Rob Childs Rapier Vid 61 - How to Achieve Quick Footwork
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ย. 2024
- / castleandsword
www.freelancea...
Quick footwork is absolutely essential to the success of any swordsman. While there are certainly many different ways espoused by the various styles available to us, in this video I dive into the precise way I ensure I am not only always moving at my quickest but able to do so in an instant.
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Alot of the higher standing styles focus on closing with fast walking or passing style steps while remaining covered in order to get into critical range and strike with just a arm extension thrust. Alot of them prefur not to lunge. Def good to have all the tools in the box. Fighting low, fighting high, or even fighting naked like in the pictures lol
I was really happy you mentioned the gravitiy lunge, because it's a thing I've never heard anyone else talk about but I had formulated in my head because I noticed that when I'm tired I stand up straight and then I just fall into the lunge. Usually I fence from a relatively low center of gravity position but I think I might have a slightly longer gravity lunge, which if true might be an interesting observation
Nice one, Rob!! Shared it with my students this morning. One of those students filled in the missing numbers, and I thought I'd share them here for you in return.
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"Also to add the hard numbers he left out
High center of gravity using gravity lunges - your acceleration will top at 9.8 m/s^2
Low center of gravity movement- average acceleration of human 10.92 m/s^2, but has repeatedly been shown to be much higher in shorter bursts(most human acceleration research has focused on sprinters in long amounts of time not humans) - one fight science researchers showed a punch thrown by a pro box was around 30 m/s^2"
Ah, thanks much. I deliberately kept the actual numbers of human acceleration out of the video just because it varies from one person to the next and I didn't want to draw conclusions for all. While pretty much all are faster than gravity's acceleration, it depends on the individual just how much so.
Thanks Rob, very helpful and enlightening! I can always use more speed.
Can't we all though? :)
Bruce Lee studied fencing, which is why I clicked. I study jkd & mma. Just found your channel. Thank you for your contributions.
Quite welcome.
Very nice to see actually discussion from a place of deep knowledge.
I'm a high center of gravity fighter(bel/foam leagues). High center of gravity can use human acceleration, just looks different. You can only torque, as there's nothing to push against.
For instance, my bread and butter is a rotation of my center of mass (stomach back, chest forward), executed in response to an attack. (Distance is critical, I am usually controlling and baiting the attack.) Time of the belly beats time of the hand, but only if you do it right.
So yeah, yes and! Very nice to see the low fight moves laid out so well. You truly are an expert!
This is exactly the point i was about to make.
There are basically 3 power generations "up/down and rotation" or push/pull/torque. One can make it easier to understand with hand. Push is expanding the hand from your body against resistance, pull is contracting your hand against resistance and rotation is neither push or pull, just rotating the hand against resistance. (well there is also anti-rotation.... but let us leave it be for now)
Relocating the body in space and therefore footwork is combination of these three. You push the ground, to "lift of" (accelerate) or move to the direction, pull to stabilize impact (de-accelerate) and ready yourself for next move, and rotate to both swing between the two (think knee for example) and also to change body orientation to your enemy. This external/internal rotation in hips and core changes not only power delivered to the hands and upper torso (as well as faster swing phase of legs). But also change distance and reach of both fencers.
Lower stance fighters can use less of this hip torque and therefore often keep more the same profile, while higher stance fencers can utilize more of this torque and changes of profile and less push. They all use everything it just differs in potential. While technically you can be low knee bend, fencing position of the feet (L shape or around this position- this is another topic about feet position dynamics), full squared fencer and have amazing straigh line power and speed, you will exchange it for less offline mobility because you are close to full hip rotation in that position to one place and it will take too long with a lot of mass to rotate or move in that direction further. So you do not have potential to use the torque to that side. It is same as the "lowering" in vid... they need to pre-rotate to use it and that can be abused with proper technique and positioning.
@@WilliamKeloren Maybe edit a bit? I like what you are saying, but you are a bit hard to understand.
better?@@gpeschke
@@WilliamKeloren Thanks for the edit! Yeah, my understanding of the subject is a combination of physics classes and my practical fighting experience.
Physics classes are all about the two types of motion (translations, and torques), how there's always an equal and opposite reaction. Force at a given angle- all that trig stuff. Oh, and conservation of energy.
Every fighting technique traces itself back to stuff you can learn in those classes. Which is great- but fighting requires manipulation of them with a lot of intricacy and nuance that you don't get in said classes.
For instance, as you spotted with square vs linear stances differing in raw speed vs ability to move offline is a direct consequence of the trig stuff. There's lots of stuff like that, that I would love to see a truly high level fighter go over.
I rarely find it. Most with the knowledge have it intuitively rather than rationally. And those that do have it rationally(like yourself) are rarely able to relate it back to newton. If you want to improve your fight theory crafting, I highly recommend you study up on that stuff. Will allow you to work from the right primatives.
OP's video and your reply are kinda the best I find- workable but half formed. But listening to your explanations are so worth it. There's knowledge that you aren't going to get from a stareing match with an equation. I'm not a bad fighter- I don't actually need to improve all that much. But finding others like yourself who have noticed some of the same intricacies that I have brings me joy.
My understanding of the original video was that it was about conservation of energy, demonstrating storing in a low stance using muscle tension. That low stances can deal with the equal and opposite problem by pushing off the ground, and that storing energy using height and recovering it using gravity is slow, relative to that. Which is all awesome, true and such distinctions need to be taught.
Being a high stance fighter, the nuances of his stance as he demonstrated were extremely interesting. The moves he did in passing to demonstrate the concept have a lot correctly packed into them, that I very much want to decode, should I ever try low stance fighting.
My response was that High stances rely on torques for quick movement. Because they aren't net translations, they don't need to push off anything or wait for gravity- they also can be muscle powered. Your center of mass doesn't change, but the location of your shoulder joint (which determines your static range) and target areas do.
@@gpeschke Thank you for these kind words... but also well... now you have me triggered (well triggered in playfull way). :-D Tbh i evaded some words on purpose. I tend to think that explaining things needs to be as simple as possible. I kept sort of similar vocabulary to vid. So that everyone can understand. :-D But i can relate it a lot to physics, biomechanics and biochemistry (that i have a degree in) if you want. 😀 But as was pointed out already, the vocabulary in the video is not right. But the vid describes true phenomenon, so it was not important, in my opinion, to point it out.
There is amazing amount of sources today, sport science can answer a lot of these questions. Specifically from fields of olympic fencing together with boxing and mma, can probably give you all the insight you need. :-) Search it up.
But i will try to explain why i evaded Energy as a word now. What i mean in my post as "potential" is not energy, but WORK. There is different amount of potential to do work. Work to produce force. And therefore achieve acceleration. But are you conserving energy? What energy? What do you use for the muscles to work? Chemical energy. Are you really conserving energy or using it more efficiently? No. The force you produce (per energy unit) is still the same. Is the acceleration of the muscles in e.g. lunge constant? No. Why? Well there are levers. You can produce more power output if you have the resistance close to your body (e.g. lifting) than if you have it stretched out. How come? Well the force output from muscle is the same, but the lever is different. So how does that affect acceleration? Well it changes gradually. Think about this. It is really important, but to long to go about in comments.
Now for the muscle tension.... you can be happy i connected it to Einstein theory of gravity few posts lower. :-D Under guy called Nirrael. The tension is not storing energy, it is resistance to falling caused by longer lever. (that is why it is more tiring standing in horse stance than normally) But you gain potential to work.
Do not forget this talk is about movement from stable position. If we would include plyometric and using elasticity of tissue, we will enter the part where the "pulling" part stabilizing the fall gets more and more importance. Remember, you are not skipping rope in low stance. :-) Have great day. And thank you again. I really appreciate the praise.
Robs snap is always on point
Exactly what original JKD theory teaches.
And, there are diminishing returns the lower you go, there’s a sweet spot for each persons kinesiology.
It take subtle experimentation to refine this.
Also, it looks like you have been seriously working your core, your body is one.
Core is definitely one of those areas that affects what we do no matter the art.
Good video, though the physics isn't quite correct to say it mildly (especially referring to potential energy).
Yeah, one should really study sports science and kinesiology before discussing energy of the human body/movement!
This is interesting. I am not a fencer, I am more into kickboxing and I always believed that gravity is faster than muscles. If you want to duck under the punch just relax your leg muscles for a split second and let gravity move your body.
It depends on how you look at it. For example. Is a race car faster than a motorcycle? Well, yes and no. If you line up a racing bike and racing car and wave a checkered flag the bike will take off much more quickly and be in front, until the superior size of the car's engine takes over and the car takes the lead after a certain distance. The same thing applies to footwork. Gravity will obviously get you to a top speed that's much higher than that of your legs alone, but it takes some amount of falling to speed you up. Your legs will give you more explosive energy from a stationary position than gravity will. Thus, a lower stance, where you can push your foot into the ground and create that explosive movement will give you a much faster movement over a short distance. In the example you gave of a slip or duck, gravity is still the fastest method. The reason being that you have nothing above you that you can push against, to increase your speed in falling.
@@resolvedinsteel Well that is true. But in kickboxing there is reason of teaching it that way. One is that people think that tension in legs and using leg muscles increase this speed, so they tend to "move somewhere and down". Which is not true. The tension you feel when doing slow squat is actually your muscles resisting the fall / gravity (as they always do when you are standing up) so if you feel tension it means you are slowing down you fall. So you need to learn how to relax them so you dip down as fast as possible (if your only goal is to go down). The other one is that people tend to bend at waist or move their head.... which is actually valid technique to increase the speed. As anything that is above your center of gravity you can colapse with mucles and anything that is under you need to relax, that way you achieve max speed of evasion. (boxers do that) But in kickboxing it is well.... bad, because you will expose yourself to kicks and knees. So they usually sum both up like that for ease of teaching.
(oh and btw. in hypotetical one second the gravity will achieve higher velocity that human muscles, the free fall will sort of (depending on weight and postition) get you around 10 m/s while that is about max speed of decent sprinters which they achieve at around 40m)
The lowered stance is something common in epée I'm surprised we don't see more of in rapier
What is your height and arm span Robert?
I am 6'2" but my arm span is 6'5".