Working without contact

This area of work has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. There is nothing supernatural about it and everyone can develop this with the correct training drills.

Before looking at this kind of work take time over developing your physical skills. Practice moving so that your movements and / or position protects you. A good exercise for this is to have your partner punching and kicking slowly, but fluidly. Keep moving around them escaping the attacks. Move to where you feel safe. If you do not do this you will contort your form in an effort to escape and your body will become tense and locked in position.

When you have developed this you need to gain an understanding of Density. This is more than physical tension or resistance. It is also where the attention of the mind is in the body.

There are numerous drills for developing this work. Placing a hand on your partners body and feeling where the density is the first step. Don’t push directly against it because you will end up struggling against each other. The density will have a direction which you can feel.

With practice you can apply pressure to the density, but from a different direction. This will move your partner. Don’t be greedy and want to push them straight into the floor. As your partner’s form changes so will the location and the direction of the density in the body. Knowing this allows you to push on other points of density continuing to push your partner to where you want him to go.

This kind of work can be done with either one or two hands and as you can see it is physical work.

The next thing you can do is learn how your movements effect the density in your partners bodies. When you hit or move in a manner that is likely to damage or hurt your opponent they will react and create density in their bodies. Depending on the psychology and physiology of the person they will react at differently. Of course if they don’t react you can simply hit them. Do this a few times and they will soon start to move.