Preview of Martial University 2007

MU is coming up fast, May 19th near Seattle. The link is here:
http://westseattlekarate.com/martialu.shtml

I'm scheduled for three classes this year. One will be at the technique level, one tactical (tactics applies to teaching and learning just as much as it does to fighting) and one will be more global- not truly strategic, but more an intelligence briefing on identifying the real problem.

The first class, at the tactical level, will be a way to look at both training and survival from the standpoint of different 'toolboxes'. The students will do a free flowing drill and look at it from the "classes of technique" level; then from the "effects on the threat level"; then from the "critical skills" level. These toolboxes all do the same thing but they do it in different ways and will resonate with different people. In the 'technique toolbox' you may come to realize that you aren't trained in an entire class of skills, and therefore can't exploit (or sometimes even see) opportunities. The 'effects toolbox' reverses the lens, looking not at what motion you can make but on what you can do to the threat. 'Critical skills' breaks down my personal fighting into essentials. All the toolboxes do the same thing, but in different ways with different side-effects. This class will be most useful for instructors and senior or plateaued ( if that's a word) (it isn't) (stop that) students.

Class number two will be technique level- close range power generation: drop step and bone conduction; Jack Dempsey's system for generating circular power in a hook punch or elbow; long, short and inner whip power; wave action; dead hand and dead body power; and bone bouncing. I originally wanted to try to fit takedowns in the same time slot, but it won't work.

The third class, training for stages, should be good. It will divide training for assault survival into time frames that require different stages- long before the fight you need to understand the basic legalities of self-defense and what your issues about violence are and decide what you will fight for long before the decision comes up. Just before an attack the important skills are avoiding it; recognizing one coming and defusing the decision; and (key) recognizing when it is too late to deal with it as a preventable social problem.

In the attack itself, the first second will involve a single technique that must be conditioned to reflex speed (the OC stage) if you are lucky. People who have not trained for this will experience the freeze and will be caught like a deer in the headlights. You have to train to recognize the freeze and break it. Then what ever happens- if the freeze is broken successfully, all your martial arts training will come into play. That's the fifth stage and we'll go into some of the environmental, mental and hormonal differences between this and training. The last section will deal with the aftermath- physical, emotional and legal.

Should be fun. Anyone think this is too cerebral?