I actually cringed (Experience an
inward shiver of embarrassment or disgust) a little as I typed the title
however knew if I typed Upper Forearm Strike 99% of the Protection Art World
would have no idea what the heck I was ranting about.
People know this technique by many names; face, face cover,
head, head cover, upper block, high block, et cetra. All of these tend to make the end use feel
that this is a block or a cover and that is not really how Taika used it.
We call them forearm STRIKES to make the student envision them as a
little more aggressive rather than the passive 'defense only' image that pops
into the head of someone when they hear the word 'block'. Taika used these in many places over the
years, in anything from a defense against a bear hug to a simple forearm strike
to the neck. He showed repeatedly in
various exercises which included "single, double, head", that the
'head' motion was just rolling the opponent's arm around to reposition yourself
inside or outside of their body.
ALL of Taika's forearm strikes (single, double, head) have a
rotation element of the forearm. What I
mean by the rotation element can best be visualized without pictures by doing
the following;
- Place your arm out in front of you palm down
- Rotate your arm until it is palm up
You have just completed the rotation element I was talking
about. So the forearm rotates as the arm
in its entirety moves towards its target.
This is a striking multiplier of sorts as you have the normal kinetic
energy of the entire arm coming towards its target, plus the forearm is
spinning on its axis adding yet more kinetic energy. All of his forearm related strikes (blocks)
have this. So let me describe what many
people call an upper block, once again without the aid of pictures and only
focusing on the single arm (though in reality there is a whole lot going on
with the other arm).
- Arm comes out at about a 45 degree angle out past your belly button, mostly palm up (almost parallel to the floor), but slanted just a little towards your body because 100% flat would feel all tight and awkward.
- Arm begins rising, and in the last part of its upward rise, rotates out - palm out.
So in that description, the beginning motion is pinky side
towards you, and it ends pinky side up and out. OUT.
Did I mention out. The forearm,
ulnar bone, is rotating forward and up.
Where my rant comes in two play now are two things I've
noticed lately in personal accounts as well as on various facebook postings. I keep seeing people who are either a) not
rotating their forearms to get the extra kinetic bonus points, b) not going
forward with the strike, or c) all of the above.
a) Please try this for yourself and
you will see just how important it is.
If you do the age old, stereotyped karate chop where you align your ulnar
bone to point down (pinky down thumb up for the bone nomenclature impaired),
and chop exactly straight down with no twist on the partner of your choice, you
probably can get a decent reaction depending on far too many variables to
detail here. BUT, if do the same motion
and let the forearm rotate, you will get a significant amount of extra bonus
points a kinetic energy arriving into and through your target. So as you have your hand up before you chop
down, have it palm up and then as it is dropping and impacting something fun
like your buddy's forearm, it rotates to the point of impact and beyond. And that is how little people get the great
strikes. Taika I believe was
5'4". He used every little trick
possible to get these strikes to be as effective as possible.
b) Abe
Lincoln could not do backward Upper Blocks and look cool, so why should you? Ok, what the heck is Lee talking about
now? Well, I see people doing these
strikes and instead of going forward, it is like their arm is frozen at every
single joint except the shoulder. So they
let their arm lock into place, and just pivot it on the ball socket type joint
of the shoulder, letting it raise up with a forward and then backward arc, that
would knock their pretty little top hat off if they were wearing one. This is a forward moving strike, not a knock my hat off rearward one.
I recently had the misfortune to watch an instructor teaching
a series of moves containing the upper block.
Each time he did it, he neither rotated his forearm and just knocked his
imaginary hat off. The really sad part
was his original instructor was there as well doing the same patterns and was
performing the upper block correctly; out, rotating and forward.
So now the question; How are we getting students in these bad
habits?
Banana Attacks
I think the main thing we are doing is bad formation training
and paired dances at their early stage of development. I have been guilty of the first one
myself. In the past I would have the beginning
warm up in class with students in horse stance doing requirements. Warming up by doing hundreds of blocks,
punches, et cetra. When they would do
their Upper Blocks, I would sometimes have a foam stick and to illustrate that
they were not high enough, I would drive the foam stick down towards their
head. I've seen people in other styles
doing this as well as three step sparing (which we have thankfully have never
done) in which the uke steps forward three times with various banana style downward
attacks and the tori retreats doing Upper Blocks. Well, an upper block is a horrible response
to a downward move with a knife, bat, banana, rodent, or anything else. I won't get into proper responses at this
point but I think instructors create that problem.
Solution?
First, be a good target.
For the formation upper blocks, I may still walk around with my padded
stick now, but what I NOW do is I hold it out in front of the student like it
is the opponents neck. Now when I call
off the count they are having to strike forward to hit the neck, pencil neck
that it is. So my students begin
visualizing forward motion. I put it
just enough in front of them that they have to go forward with it. Then when I start to do movement drills, it
is forward motion, not retreat that I'm doing.
So I have the stick out of range and they have to shuffle into it.
Second, stop calling them blocks. If the whole damn world jumped off a cliff
would you? No Mom! It is a purely mental thing but block has the
connotation of, "Oh crap, get me out of here, retreat!!!!!!" Or maybe just, "Run away, run away!" Taika would do single, double head or the
turtle exercise and that upper block was actually navigating the opponent's arm
out and around to switch him from being inside to outside. He would do a neck strike with it. He would use it for a bear hug defense. Yes, these are defensive motions but none of
them are running away. They were motions
that exploded forward. I really believe
that changing the name puts a more forceful spin on it and makes the students
push harder to defeat rather than retreat.
Of course, you probably have other good ideas so feel free to
share them.
Lee
