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:
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