Monday, July 28, 2008

Elbows and Wrists

Recovered from a bout of diarrhea, which explains my lack of updates.

The only training session I attended this week was Wednesday, where we practised First, Third and Ninth Master of Dagger, which brings me to my point of this post.

How does one train accuracy when aiming for the elbows and wrists with hands? With a sword you can do pell work to improve your cutting form, or train opposite a person to train your stroke.

You obviously can't do the same thing with an unarmed frontale because (1) the elbows and wrists are extremely small targets and (2) build and positioning causes this to vary even more than it normally does, in contrast with fendente cuts.

I'm asking this because I can't figure out a good methodology to train this apart from doing it over and over again - and even that seems to provide limited gains because of different sizes of training partners, different positions for hands, wrists and elbows when striking, etc.

Some help anyone?

2 comments:

Ilkka said...

Hi, this answer may seem odd, but is the best way to learn this in my opinion.

You need to familiarize yourself with the elbow. If you are supposed to catch someone's hand it is relatively easy unless they deliberately make it hard for you. Catching the elbow should be easier as the elbow moves slower than the hand. You are simply not familiar with it.

Exercise elbow massage to get to learn how the joint is built and how it works.

When hanging out with your friends and when you wish to direct them somewhere or catch their attention, instead of the shoulder tap them on the elbow, or give them a gentle elbow push. Find out excuses to touch elbows, and it is training. Look at people, and see (and feel) where their elbows are.

For simply training, practice against hammerfist strikes so that you always go for the elbow, from the inside, then the outside - and soon it becomes second nature. Break out of a set drill, and simply grab or push elbows from all angles, from all attack directions.

Practice locks and takedowns so that your partner _lets_ you take their elbow, so that you can feel how it is built and apply the pressure properly.

Hope this helps.

Just for accuracy we used to do an exercise where, against the hammerfist strike you tap the wrist, elbow, shoulder blade and the further shoulder blade with your hands, going right to wrist, left to elbow, right to first blade and left to the second, resulting in a quick 1-2-3-4 tap tap tap tap, with footwork, of course. The shoulder blades represent takedowns, elbows to the head and so on. :)

Anthony said...

Sweet! That's exactly what I was looking for.