The Way of Least Resistance

It was early morning, mid-April 1971 and I was in the back seat of my parent's brand-new, shiny-white Holden Kingswood, trying to listen to Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" which was blasting valiantly from the tinny AM radio but losing to the road noise coming in through the open windows. We were driving the 15 km or so down the dusty Riverina Highway from our "home town" of Finley to the "big smoke" of Berrigan.  My mother was an aspiring portrait and landscape artist, but living in the country gave her few opportunities to display her work.  The annual Berrigan Art Fair was one of these. As I recall, back then the fair was held at a local church.  And, it being a Sunday in deeply conservative rural New South Wales, my atheist parents were naturally obliged to attend the service. I remember quite clearly arriving at the imposing building, nestled in amongst tall trees, a paddock to one side.  As we walked in through the pipe-iron an...

Introduction In my article " Gorillas in the midst: the question of wrist grabs " I wrote about the common misconceptions about wrist grabs: their occurrence in attacks, their function in "setting up" techniques and their use in martial training pedagogies. But recently a correspondent's query made me realise that I haven't yet addressed the question of how to deal with wrist grabs . In this regard, Nathaniel wrote: "As a small man (140lb), I've found that people frequently grab my guard. They use these grabs to easily break my structure and make me feel quite foolish. I've been having a lot of trouble countering these grabs, especially double wrist grabs. I don't suppose you'd know anything I can do to improve this without anyone physically there to provide resistance, do you?" The occurrence of wrist grabs Nathaniel's comments provide an example of what I believe is the most common use of wrist grabs. Yes, you don't see ...