The aftermath of the Sillim-dong stabbing rampage remains eerie. Some people turned themselves in to the police after making ‘murderous predictions,’ while others ended up harming their acquaintances with weapons out of emotion or money. In just a week or two, Korea has gone from a country where you can safely walk down the street late at night to a country where you can’t help but think, “What if this person is walking next to me?”.

I write about and teach self-defense, but I am saddened by the fact that my hope for a world where my students never have to use the skills I teach has been dashed.

The exercises I presented in my last column are the most basic exercises for learning self-defense.

Let’s review. Touch your opponent’s outstretched hand or arm with your hand as quickly as possible. Your hand should not dip backwards or sideways, but should extend directly from its original position towards the target. Also, don’t hit the opponent’s hand or arm to knock it away.

In the following exercises, your opponent’s hand or arm will be touching yours. First exercise. The opponent pushes my hand away with their arm or hand, and I ‘keep my arm from bending’, maintaining the same distance between their hand and my body as in the first exercise. Initially, it’s okay to be pushed back.

However, the opponent’s hand should never be close to my body. If your opponent’s hand is close to your body, it means that his weapon is breaking through your defenses and getting closer to your body. Once you get the hang of it, you can widen your stride and shift your center of gravity to avoid being pushed back.

Second exercise. This is a continuation of the previous exercise. The opponent continues to exert force to push me away. You use the palm or forearm of the hand you’re holding to push their hand or arm aside. I do this in a way that allows my body to move around the outside of their outstretched hand, whether it’s their left or right hand. If you do this correctly, your opponent’s center of gravity will swing wildly because the force of their push has lost its target.

Now let’s move on to the next step.

Third exercise. Now we’re going to put all the previous exercises together into a flow. When your opponent reaches out, quickly touch their hand or arm. As soon as my hand touches his, he uses his strength to push my hand away. I try to keep my arm from bending and then quickly move their hand aside.

You can take this drill to the next level by counting “one, two” as you start to hold on and then moving it aside on “three”. This drill will also be useful if your opponent tries to use violence with their bare fists rather than a weapon, so keep practicing until you’re completely comfortable with it.

Of course, this is not a defense against all attacks. It’s 바카라 just an option to use if your opponent is trying to attack you and you’re blocking, and they keep trying to push in with force. It can be dangerous for the opponent I mentioned in the last column, who uses the elasticity of your defending arm or hand to keep stabbing at you quickly.

However, it is difficult to explain this method accurately in writing. Even in the 21st century, there is still no way to fully convey the sensation of how your opponent is exerting force, what angle to strike at for optimal effectiveness, and how much contact you need to have with your body to execute a technique correctly. When I teach self-defense in person, I use a lot of examples, break down the movements and sensations that apply to each example, and make sure to practice a lot.

Again, the best option is to find a martial arts school near your home or workplace and learn systematically. Hopefully, this article will help you make the commitment.