Anyway, we've been keeping up with our training (re: my circle-turning goal, I am well ahead of schedule now and will, in fact, hit 10,000 minutes for the year so far sometime this afternoon, which is a bit of a milestone, I suppose). We've also been trying to arrange it to make videos to showcase a little of what we know Yin Style has to offer--even if we're having a hard time getting that to translate onto video.
Our latest project is part of a trend that we're looking at exploring now--Yin Style pitted against a non-compliant opponent. Our first videos showcased YSB in applications demos (videos on links), which are cool but apparently don't impress the video-watching masses very much (perhaps they should come feel those applications?). For good or for ill, the opponent in our video isn't compliant enough for the ever-angry Interwebs crowd, so I guess we'll have to keep upping the ante. Check out the video and see what you think. I'll talk about it more below the embed.
Importantly: This is not how we usually train. It is not endemic of Yin Style training or the Knoxville study group. We were just testing some waters, having fun, and making a little bit of a show of it.
Part 1: Gi grappling, standing
So, at first, the video opens up with me wrestling around with a guy in a jiu-jitsu gi. Here's the backstory on that. About two weeks ago, I took the opportunity to work as a helper at a local Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament, so I got to see a lot of that kind of stuff firsthand. It got me wondering, of course, what might happen if I had entered said tournament. As it turns out, the fellow in the video with me used to do BJJ (he trains with us now), but not in several years. He also used to do karate, as it turns out, but again, not in several years. So, I asked him if he'd mind checking out the BJJ scene, kind of with a "if you can get me on the ground, then we'll need to start thinking about what to do on the ground" attitude, given that the implicit assumption that seems to underlie the BJJ-supremacy movement is that every BJJ guy can get every everyone else on the ground and then win, no problem. (Incidentally, they probably can win most encounters, given the security of one-on-one fighting, at least, if they take a non-BJJer to the ground, but that assumption needs to be validated.)
So here, at the start of the video, I'm not trying to show how Yin Style Bagua grapples, as some people out in CyberDojo seem to think, but rather I'm seeing how I--as a Yin Style dude who hasn't wrestled with anyone in any context remotely like this since 2009 (when He Jinbao had us do shuai jiao "for fun" and strength) and not since maybe 2002 before that--would do against someone who has done BJJ before in that context. Kind of: what if I had entered that tournament in the noob division, would that have gone okay for me?
Well, the answer seems to be yes, at least for the noob division--although maybe not: BJJ tournaments require you to go to the ground and wrestle there, and I think I'd be less in my element there (apparently it's bad form to the point of being against the rules to throw a dude, stand there and wait for him to get up, throw him again, etc., to win on points in a BJJ tournament). Evidently, I was pretty hard to move around, had relatively awesome base, felt pretty heavy, and was able to feel and then execute throws fairly well (all what my partner had to say about it). Does that mean I can show up at the BJJ Pan Ams and get my gold medal now? Hell no it doesn't, but it does mean that at least with a novice-level grappler, I'm not a free toss. We'll probably go looking for better grapplers soon to find out more. For what it's worth, I showcase a handful of throws here, but there were probably three to every one that made it on the video just in the time we had the camera on. Yeah, they're the pretty ones, but there were others. I was not thrown.
Part 2: Opening with strikes
Here we took a different tack. Yin Style would not open an encounter by letting someone grab onto them, if it could be helped, and it wouldn't grab on to someone directly with the intent of just wrestling to the ground. Yin Style is a complete martial art, featuring striking, kicking, throwing, and grasping. Specifically, that means striking, usually first. In the interest of full disclosure, my partner's instructions here were "get me with whatever, but don't get got," but he claims that message wasn't clear enough for him. Since we weren't wearing any protective gear and because he's never done anything like that before, he didn't come at me full-bore (in the context of not hurting each other), so it's hard to call him "resisting" in the real sense in this section of the video.
Here's the rub about that, though. Part of the strategy of Yin Style, so far as I understand it, as a combative art, is to make it so that the other person doesn't really get a chance to try. Maybe that's just Lion and Phoenix; maybe it's more general. In any case, one of the strategic goals of the art, to my understanding, is to overwhelm the opponent from the moment his hands come up--or even from the moment that you can be quite sure that something is about to go down. There's none of this tag-tag, scuffle-scuffle stuff that characterizes so many other arts. That said, we'll see about getting some protective gear and upping the dose here a little to see what happens.
N.B.: In the very first clip of this section, we're actually following "part 3" rules only with strikes from the wrestling allowed. We really had five parts, but that would have made a cumbersome video. See just below for details.
Part 3: No-jacket wrestling and blends
So, this is really an amalgamation of a few different modes of play. We did straight-up grappling rules here, just to the throw, then we mixed in striking. At the very last, we actually slowed it down and did more like demo/applo speed, which can be seen in the very last technique on the video (and at least one other, if anyone cares to guess which). Instead of making that super-clear on the video, I just kind of lumped it all together as "no jacket, not starting out with striking."
Given some of the criticism that has floated in about this section of the video, perhaps I should have left in some of the stuff where I quickly broke his hold and brought strikes toward his head and neck, but it just didn't come out too clearly on the video since I didn't actually hit him in the head and neck--which is surprisingly easy to do even from a tight grappler's clench, using shocking or penetrating strikes to break holds or make space to pull off various techniques (chopping, blocking, and extending strikes are particularly effective, and sweeping and hooking have clear uses).
What we learned
We learned a few things here. First: this kind of training from time to time is pretty fun. It might be good for "keeping it real," as they say, as well. Mostly, we learned, though, that Yin Style training methods of development give you at least some degree of success in these regards without having to spar. The confirmation, long awaited, that training without sparring can produce a better result is rather close to being at hand. Of course, we're watching out for confirmation bias here--we wouldn't want to assume we're badder dudes than we are based upon a little play with any particular individual.
We also learned that people on the Internets bitch a lot about just about everything. Good times, for sure! We'll be sure to drop a bigger rock in the pond next time and see where the ripples go.
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