Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

Free Style Tui Shou – Pushing Hands

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Tai Chi Chuan is one of the main arts I practice and Tui Shou (aka Pushing Hands) is a key component of the art. Just like you do in Judo, wrestling or muay Thai, we also work on our grappling though at first glance it looks very different from those arts. There are some key principles when you do these drills and I’ll explain them in a bit but first the video:

 

Some thoughts on all this:

  • Like I said, I usually don’t attack all that much. I’m pretty much always the heaviest guy around so it would be way too easy for me to use my weight advantage. It’d be easy to overpower my training partners but I don’t learn anything when I do that. So instead, I try to avoid using pure physical strength and place myself in vulnerable or difficult positions. That way, I am forced to work on getting more skilled instead of powering through everything I come across. [Read more…]

Training with Barry Eisler

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A little while ago, I spent a week teaching Barry Eisler private classes every morning at his place. I’ve trained him before throughout the years but this was the first time we had a full week to dig a bit deeper into certain techniques.  For those of you who don’t know him, here’s some information. I like his books (and especially the John Rain series) a lot and highly recommend them if you like action packed thrillers featuring skilled assassins.

 

Anyway, Barry has an extensive grappling background (wrestling and a black belt in Judo from the Kodokan) and he asked me to work from that but add some more nasty stuff into the mix, especially striking. Here’s one of the things we worked on, the circle drag:

 

A couple of points about this:

  • Like I said in the beginning, this is a very specific type of training. What we’re doing is exploring different possibilities. As in, “what would happen if you do the elbow snap on somebody with some training and the guy feels it coming?” A trained fighter has different reactions than somebody who hasn’t been in a fight since high school. So we spit-balled a bit and covered a lot of ground with this scenario here only one of the many possibilities.
  • One of the most instinctive ways to save your arm when it’s about to be locked out and then snapped, is to bend it quickly. In this specific situation, that gives me the underhook (at the elbow, not the shoulder) when I feel him retracting his arm. But before I go for it, I buy some time/space with a quick elbow to the chest or face. The face would be the better target but it might force you to loosen your grip on his arm, so I prefer to go for the chest (this is a personal choice, it’s not set in stone) because it’s closer by. If you don’t think the elbow to the chest hurts, I’ll gladly demonstrate in person. :-)
  • Once I get that underhook, I have to keep him controlled so he can’t counter as easily. Which is why I spin away while I use my other hand to slap/strike down (to do some additional damage  that slows him down) and grab his neck. Then I twist his arm a bit as I pull at his neck. This keeps him bent over and under pressure.
  • I immediately throw a lead knee to his face to keep him on the defensive. The rear knee is more powerful (and I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t use it) but speed is crucial here: if the guy is trained, you don’t want to give him even the smallest opening to counter you. In any case, once you throw the first knee, you can bring that leg back to launch the next strike so the point is moot.
  • Another instinctive reaction is to protect your face when somebody knees into it. As soon as I spot my opponent do this, I use the other knee (though you can use the same one too, it also works) to hit him with either a glancing blow or pass by his face altogether. Then I kick that leg back down while I yank his arm forward. This spins him and drops him in front of me.
  • Once there, you can pick: do an arm bar, control him, hit him, flip him over for more arm bars, stomp him, etc. The choice is yours.

Like I said, this is only one of the possibilities. There are many, many more. But we didn’t want to spend our training time filming everything so we only showed you one scenario. Don’t let that fool you into thinking there isn’t anything else.

 

Barry had access to some High Gear so we put that on to beat the crap out of each other throughout the week. For your viewing pleasure, we shot the same sequence again but with a little more impact. We’re both obviously still holding back. The High Gear isn’t meant for full force training, you can still get hurt that way. What it does is minimize the blows so you’re only hurting and not taking extensive damage. To give you an idea: after a dozen or so powerful elbows to the back of the head from Barry, it was time for me to either take a breather or drop to the floor unconscious.

Here’s what it looks like: [Read more…]

Sanshou class highlights

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Here’s a video with some highlights of my Sanshou class. I’m only showing the fun parts here (fun for me, that is), meaning: when I land techniques on my students. They land shots on me too obviously but those don’t make for such great footage in my humble opinion… :-)

The whole idea is to give you a sample of the way we train, particularly the sparring. One caveat about that: the contact level is pretty low. I vastly outweigh most of my students so I have to pull my punches to avoid injuring them. I mostly work on my timing and other things but rarely cut loose with power. After all, they’re my students first and only my sparring partners second.

I also very often limit the sparring to 50% power, 50% speed. That way students are more fre to experiment without the fear of getting knocked out. Full-on sparring is usually limited to those students who compete or those who’ve been training for a few years. anyway, I hope you enjoy the video.

 

 UPDATE: Something seems to have gone wrong during the upload. There’s loads of artifacts and noise on the video. I’ll upload a better quality version later today.

UPDATE 2: I just uploaded a 720P version of the video and the quality seems to be better now. There are still artifacts but it’s a bit better now. I don’t know what the issue is because I’m uploading in the same format as my previous videos. Weird…

Martial intent, what it really looks like

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I’ve written about martial intent and martial intent the wrong way before. But here, I’d like to show you some other aspects of it.

However, this is a difficult topic to talk about as so many people have their own ideas about what martial intent actually is, these can then get in the way of looking at it differently. But also, I probably have a different take on it for a variety of reasons I won’t go into just now. What I will say is this:

When I was a young man, I read something about KGB agents in training having to go to the zoo and stare big predators in the eyes to learn what a true killer is like. Now I have no clue if the Russians actually did this or not but I did find it an interesting concept and tried it out. There could be a long blog post about those experiences  alone but again, not today. The key is this: I learned a lot about intent, fighting and myself by staring down tigers and panthers and them being totally unimpressed. But when they did pick me up on their radar, things got interesting… It sounds too woo-woo even to me and I was there so I’ll save that for another time as well (there’s a theme here…)

Anyway, I highly recommend you try it out when you have some time. If you’re lucky, you’ll experience some amazing things and gain important insights. If you can’t, here’s the next best thing, a couple videos of animals in action.

The thing about animals is this: animals are as close to “no mind” as it comes when fighting and violence is concerned, so you can take a cue or two from them. You don’t see them second-guessing themselves when they attack. Nor do they delude themselves that deadly violence isn’t happening. That’s what we humans do.

 

Warning: It is possible to get lost in this type of training and do some serious damage to your mind and if you believe in it, your soul. I consider some of this training part of the “dark side”, for lack of a better word. Those of you who have experience with this know what I’m talking about. Those who think I’m full of it, I wish you well.

That said, here are the videos: [Read more…]

How to make absolutely sure you get your ass kicked

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Here’s a video showing some behavior that always baffles me: Just as a guy who’s harassing a woman is about to leave, she does everything she can to make sure he kicks her ass. Case in point:

To make my opinion absolutely clear: that guy is an asshole. Regardless of what the woman said or did, he’s an asshole for landing that leg kick. He could have broken her knee or leg, she could have cracked her skull, etc.

That said, the woman isn’t entirely without an important part of the responsibility for why it all turned out the way it did: with her ass getting kicked. Here’s how I see it: [Read more…]

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