The Two-Way Street in Martial Art Training.

Managing your opponent and managing yourself.

I am not sure how often this topic is explored; I am convinced that we don’t really give enough time to chew this one over, usually because we are all too often either ‘in the moment’, or, in some cases, bewildered by the complexity of just learning our stuff.

Let’s look at both sides of the equation.

Managing your opponent.

I want to start here because this side of the coin is almost taken for granted.

In free exchanges like sparring there are degrees of sophistication. At the lowest skill level it is to just go marching in and throw a vigorous technique or two at your opponent, treating them like a punchbag (after all, they are not going to do anything, are they? Wrong).

Or, if you have a lot of energy you could take what I call the ‘handful of stones’ approach; this is where you imagine you have a fistful of large-sized rocks and you throw them all at your opponent and at the same time, knowing that at least one of them will find a target – any target.

I don’t think there’s a grappling arts version of this, but some of my regular readers might want to contradict me.

This is more in the striking arts, it’s the kind of thing you might see in so-called ‘White Collar Boxing’ bouts; semi-skilled (mostly) blokes, chucking everything into it with the hope that the other guy just goes all defensive and folds under the pounding (A friend of mine had some experience competing in these events and confirms what I have said). In those circumstance, I doubt you are really ‘managing your opponent’, except in the most basic of ways.

Higher up the evolutionary ladder you find these characteristics regarding managing your opponent. Here’s a basic list:

·       Evaluating expectations. Smart observations of your opponent’s qualities, before and during. These can be things like; build, reach, favoured side, favoured techniques, level of ‘switch-on’, too many to list.

·       How your opponent ‘reads’ you. You can manage him by sending micro-signals, involving eyes, posture or the area you choose to occupy. An extreme version was used by Muhammed Ali in his 1974 fight against George Foreman, Ali called it ‘rope-a-dope’. This consisted of taking a protected stance while laying back against the ropes, seemingly pinned by the opponent. The shock of the opponent’s punches was taken up by the elasticity of the ropes. There was a cunning plan behind this strategy. Follow this link to see this amazing fight broken down.

·       Footwork and positioning to draw the opponent into the position you want him. Shiomitsu Sensei of Wado Ryu karate said, “never dance to your opponent’s tune”. Fighters develop all manner of tricks to ensure that their opponent dances to their tune. Wado international fighter Charles Longdon-Hughes had a neat trick of lowering his shoulders to get his opponent to mirror his actions, in fact ‘mirroring’ was something he used a lot, sometimes taking an extreme posture as a taunt. He explained this during a coaching session back in the 1980’s. A very clever fighter who knew how to push his opponent’s buttons.

·       Work off action and reaction. For every pressure there is liable to be a push-back. Engineer situations where your opponent feels compelled to push-back.

·       Fool the opponent into underestimating your armoury or your position, and lay traps that he finds difficult to resist.

Managing yourself.

It goes without saying that you have to be in the right headspace, but I am not going to dwell on the psychological aspects; I may save that for a future post. I will stay with the physical side of the equation.

This is about how to apply all the work you have put in. Unless you can implement these skills then all the effort is pointless.

You have to be in a position to act; a physical position and an attitudinal position. You cannot be too closed (defensively) or open (in your offense).

We’ve all heard the phrase to be ‘on the back foot’, this automatically suggests a poor position to be in. (Conversely, you also have heard of, ‘being on the front foot’) but what you are looking for is equilibrium; the calm, balanced centre of the tornado, where the mind is still and the body is free to move.

When coaching sparring, I see the same mistakes made over and over, but one of the most dominant ones is being out of position.

Often it is just pure inexperience; but sometimes it is because you have overreacted to something your opponent has done. The net result of this is that you are unable to capitalise on an opening the opponent has neglected to cover; the window of opportunity is there, but, through ill-considered body management you are in no position to do anything about it.

Students kid themselves that they are waiting for the big window of opportunity. A good opponent is not going to be so obliging, so you have to learn to take what you are given, however slim that might be.

Without being too fanciful, this is the sliver of opportunity found in kenjutsu; the width of a blade, no thicker than a cigarette paper. This is the refinement that can be crafted in paired kata. That level of timing and precision in body management and body positioning is in the realms of the highest refined skills, true mastery. But to reach towards that requires a focussed self-awareness, that many people are not willing to engage with; not because they are lazy, this omission comes out of just never considering it as a ‘thing’.

Of course, all of that is somewhat dampened by Mike Tyson’s oft mention quote, “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth”.

Header image: Tim Shaw, Generated with AI – 30^th October 2023.