which is essentially mostly wrestling with two hands on the head being allowed. The ability to control, hit positions and transition with stability is much better with a wrestling background. Hell Wrestlers that have never done striking very easily can self-teach dirty boxing. In Muay Thai they will do these jump knees and jumping elbows in close quarters to be explosive and land a hit, but because level changes and folding an opponent is not allowed, they get away with it in Muay Thai but often can’t do this in any kind of MMA or Vale Tudo. Wrestlers who strike in the clinch often do not do this over reach, are not vulnerable to being taken down as they strike.
And the thing is, sometimes in close quarters you’re in positions where you can’t hit, that means you can’t do dirty boxing, even in a traditional Muay Thai context it’s hard to hit, the Thai’s will often do dumps in that situation, or stall. And if your a kickboxer, Dutch Muay Thai or karateka that doesn’t practice any kind of dirty boxing, it’s even worse.
But wrestling? A wrestler will start going into take downs, slams or position changes from there. Infact as much as I love dirty boxing, Wrestlers can forgo that skillset and take control. If they get clinched they can disengage it. If they get taken down or tackled, they are very good at popping back up.
Even the distance isn’t much of a problem for them. People have noticed Wrestlers do better in the UFC than high level BJJ Champions doing it, even guys not known for butt scooting. THe reason is because wrestling often has a sense of distance management, while BJJ even when they clinch don’t respect the distance nearly as much. They often take space away and go for the take down, it’s not a priority since take downs are only moderately scored. But in wrestling, take downs are very heavily scored, they want the perfect distance to explode, shoot or enter the clinch. So even though they may not be strikers, they have a sense of distance management BJJ players or Judoka do not have.
They can often pick up striking skills easier than BJJ players as well.
Did he even TRY to get some sort of striking for MMA?
Yes Ben Askren had crappy striking like Damian Miai. But Usman, Covington, Khabib, Islam, and a shit load of other wrestlers have decent striking, often much better than the strict BJJ players, because wrestling is very familiar with the upright posture of striking, and those that struggled with crisp striking often had heavy hands, it seems consistent with many wrestlers other than…Ben Asken. Damn you funky man!
But hey, much of what you’re saying is still subjective Adeel. Gimme something more universal.
Okay sure. I’ll make this point:
As much as I love karate and striking in a gi, styles like karate and even Boxing are not nearly as wide spread as some form of wrestling. There is wrestling all over the world.
Yes boxing in some form exists all over the world as well, but not nearly as wide as wrestling, often not nearly as refined or well practiced. Most cultures appreciate grappling much more than North Americans do, they won’t boo when seeing good grappling exchanges.
If wrestling is not important, why is it found all over the world throughout history? Why is medieval combat often using wrestling techniques modified for Gamesons and armour?
Medieval combat whether Japan, South America, China, Europe, Middle east didn’t have people pulling guard and scooting around on their bums. They may strike sometimes, but kickboxing wasn’t the staple, even in ancient Greece and Rome wrestling was more the foundation even of their beloved Pankration than kickboxing.
Hell wrestling isn’t even bound to the human species.
Animals with claws often use wrestling to show dominance that’s true, they don’t want those claws and teeth to ruin and wipe out their species, either intentionally or instinctively. Bears wrestle a great deal, doing lots of familiar positions and moves.
There was a viral clip in MMA forums of a gorilla faking an ankle pick to cross over and scoop the opposite one, just like a real wrestling feint.
Thing is though, when bears maul people, they don’t stand on their hind legs bouncing around saying ‘stick and move! Stick and move!’ they basically jump on a person, pin them down, then claw and bite. Very similar to how soldiers pinned armoured opponents and stabbed them with dagger or other weapons.
Yes some forms of wrestling had a guard like Judo had a fairly well developed guard including Dela Riva and X-guard, and Chinese wrestling also had it. Catch didn’t like it much, but used it in the form of ‘body scissors’
But none of them relied on the guard, it wasn’t a neutral position like it is in modern BJJ. The moment strikes are allowed, a person needs to have a significantly better grappling game than the person on top to reverse, otherwise they will get hit and drained in the modern era. Not to mention guard jumps or guard pulls are absolutely terrible when slams and soccer kicks are allowed.
Now as for boxing, it’s the second most common martial art in the world. Some cultures did not have it like Japan, their boxing equivalent came from their conquest of Okinawa. Kung-fu can be said to be a boxing style, but it does not manifest as we think of boxing. Those culture skewed more in terms of wrestling. I dare say Taiji is more a grappling style than a striking one. Hsing i was created for spear fighting, and Pa kua is a heavy weapons art as well. All of them close quarters. More striking heavy kung-fu styles are newer, and many speculate were influenced by trade with other countries.
However outside of East Asia, boxing is very common, with the Philippines having an indigenous form of kickboxing, Muay Thai is a boxing style, perhaps the most extreme form. Lethwei in Burma. Boxing all over Russia.
Yet if you look at these boxing systems before the sport, they often had heavily involved clinches. British Boxing used to have kicks and throws for a long time. Then we know the Marquis of queensberry rules happened, but even then the standing grappling in boxing was good to set up punches and strikes. Jack Johnson was known to have a gentlemans fancy style of boxing, but martial arts historians pointed out he had a killer clinch where he mauled guys.
Of course for the sake of entertainment, boxing penalized the clinch more and more. Floyd Mayweather is known as a good clinch boxer in the modern era, but it’s more an exploitation of the rules where he holds without holding to hit. The moment his opponents ACTUALLY grab him, it’s broken up. It’s certainly not the heavily involved dirty boxing of Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey, or the wars we saw between Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraiser.
What does this have to do with wrestling?
The clinch. Standing grappling. Boxing will always be a combative martial art, having hands and throwing them will always be tactical. But boxing got way less gritty, way lesss brutal when clinching was more and more penalized, and it continues to be.
Wrestling is where the clinch seems to remain, and the clinch of MMA owes it to wrestling.
Sambo is heavily influenced by wrestling and owes it’s clinch to that art.
Boxing and wrestling used to be brother and sister, and many boxers supplemented their clinch game with wrestling.
That clinch is super important, and wrestling is the king of clinch in the modern era.
I am going to use the term PENG from chinese martial arts to describe weaponizing the natural elasticity in the body to strike, push or move. While I believe Taiji and many chinese styles particularly study this concept in martial arts more than others, they are far from the only ones to use it or talk about it. Until I find a better term however, I will use Peng.
I see the use of Peng in both striking and grappling, though I know only a few cerebral type martial artists to actually point out where and when it appears during applications or movements. Most people just say “Do this” and when the peng happens they say, “Now you’re doing it right.”
If I were to cover peng as a total concept, I could write a small dissertation, hardly worth it for a blog I barely edit for spelling and grammar.
Instead I’m going to talk about when you use the peng/elasticity of your own enemy against them.
It’s not something many people really think about, the closest is parlour tricks Taiji people do when they practice push hands or demonstrations. The person pushing often uses their own and their opponents ‘springs’ to send them flying. But many then try to do the same against resisting partners or in free fighting, and while often they can weaponize their own elasticity, they find it difficult to use their opponents springs against them unless doing push hands. But that’s the problem, their only reference is pushing drills.
It’s not a bad reference, while ‘parlour’ trick is isn’t entirely inaccurate, the point of such demonstrations is not to teach a fighting technique(Though explosively pushing someone into traffic or a wall is useful) but to simply show us the very existence of this concept. The demonstration of Peng is meant mostly to teach. Many internal martial arts practitioners look for fighting application in Yilu, but I found it more useful as a tool to discover how to move and feel the dynamics of the body (Peng in particular) than fighting techniques. Now my own Taiji teacher does sometimes say ‘look at this application for Yilu’, but he mostly it’s a teaching tool than a system of fighting, which is why I train with him instead of other internal martial arts teachers (That and familiarity).
And just as the form is a teaching tool, so are the push hands drills and competitions, one should not expect to have the same dramatic results against a resisting opponent unless the stars line up perfectly. Now many do think this is how violence will unfold, internal martial arts is well known to have students way to compliant, almost giving teachers a mystical status. I can understand why, when one is first exposed to their teacher sending them flying with a small motion, it can seem mysterious. That’s why otherwise good internal martial arts teachers will show a concept, but it’s difficult to tell if the concept is good or if the students are reacting too strongly due to being in awe of the master.
The guy demonstrating this teaches good stuff. But man his students don’t react in ways that demonstrate the mechanics. This guy just simply collapses and crumples down like a sack of potatoes. Why? Because the guy demonstrating this is good, and they assume any force will break them. If there was resistance, the elasticity would have flung his opponent bouncing instead of just…crumbling. This is believing in the master too much.
One could on impulse make fun of the people in these GIF pictures, both the master and student. But I’ve been there with my karate and Taiji teacher, been so compliant that I reacted in over the top ways. Sometimes it happens unintentionally, this is a pitfall of martial arts focussed on subtle mechanics.
But just because of these pitfalls doesn’t mean these drills are bad. We just must realize that everything is much more subtle in a real fight, less big, less dramatic. But that’s okay, because fights can be decided in millimeters, small little steps, small little factors. Sometimes things we can’t even see going on within an opponents mind or body.
The above snapshot looks nothing like the tai chi man sending his opponent flying with a push, yet it’s exactly the same concept.
The snap down is often thought of as a feint in wrestling, you pretend to snap them down, they resist and go up, so you shoot for a double leg. One would think like most feints, if someone knows what you’re doing it doesn’t work.
Yet I can literally tell my students or partners that I am going to do a snap down, and yet I still get a double leg or ankle pick.
Why?
Because if they resist being snapped down, their own body creates a spring. The moment they resist I release it, and they pop up leaving them open for a double leg. They can know I am going to do this, yet their own body will create the spring the moment they resist.
If they do not give me the spring, I have them off balance and I ankle pick them. Win/win for me.
They only way it stops is if they shuck my neck tie or break my grip on their gi.
Another grappling application is to grip and drop, causing the person to spring as they regain their balance, putting them in motion and therefore causing them to react and over reach.
And yes, you can push people. But unless you catch them off guard with a big explosion, it will look like this. It may not look explosive like Peng Taiji demonstrations, but only because the other guy is doing it back. I’ve played with sumo pushing, watched videos of them drilling pushing. They are using what chinese martial arts call peng, and if you drive once, you can keep going and doing a consistent bounce sending them into a wall or out of the ring.
But the application is not like the Taiji clip all the way above with Chen Man Ching, but a consistent jack hammer of pushes that keeps the opponent off balance or if they are covering, moves or disrupts the guard. It’s like a constant explosion of peng rather than a single burst.
The striking application to this I have no picture for.
There is a concept I was taught by my Karate teacher over the last three years called ‘concentric expansions’ related to ‘threading the nine pearls’ which is a way to express every join as either an expansion along a line or from a rotation. The movement can be seen in many kung-fu forms, and many boxers will do it when punching through someone’s head or body like a stab.
Eh, not quite the strike I’m talking about, but close enough I guess.
Thing is, this punch can be done as a push which creates the peng from both your body and your opponents to knock them down or send them flying, or you can pop it like a proper punch and either hurt them without using their peng, or they tighten up when you hit the chest or stomach and they bounce. Again it’s not a dramatic bounce, it’s often nothing like taiji or hsing I demonstrations unless your timing is really good or you really catch someone off-guard.
The closest thing to an image I could find of it’s effects is Bruce Lee sending someone flying with a side kick. Yes his power has the guy off balance, but the guy also bounces.
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What's the deal with Adeel? 