Silkroad - The Family Art
When Lynn & I started dating in 1977, we were already training, We have, mostly under instruction, trained together since then. Crystal has been an enthusiastic student with an impressive kinesthetic memory and understanding of the various techniques thru her teenage years.
Family Martial Background in Boring Detail
Purpose of the Art
You might say the real purpose is to have fun. But any hobby, art, game, and so on must have a goal, a purpose, an intent. Our art's focus is survival when attacked. Politely called self-defense, it has been proudly called street fighting by many of our fellow students. While martial movement focused on sport, exercise, entertaining others, and such are perfectly respectable practices, the goals and techniques of these martial practices are not the same as combat. The difference between self defense and street fighting attacks, however, is not the techniques used but the context of the confrontation.
Types of Techniques
The family art is a combination of stick, staff, and knife work, and empty hand. The empty hand techniques include pressure points, joint locks and throws, and strike patterns.
Ways of controlling
Pain, either by twisting joints or pressing or striking pressure points.
Blending with the attacker's movement, and diverting it.
Physically overwhelming the attacker with superior body mechanics and positioning.
Damage to the attacker, such as breaking a leg or paralyzing an arm temporarily by hitting a nerve.
Threats. Keating calls holding a knife point to the throat "the bargaining position".
Training methods
Drills. Striking patterns (sometimes grappling techniques) of hand, knife, stick, or foot, repeated over and over. These are practiced with a partner, and mirrored in turns. They can be solo, practiced against a moving target, a wooden dummy, a heavy bag, a speed bag, etc. These are analogous to a musician practicing her scales.
Freestyle. Randori in Japanese, or sansoo in Cantonese. The most common way is for one student to attack another with any grab, strike, or kick. The defending student then defends in a free flow of moves, in a rhythmic striking pattern segueing into throws or joint locks. Normally the "fight" is brought to a final conclusion, which can mean anything from death to the attacker to a crippling strike to a simple armbar and hold. The strikes are pulled, the joint twisting (chin na) is done slowly enough that the attacker (aka "the loser") can respond, and the throws pretty much at full speed.
Sparring. All sparring is a simulated fight, with at least one element or large class of techniques missing. Sparring can be anything to from one or two hits with one or two blocks - and no other techniques - to almost full fight Mixed Martial Arts competition (which we don't do). Throwing a beginner into a sparring situation will usually just teach him to flail fast. Once the student has at least one type of technique down comfortably, then limited sparring can be a useful training method (and all sparring is limited).
Forms. Kata. Kuen. These can teach rhythm, balance, breathing, body mechanics, and internal power.
Conditioning. We all run. I lift weights and strikes targets for moderate hand conditioning and skill maintenance. Damaging the hand does not contribute to a fighter's ability to defend himself. Internal toughening of bones and connective tissue, and normal callousing of the skin, is no more unusual than the changes brought by working with hand tools, lifting weights, riding horses, etc. Mostly, calloused knuckles allow me to punch the heavy bag without gloves - if I am attacked on the street, after all, I won't have time to tape up.
Historically, the Silkroad was the path reaching from Eastern China to Southern Europe. Trade and ideas moved in both directions. It was not a single road, either, but rather many roads, sometimes parallel, sometimes, crossing. A friend once called California the "Shaolin Temple of the twentieth Century". Now, I think, the whole world is the Shaolin Temple of the twenty-first.
I am not associated with the following website in any way, but it is an excellent introduction to the historical Silkroad.
- Kermit