Sensitivity as a Combat Attribute

Today I made an appearance at Goshin Jitsu. I hope to make many more. With the beginners we taught basic footwork, forwards, backwards, to the sides, and the rear 90° pivot. The two stepping drills we worked on:

1. Shuffle retreat, switch retreat, 90° pivot
2. Circling the mat using any step less than three times in a row, avoiding the blue pads, and trying to catch our team mates

We also introduced kicking, helping each other stretch and turn on the ball of the foot.

With the advanced students, I reviewed the jab range finder I learned at Top Level Gym. This strategy prunes your opponent’s decision tree by throwing the jab, followed by two “range finds” extending the arm and using the palm of the glove to make contact, you step laterally to set-up an outside line. This gives you information, if you cannot reach they are out of range, if you can just reach they can likely be hit by a kick or cross, and if your arm is bent it is likely best to throw a short cross or round knee. If you check their arm and it’s loose you know that it is likely you can push it aside to set up your shot and if they are rigid that they will be more easy to turn.

We did four 2-minute rounds:

1. Jab-range find-range find cross
2. Jab-range find-range find rear kick
3. Jab-range find-range find rear round knee
4. Any of the above with the holder feeding different energies.