The Basics (Patreon)

• LMA Table of Contents

The Basics mean four specific things in Liberation Martial Arts.

Don't break gaze: Keep your eyes on your opponent's chest to see their punches and kicks, and keep your chin down. When you look at their face, it lifts your chin.

Don't break stance: Hold L or J-stance even while moving or switching stances. If you break stance, it should only be as a momentary transition. Being out of stance means you can't defend, attack, or balance.

Don't break Position Zero: Keep your rear hand in front of your chin and your lead hand below your eye line. There is leeway with the lead hand, which makes the rear hand position even more critical. If you transition to blocks or high guard, commit to it, but don't drop your rear hand. Consistently maintain some form of defensive guard.

Don't break your brain: As far as movements, whether offensive, defensive, or footwork-related, keep it simple. Don't break your game with too many techniques and movements. Have a few techniques for a million situations (e.g., teep, turning kicks, jab, and cross).

Scaffolding Movements Into Your Game

80% of good sparring is The Basics. Adding more untrained movements to your game doesn't bring that 80% to 100%; it'll drop it down to 40%. It's like managing a software project and adding more coders who don't know how to code. It doesn't help the project or make it better; it'll delay and worsen it. In fact, too much code is called "code debt," and each unnecessary line becomes a liability.

Your ability to integrate new movements without compromising The Basics will take a long time to develop. Rather than patchwork, you want new movements to enhance your overall design. For a very long while (or permanently), all you'll need is The Basics because unless you are sparring pros, other practitioners will constantly afford you opportunities. The game is about whoever leaves fewer openings, and adding too much too soon will compromise that.

If something is going wrong, the problem probably isn't the lack of a new move but The Basics. Only when opponents (high-level amateurs or pros) have you exhausting The Basics to find an opening do you need anything more than that.

A project improves when someone familiar with the project is added at the right time to reduce inefficiencies. The same goes for new movements. They need to be trained and integrated slowly while making your overall game less taxing. But more often than that, once you become competent at sparring, what you need isn't new movements but new concepts and perspectives.

For example, a practitioner needed help landing their side kick and back kick, but the mechanics weren't the problem. Since they enjoyed throwing those techniques, I didn't want them to abandon them. So, I needed a way for them to integrate them.

I told them not to think of the front kick (teep), side kick, and back kick as three different kicks but as the same kick adapted differently based on the opponent's location. A technique is a reaction to where the opponent is or will be. If the opponent is in front, front kick. If they are to the side, side kick. If they are in the back, back kick. The names describe where the opponent is relative to the kicker rather than how they are delivered.

Since you and your opponent are always moving in a circle, and every punch, kick, or evasion has you rotating, you and your opponent will get to odd angles. That's the opportunity for the back/side kick. The opportunities will come to you; you don't need to chase them.

I'm not giving the practitioner a new movement but a different way of viewing pre-existing movements. With this change in perspective, the practitioner began to land the back/side kick immediately.

With practitioners who have a hard time landing strikes, I tell them to use their punches to land kicks and to use their kicks to land punches. I'm not teaching them how to kick or punch, they already know that. What I'm giving them is a simple set-up. When you punch, the opponent's eyes move up, along with their defense. They can't see the kicks. When you kick, the opponent's eyes move down along with their defenses. They can't see the punches.

Furthermore, when you block punches, you shift your weight forward, making it hard to check a low kick. When you block kicks, you lean back on one foot, which makes it hard to defend punches or sweeps. Set-ups are ways to shift your opponent's gaze, defenses, and weight (stance). You're effectively making your opponent break The Basics. Once they can implement this concept, they can move on to ending combinations with a low kick or a jab. Advanced often means the ability to do The Basics seamlessly and without hesitation.

Getting from 80% to 100% often isn't new movements but new concepts to bind the movements you already have together.

– Sam