After the Crazy Monkey kung fu post, several people commented on how weird it looked. And also how this type of “go nuts and flip out” fighting might surprise you at first.
Surprise! I’m crazy!
The last part first. One of the fighting “temperaments” is just that: you flip out and go crazy, making you very unpredictable. It’s very surprising the first time you meet somebody like that. Unless you have lots of experience, you might get caught by a sucker punch form such an opponent. You see guys like this on the street for different reasons:
- They’re pumping themselves up/intimidating you.
- It just happens to be their preferred way fighting. (It happens.)
- They’re crazy, as in certifiably so.
- A combination of the above.
When you’re faced with such a person, it can go bad for you because of that unpredictability. You don’t have to lie down and start bleeding just yet, but there’s definitely an extra difficulty to these guys if you haven’t faced them before. My personal preferences:
- If they’re not attacking you just yet but are flipping out, leave ASAP. If you can’t, strike first, very fast and hard. It’s hard to jump up and down and be all hyper-active when your knee is busted or your cracked ribs are sticking to your spine…
- If they’re coming at you like that, you might like to:
- Side step quickly and counter very, very hard.
- Fire a powerful long range technique as they come in (balance is not their strong point) but only if you know you have the speed, power and timing to do the job of stopping them cold.
- Grab a tool (preferably a big one) and hit them with it.
Obviously, anything can go wrong but in my experience, these guys are usually not prepared for an immediate and powerful response form you. I find the right mindset for this to be “I don’t care how crazy you are; I’ll just hit you really, really hard right away.”
What’s the point?
The first question remains: why on earth would somebody train like those guys in the video? For a variety of reasons actually. I covered the tactical surprise here above but there’s more. [Read more…]