Wednesday, July 25, 2018

A Shearing Plane of Force

The first way I saw karate it was as a percussive art, Strikes and Kicks.

 

Then one time when I first started training with Tristan Sutrisno, I saw simple exercises he was first shown as a boy when he was 4 in Indonesia by his father. In time I realized they were not just a child’s exercises but were the basis for extremely effective martial technique in their own right.

 

I came to see such movements in a different way from the percussive manner of karate. To me they became use of a shearing plane of force against an attacker.

 

Further study I began to realize they were present in everything I studied. Where I studied tai chi just to do tai chi, not for martial use, I came to realize these motions were in tai chi.

 

They were in karate. They were in karate.

 

When the eye opened I saw they were present almost everywhere. But it is easy to define an art from one perspective;.

 

An extremely effective demonstration of how this can work can be seen here.

 
 

Or course this does not explore all of the potential uses of the Shearing Plane of Force.


Addendum:

 

It is easy to define karate for its use of percussive force. A strike or a kick delivered to a point.

 

Where it takes a more subtle eye to understand how karate uses a  shearing plane of force. Examples can be found  when a side block is utilized as a plane of force to down an opponent. Or when the crescent step can be used after every strike to shear down the opponent. The middle section of Chinto can be used for it’s shearing planes of force, or the opening sections of Kusanku can also be utilized to down an opponent.

 

Often using percussive force and the shearing plane of force in conjunction with each other.

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