Magic Comparison

We’re getting close to wrapping up the June challenge of talking about the fighting principles in non martial ways.  Here’s my attempt to relate the fighting principle of Independent motion to doing a card trick.

…

The bigger a motion is, the easier it is to spot. The easier a motion is to spot, the simpler it is to thwart.

Consider the sleight of hand tricks employed by a magician performing a simple card trick. If the magician hides a card in their sleeve, they don’t want the audience to see them do it. Too accomplish this, they might use as small a motion as possible to hide the card – something involving just the fingers of one hand, perhaps. If they were to use a big motion, where they bent at the elbow or even the shoulder, it would be too obvious.

This is not to say a small motion is the only way to hide a card. The magician could also create a distraction while hiding the card, such as a bright flash of light, a clever joke or a loud noise. However, it is the notion of a smaller motion being harder to detect than a bigger motion that we want to examine when we are talking about the fighting principle of Independant motion.

A martial parallel to the card trick is to punch by first moving your fist (or whatever weapon you are striking with). Consider the most basic of boxing jabs – the fist launches out and back with no body movement. It’s fast but weak and only covers the distance of the fighter’s arm. If ex add a step to this jab, but still move the fist first, then we can keep some of the speed and deception (starts with a small motion, not a big one) and also add some distance (step forward) and power.

To summarize: Independant motion is a way of masking an action by keeping the initial action small.