Last night in chin na I got cranked on pretty good. In fact, here are the three positons I now find myself in a lot:
- On my toes tapping
- Crouching and tapping
- On my knees with my face in the ground…tapping
These chin na posts in general are challenging because it’s really hard to describe these techniques. So I may end up talking about what I learned at the macro level.
Out of the newbies I’m pretty certain I have the most martial arts experience. I think this may be why I was the practice dummy for much of our new techniques last night. We got to work with the other main instructor and I have to say he’s hard core and the real deal.
He explained again that chin na means to “seize and control”. The nice thing is control does not necessarily mean causing pain or hurting someone. In fact, while demonstrating “hand wrap 2″ he showed that he had my shoulder dropping and was in control without causing me much pain. The scary part is that I was in a position where if I tried to escape, kick, grab, punch, etc., all he had to do was sink back with his body weight and basically break stuff on my right arm!
He also showed that most of these techniques are taught in large circular patterns. However, once you have the pattern down you need to make the circle small so the technique is executed with great speed. This guy is literally at the point where he can execute chin na before I can let go of that which I’m grabbing.
Last night I learned the second “hand wrap” and something called “turning around heaven and earth”. This second one has nothing to do with heaven! I’ve also seen varriations of it in other martial arts. Regardless, I really liked this one and hope to get it up to speed. From same-side wrist grab you use the chin na claw to take hold of their grabbing hand. Then you rotate the hand that’s grabbed while you sink your elbow to break the grip. From here you already have half the grab so you press with your now free forearm to get their arm in an ackward 45 degree angle. Then you slide down and with your free hand grab the thumb side of their hand (you already have seized the pinky side). Finally, you sink down and start cranking. In almost all of these including “heaven and earth” you step off to one side while executing the technique. This to get out of the way of a punch or kick from their free side.
Anyhow, this goose neck crank can be nasty. We were just shown it at the basic level. However, the instructor showed two advanced varriations of it on me. I can’t even explain what he did because it happened so fast but he did have my entire right arm all tangled up. Worse still were he to have sunk back with weight I would not be typing this because my arm would have been broke at the wrist and elbow.
Oh and yes, it was very painful!
So much so that my right hand is now back to jacked up and I had to pop tylenol when I got home.
I’m starting to see that this chin na is deceptive. You see it done to someone else and say: That works? Yet when it’s done to you there’s no way in hell you are getting out unless you want to have a nickname that starts with “one arm”!
The only other news I have is that I’m really considering Mantis come fall. By August taekwondo will be done and I’ll be through with the testing and tournament game. So, I’m in no real hurry after that. I figure I have at least another good 10 years in me and maybe 20 if I take care of myself.
Anyhow, I found a video that shows the first hand wrap I was taught. We reviewed it last night and if you go about 1:04 in you can see an example that’s pretty close to what I’m trying to learn. It doesn’t look like much but I can promise you it hurts like hell.
~BCP
