Drill Post #6: Fine Tuning the Kick Range Reposte

In Drill Post #5, the initial feed by the trainer involved a front kick/jab kick to the trainee's midsection with various degrees of depth of the trainer's advance, and the initial response of the trainee was to see how small a distance he could evade the kick by without parrying. Let's now add two possibilities to this. If, as is very common, the kicker drops his hands as he kicks and steps down, the defender (if he has controlled his distance properly) jabs or crosses, timing it to land just as the attacker's foot is landing. If the trainer keeps his hands up as he kicks and plants forward, the defender, after the evasion, leans back to execute a stationary low side/stop-kick. ("Stationary" simply means to lean the weight back on to the rear leg to kick with the lead so that there is no advance which would crowd your kick). Note that the jab or cross is in essence a stop-hit, even though it is after an attack, because it is intercepting the continued attack. As always, the goal of the defender is to make smooth timely responses. The trainer should not have to hang out while the trainee is figuring out what to do. As usual start at a mellow pace and work up.

Drill Post #5: Fine Tuning The Kick Range

Again back to reading distance in flow and responding with appropriate footwork. As nice as it would be to stop-kick everything, sometimes a kick may be launched and we are simply not prepared enough to stop-kick, so we do this drill.

Starting at kick fighting measure, the trainer will execute a front kick/jab kick towards the trainee's midsection. The trainee's first goal is to evade the kick by the SMALLEST distance possible without blocking/parrying. If the kick is so shallow that the trainee doesn't need to move to evade, then he doesn't; if the kick is deep enough so that the trainee can evade with a small retreat, he does so, or moves back with a slide and step if it's deeper. If the kick is deep enough that the trainee feels the need to side step, or parry and side step that's fine, but he should parry only if he feels he'll get kicked otherwise. The trainer should kick in a mellow enough manner at first that the trainee would only receive light contact. That way he can feel comfortable seeing how close he can let the kick come. Being gonzo prematurely just slows the whole training process down. This is the first half of the drill.

The second half of the drill involves what happens after the trainers kick: does he plant forward? Drop his leg back? Slide and step back? The trainer should do all of the above at random, to which the trainee uses the appropriate footwork to deliver a controlled low side/stop-kick. We are limiting the return to one tool (the low side/stop-kick) so that the trainee has to focus on footwork and distance judgment. If the trainee moves in before properly reading where the attacker is placing his kicking leg, he is likely to be too far away or too crowded. The goal is to read smoothly so that the defense and attack flow together and that the trainee's kick lands on the trainer's leg the instant after it hits the ground. The interesting thing about this drill is how challenging it can be to use a simple set of tools with proper timing when there are even these few variables.

Drill Post #4: Hand Defense Training

In drill posts 1 and 2, footwork was the primary defense, along with the stop-hit and then the stop-kick in post 3. Now, to develop the hand defenses further, we'll take away all footwork. As the trainee, put your back foot against a wall (now taking away all footwork) and having a partner throw a flow of strikes at you, not hard at first, and not so fast you are getting tagged most of the time. As your skill builds up, the trainer should go faster and appropriately harder. Also, the strikes being thrown should mix smooth combinations and broken rhythm, the simplest example being half of a jab followed by a rear hook, or half of a right hook (as fake) smoothly followed by the left hook. This will help develop a bodily understanding that what seems to be coming might turn out to be something else, and to keep all defenses small and tight as possible to be able to deal with those unexpected shifts in the flow. The primary tools the defender will use will be the high-line parries (parrying on the outside of the feeder's hands), the modified high cover for head hooks, low covers for body hooks, centerline forearm parries (like a detached "fook sao" from Wing Chun) for mid and low straight shots. For the variation of a cover (versus hooks) that I recommend, put your wrist on the back of your head, shoulder hunched up, with the elbow level between the nose and the eyebrow and, very importantly, pointed OUT slightly. This angle prevents a hook from getting any kind of surface to "bite" into and makes it slide off behind you. It's important to slip slightly forward when doing this to prevent the hook from slipping inside of the cover. The defender should keep his gaze on the attackers chest so as to be able to pay attention to a field of activity rather than one thing at a time.

Drill Post #3: Long Kick Fighting Measure

Extending the fighting measure to include kicking means staying at the distance where your opponent cannot reach you with a kick without taking a preparation step. Again, this gives you the chance to see it coming and to intuit whether to intercept (attack on his preparation) or to defend whether through evasion or any other tactic. Now with the trainer moving around as described in drill post #1 but at the extended fighting measure, the defender stop-kicks every time the trainer/attacker tries to move in to attack with either hands or feet. The stop-kick (jeet tek) is traditionally done in JKD as a "stiff leg" kick, that is, it is not chambered, but rather delivered as though you had a cast on your leg and raised it to side kick position to the opponent's closest shin or knee. However, actually you have a slight chamber simply by merit of having your knees slightly bent in your stance, so I would recommend using that slight bend as a way of giving the stop-kick a bit more punch than a stiff leg one might give, although clearly either would work. Use the striking surface is the arch across the bottom of the foot, as it is more stable than the edge of the foot. Although you would ideally follow up after a stop kick, for the sake of the drill simply drop back to the long fighting measure.

Finger Jab Specifics

I may not be able to do drill posts with as much depth as I would like for the next several weeks (although I'll try), so here is a quick technical one in the meantime. Regarding the finger jab, I recommend having the hand at a slight angle (not more than 45%) and using the pads of the fingers as the striking surface, and the fingers slightly flexed so that if you hit bone instead of eyes or throat, your joints won't get painfully jammed up/bent back. Try finger jabbing/tapping a wall surface with in this manner and see if feels comfortable to you.

Drill Post #2: Four Essential Responses

We'll now add four important response possibilities to the previous "Frankenstein Drill. With the trainer moving the defender around, he will periodically throw a right or left haymaker/wide hook. The trainer/attacker will have four variations of hook that he will throw for the defender to develop the perception for. The first is a hook that is far enough away that the defender can simply let it pass (within inches) before returning a jab using a light palm to the attackers shoulder as a training target. The thought behind this first variation is that it's good to fine-tune our distance sense so that we don't defend against strikes that are not close enough to reach us (and indeed, nervous second-rate attackers do throw strikes like this). The second hook variation to be thrown is one where the attacker is stepping in just enough so that the defender has to take a small step back before his return strike. The defender should not "slip" back for now: That is, he should keep his weight forward/centered so that just as his rear foot touches down on the retreat, he can fire his strike and be leaning into it. In both of these first variations, it is VERY important that the the timing of the defender's counter-strike be initiated JUST as the attackers strike passes the defender's face and not at the end of the strike, as the defender might be stepping right into a following strike. The third variation, and one that could often be used, is when the attacker steps clearly inside the defender's FM WHILE loading up his hook, to which the defender will respond with a stop-hit, palm-stopping (not too hard) on the attacker's chest for a training target. It is important that the counter strike is not prepped with a drawback which would delay the strike. The fourth variation for the attacker to feed is the windmill, i.e. a series of continuous alternating sloppy right and left hooks while moving forward. This should be fed so that one hook is coming up in preparation as the other is firing, and that's what the defender looks for as his cue to maintain the FM until he sees both hands drop away at which time he returns his lead strike. This kind of emphatic but sloppy attack that dissolves is really common.

OK, I'll say in advance that Yes, there are many other good responses including stop kicks and time-kicks, but we are working a particular perception development here, and Yes, of course you would not necessarily continuously evade or have the opportunity to, but I repeat the above. Now, have fun with the drill.

Drill Post #1: The Fighting Measure

Hokay, there are many legit ways one could start training, from the ground, from situations (grabs, etc.), but I will start with general stand-up skills.

Training partners A and B stand just outside of the hand's reach: This defines the fighting measure for the hands. In a street situation, one would stay just outside of the kicking distance/fighting measure, but focusing on the hand measure is a smaller distance and therefore helps develop a finer sense of distance. I'll call the trainer "A" and the trainee "B." A holds both hands extended in front of him (which is why we call this The Frankenstein Drill) so that B knows exactly where "just out of his reach" is. Then A starts moving at random in all directions while B maintains the distance. It is important that A also moves backwards and that B follows. When A moves straight forward more than a step or two, B should start to circle (but making sure not to step inside the measure while doing so). A should sometimes follow B when he circles, with his right extended arm reaching towards B's right shoulder so that B knows to keep circling. After a two to five steps of A having B circle in one direction, he should reverse it, and cut back and forth as so he's trying to cut B's circling off, which B responds to by always cutting back/circling away from the pressure.

If some JKD related practitioner thinks this sounds like the "mirror drill" they would be correct. However, the problem with the way most people do the mirror drill is that they are so focused on mirroring the feeders footwork, that they forget the whole purpose of the drill which is learning how to maintain the fighting measure, which is a key to generalship. That is why I have set the drill up this way.

It may not be clear at first how to do this from reading a post, but give it a try! Within the week, I'll add four primary responses to additional feeds.