I find our bodies to be amazing things. They naturally strive for preservation and efficiency. You exercise and work hard for a long time to make physical gains, then you lay off for just a short while and all that work disappears. Our bodies strive to maintain just the level it needs, which is great, but frustrating when it takes so much time to gain and so little time to lose.
One area I see this is my legs, not just in strength but in endurance. In Kuk Sool we strive for low stances. This can look very nice when performing forms (especially on taller and thus longer legged and torsoed people), but moreso it’s a matter of training legs for strength and endurance. You don’t really fight in a low stance, but it’s a lot easier to duck via bending your knees when your legs are strong enough to allow you to do this.
I think what motivates me more than fighting, self-defense, or any sort of martial activity is growing older. I see people much older than me and even people my age, that just can’t get around. Getting off the couch is an effort. Picking something up off the floor is a strain, and they bend from their back then complain of back problems when they right themselves. They haven’t used their body, so they’ve lost it. I don’t want to be this way as I grow older. So, I do my best to just use my body fully in my daily life. If I need to pick something off the floor, I bend at the knees, either squatting or quasi-lunging to do so, but either way using the full range and ability of my body. If I need to stay down for a long time (e.g. scooping out the cat litter box), then I assume some sort of low horse stance while I do so… again, not being bent over at the back and feeling the lumbar pain as I’m down working for so long. Lifting a heavy object? Use the legs, baby. Things like this. Just ensuring that whatever I do in my daily life I do fully (other implications implied).
Doing such things in everyday life won’t turn my legs into something Tom Platz will fear, but it helps to keep my legs and body usable. As I said, the body likes to maintain just the level it needs, so my hope is if I continue to use my body every day at the level I wish to have when I’m 70 years old, hopefully when I get there I’ll still have it.
Self-defense bottle caps. Um… OK. It’s certainly novel.
Now, let’s ignore the whole issue of bottled water, and the fact that a gun or a knife trumps a lump of knobby plastic atop your water or soda bottle (both you being attacked by, and that they’d be better tool choices for yourself).
Could this thing be a reasonable self-defense tool?
Actually, maybe it could. Maybe.
I think about dan bong (short stick) techniques, seen in Korean martial arts such as Kuk Sool, Hapkido, and Hwa Rang Do (and their variants). Not that I think this bottle cap actually could work dan bong style, but it’s something I’m familiar with and as soon as I saw the bottle cap and thought a bit about it, dan bong techniques came to mind. One premise of dan bong techniques is directing hits to sensitive/vital areas, pressure point targets, and so on. This article describes some of the points, but lacks visuals. So instead, here I have a visual taken from Kali, and I have seen a similar illustration from a Modern Arnis book I have by Remy Presas. You can click on the picture for more details (it’s discussing the Presas approach), and you can see the basic striking points and angles of attack. Dan bong is similar. While with this bottle cap you may not take a true Kali/Arnis/Eskrima or Korean dan bong type of strikes, thinking about those weaponologies… take strikes with the butt-end of the stick, apply them to these vital target areas. And so yeah, maybe a knobby lump of plastic might do something. I would think the cap would be more effective applied to bony areas, bare skin (clothing pads and would diminish the effects)… striking, grinding it in.
But on that token, I think that’s where the cap has limited application. Someone attacks you middle of winter, they’ll be rather covered up… where are you going to strike them? Or even if it’s in the summer and lots of flesh is exposed, the striking/grinding application of the cap is only going to be effective in certain places. I guess go for the head and hope. Which brings up another point… this is a contact weapon. You’re going to have to be close in to use it, and that’s probably too close for comfort. This is where tools that utilize projectiles are useful.
I also wonder about the structural integrity of the bottle. Many bottles now are being made out of very skimpy and flimsy plastic, so bottles collapse and crush pretty easily. Can those bottles withstand such a use? And would you trust your life to that? Maybe these will screw on top of the steel (reusable) water bottles. Most of the steel ones I’ve seen have a female top with a male cap, and this Bottle Bezel is a female cap for the male disposable bottle tops… so unlikely to work unless you can find a steel one set up the right way. But steel would be better than plastic bottles. Then perhaps you could use other striking techniques with the bottle itself, but even that’s a bit unwieldy.
I’ll say this. While I applaud their efforts to create a “less lethal” self-defense tool, one key part of self-defense is to stop the attack so you can escape. Is this bottle cap going to stop an attack? By look alone? I highly doubt it. I mean, flash a gun or a knife and attackers typically stop… flash a bottle cap? Then by effective application? Well, perhaps, but it seems so limited and difficult to trust.
I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t actually seen or played with one so I can’t make a complete assessment. But just looking at the logic of it all, I can’t see it. If they really want to market it as a self-defense tool, they ought to show how it can be used. Give us some honest material and ways to view this as anything other than a gimmick or talisman. Maybe they can create their own martial art and call it “H2-Do” (sorry, the pun was there). At this point, it’s not something I’d put my faith in. I have more effective and proven tools, and I’ll stick with those.
Here’s an advanced kicking routine that we used to do at my martial arts school. I don’t know if this is some greater Kuk Sool kicking drill or was just something local to our school. But it’s a challenge, and fun. Note as well that I’m using what ought to be typical Kuk Sool verbage, both in kicks (e.g. a “spin kick” is what others might call a 360º kick) and and specification (e.g. inside kick implies using the back leg, pop-up implies front leg).
Start in defensive stance
Inside kick (now in offensive stance)
High spin kick
Low spin kick
Jump spin kick (ending in offensive stance)
Switch stance (now in defensive stance)
Pop-up outside kick
Roundhouse kick (now in offensive stance)
Spin kick (ending in offensive stance)
Inside kick
Jump spin inside kick (ending in defensive stance… and no right had soo doh 🙂 )
I train in an empty hand martial art. I train with guns. Some would say I have a greater ability than the average citizen to hurt other people and perhaps end their life. And there’s no question, when you start to learn these things you get a big confidence boost in your ability to take care of yourself. Unfortunately, ego can get in the way… and you can get over-confident, and that could get you killed.
Over-confidence can lead to a false sense of what your skills and abilities actually are. Over-confidence might lead you to make choices, especially in the heat of the moment, that turn out to be less than correct and could lead you into greater trouble. And worse? Being over-confident might lead you to be arrogant, and that could lead to you getting your ass handed to you.
What is the point of self-defense? To come out alive with as little injury as possible. A realistic humility aids in this endeavor. If I know it’s a bad part of town, while perhaps I could take care of myself just fine, why should I even put myself in that situation in the first place? If there’s no need to go there, don’t. There we go, I’ve just defended myself, came out alive, no injury to myself. I didn’t let my ego get in the way with a “I’m going to go there, and if any punk tries to mess with me I’m going to fuck him up good!” sort of mentality — that’s more than likely just going to get me in trouble.
Realize as well that just because you have those particular skills doesn’t mean you have to use them. It’s the old “you have a hammer so everything looks like a nail” problem. I recall my first “force-on-force” scenario. I had a (fake) gun, I felt like I had to use it (it’s a gun class after all, right?). But in fact, that was the wrong answer; the best answer was to just call the police and avoid putting myself in a potentially dangerous situation. It was a humbling experience. Yes, my ego felt really bruised to have gotten the answer so wrong. I wanted to rationalize, I wanted to make excuses, I wanted to save face. But that’s the wrong way to go about it because I wouldn’t learn. Better to make the mistake in a forgiving environment and learn from it. The experience was humbling in and of itself, and by accepting my mistake in a humble manner, it’s a lesson that’s stuck with me and I’d like to hope I’m a little better off for it.
If someone opts to get in your face for something stupid, just apologize. Back off. Yield. Take on a submissive posture (tho still have the mental preparation and wherewithal to respond should the situation turn ugly). Even if you were wrong, still apologize. What’s more important? Being right? Or being alive and uninjured? This isn’t to say be wishy-washy, it’s to say you should be smart, you should be wise, and you should maximize the course of action that allows you to stay alive and unharmed. Don’t let your ego, your testosterone, your fantasy, your false sense of honor, get in the way and get you hurt.
Be humble. Yield. Knowing how to yield is strength (Tao Te Ching 52). Ponder Tao Te Ching 59:
The generals have a saying:
“Rather than make the first move
it is better to wait and see.
Rather than advance an inch
it is better to retreat a yard.”
This is called
going forward without advancing,
pushing back without using weapons.
There is no greater misfortune
than underestimating your enemy.
Underestimating your enemy
means thinking that he is evil.
Thus you destroy your three treasures
and become an enemy yourself.
When two great forces oppose each other,
the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield.
There aren’t many blogs out there that talk about one’s journey through the same martial art that I study, but I found one and he’s fairly active with it.
Getting in the car with the children. It’s dark. They struggle to put their seat belts on in the dark. “Dad, wait… I don’t have my seat belt on… I can’t see the thing the buckle goes into!” My response? “Feel for it.”
I’ve been teaching my kids the importance of doing things by feel. You don’t always need to use your eyes, as you can accomplish many things by just feeling. In fact, sometimes it’s better to use your sense of touch, leaving your sense of sight to perform other duties.
For instance, the reason I opted to write this blog entry is because I was just doing dry-fire practice with my handgun. I was working on malfunction drills and reloads. Everything I did, I was doing by feel. Why? Because I’m practicing on keeping my eyes on the threat. I can’t use any other sense to mind the threat (maybe hearing) so I really want my eyes to be focused on that task. If I have to avert my eyes and focus to the malfunction/reload process for even a second, that takes my eyes off the threat and who knows what they might do the moment my eyes are averted. Thus I need to use my sense of touch to manage the reloading. Sure, there’s a small bit of peripheral vision being used for the reload, but for the most part, it’s touch. In fact, you can get to a point where you could do a reload with your eyes closed, because our body does like to naturally bring its hand together.
This also raises the importance of index: that something is placed in a manner that naturally aids your ability to find and complete a sequence of actions. and in this case, by sense of touch. For example, my reload magazine is positioned with the tip of the top bullet “facing front” so when my left hand grabs the magazine the tip of my index (!) finger is on the point of the bullet, which ensures the magazine is naturally aligned for the reload (no flipping the magazine around in my hand), and my hands and fingers all naturally come together and go to the magazine well at the bottom of the gun for a fast reload. It may be difficult to see in the picture to the left, but it’s there. You’re able to keep you gun’s muzzle between you and the threat, your eyes are up there on the threat, so the gun is in your peripheral vision, you feel for the magazine release with your right/shooting hand, drop the empty or problematic magazine to the ground, meantime your left/other hand is going for the fresh magazine, magazine grabbed and properly indexed, eyes still on the target, magazine brought up and seated, left/other hand racks the slide (no, you don’t use the slide lock as a slide release), and off you go. A bit of vision involved, but it’s all mostly feel, aided by proper indexing.
Another illustration of indexing is if you wear a folding knife clipped inside your pants pocket. Where do you want the knife to be? You want it as far back, as close to the “end” of the pocket as possible. Why? This is a known, established spot. You can hook your thumb anywhere inside the pocket, slide it towards the back of the pocket, and you’ll find the knife. If the knife was clipped anywhere else in the pocket, you slam your thumb into the pocket and then what? Where is the knife relative to your thumb? Do you know? Can you know? Is the time spent finding the knife time well-spent, or precious time wasted? Again, this is indexing. You can place your thumb in the pocket at any point, slide to the rear, and allow yourself to index to that spot where the knife is and off you go. The need for a knife doesn’t always involve the luxury of seeing where your knife is or even an ability to use two hands. And this isn’t just defensive use of a knife. Just mundane things like cutting open a box can go faster and smoother if you can keep your eyes on the task and let your sense of touch, with indexing, help you acquire your tools.
If you’re not using to using your sense of touch, if you’re not used to indexing, take the time to learn. Yes it’s a little uncomfortable to give up reliance upon your eyes, but if you force yourself to do it and allow yourself to go slow and learn and get better with consistent practice, AND if you allow yourself to trust your other senses, you’ll eventually get quite fluent. Being able to spin off other tasks like this to secondary threads (yeah, got my programmer-speak going here) can be a huge help towards more efficient processing and accomplishment of tasks.
Updated:Karl Rehn, wrote me a response to this correcting some stuff. I’m happy to be corrected, and let me share with you what Karl wrote. The words are Karl’s, I just retyped for formatting.
>> Because I’m practicing on keeping my eyes on the threat.
Danger Will Robinson. I have seen more people go down this wrong road with regard to reloads.
Learn to do the reload with the gun held up at nipple level, and look as little as necessary — but nobody that is good at reloading the pistol does it purely by “feel”.
Google “Travis Tomasie reload” and watch the video of his reload, which is the fastest ever recorded. He looks at the gun just enough.
It’s a risk analysis problem. The risk of blowing the reload (empty gun, mag on the ground, lost time) is very high. The risk of getting shot because you took an extra 0.1 sec to look at the mag being seated is not going to be decreased by not looking. Why? Because you are only reloading for one of two reasons: (1) You believe there is a lull in the fight that provides you sufficient time to replace a partially spent mag with a full one. If this is the case you don’t believe you are about to shoot, thus you have to look. (2) Your gun is not capable of shooting because it’s out of ammo or has malfunctioned. In this case you are defenseless until you get the mag in the gun, and what’s critical to you in that situation is time, not awareness. If the gun isn’t shootable and a threat pops up, there is nothing you can do about it until you get the gun loaded. You should already be using the best cover available so it’s not like you are going to stop loading and duck behind cover, since you should have ducked behind cover first before starting to reload.
Looking back at what I wrote, I did give too much impression of doing things totally by feel and involving the eyes as little as possible. My mistake. I am using my eyes, but I will admit I was trying to use them as little as possible so that my eyes were being focused elsewhere. But Karl is right. Depending on the situation your focus ought to shift to the reload itself so that you can ensure a successful reload, or the problem is big enough (e.g. malfunction) it will be what requires your focus and attention. The shift of focus may be quick (that 0.1 seconds to ensure the mag is seated), but still there’s a shift.
(Sorry…. I had to turn the music off while watching, but the content is still good.)
This is Master SUH Sung Jin; 8th degree black belt; oldest son of SUH In Hyuk, founder of Kuk Sool Won. This video shows him demonstrating various Kuk Sool forms (hyung):
Oon Hak Hyung, “Crane Over Cloud”. Learned at 5th degree black belt. I’ve seen many perform this form, but the way Master Sung Jin has been performing this the past few years is simply amazing. Beautiful.
Kyuk Pah Hyung, “Power Breaking Form”. Learned at the 2nd degree black belt level. Watch the form and you can see the breaks, the power. I’ve seen many perform this form, but few perform it as well as this.
Ki Cho Hyung, “Fundamental Form”. Learned at the white belt level. This is not an easy form, but is the foundational form upon which all Kuk Sool is built. Master Sung Jin has been performing it recently in demonstrations in this “stylized” manner to help promote improved execution and technique in and of the form.
Gum Moo Hyung, “Sword Dance Form”. Learned at the brown-black level. The speed at which Master Sung Jin’s hands are moving during the middle portion of the form’s execution is amazing. Great relaxation.
Dae Geup Hyung, “Advanced Level Form”. Learned at the brown belt level.
The video is nice in that it is a compilation of various forms demonstrations. But moreso, what I like about this is seeing “other” forms demonstrated. Many times in demonstration what gets demonstrated is the highest-level form the person knows. While that’s nice, us lower-level folk like to see our stuff demonstrated too, but performed at a higher level. It helps you see what the form can look like in an ideal state, or at least give you a more tangible ideal towards which to model and strive your own execution of the form.
At the dojang today, all I did was sword training.
I don’t care for sword.
I know some people are totally enamoured with swords. There’s a Romantic notion about it. There’s great fantasy in it. But for me? I couldn’t care less. I’m practical. A sword is not practical. Sure it’s better than nothing, but it’s just not a practical weapon for the 21st century urban dweller. In my traditional martial arts training I prefer more practical weapons, such as a staff (especially short staff called “dan bong”); I’m looking forward to studying cane.
But for today. Sword.
So I look at it this way: it’s training, it’s discipline. I have a heavy (relatively-speaking) steel sword. Most people don’t like to use my sword because, while a gorgeous and well-balanced sword, it’s long and heavy: arms tire out. That’s why I like it, because it works out my shoulders, my arms, and most of all — my grip. It’s not just strength, it’s endurance.
Updated: I should clarify. I only have so much time and energy in a day to study and practice something. So with limited time and energy, I’d prefer to spend my finite resources on the things I find most productive and useful. Thus why I prefer to study things like staff or cane or firearms. But if I must study sword, and to progress in my martial art yes I must from time to time, then I might as well utilize that time towards productive ends. Maybe I’ll never be a master at wielding a sword, but if it’ll strengthen my grip, well, I found something useful to focus on.
Rob Leatham is one of the top competitive handgun shooters. In his blog he has an article about shooting fast, and he’s certainly one that knows that area well. While Rob’s article tilts towards the gaming/competition aspect of shooting, the fundamentals apply to any sort of activity, not just shooting.
Shooting fast is about shooting at the highest level of your ability, and that isn’t to say that you can’t raise your highest level even higher through practice and work. But speed that’s sloppy? That’s not speed. You have to be correct. You have to be accurate.
A few weeks ago when I was down in Houston for a black belt test, one of the things Master Alex spoke to us about was being fast, but sloppy fast isn’t fast, it’s just sloppy. One of the 5 principles of forms is “hands fast” but you must be correct, you must be accurate, you must be crisp and clean, then also be fast… never so fast as to lose those other aspects.
Remember years ago when the Pentium processor had floating point calculation errors? Back then it was a wicked fast chip, but I started saying “No one cares about the first person to get the wrong answer.” Fast may be important, but correct is more important.
Ever have a group of kids, you ask them a question and there’s always those that shoot their hands up first, maybe before you even finished asking the question? Then you call on those kids and many times they don’t have the answer… they just wanted to be fast and first.
So you see, it doesn’t matter what the realm is: shooting, martial arts, computers, or just life. Yes, being fast and first is important, but I would say being correct/accurate is more important. Slow down, work to be correct, work to be smooth. Speed will come.
Two separate but related quotes from Bruce Lee, on being.
It is the ego that stands rigidly against influences from the outside, and it is this “ego rigidity” that makes it impossible for us to accept everything that confronts us.
and
Seek not the cultivated innocence of a clever mind that wants to be innocent, but have rather that state of innocence where there is no denial or acceptance and the mind just sees what is.
Stuff From Hsoi 