Point of branching

Many of the martial arts students I teach want a "technique" to solve their problem. And the technique is typically a long cascade of movements, sometimes based on the attackers movements(while the technique is being utilized) but mostly while the attacker is just standing still.

The "dead attacker" isn't that hard to explain to people  they "get it", but sometimes it takes time. What is more harder is that the technique can change depending on the attacker, but also yourself.

At this seminar I was teaching I was showing a simple response to a straight punch to the "face". Step aside and start doing your thing. I knew before hand that there were going to be many different variations of "I can't get it to work", and had planned on showing the different variations, and how they got started. And behold, the students started asking on why the technique didn't work for them.

Sometimes the step to the side combined with the force of the attack made made the student end up more to the back of the attacker, while the opposite also happened ending up beside the the fist of the attacker.

Using these differentiations I showed them the natural "stop"/evaluation or point of branching. It's like a tree, where most of the techniques and movements are part of the steem, but sometimes you need to branch out. It could be the attackers is higher than normal or a weapon is involved.

Knowing these points of  branching are key areas of seeing and letting your movements be an integrated part of responding to your attacker. It's like learning when to know when your elbow can connect and when it can't.

Teaching this level is hard for students that have for years worked on the techniques that had 1 solution for 1 attack, but after a while you could see the students combined that knowledge and grow their understanding of their curriculum. They were showing the higher levels of Blooms taxonomy!