WATCH THIS VIDEO CAREFULLY: Repeated viewings of GM Perkins’ movement while flowing with students yields tremendous insights into how to react properly; words cannot fully convey this but you will begin to feel in your own body what is effective GC movement.
• The game is being Unavailable and Unavoidable.
• By being both whisper light and stepping to a place where the opponent has no balance, you can easily send them. This is how you train moving very slowly in Contact Flow with no sudden speed ups. At high speed, these instead are translated into strikes.
• You can only be on balance in one spot at a time. The opponent will shift their balance while YOU shift to where they have no balance.
• HOWEVER, you are not unbalancing the opponent so you can throw them. You are unbalancing them so you can HIT them. The hit will come off of their resistance as either a Springboard, a Skim (where YOU release), a Slide (where you let THEM release), a fold (like to an elbow strike) a Corkscrew strike (where you spiral around a defending arm, etc.), a Pivot strike (e.g. a hammer-fist off an elbow reference point) …or a million other options based on your ability to improvise freely. Note that all of the above can be done WITH JUST THE UNBALANCING ARM. Add in striking with the arm NOT doing the unbalancing and you more than quadruple your options.
• The flipside of the above is to be loose, sensitive, and efficient enough to avoid resisting and, in turn, absorb/move to a place where they have no balance and hit.
• Note that when we say “move” we generally mean to move IN, not away.
• Don’t step backwards, stay soft and get around the opponent.
• If they don’t stay soft, the instant they stack up and resist, you have them.
• Dropping can both take you out of the way AND allow you to get in again to hit.
• Avoid the tendency to grip or grab their arms: it freezes you and greatly increases your vulnerability.
• Instead of throwing the enemy, you stay light but take their balance and slam them at the same time. This “strike-centric” approach is vital -- as opposed to ruining your nervous system with a focus on throwing.
• One way to move in is to follow the retraction of their arms.
• Once you are in, you don’t try to hold your position with pressure. You slide, fold, skim, step, corkscrew, etc. as they try to get purchase on you.
• Once you are in, the ability to use one arm as an antenna sensing BOTH of their arms leaves your other arm free to cause more damage.
• By training shoulder isolation, you can extend the length of your strikes, as opposed to hitting with a rigid torso, as you’ll find in most other systems.
