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Old 05-05-2011, 07:58 PM   #18
Mario Tobias
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 261
Philippines
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Re: The Bad Habits Thread

Regarding not looking directly into partner. It's not only Hikitsuchi sensei that I've gotten that idea. I also got that from my Jujitsu teacher awhile back and many teachers others as well. He says there's always a tendency to look at the eyes, face, head, or shoulders, hands when sensing danger and getting into the defensive stance.

The principle IMHO is really to not focus on just a specific part of the body but looking "expansively" as Endo-sensei put's it, and the totality of the person as well as the surroundings. I have the habit of let's say just focussing on the part that's attacking or being attacked. I've applied this and I think it's made a difference on how I move and do my techniques.

Let's say for example, a katatetori technique. I have this weakness of just focussing on attacking uke's hand/arm that is the one grabbing me. Or a tsuki (with knife). We tend to focus on the knife.

Another pretty obvious weakness I have that I've just learnt recently was that I'm always concerned about let's say uke's grabbing hand. For example, any hand/shoulder grab techniques. I'm always worried about uke's hand/s that grabs. If you think about it, this is the least threatening part, it's just grabbing, it's locked and cant do much damage. What's pointed out to me was you need to worry about the other free parts of the body which are more threatening so why are you attacking the part that's least threatening and/or most difficult to put a technique on IMO ( the head for example is easier to attack rather than the grabbing hand)? Pretty obvious but I didn't realize this until somebody pointed it out to me.

Regarding Hikitsuchi sensei's habit of not looking, I got very curious and tried an experiment on some of the white belts to see how they would react. For some reason I can't explain, I can do the no touch throws sometimes. It doesn't work all the time, but the reaction is somewhat the same as what I saw in the video. Pretty mysterious to me.
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