How do you fight differently due to physical limitations?

[baronbvp]

Here's a topic of great interest to me. Like Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, many of us have injury, age, or body style issues that affect or restrict our motion or mobility. As a result, we can't do all the moves of our style or have modified them in some way.

For instance, my hips are not limber for sideways motions of lifting my thighs and never have been. I am 45 and no matter how much I stretch or warm up, it's just the way my hip joints are constructed. I also sleep on my sides, so any pain in my hips from trying to tough it out makes it difficult to sleep. While I can agilely shuffle from side to side such as in racquetball, I cannot lift my legs for side kicks very high at all. As a result, I rarely use side kicks for strikes above the knee or at best the lower thigh. I love front and back kicks instead.

Others have had knee, shoulder, or other injuries; are overweight or very petite; have trick joints; have had amputations; or have asymmetric bodies or other birth issues that cause them to adjust their technique accordingly. Many of us older martial artists - I mean Masters - cannot do deep stances because of pain and pressure in the knees.

How have you modified your fighting, sparring, or training style to compensate for restricted motion or mobility due to injury, aging, or other body issues? How effective is your modification?

Edited January 2, 2007 by baronbvp

[patusai]

Yes, otherwise I would not be able to train.

[lordtariel]

You have to, otherwise you're just going to injure yourself. There's nothing wrong with pushing yourself, but you have to do it wisely.

[ashworth]

I had a problem with my back once that wouldn't allow me to kick so during that time I had to use just my hand techniques but did still try to throw in the odd kick

[baronbvp]

We had a sensei who'd grown pretty heavy as he got older. He must have been in his mid-fifties. As a result of his weight, he was no longer very agile and fought from basically one general area on the floor and made the opponents come to him. But, man, could that guy punch from a solid base. He had modified his technique to being "fat man who hits hard." He was demoing a technique on me once and didn't mean to really hit me, but the force he just naturally applied when he punched my chest was surprising. I continued with the drill, but in my head the whole time I was thinking, "Damn! I'll feel that one inside for awhile."

[bushido_man96]

I think that technique modification is one of the important things that martial artists must do as they get older. I am in TKD, but I can't do all of the fancy arial kicks, and as I get older, the window of opportunity to learn them closes faster and faster.

The important thing is to be able to do what you can proficiently, and keep it close to you all of the time.

[AikiGuy]

I have this same problem with the side kicks. Since my leg injury, my lateral flexibility is almost nothing. I do Karate but I learned a cool adjustment from some TKD guys I know. First, turn your base foot so it is pointing away from your target. This puts the tension of stretching on a different area of the leg/hip which may be more flexible. Second, lean your body back away from your target instead of keeping your torso upright. Practice this while holding a chair in front of you to see what I mean. Without leaning, raise you leg as far as it will go and hold it. Then lean your body down and back away from your extended foot and watch your foot rise. I get about an extra 20 degrees from this if I do both tricks together. Just don't raise up onto the ball of the foot if you are doing a hard kick. It may make your kick just a bit higher but it also is less stable since only half your foot is gripping the floor. Very easy to slip or be knocked off balance by just a little force from the opponent. Trust me, I know from experience. Good luck.

[baronbvp]

First, turn your base foot so it is pointing away from your target. This puts the tension of stretching on a different area of the leg/hip which may be more flexible. Second, lean your body back away from your target instead of keeping your torso upright. Practice this while holding a chair in front of you to see what I mean. Without leaning, raise you leg as far as it will go and hold it. Then lean your body down and back away from your extended foot and watch your foot rise.

Thanks, I'll try that when my KB class starts next week. When I turn my foot 180 degrees away from my opponent, it almost turns into a back kick or close to one. I'll work on that with the chair as you suggest.

I also have to be warmed up to move like that. The likelihood that I would ever use a side kick in a real fight is low since I likely wouldn't be warmed up and wouldn't be able to move like that, at least not more than once.

What Bushido Man said is true for me. I know what my body can do, so I focus on trying to do well with it as it is now. Once I get going and get my joints lubed up, I can move okay. But it ain't like it used to be...

No old man emoticon?

[Havoc88]

First, turn your base foot so it is pointing away from your target. This puts the tension of stretching on a different area of the leg/hip which may be more flexible. Second, lean your body back away from your target instead of keeping your torso upright.

I do shotokan karate, and that I exactly how we are taught. Your heel must point to the opponent and your body can lean away from the target. Not turning your heel messes up the knee since you have to turn the hips to throw the technique. Anyway, I would advice not to use a chair, unless you are using it to gain strength. Balance is a real issue with this technique in my opinion, and by using a chair a lot you wont learn this.

OT: Well, being not that flexible, I tend to not kick as high as I would like. Other than that, I haven't yet found much.

Tom

[baronbvp]

I have always found it very difficult to point my heel toward/toes away from the target; I still do, even using a chair. To do so puts a lot of torsional side pressure on that back knee. In order to keep from feeling that awkward pressure, I have to rotate my hips away from the target. As a result, I end up almost back kicking instead of side kicking. I can back kick okay, but a side kick with my toe in any rearward position is awkward. I can't side kick any higher than a doorknob on a door no matter how I do it. If I lean back with my toe pointed aft, there is even more pressure on my knee. I am more stable if I just turn all the way around and do a back kick.

I am working on my hip flexibility in MT class, but I think front snap and push kicks and crossing and spinning back kicks may be about as much as I can do, along with a low to medium height roundhouse.