Can some people be gifted...

Or, have you ever seen Godfather 3?

 

It was only meant to be a joke...

 

The thing is the really big guys are building muscle around there neck which does make a difference. It does not mean they are easier to knock out. It is the spine you are trying to have an effect on when fighting. So, those that have the strongest muscles a round the spine, are often what people mean by tough.
I never use the term tough, it is a sign you are ignoring reality. I guess there went another never. Now back to not using tough about some one who can take a lot of punishment. I would say you need to focus on how to effect the spine instead of the knockout.

 

We do occasional blindfolded training. It greatly heightens perception, which remains with you. This has been discussed and argued on a thread a while back.

 

Well I agree it helps but I use to do the training after blindfold with certain color lights to help the eyes. It can be used for shadow effect to.

More important your location is you trying to teach us your original language, right? After all you learned are English so yous thinking we could learn some obscure language right. The thing is I heard a person speaking old Scottish and something else and, I know I will never be able to speak it.. Just have to say no way you can say the sound "K" that many times and not hurt your neck.

 

We do blindfold training in the local park with all the obstacles of tree roots and (at this time of year) conkers!

As for speaking Cymraeg..the difficult letters to pronounce are ch/rh/r/ and the one that BBC announcers don't even attempt...ll.

Back on topic, we also do most partnerwork outdoors as that is where attacks are most likely to occur. It is important to know how to fall outside, as opposed to padded floors. It took me a while to lose my fear of falling but it was important to take that fear from my training, leaving me to focus on learning.

 

Could you pronounce that for me please, Carys.

 

Save me from the deadly eye finger jab!

Targeting the small area of eyes with fingers from typical striking range is a pretty big waste of time. You can't go for a lot of power - cos if you miss you're screwed and eyeballs are surprisingly resiliant things. At best it will be a minor nuisance to a big strong determined and half handy bad guy if ..

If you're going to target eyes for emergency self defence against the bigger and stronger at least do it in the clinch grappling range and use your thumbs to really dig out the eyeball. You could use your fingers i suppose, but have a hold their neck or head at least and be nice and cosy close eitherway. Hell why not just go for the brain while you're there.

You can then use eyebrain dip as a tasty snack and save on some kebab money.

Personally I'd rather avoid the 'go for the eyes' mentality in training. I didn't really like it with my old instructor and one of the reasons he's now my ex instructor.

But having said that, on the psychological angle - his instructor in turn had him practice gouging on real eyeballs attached to dead pigs heads..

nice

(ex SAS and all that)
I just wonder if someone danced around with them to provide a moving target..

Joking aside, some of the psychological type stuff my ex instructor did with this guy was interesting.. Just stuff i heard and have no reason to doubt.

Being buried, 'mountaineering' without safety, having to carry a knife everywhere he went regardless of legality .. and of course the pig head eye gouging thing. And in those days the gradings were guaranteed to be literally bloody affairs i was told.

Ahh the good old days..

Women are better off using the headbutt - there's a clip out there of a small lickle girly knocking out a big bad bouncer with a headbutt. A bit naughty as she wasn't actually being attacked.. poor guy. Ah well, such is life. Never seen a clip of anyone succesfully targeting eyes in striking range - but accidents will happen, luck always having been more reliable than judgements in such cases. Including damaging a finger trying. but's it's only a finger and nothing compared to what the big bad wolf lurking in the shadows is going to do to you!!

Ah well, such is life.

You can get helmets these days for sparring with headbutts. and practice your butting on bags (in combination with punches and elbows).

Otherwise knees and kicks to the groin. The chances of success landing an eyestrike with your fingers against a moving and resisting target are too low to be of much practical use in any kind of altercation, fight be it self defence or otherwise. biting and scratching(if you have the nails) for a S/D are better and more practical bets even than the deadly eye jab.

But hey.. it's the proverbial your 'sparring' time to spend..

I know, i know you can do it!! (by never actually landing anything of note to the eyes like in non contact or some pointy tap sparring)

Everyone has apparantly judged well how fruitfull those habits can become.. hmm.

Or have they? :Alien:

 

Ah... this were I reveal myself as a bit obsessed with the whole self defence thing... Maybe I should get out more!

 

Sounds a bit esoteric to me. Uppercut comes through constantly as one of the most devastating techniques when you get in - look at Chuck Liddel, just dropped when he got uppercutted. Yeah - it probably does whiplash your spine.

Thing is, your face is always sensitive - unless you've conditioned it through being hit loads - and eventhen, parts of it will always be sensitive. A god crack on the chin bar knuckled, and even Tyson style neck muscles might not help you.

 

Also rarely thought of is trainign with very loud music, like in a club - or even drunk. I went wushu training after drink a few times - lot sof fun! And so did the coach!

If you have a good friend, drinking and sparring is fun, and incredibly dangerous, ha ha... but for most people, the only time they'll ever be in a fight is when drunk - and they never train for it! Very funny.

 

Of course if you've got any self discipline you can just keep your eyes closed

I don't do it often because I'd usually be able to see, and usually train to use my senses in conjunction with each other AND because I think it can make you a bit introspective, which I'm wary of, myself, personally.

 

And if you've got poor eyesight, like me, you can spend quite a lot of your contact time in a wierd blurry world where you can't even see your own hands clearly. I would recommend training without glasses for specs wearers because you really need to get used to that disorientated state and your glasses (or contact lenses) are very often the first things to go, in any kind of altercation.

 

There's a "thing" where all martial arts have their myths and counter myths. I went trainign with some MMA guys, and thery were saying if anyone tried to eye jab them when grappling that'd just make them madder. And I thought, well, yeah, you could mess it up, in which case you would just make them madder - or, have they just verbalised a counter myth rather than face the reality of what it would mean to have fingers thrust in your eyes? Ans then that myth becomes part of their mythology...

Actually, if you look at videos of grappling and attacks involving grappling, there's a lot of head grabbing - also, say, you're a woman and a man grabs you and tries to kiss you, and you put your hands on his face. Thumbs in the eye fromt here is easy.

I do think like wing chun style eye attacks are much harder than people think, but, that's why most self defence trainers recommend "raking" down then back up across the face - not just gouging but scratcing as well. A "rake" covers more area, and isn't always about gouging - it can just be about making the attacker recoil for a moment, fearing for his eyes.

There's a technique in MMA called "blinking your opponent" - sometimes called that - meaning, doing something that makes him blink so you can "shoot" in and take him down. Anything near the eye tends to cause that.

Eye poke, like anything, rest on deeper principles, timing, daring and a bit of luck. In a fight, though, as opposed to a vicious attack, you risk escalating it beyond where you want to go.

The far worse mentality, espcially for women's self defence, is unrealistic self defence techniques - I despise that field. I believe in eye rakes, biting noses off, ears, hedbuts - the lot. Madness kung fu.

But I agree also if you mean those instructors who think they've got a set of ultra deadly techniques and that's going to work for them. That's just as dangerous a conceit. Especially when the blind man with the glass eyes attacks... And then you arm lock him and his wooden arm comes off! You could always hit him with I suppose!

Interesting - lol. He didn't become pig headed about it did he?
nice

A knife is a funny weapon - it's so limited, like, it takes more skill not to kill your opponent than to kill him - so of all the weapons, it's like carrying twenty five years in your pocket... and it's a sign of premeditation. One of them extendable batons would be better.

Agreed on that - top weapon. You can't put muscles on your nose!


Ah well, such is life. Never seen a clip of anyone succesfully targeting eyes in striking range
[/QUOTE]

No, me neither, but I have seen a lot of MMA fights where I thought the rules let people be safe when actually if there really where no rules they'd be open to eye gouges, groin strikes, and even bites - in the groin. There again, I wouldn't want to bite someone who had me in a headlock - or a UFC fighter, lol - it really would only make them madder, ha ha.

Ah well - that's why raking is better than poking. Also, if your hands are on their head, that will guide your thumbs forwards to the right place.

What annoye me in films is where people do that - then run away - to the locked door! Rather than pressing the advantage and booting them a bit while they're down, to make sure! You know - not that I'm obsessed or anything...

We wear those helmets just to go out around here! Don't practice butting on bags, lol - that really hurts your neck and is bad for your head - I tried once, boy did it hurt me! Paractice headbuts on pads...

My buddy a funny fight once, and he booted this lad right in the knackers, and this lad just looked at him and said "Is that your best shot?" If you're unlucky, you miss the knackers. Knackers is a technical term, by the by.

Ok - that's interesting - thanks for the heads up on that.

 

In Yiquan, this is called "thinking skin" - similar to how a football player needs to be able to be looking at the opponents while his feet do the necessary.

What you're trying to do is minimse the thinking - not intorospect it in any way - a purely physical skill. This comes under the category of "physical knowledge" to me - stuff that the body "knows" how to do. You can actually feel it take over when blind fold - feel the switch to the body knowledge.

And if you look at categories of attacks, and when people are attacked, a lot happens in dark place,s or places of low visibility.

Also, people's visual sense tends to alter when attacked, which is why people so often find that they can't remember specifics after an attack - perception tends to switch to an entirely different mode. Unfortunately, the mose it switched from is the ability to notice and recall highly specific information - such as detailed movements - and what it switched "to" is a "general scene" recall mode. Why it does that is thought to be because the brain needs to remember dangerous "types" of events, so it recalls the "type" of event, not the specifics - hence, many attacked people only recall figures standing over them, and not a single feature of a face. Your brain wants to remember that "type" of event for the future, so it doesn't focus on details, it focuses on the scene - figures in an alley, a man behind.

It's a very common psychological event. People say "It was all a blur" and everyone's memory of the event comes out different. Recalling later, unless they've had a really good look, many specific details just aren't there.

It's important to know that, because it means we probably won't have our usual visual sense. Then body knowledge comes in to its own. It's thought that really good pro fighters have the ability to remain calm and keep their usual visual recognition mode intact.

 

That's a very, very good point. Also, people are in that blurry world when completely drunk, lol. And although it seems funny, self defence for people who go out and enjoy a firendly drink with pals is a significant issue. In that case, people need much more basic survival skills - covered up, head covered, keep low, type of skill, because when drunk, you don't even know where you're being hit from, and it may well be a glass.

 

*Round of applause for Julie*
Actually, till you brought it up I never thought of that (not visually impaired myself) but I suppose in a good skirmish the first to go would be glasses. Excellent point!

 

I'm not just arguing for the sake of it here, but I do recall being attacked in some very unlit places on several occasions and as well as the adrenaline slowing everything down, I found it gave me a blow by blow memory and seriously sharpened my vision.

I'm sure you're right in principle though and I know what you mean about developing your sense of touch, but on the other hand, I don't recall many fights where it would have done me much good I don't think. How much sensitivity is really involved when someone is trying to strangle you and you're busy destroying their face?

I'd be genuinely interested to hear if anyone has any memory of a real fight where they were glad of their "push hands" sensitivity skills.