Monday, September 10, 2018

A Dynamic Drill from Tjimande


 


One day many years ago while I was visiting Tris Sutrisno and training with him I learned a short drill, what he called Tjimande Juru one, for his students.

 

It was not too complex and I remembered it, then I returned to Derry and showed it to my students. But when we practiced it as shown, it was tearing up our arms, until we turned it into something else.

 

Not wanting to do that, I made the decision to change the defensive portion of the drill to become simple slap checks. Allowing us to focus on the offensive portion of the drill.

 

Of course that was wrong, as the reason the defensive movements hurts so much is that they were not defensive movements, rather intended to be offensive replies to the offense used.

 

Both sides of the drill were intended to tear up the other.

 

Later I learned a few more of them, and each time the same principle was used.

 

I am only going to talk about the opening section of that juru.

 

Now that opening for the drill was:

 

Attacker left cat stance forward, hands up before you.

 

            1. Lead hand strike towards opponent head.

            2. Rear hand strike towards opponent head.

            3. Lead hand uppercut to the opponent, to their body..

            4. Rear hand hook strike towards the opponents head.

 

The timing was a very rapid flow 1-2-3-4 set of movements tearing into an opponent.

 

What I originally thought of as a defense for those movements was,

 

Defender  (in reality equally an offensive set of movements) left cat stance forward, hands up before you.

 

            1. Left hand strikes with edge of the hand across your body.

            2. Left hand strikes with edge of hand turning into the 2nd strike.

            3. Right hand strikes with edge of hand downward into their rising uppercut.

            4. Left hand strikes with inside edge of hand into the inside of their hook punch.

 

So each side was trying to destroy the other if they did not encounter a counter.

 

And as I did not understand that what I changed the 2nd side of the juru into was using light touches of the palm as parries to the strikes.

Over time I came to understand what was really happening in the original version.

 

The reason the original practice hurt so much is that was what those strikes were intended to do. Striking into the forearm as it is striking where the forearm does not have much protection is very painful. Likewise striking down into the forearm of a rising uppercut strike is also extremely painful. Finally the inner open hand srike into the uppercut was also very painful.

 

There was a real lesson about the fine use of pain here.

 

 

But things often have many possible uses, even in changed forms.

 

We saw the opportunity to use this section as an offensive striking drill for our youth, Not planning on showing them the 2nd offensive side of the drill. That sequence does have its uses to overload an attacker at the same time. I liked the learning how to tear into an opponent for youth as a 1-2-3-4 attack.

 

So we modified the 2 person sequence to have the ‘defensive’ side just use palm parries/

 

 

Defender  left cat stance forward, hands up before you.

 

            1. Left hand parries with palm of the hand across your body.

            2. Left hand parries by rotating the palm of the lead hand turning into the 2nd strike.

            3. Right hand parries with palm of hand downward into their rising uppercut.

            4. Left hand parries with palm of hand turning into the inside of their hook punch.

 

 

Of course this is different from the original

 

This is what the youth version looks like.

 

Opening to Juru One Mike and Devin
 



By way of comparison this is what the complete version (as we did it) looks like.

 

Complete Juru One Mike and Young
 

 

Again a bit different from what I was originally shown. However as I was not schooled in it that happens over the decades..

 

 

There are multiple lessons here.

 

About how being shown something is not the same as being schooled in it.

How other valid uses can be made of even part of something.

And, how there is always more to learn.

 

 

 

 

I have written about the few Juru’s I was shown:

 
https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2015/03/moretjimande-basid-drills.html

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