Just lately I’ve been coaching numerous a brief drill-like kind that Phil Duffy taught me years in the past. It’s somewhat sequence that incorporates about 8 or 9 primary Choy Li Fut strategies (relying on the way you rely them) and runs in a loop so you’ll be able to simply preserve doing it time and again. In the event you needed an excellent introduction to Choy Li Fut, that’s it. There’s just about every little thing you want in there to get proficient at one thing that not less than resembles Choy Li Fut. There are not any difficult animal strategies or something too fancy, simply sensible blocks, deflections and strikes completed in a CLF model and utilizing the essential Choy Li Fut stances.
After which I began questioning about what it could be like if an individual solely ever practiced that little kind, however drilled it intensely every single day time and again and in addition spared the strategies for a yr. I ponder how good you could possibly get if you happen to simply did that? I feel you’d really get fairly good! You’d want different conditioning drills, after all, and stretches, however you’d positively have the essence of one thing.
And that obtained me eager about the entire idea of simplicity in martial arts. Very often we make martial arts overly difficult, particularly in Chinese language inner kinds. There are fundamentals to grasp first – basic rules of physique motion, posture and respiratory, that each one should be coordinated along with the interior parts like psychological intent, jin and calm focus, and so forth. Then there are lengthy types to grasp, after which different types on high of that. And that’s not even pertaining to the strategies you must grasp. And push arms and weapons types. It simply goes on and on. It’s like Tim Cartmell mentioned in our current podcast dialog (and I’m paraphrasing him right here) “in a few of these kinds you achieve this a lot physique work that you simply neglect the opposite man is definitely going to throw a punch!”
The heavy sparring emphasis I’ve skilled in BJJ has taught me that martial strategies can’t be too difficult in the event that they’re going to face an opportunity of working when the rubber hits the highway. A six transfer combo to brush someone, cross their guard and choke then out is fairly unlikely to work in sparring simply the best way you drilled it in observe as a result of no plan survives contact with the enemy. What works in actual life are strategies and methods that hit that candy spot someplace between the extent of “too dumb” and “too difficult”. These types of strategies, drilled to turn into second nature, have an actual probability of working once you want them to. That’s the simplicity you wish to aspire to in martial arts, and to me that’s the actual energy of martial arts like Choy Li Fut – they’ve sufficient subtly to make them attention-grabbing, however not sufficient to make them too difficult and impractical.
Once I get time over the weekend I’m going to movie my little mini Choy Li Fut routine and put it within the Patron’s space, so you’ll be able to test it out there.