Once more with the Forward

Drilling the notion of forwardness into any martial artist is troublesome. Who wants to be closer to the oncoming punch? Who wants to put forth all that effort of leaning when they could just stand upright?

So we have to supply the reason. What’s so great about forward?

To answer that question, let’s get (very briefly) philosophical. To solve a problem, it must first be engaged. In our system, the first way we teach the ability to confront a puzzle is through forward attitude. There are limitless other attitudes to put on when problem solving but in a martial context, we’ve discovered/decided that meeting things head on is a very functional way of helping students to confront conflict.

To sum up, we taught the same class to the Winterhaven kids on Monday that we taught to the Lewis kids on Thursday. The difference, as is almost always the case, was the second class was much smoother than the first.