Dojo Rat has an interesting post on not-touch knockouts and hypnotism. Reading it made me think of my experiences with that kind of stuff — especially a technqiue called the ghost punch.My choy lai fut teacher was capable of some amazing things, but one that I remember the most was the ghost punch. One day he told me he was going to show me something special. He said that he would hit me in the ribs with his fist and all I had to do was block it. “Ready,” he said. “Ready!” and then wham! I didn’t see his hand move.
I was pretty confused and he started smiling. He asked if I saw it but I clearly didn’t. He held out his fist so I could see it and asked if I was ready again. I said yes and then I got hit again.
After sparring with him every day for years I was pretty confident in my ability to block because he had thrown thousands of techniques at me by that point. Not that I could or did block all of them of course, but I had gotten a lot better over time. With him, building a good defense was a must. So the fact that I didn’t even see this technique shook me up for a while.
I never figured out how he did it and he never revealed the secret. Hmmm….
4 responses so far ↓
1 Joseph T. Oliva Arriola // Mar 29, 2008 at 12:27 am
Nonetheless, you were given a gift. A result…that can be discovered through reverse engineering. Most people never get to “feel it”…as such will never be able to uncover it, much less go beyond it.
2 Boyd R. Jones // Apr 1, 2008 at 9:13 am
Perhaps you should have retained physical contact (as in Push Hands or Chi Sao) to better understand his technique.
3 Eric C // Apr 8, 2008 at 12:04 am
It may be as simple as ‘the hand is faster than the eye’. However, if my teacher were to show me that, I would definitely feel emboldened to pester him about what he was showing me. Otherwise, it is just a magic trick.
4 SteveG // Apr 8, 2008 at 1:05 pm
My teacher demonstrated the same thing, it was freakin’ uncanny, never understood it. What I took away is that there is a way in total relaxation using sudden ennervation in which it is possible to send a punch out and back literally faster than the eye can see- truly amazing and perplexing really….
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