I'm curious if others practice any of their forms or exercises in extreme slow motion?
In the advanced stages of pregnancy, I find that this still allows me to practice some of the kata (modified where there are kicks, due to balance) and avoid any injury related to the loosening of joints, change of balance and unhappy baby jiggling due to whip-like reactions.
When I'm learning a new kata or trying to get a specific combination down, I also find that doing a motion extremely slowly, and then speeding it up, also helps me understand the mechanics of a motion and how it all fits together.
I'm thinking this builds on muscle memory and also allows some of us who might "think through" an action too much to have brain and body "catch up" with one another. Still, I do want to make sure and avoid doing karate by numbers, but this seems to help me in learning something during my personal practice times...
Does anyone else do this, and what do you think are the pros/cons of this practice?
I don’t do forms per se (none of the systems I practice have them—except for Judo, and I don’t know any Judo kata), but I am a very strong advocate of slow-speed shadowboxing, particularly for newer students. I think it helps students build proper biomechanics, check their movement, and make sure that they are really doing things properly, rather than quickly.
If there’s a downside to it, I haven’t found it. Maybe I just haven’t found a student who spent too much time going slow…
I love slow motion drills for revealing where we hide our faults with speed.
I do lots of slow kata listening closely to what my body is doing.
What follows is a slow motion drill I have found very effective in teaching self protection and proper reactions. I call it soft adrenaline training because there is an adrenaline kick you have to handle to stay moving slowly and that can be really hard.
As you train the drill it can move faster but the control still has to be there.
Going slow gives people time to “see” and learn.
Night of the Living Dead (NLD) Drill
Introduction
I was introduced to Night of the Living Dead (NLD) by Tony Blauer, a self protection expert and trainer in Montreal, as one small part of a seminar he was presenting on knife defence. Tony called it NLD because you move slowly like the attackers in the old horror movie. It was a great gift to my martial arts training that was beyond any expectation I could have had. I will always be grateful to Tony.
I am sure Tony does many things with this drill that I did not have an opportunity to learn because it simply was not the focus of the seminar he was presenting. In working with NLD I waned to develop a methodology for teaching the self protection responses that I felt were the most effective. Therefore I developed the progression of phases (levels) presented here.
Definitions:
Aggressor: The person(s) attempting to assault another party.
Respondent: The person the aggressor is attempting to assault.
The respondent is always seeking to be successful.
The role of the aggressor changes with the experience of the respondent.
Night Of the Living Dead Drill
A brief Description:
This drill is required to be done in slow motion as much as possible. The reasons for this are many.
The first is safety because any defence is allowed.
The second is subtler in that to move slowly in this drill requires you to control the adrenaline created by the drill. This helps train you to control that chemical cocktail dump that takes places during a self defence situation. This vital to surviving a street assault.
Another reason this drill must be done in slow motion is that nothing is “pulled.” All strikes are taken through to their fullest extension. Because the strikes are being delivered slowly there is some requirement of the person being struck to evaluate the effectiveness of the blow and allow the proper anatomical response.
One of the main reasons for slow motion is that we want to build into the natural responses a person has to being attacked an effective reaction. When moving at full speed the proper movements are not felt, opportunities are not seen, and the ability to sense and fill holes is extremely difficult to learn.
The Drill
1) The respondent closes their eyes and does not open them until the aggressor says “BEGIN”.
2) The aggressor begins an attack in slow motion and says begin part way into the attack. (The types of attacks can progress as well, however, it is highly recommended that you use the types of attacks found in the street and not in martial arts schools).
3) When the respondent hears “begin” they open their eyes and, in slow motion, begin to react.
4) If the respondent is unsuccessful it is beneficial to repeat the same attack until they find a way to succeed. This installs within them “success” in defending themselves. It does not leave them with the memory defending in an unsuccessful manner.
PROGRESSION
Phase 1 “Teaching Stopping the Aggressor”:
• The aggressor attacks and keeps coming until the respondent does something that would stop them (keep throwing attacks until the respondent does more than block – no pauses).
• After the respondent delivers a stopping reaction, they will continue to follow up their initial stopping move until they are safe.
• In this phase or level after the respondent uses an effective stopping move, the aggressor will not press another attack. The aggressor will simply respond anatomically to the balance of the respondent’s attacks.
• This allows the respondent to learn how to follow up with natural attacks that flow from one to the other.
Phase 2 “Filling your Holes”:
• The aggressor keeps coming until the respondent does something that would stop them (keep throwing attacks until the respondent does more than block – no pauses).
• After the respondent delivers a stopping reaction, they will continue to follow up their initial stopping move until they are safe.
• The change is that the aggressor will now fill any holes (point out faults or weaknesses) in the respondent’s follow up with a small touching strike. However, the aggressor will not push into this opening and take back the initiative of the attack. The aggressor will not press a new assault.
• The goal here is to teach the respondent where their holes are so that the can improve their follow up by eliminating them.
• The other purpose is to teach the aggressor to look for and find the holes. This will improve their self protection capacity.
Phase 3 “Filling the Holes and Pressing the Issue”:
• The aggressor keeps coming until the respondent does something that would stop them (keep throwing attacks until the respondent does more than block – no pauses).
• After the respondent delivers a stopping reaction, they will continue to follow up their initial stopping move until they are safe.
• The aggressor now will not only look for the holes in the respondent’s reactions but they will take back the initiative of the assault anytime the respondent leaves themselves open. The aggressor will press a new assault until the respondent once again reacts with a strong stopping action.
• However, once the respondent retakes control the aggressor will only take over again if the respondent leaves another hole.
Phase 4 “Surviving”:
• The aggressor keeps coming until the respondent does something that would stop them (keep throwing attacks until the respondent does more than block – no pauses).
• After the respondent delivers a stopping reaction, they will continue to follow up their initial stopping move until they are safe.
• In this phase both sides try to win. If the respondent does not stop the aggressor they will keep coming.
• If the respondent leaves a hole the aggressor will take back the initiative of the assault and press on to win.
• Both sides try to win while staying within the bounds of the drills requirement to evaluate the effectiveness of a reaction to gauge the appropriate response.
Phase 5 “Responding in the worst case”:
• This phase can be done with any level of the training. If a respondent has a hard time with it you would want to do the “worst case” starting again at phase one level of training and build them back up to phase/level four.
• The respondent does not start until they are actually being struck/grabbed. While any strike may take us out, this training tries to build in the mindset that you take it and fight on. It also teaches how to try and mitigate impacts.
Phase 6 “Blinded”:
• This phase can also be done with any level of the training. If a respondent has a hard time with it you would want to do the “worst case” starting again at phase one level of training and build them back up to phase/level four.
• This is very interesting; the respondent never opens their eyes. The attack begins just as in phase five with the actual strike/grab and the respondent must react the entire time with their eyes closed. This helps prepare someone for when the attack takes away their sight.
Phase 7 “Jazz It Up”:
• This phase can also be done with any level of the training. If a respondent has a hard time with it you would want to do the “worst case” starting again at phase one level of training and build them back up to phase/level four.
• Jazz it up anyway you would like. We have done the drill with weapons, multiple aggressors, the respondent only having the use of one arm, and in complete darkness.
• One other way we have done this drill is have a number of respondents stand in a circle with their eyes closed. An aggressor moves among them and when they say begin everyone opens their eyes and the person being attacked defends themselves. The more the aggressor walks around the higher the level of anxiety and adrenalin.
Phase 8 “All out”:
• At this stage you will go as fast as you can as long as you can:
1. “See” everything still.
2. Have total control of what you are doing.
3. Both move at the same speed.
Other Important Points
Notes about the Drill:
One learning point you may want to keep in mind and use is that, if the respondent is unsuccessful in a defense, the aggressor repeats the same assault until they are. This teaches the successful reaction to the respondent by ending with a successful memory.
There is an acting (role play) element to this drill as the participants must gage the damage a technique might do to them and respond in a correct anatomical manner.
Every attack must be extended through the target to show the effects. Done in slow speed this should a perfectly safe exercise even when otherwise dangerous techniques are being used.
Maintaining the slow motion is excellent training to control adrenaline. I have referred to it as soft adrenaline training. (I’m thinking Tony Blauer’s HIGHGEAR would be hard adrenaline training.) As you gain control and experience you can speed the drill up, however, done too soon not only decreases the safety factor but reduces the learning capacity.
You will find that maintaining that slow speed will be one of the hardest things to do, but do it. The aggressor has a great deal of control here.
The respondent must learn to accept mistakes and turn them around rather than speeding up to avoid them.
Notes about Effective Self Protection:
It is the unpredictable nature of a street attack that makes it dangerous. If you try to predetermine your response it may lock you into a response that can have disastrous outcomes.
Being calm amongst the chaos is vital. The soft adrenalin training worked on by this drills helps you accomplish that very thing.
You must replace their intent to harm you with your intent to stop them. Never “defend”. A defensive mindset is a losing mindset. You must always seize the initiative and stop the aggressor. Often it is not the aggressor’s ability that allows them to harm people but their overwhelming intent to do so. You must override that intent with your intent to stop them. (I use the term stop because each situation will require an appropriate response that fits your moral beliefs and our legal obligations to society.)
When the drill begins you should determine the line of attack and get off the line of attack. HOWEVER, this must be done AS you initiate your stopping technique (e.g. a strike).
Use the slow motion to feel if you are using the proper body mechanics. All participants should press the other if they feel the strike, or positioning, is weak.
Always follow up until you are safe. Again this will have both moral and legal requirements.
When striking, always slip of the line of your aggressor slightly. Standing in front of them to “pound it out” makes it very easy for you to be hit (they just stick their fist straight out in front of them).
If you are constantly slipping off line then often at some point you have an opportunity to take a half step that will place you behind the aggressor – always take it.
The essence of reacting to a street attack is learning to sense and fill the holes of the aggressor. NLD allows us a progressive way of learning how to sense those holes and how to effectively fill them.
Conclusion
I have found this to be one of the best training drills that I have ever come across.
I have found this to be one of the most frustrating drills I have ever done. It challenges everything we have been taught in the martial arts and reveals any weaknesses in a glaring fashion.
At first many martial artists hate to do this drill for the very reason stated above. They go from being very good at what they do to fumbling around and failing.
This drill is not pretty. Particularly at first because street assaults are not pretty and this drill reflects a street assault. It lacks the crisp and perfect responses of a well organized prearranged fighting set (yakusoto kumite). This can often throw off the well trained martial artist.
So at first the martial artist can often feel that all their years of training have been wasted. However, if the martial artist keeps at this drill they find their training can come out effectively. It is often not the style or systems, but the use of the system in a street reactive situation that is flawed. A good martial artist with decent training will over come this.
I strongly recommend this drill of Tony Blauer’s and ask that you give it a chance. Those who work on it have come to love it. They love it despite the challenge of it. They learn to love it because it is not forgiving, just as the street assault will not be forgiving.
The first form in Chun has a slow section, the first section.. It is done in very slow motion, so slow you can barely see the motion..
The idea behind this particular practice is to incorporate an energy component, or tendency into the tools, such that even when tools are not "in motion" they will still have this relaxed energy component. This energy could be in lieu of dynamic tension seen in some other arts.
So in this case the slow motion is not so much about actual slow motion but about a beginning point in training subtle energy release, thought to assist in adding this constituent element or 'tendency of force' into certain shapes, tools and positions..
Shaolin M Y V T K F "Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit
I've found slow motion kata has helped me quite a bit. It allows me to focus on maintaining my balance and my rooting, moving from the center, and really think about the targets and mechanics of delivering techniques. Subsequent faster kata feel much more controlled. Not to mention it serves as a good warm up just out of bed on cold mornings.
I am reminded of something several music teachers I've had in the past were always telling me: "only play as fast as you can play perfectly".
Thanks for some reinforcement on what seemed to be a good training idea, and I really like that drill, Rick! Once I'm back in full training mode, I'll have to see if I can get some of my fellow Uechikas to play with me!
I also like Jim's term "relaxed energy focus" which seems to hint at that power from a relaxed posture that I keep hearing/reading about...now if I can just loosen up at the right times to take advantage of that!
Shana Moore wrote:
I also like Jim's term "relaxed energy focus" which seems to hint at that power from a relaxed posture that I keep hearing/reading about...now if I can just loosen up at the right times to take advantage of that!
I would suggest: Try to stay loose at all times.. It's one of the fundamentals of overcoming force.. But loose doesn't mean having no energy of intent--indeed energy should fill your body while being loose.. Brute force is often made up of 'dead energy' a kind of stiffness really, the opposite of loose power.
If you can avoid getting stiff, maintain a constituent of constant (subtle) forward pressure/energy, against his resistance (close range contact) you may find his force simply can pass if you don't fight it. (insert very small circle here.) If you can train that in conjunction with filling the space that (you feel) opening with sudden power you have discovered the power of softness..
Shaolin M Y V T K F "Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit
