blocking a strike with closed eyes???

[NightCrawler_SW]

The drill and the guy's talk about ki was BS, but learning how to fight by feel is very important. When you're clinched up with someone or grappling you need to develop your awareness of where their body is and how it's moving so you can counter your attacks.

I just spent an hour drilling a white belt on that very principle. I was throwing punches and having him get in close, and then making him react to my punches and kicks from there. It took him a while (and he's probably bruised to all hell) but eventually he got to where he could react decently to changes in my posture and balance.

It has nothing to do with ki or sensing with your eyes closed, but everything about paying attention to how your training partner/opponent is moving, incase one does have to fight blind, in low light, or with people you can't otherwise see (such as behind you).

But yes, closing your eyes is stupid if you can keep them open. But realistically, one can't always rely on having full vision available in all situations. Then again, since you're a grappler, I'm pretty sure you've learned the trick of fighting by feel already, probably much in the same way I taught this poor white belt tonight.

awsome well put. Threads like this are exactly why I came on this site....

[twilight_ronin]

ok, first of all, i missed out the main point in my previous post
they "punchers" were behind the people who were "sense-ing" so it wasnt a visual thing

ok i see. thanks for clarifying.

and i am also quite a practical person, i dont think this could ever be used in a fighting situation aside from instinctively moving (like the kendo example earlier) i just thought i'd share my little experience, maybe the aikido teacher of yours was right?

i've actually given this 10 years of thought and practice. although i label my primary art here as karate in this forum, aikido was actually my first art for years. what i can say is that most of the time whenever the term 'ki' is used, it is probably more useful to be understood in a metaphorical sense alluding to things like posture, balance, sound technique and good sensitivity etc.

but unfortunately, at the same time we run into aikido folks who constantly need to mystify all they do and risk confusing sincere students. these sincere students, especially those who have already hit dan ranks or high kyu levels are probably so enamoured with the ideology of 'ki' and how aikido is some alleged 'higher art', they'd lap up everything their instructor throws at them. in other words, the instructor is already 'preaching to the converted'.

my bottom line is this: the instructor whom i was referring to decided to talk about 'ki' in a way that i think is really not helpful and misleading. and there are consequences resulting from this - you get students who start to think that aikido is some new age/new religion excuse to neglect good hard training and a down-to-earth understanding of techniques that may after all be really useful one day. granted that aikido's founder was quite a dreamy and quirky dude himself, but lesser mortals like me would probably benefit from something more grounded in our reality when we start to pick up the art.

i'm not saying that aikido shouldn't assist us in trying to be better people. all and good if they want to treat aikido like some comic book philosophy they can use to make themselves feel superior, but the worst consequence is when you get these 'aiki-snobs' who think their art or themselves are god's gift to the martial arts. yet interestingly, so many of them are hardly really tested. the higher the rank they achieve, the more shielded they are from scrutiny. heck quite a number even stop taking breakfalls. and eventually you get high ranking people who actually begin to believe their own 'ki' BS because they've never been challenged. their own students will also never challenge them because they also have their own invested interest in the art. eventually all the 'ki' talk becomes a self-perpetuating ideology, where everyone is in collusion with each other to maintain their belief in a mystical ideal of 'ki'.

the fact is that i (maybe?) felt something or we were all starting to get luckier as we practiced this little drill, i think one of my classmates had this taped at some point, i'll see if i can get hold of it in a few weeks (we are on holidays from class for another week)

well like i said, i think it was probably due to the fact that your other senses (other than sight) became more heightened over time. this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say and i would never rule that out. but when someone tells me something that seems to have come from a star wars movie, that's when i draw the line.

it really is quite hard to explain a feeling, and i'm not the best writer. since i've experienced "something" i'd say give what your aikido teacher is saying a try, dont dismiss it without a second thought

i didn't. i gave it 10 years like i said. well maybe my aikido simply sucks. i guess that's why grunts like me are now with karate who are so 'brutal and barabaric' in the eyes of 'civilized aikidoka'. anyway, all the best with your training.

[roly]

wow, thanks for the awesome response twilight ronin, i was expecting a good old flaming

i guess that's why grunts like me are now with karate who are so 'brutal and barabaric' in the eyes of 'civilized aikidoka'

got a good laugh out of that too

[roly]

on a kind of tangent here, but we sometimes do a drill with judo groundwork, one person has closed eyes and the other goes a bit easier, i highly reccomend it to everyone

[Kungfoolss]

:wink:

I didn't want to say anything being that it's such a silly "test" your instructor put you through. Were it I, that instructor would've been eating the floor with a simple leverage lock on his outstretched arm and downward body rotation.