An eye for fighting

"Shall I tell you the difference between you and I? Level. It's like the story of the monkey trying to capture the moon. No matter how he struggles, it's just the moon's reflection on the water he sees. So he only sinks into the water. Time after time, he sinks. Your fangs will never reach me."

Ok, so this post is going to get a little nerdy, and reference some anime/manga (like the above quote from Bleach). This past Sunday, I attended a seminar that included Jujitsu and Kali. The Jujitsu stuff was pretty straight forward for me, due to previous training. However, there was something about the Kali instruction, as well as my own training.

It reminded me of an episode of Naruto. Long story short, one of the characters has the ability to see and copy or dissect someone else's techniques. The problem in this episode is that he runs into an opponent whose taijutsu (unarmed techniques) is so much better and faster, that even though he can see the technique, there is no way for him to physically counter, because his body's not fast enough.

Now, when you first start training in just about anything, you're pretty much going through so much sensory overload, that even the simplest maneuvers are hard to completely grasp. I mean, you have to deal with your feet, hands, and balance, and your opponents feet, hands, and balance, and the intricacies of where both exist in space and time at any given moment of the technique. During this phase, it's funny to watch white belts.

However, as you get better, you can see the techniques a lot easier, and you can duplicate them fairly easily. There's a lot less "brain" involved. You feet will do what they have to do, and you can naturally position all of the other parts.

While I was at the seminar, Datu Rich Acosta (7th degree Black Belt), demonstrated a number of techniques with the Escrima, but then showed how they directly translated to unarmed fighting. The thing is, he was EXTREMELY fast when it came to the unarmed parts. I definitely couldn't fully catch is hand movements when I saw the techniques. Even as I was able to catch on what was happening, the next thing becomes actually knowing how to react to it. For something that fast, you can't "think". Training will attempt to mitigate the need to figure out what's happening, by using all of your sensory inputs, especially touch, to know what is coming next.

The second issue, though, is disparity in skill.

Now, there's a series of disparities between myself and Leo, who is my current instructor. I started training around 14 years ago, but due to the military, there was a long period where I didn't advance in my training. Meanwhile, Leo has been training for the past 25 years or so. I can completely see what he does, but my ability to stop it (and some of my ability to completely replicate it) isn't there. Interestingly enough, it creates a moving bar for my standard of achievement.