Russian Martial Arts Northwest
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