Kung Fu and Natural Response to Stress

Your body's natural stress response is divided into three stages. These are alarm, resistance and exhaustion. The stages of a confrontation can also be divided into these same stages.

Alarm is the initial stage. This is the initial confrontation where a decision on fight or flight must be made. In Kung Fu it is always preferable to avoid confrontation but there are times when a fight is necessary. Each person must quickly be able to assess the situation and make a determination on whether or not a fight is necessary. If a fight is necessary, the next assessment should be how to quickly end the fight or escape the situation. In a physical confrontation this is an important as the wrong decision can be disastrous.

Resistance is your natural attempt to store things to normal by eliminating the cause of stress. In a fight this is the desire to return yourself to a safe state. This is a result of disabling your opponent, fleeing the fight, or fighting until the opportunity arises to escape. Once you have returned things to a normal state your body will slowly return to its pre-alarm state as well (heart rate, adrenaline, blood flow, etc.)

In a case where you cannot return things to normal through resistance, your body will become exhausted and start to show strain through the onset of minor health issues and later more serious issues. In a physical confrontation, the results can unfortunately be much more drastic as this is the point where you would be unsuccessful in the fight.

Through training in Kung Fu we are developing some moderators that can influence how we deal with these situations. We learn to remain calmer during confrontations, be more confident in a positive outcome, be physically prepared to absorb some damage if necessary, how to properly execute techniques that would end the confrontation and how to defend against physical attacks. Your personality is the other factor that will play into the outcome as each individual has different ways of dealing with confrontation.

Building Basics To Help Learn Advanced Techniques

James commented on a previous post about building into fancy techniques instead of trying to learn them upon starting your training. This is very much the case in good martial arts training. All techniques build from the basics and development usually happens in stages.

The Kung Fu practitioner always starts their training by building their stances. This is not done as a punishment, there is a point to it. Strong stances will allow the practitioner to maintain balance upon impact, drive from the legs to generate power and maneuver while staying solid on the ground. From solid stances, the practitioner is able to execute a powerful kick while someone with weak stances may lose balance when kicking because they are on one leg.

An example of the importance of stances came during a Kung Fu demo for the Hainan Association members. I was performing Black Dragon Sword when I stepped on a quarter of an orange that their lion dance team had left on the floor. Instead of slipping and falling, I slid across the floor standing on one leg as the technique required a crane stance. As I stopped sliding, I continued the form. The members of the Hainan Association did not realize anything had happened but one of the lion dance team members ran out and picked up the orange as I continued the form.

To continue on the along the road of progression mentioned earlier, once the person has learned how to kick properly and spent the appropriate time to be solid while kicking, they can easily move on to jumping kicks. The actual kicking technique is the same but the practitioner is now in the air. From here, the practitioner can build into spinning kicks, jumping spinning kicks and aerial kicking combinations. This is one example using kicking as the progression but the same can be done with hand techniques as well.

To illustrate how knowing basics can help with learning forms we can look at the components that make up the techniques. As a person learns a new form they will be entering into some unfamiliar ground. It is difficult enough to figure out how to move their hands without worrying if their feet are in the proper position in the stance. Add to that the proper speed of execution, transitioning between stances and intricate smaller motions to get to the next move and the forms can become very confusing. Knowing all the basics allows the practitioner to focus completely on transitions between the techniques and remembering the sequence of techniques.