In this video from the online course “Martial Studies: The Accelerated Method to Become a Polyvalent Practitioner without Illusions or Frills”, discover how to save your “energy gauge” when you strike so as not to squander your strength unnecessarily.
Table of Contents
You have a daily “energy gauge”
The goal is to be able to practice even when you are sick, tired or not in good shape.
It is therefore important to distinguish two kinds of strikes:
- the “big strikes” – that everyone can do…
- the “penetrating” strikes
Think about your daily energy gauge. It is not always at its best, sometimes you get up on the wrong side of the bed, you feel tired, you didn’t sleep well or you are injured after the previous day’s training, etc.
However, in spite of all these factors, you have to try to preserve as much energy as possible.
Know how to gauge your energy
Everything starts with the guard. Don’t waste your energy contracting unnecessarily. What’s the point if your attacker is still far away? This is the best way to waste your energy from the very beginning and to find yourself “weakened” when you face your attacker. Don’t forget that every time you contract too much, your gauge decreases!
Stay alert, and as soon as you feel the danger getting closer, then you can start to tense up a bit.
Whatever the attack, when you are about to strike, you do so in a relaxed manner, and it is upon the impact and the “twist” that you add power.
To sum up
In “tensed” mode, your strikes will hurt a lot for sure. However, you will get tired much faster, especially if you take hits at the same time.
Hence I recommend you to be “soft”, relaxed and to give it all you have at the very last moment, upon impact, upon the twist. And so on and so forth!
Schematically, it goes like this: go soft/relaxed – penetrating strike – relaxed back, and so on…
Although such a technique is not always possible, it is still better to train like this.
In the dojo, if you get used to working and training in constant tension, but in the street, with stress, surprise and adrenaline, it will be even worse!
You may find yourself tetanized and therefore no longer “free to move”.
