In Real Time

Firstly, thank-you to Todai Bauer and Todai Raw for kindly moving in front of the camera for me in last nights class.  It was very helpful and I gained much from watching you work with each other.

I am one of those people that is hesitant to actually “hit” my partner too hard.  But I noticed something, as a third person viewer, right after Sifu Brinker was very direct that we should be using some actual force.  I noticed that the flow in the technique was very different once a person committed to that initial strike to the face.  With a hesitant strike….it was “strike THEN push face and turn opponent”.  Once the intent changed, it became “strike AND push face and turn opponent”.   Even the trajectory changed.  With a more hesitant strike, it almost pushed the opponent back and away…resulting in the need to then reach for them and pull them back.   When striking became part of the intent, somehow the technique became more circular where everything worked together, flowing from one thing to the next.

So when we work on a complete sequence as part of a particular technique, each individual component needs to maintain its intent (or maybe I should say each component needs to have intent, since intent can change on a dime) or the technique as a whole doesn’t quite work.

It was really interesting to watch how this particular technique changed and evolved throughout the class as Todai Bauer and Todai Raw worked together.  I was literally watching them progress in real time.  Very cool.