Soft skills

[AngelaG]

A fence can be used to maintain distance, to help you judge distance, and to protect yourself.

It can also be used to help calm a situation down. It can be adapted to be either passive or dominant.

Apart from that it can be used to manipulate the type of attack the other person uses. A narrow fence is most likely to get a hook punch, and a wide fence is most likely to get a straight punch. Thus you can manipulate the opponent to throw an attack that you are most comfortable dealing with.

[nkudahc]

angelag said:

Apart from that it can be used to manipulate the type of attack the other person uses. A narrow fence is most likely to get a hook punch, and a wide fence is most likely to get a straight punch. Thus you can manipulate the opponent to throw an attack that you are most comfortable dealing with.

that i would have never thought of...thats a great idea. perhaps you guys could reccommend a book about soft skills?

[whitewarlock]

I would love to participate in this thread, but short on time. Maybe later.

[random]

This thread seems to be the fusion of three going on at the moment. LOL.

I have used the traffic light colour scheme in the past, and when working as door security learnt the value of manipulating an attack with the fence as described above. One of the problems is recognising that green isn’t being unaware, just not being as aware. Green would be spotting potential incidents amber plotting a solution, which my mean crossing the street to get back to green, red is fairly obvious, red amber that period after an incident when a flashpoint can occur back to green, hopefully we never have move from green. I am in an amber state once it gets after 7, which I am sure isn’t too healthy.

[AngelaG]

I think most people exist in permanent white. They are the kind of people that walk into you when you are blatantly walking in the middle of the pavement, or the people that stop dead in front of you, and scarily the kind of people that quite happily pull out of a side road in front of your car.

I like to think that these days I spend most of my time in green.

[random]

This is an interesting observation Angela, and true the amount of people who walk and drive around with apparent disregard for others. Perhaps it goes beyond being plain rude, but that they are just unaware of whom and what is around them.

[Aefibird]

random said:

Perhaps it goes beyond being plain rude, but that they are just unaware of whom and what is around them.

In some cases then it is more than likely.

Children can often only "see" what is right in front of their noses; maybe some adults have the same problem.

I was a dozy kid, I'm a dozy adult too - a mate of mine always says that if I was ever at an illegal party that got busted by the police I'd be the one stood there in the middle of the room saying "What? What's going on? Whats happening??"

I've got a lot better since training in martial arts, but I'm still prone to moments of idiocy.

[Shorin Ryu Sensei]

acerimmer said:

Soft skills, including awareness, threat evaluation, fence or guard etc etc

I would say that any sensei that DOESN'T teach "soft skills" (I never really named them) isn't teaching a martial art that is designed for saving your butt in the street.

Awareness and threat evaluation is a critical portion of learning self-defense IMO, and the fence/guard is just one of many different approaces to defending yourself.

Show me a dojo/dojang that doesn't teach these things, and I'll show you a McDojo or sport oriented school.