Training Jedi Knight Types Lesson 5 Spear Hand - Part IV

By Stephen Cheney

PART III - THE KATA STRETCH

THE PARRY

A parry is an open palm with its large area swatting or pressing an incoming limb, whether hand, wrist or arm (legs need a different defence), away off their target. Similar to swatting a ping pong ball with a ping pong bat.

Normally you parry a limb so that it is moved to Close off the Attack, that is, you move it to go towards or even to cross the opponent’s centre line. Towards the region of his other dangerous hand, blocking its area of reach.

Normally you use the hand on the same side as the incoming strike. So your Left hand parries their Right arm; your Right hand parries their Left arm. These are from Outside towards the Inside blocks.

However, your Left hand, if it is passed your Centre Line, can sweep back (an Inside to Outward block) and collect the opponent’s Left arm pressing it to or passed his Centre Line. Thus your Right hand is free to strike. Similarly, your Right hand, if it is passed your Centre Line can sweep back (an Inside to Outward block) and collect the opponent’s Right arm pressing it to or passed his Centre Line. Thus your Left hand is free to strike.

Parry at different speeds with your partner: Start in SLOW MOTION, then a bit faster. ONLY when you get very good at it do you increase speed. Only increase the speed of the attack up to what your partner can handle. It is the MIND that must learn to judge incoming attacks and the body learns from that. You are practicing to LEARN, not DO and not Damage your partner. DO comes later in a real fight, when having much training you can judge the speed of the attack and match it with speed of defence. SLOW MOTION training is recommended and a lot of it. The mind then has time to thoroughly learn the fundamentals of a waza. Later it is happy in going at higher speeds.

What Principles does this waza seek to Teach: and thus what can you Learn from Practicing this waza?

• That avoiding a strike is better than to clash with it by a hard block.
• That avoiding a strike means you can first touch the striking limb but you must move your body, the target.
• That every attack exposes some part of the attacker. In Kenjutsu, swordfighting, who moves first, loses.
• That in order to counterstrike you must get close enough to do so.
• Close enough means that when your striking limb touches the target, your limb must still be bent so that when you suddenly straighten your limb it is levered not on, but through the target, preferably towards the other side of the target body.
• That when you strike the torso, the direction of your force should be (usually) towards the very centre of the Target’s body mass for maximum impact on their inertia, balance and organs.
• That in the chaos of battle the simple waza are more likely to succeed. They take less TIME to execute and there are less parts that need coordination and synchronization. With less that can go wrong, less can be countered.
• You strike your Hard weapon (knuckle, finger-bone) into SOFT targets. Fists on bone, such as skulls, lead to broken hands, as any boxer can attest, even with protective gloves on (which is what the gloves are for: to protect the fist not to lighten and spread the blow).
• Striking nerve points/areas has maximum effect; not striking them gives minimum effect.
• Experiencing Pain can deter an aggressive person’s intension to continue.

What does this waza FEEL like to you?

Your arm is a bolt of lightning; and that is what the opponent feels it is on impact.

What does this waza FEEL like to the enemy?

The strike into the nerves in his armpit will be painful. He will not want to raise his arm again for more of the same treatment. With only one arm fully functioning a continuance of the attack is unlikely (you can also strike and damage the other arm if he raises it to strike or grab: leaving him armless). The pain will send a message to his brain: to back off.
You can test the effect on yourself: jab gently into your armpit and then imagine the effect if you had jabbed hard and deep.

A child using this waza against a bully would protect itself from damage and not kill the bully. However an adult or Karate practitioner driving a powerful blow into the armpit can seriously affect the health of the Aggressor. So controls to the power of a blow should always be trained; however in any fight control over what you are doing and how much force you use is difficult. The Aggressor makes it difficult.

STYLES OF PRACTICE

How should a pair of students safely, but also effectively, practice strikes?

Karate tournaments in America used to fight in Point-Scoring style. Where strikes would be pulled just before contact. It was difficult for the judges to decide whether or not the delivery of force to target was close enough to award a point. Such training in street fighting would be dangerous for the practitioner as pulling strikes would be their automatic highly trained reflex.

Passed the childhood/beginner stage, training harder than you would be pressed in an actual fight is highly regarded. As is Reality Based Training.

Due to the influence of Bruce Lee and others, tournaments changed into being Full-Contact though with restrictions on targets in order to limit deaths and damage. Bruce Lee’s opinion was highly regarded by those who sparred with him, such as Joe Lewis, although Bruce never fought in tournaments. So what would Bruce know about actual fighting when he was well known only for movie fighting? Bruce from childhood up was a Street Fighter, accepting all the many challengers, living dangerously, mellowing only later. This greatly influenced his later philosophy of Jeet Kune

Do with its focus on Flow, Range and Timing, of discarding non-practical methods of fighting, of adapting your style to meet any style, of thinking for yourself. So Bruce trained in 16 or more styles of martial arts selecting the simple and practical, discarding whatever would not work in a street fight, his litmus test. Jeet Kune Do was not, and is not, a new Style of fighting; it was a revolutionary new approach to thinking about fighting. In adapting to whatever was necessary, Bruce, though young, was a master like the masters of old. Do not just endlessly copy masters; eventually be your own master. Think for yourself.

Practicing with actual blows, such as in boxing, results in damage, sometimes death. Pounding the head will always damage the brain, despite having recovery periods, and although each bout may do little unseen damage. Like ultra-violet radiation, such small damages are cumulative and the damaged minds of some older boxers, no matter how marvellous their skill once was, is a common tragedy.

So how should budding warriors practice?

I recommend that, when with a partner, a strike should be DELIVERED FOR ACCURACY: so the strike just touches the target with its full force being PULLED. Accuracy is important. A miss by mere centimetres can be the same as a miss by a kilometre.

Then the same strike should again be DELIVERED FULL FORCE but OFF TARGET into the air: meaning the point of the limb goes passed the other’s body, your bodies almost collide.
For a real strike should always be projected and driven through a body to the other side, to allow for continued acceleration and not braking to just hit a target’s surface. Your training partner will definitely feel the passing force. Targets (Atemi points) are not a freckle on the body: they are WITHIN the body. For a real strike in a serious fight you do not stop at the border, you penetrate. Penetrate to the Core bone of a limb, or to the Core of a body.
For feeling the impact of full force when you strike: practice on a heavy bag if punching, but on a soft bag or pillow if using finger tips.

PART V - SIMILAR WAZA: The PRAYER

(Image: Parry Mastery[Ed] - Ordo Magica via Google Images)

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