Time passes but the passion does not wither.

  

 

Last night while I was waiting for sleep to fall, a memory of a clinic Ernie Rothrock gave to my students long ago, when he was paying a visit with me, came to mind.

 

I am sure I filmed it but one technique form a clinic is almost impossible to locate and now I only have me memory to guide me.

 

It was a most interesting application, from his Northern Mantis studies. Where moving outside an attack. One hand flowed down across the attacking arm and the other arm became a rising forearm strike in to the attacking limb. Where the one hand drew that limb down the other delivering a rising forearm strike into that limb, hyper-extending the elbow and causing much pain for the attacker.

 

Just a one off technique among so many other techniques covered that day. Still, I remember it clearly as I saw it I saw so many possibilities.

 

I am sure Mike and Young remember it as well as I do.  However, one seen set aside for the most part.

 

So retired, disabled and old, I have not left my studies of my Isshinryu aside, they keep rattling around. And last night I put 2 and 2 together and found another thing I had never been shown or thought of previously.

 

When we learn the shape of a kata, it often controls what we believe those techniques can be used for a very long time. The act of considering how the move could be applied against different attacks coming from different directions is hard to break down the conditions of how one was originally shows.

 

And to make it clear I was originally taught Seiunchin kata by Dennis Lockwood at the Salisbury dojo.  Almost immediately I was on the yellow belt demonstration team, and was extensively drilled on Seiunchin as performed to the music of the Hustle. Over and over, till I still hear that tune when I perform the kata. I know there were some slight differences between that version from what Dennis originally taught me. But after that intense drilling I have done my best to hold to that version ever since.

 

When I began training with CharlesMurray he made it clear that I should do kata Seiean through Chinto as I had been taught in Salisbury, and he would not teach me his versions, rather my kata from that point in time would be as he did the rest of the kata.

 

So what I just realized that the rising forearm strike ½ way through Seiunchin kata could be utilized just the way Ernie showed the Mantis forearm strike.

 

From Seiunchin when the right forearm strikes upward into the left open hand, if done from the outside of the attack, the right hand could end up over the attacking limb to pressure deflect that limb down and at the same time the rising forearm strike could be into the attacking limb.

 

When I was being shown the form I appeared that technique was being done into an attacker in front of you, and that is most reasonable. Over the years I worked up an entire range of possibilities for just that assumption. And of course they work.

 

But the control of how one was shown is very hard to break. Because it seems so reasonable. Accompany that with there are so many kata and so many studies, that it is unlikely one considers everything possible.

IMO that is the true nature of the Infinite Hand, requiring a lifetime of study and effort to cover even a fraction of what is possible.. But each time you see another path more of the Infinite Hand is revealed.

 

So retirement, disability and old age are no reason not to keep looking.

 

I wonder what will occur to me next?