The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction Recently a member of the Traditional Fighting Arts Forums, Emero, posted a query where he asked how one would defend against a spinning kick and a reverse crescent kick, pointing to the 2 examples below: A video showing the spinning back kick A video showing the reverse crescent kick I answered Emero on the particular thread, but I thought the question was appropriate enough to pose, and answer, here in my blog - especially since it will feed into my upcoming article “ Situational reflex: the key to martial effectiveness ”. Challenges in dealing with circular attacks What Emero notes is that powerful circular attacks are hard to respond to. A linear attack is relatively easy to understand and can be dealt with by controlling the center line (a topic I hope to address in the future). But circular attacks don’t really respond to the same methods; for one thing, they don’t move along the center line, so controlling it does not yield the same benefits. Now i...

Further to my articles "Karate and the Chinese martial arts Parts 1 and 2 "... Many questions have been raised in on the internet about white crane sanchin and its relationship to goju-ryu and uechi-ryu. For those who haven't done so I invite you to visit the website of my friend Martin Watts, a long-time practitioner of Yong Chun white crane. His website (http://www.fujianbaihe.com) has many videos with links to his master's site in China. The videos are very interesting and I think show that uechi-ryu is arguably the closest Okinawan form to Yong Chun baihe (white crane). In my many discussions with Martin on this topic I know he certainly thinks so. I don't think they are related in a linear sense, but they are certainly "cousin" arts. In goju, the nearest we come to white crane is our form "tensho" (there is at least one Yong Chun form with similar movements). I can see why many would argue a close connection between naha te (both uechi r...