Lesson 45 Student level 3, 7 entries, application theory

In the school in which I train, the previous video demonstrates how the level 3 is usually taught initially. The idea is that this exposes the students to the typical attacks used by a lot of different arts, such as jeet kune do, karate, and so on. It is easier to learn these arm movements that bypass your opponents arms, by practising staying around your critical distance, ie that range where you can just reach your opponent with your arms extended.
But we feel this leaves the student too exposed to a multitude of counter attacks and defensive movements. So the next step is to have the student start closing the gap just after they enter to strike. The hands go first by a small bit, but the body follows. This takes a lot of trust in your abilities at first, but you begin to feel very commfortable getting in really close. Opponents usually feel relatively uncomfortable with this, and often overreact. This allows us to read the pressures etc, and use it to our advantage.
Of course we need to be mobile enough to adjust as necessary, and to yield to greater force if it is there. Sometimes part of your body will be actually moving away or around your opponents strengths, but in general, most of your body should be attacking. You will start to find a lot of openings, if you wrist, elbow, shoulder etc work both independently and yet inter dependant upon each other. There will be times where things feel strange at first, as for example your elbow might be yielding slightly, while your fist and shoulder continue advancing. If you do this type of training religiously, your training partner begins to feel as if he is beig overwhelmed by numbers of attackers, almost like you have multiple arms. In this case the idea is more like stopping a few links of a chain, but it still rotates, revolves, slips, crashes, bumps etc and ends up striking you.

The main point of all this at this level is that you should constantly be trying to enter and take control of your opponents area. In WT we aim to move right in close, using the 'magnetic zone' theory where we try to move in so much that our torso displaces our opponent from where he is standing.