Pre-Fight Posture

[bushido_man96]

Good info, gzk.

I like the drills that you mention. This stuff can rather easily be incorporated into traditional MA classes, and should be, on a regular basis.

[Ottman]

Great posts here.

Whenever I sense a threatening situation, my first reaction is to drop my center of gravity so that it is all the way down in the center of the earth somewhere. My hands don't necessarily come up, but they do gravitate away from my body and rise as my opponent gets closer to me. This movement is done very slowly, but kind of matches how fast or slow the threat is moving towards me.

I'm a huge advocate of training to develop proper range awareness, both of your own range and your opponent's range. I'm a little shorter than average, so I tend to like to crowd my opponents and use my strength and balance to dampen their attacks and capture their momentum. It's been my experience that if you develop perfect timing, and great awareness of range as described above, it becomes easier to neutralize an attack, without having to counter with a strike or even a take down, even if you aren't expecting an attack.

Most people will expect you to back up and get out of the way if they are threatening you, so they tend to time their attacks and distance with this in mind. If you instead remain in place, or better yet move forward, deep inside the range of an attack. You can throw off an attacker's timing and sense of his range and take advantage of the lack of balance relative to your position that this creates.

Believe it or not sometimes standing still is the best defense. At least when no is expecting you to stand still.

Also, your stance is sort of dictated by your own balance here so there's no need to think about whether you should have a passive stance, etc. If you become aware of your balance and distancing as second nature, you'll be much more prepared to deal with a sudden escalation in a situation, and won't have to be worried about your stance at all. It all happen instinctively.

Just my 2 cents.

[baronbvp]

That advice is worth more than two cents. Excellent post, Ottman.