Hi All,
I just wanted to report on the immediate effect that the Fisticuffs series has had on my performance.
I have watched the whole series through once, and last night, the other Stu (forum member Fbleagh) and I decided that our brains were full after doing PYB and that it was time to do some sparring.
The first thing I noticed was that my whole torso felt both relaxed and activated at the same time. I was able to move my upper body far more fluidly after PYB than I normally do after WW. Of course, if it weren't for Warrior Wellness, I wouldn't have been able to do the majority of what was on the tape.
Next Stu and I did some shock absorption with a particular concentration on the head to help prepare us for "Softwork Sparring". This was where the first big jump in performance came for us. After a while, instead of directing our gaze at the breastbone as we normally do, we directed our gaze 15 degrees off centre as Scott suggests to do in the video. There is something about doing this that allows one to remain fully aware but somewhat "detached" which in turn ramps down the fear reactivity to being hit quite dramatically.
Scott goes on to say that you should direct your gaze whereever you are used to but in all honesty, I think he is selling his method short. Moving off 15 degrees lead to an immediate increase in efficiency of perception, ramped down the fear reactivity, and also allowed for better movement of the head when absorbing shock as it becomes a little harder to target the point of the chin. (I don't know about anyone else, but I find the chin absorption much harder than the jaw due to the ROM available to absorb shots to the jaw compared to the chin).
As for using more joints in our striking as per the tapes, the level of power we were recruiting at our usual sparring intensities (Softwork all the way to Hardwork) seemed to go up by a fair percentage and we actually had to turn down a bit more than usual. This is despite the fact that we weren't really sinking much except on bodyshots. (Incidentally, we are finding it alot harder to hurt each other with body blows these days since working hard on shock absorption.
All this happened to us after watching the tapes and then doing PYB. Imagine how good we are going to be at the end of our standup striking phase......(another 4 weeks or so).
This tape set is invaluable for anyone regardless of the art they practice. It will make you better......straight away.
I hope this post precipitates some more here on the Continuum Forum as we all have alot to share and alot to learn and the board has been a little dead lately in terms of "experience" threads.
All my best,
Stu.
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