Jamming & the Stop-Hit

[Black Jack]

I am just curious to know who here uses the stop-hit or other jamming principles in there training/style to stop the forward movement of an attacker.

By this I mean when two combatants are within equal space you may need to do something to halt his forward movement and or action so you do not end up just trading blow for blow.

I consider this different than a pre-emptive strike as its a beat behind that action-kinda like a hybrid counter/defensive strike- with the intention of jamming his offensive action from getting to you as you send off your attack, the purpose being that if you didn't you might both be eating knuckle burgers at the same time.

I am not really thinking about a destruction or gunting, though I guess it could be, but more of controlling a persons forward drive and breaking there structure by stopping them in there tracks, maybe giving you the needed edge for your own blow to land first.

Hope this makes sense. So how about it? What value does it hold to you and what kind of drills do you work it with?

Cheers,

[HuangKaiVun]

When a guy rushes me and I feel I can bang against him, I'll often simply body check him with shoulders and arms.

That body check doesn't usually do damage or even stop him, but it does serve notice that I'm PHYSICALLY THERE and thus will not be physically pushed around easily.

With guys that kick a lot, I'll utilize the 7-star step on their thighs. I'll point my toe up at the sky and block their thighs with the soles of my feet. My mobility is compromised, but the opponent then can't kick me down the centerline.

As far as arms go, I'm used to guys flailing at me. Instead of blocking each individual strike, I'll go in for a clinch and try to get my hands on their arms. This use of "sticky hands" doesn't prevent me from getting hit (one gets hit in a fight), but at least it helps me "read" my opponent's flailing and does a lot to neutralize their arm attacks. Meanwhile, I'll be twisting and turning to get into better position.

Against a guy that just stands there, I'll just ATTACK all out. I'm small and quick enough that I can find most openings on larger guys, though it's vastly more difficult on guys my same size. He might stop my first option with some of the techiques above, but he won't stop me on the 2nd once I absorb his first response. If he's playing defense, he won't able to attack me properly.

This is a bit too wordy, I know. Just know that in a fight, I just GO.

[dnc101]

Jamming is used by every style I've come in contact with, which is mostly external. The stop hit is not as widely used or understood, at least in my experience. It is a basic principle in American Kenpo. If a guy attacks you with forward momentum and you choose to take him head on, you'd better stop that momentum- and you might as well hurt him at the same time. I'm not talking about the type of situation where you redirect him or borrow his force and pull or lead him into a strike. This is where he's there and about to go right through you. A Forward Bow- rear leg straight providing a good mechanicaly grounded structure- and a vertical punch with the trailing arm will stop him. If you strike to the abdomen you need to check his head so you don't eat an unintentional head butt. I like to check with my fingers positioned so that as he comes forward he impales his own eyes, but that is a weaker check. There are other ways, of course, to stop his momentum with a strike. The main thing is to have good mechanical structure backing up a strike that will both hurt him and stop the momentum.

[Mr Punch]

In wingchun we have many jamming techniques. In fact, as the range is usually so short, most of the elbow-first techniques (kwan sau, lam sau, even bong sau) are often jamming techniques which can be used to halt an attacker.

In aikido, although the principles are to avoid direct confrontation, in tenchi nage or some straight-through irimi nage (entering the body throws), as soon as an opening occurs, a pre-emptive move is often taken which has the same effect, and then hopefully dumps the attacker on his back! The timing in this move is paramount: the opening is not created by lowering a guard, drawing back a fist or any of these actions, but by preparing to move in (so you need to be very good at reading the opponent's body to manage it).

I only mention the aiki because I think the timing and reading issue is very important to jamming, and it's the same in wingchun, just at a closer range. Otherwise, a bigger opponent on a rush in will often overwhelm you anyway, if you meet force with force.

[yu shan]

To press, lean, crowd, (jam) an oncoming attack is common in Mantis KF. We also initiate our attack with the same (jam) followed quickly with an array of techniques.

[Mr Punch]

Oh, the strike in the wingchun case tries to use the whole body but the main point of contact in a jam is the elbow/forearm usually I would say. In aiki it's the same but using palm/tegatana/forearm.

BJ or anyone, what's 'gunting'?! Can you do it with a woman?:D

[Crimson Phoenix]

A good ol' stop-kick in the knee, savate style...works most of the time on a guy who rushes to you, since he's more concentrate on your upper body than on his own lower body. The kick is fast, easy, doesn't put you in danger at all.
Guys, you really should thank me: I just exposed my secret and beloved tactic

[Former castleva]

"Stop" kick to keep at bay and at distance.
No muscling/force versus force attacks which will get me caught.
If possible,as he is about to attack,move to a zone of safety/blind area and chop.
Fast light,possibly fake attack,then quick turn into a defense stance to gain safety and time.

[Black Jack]

dnc101,

Your description of the stop-hit is really what I am getting at, the main focus on being to stop his forward pressure from overrunning you or where if you don't stop that momentum you will both just be trading blows at near the same time and even if your blow does land first that does not dictate his strike will cease to exist in motion and land its mark.

A simple blow in the form of a pre-emptive strike as stated can also accomplish the same thing, but I am more talking about an interception of the movement as if you were got more off-guard.

A good stop-hit is a shoulder strike where you intercept his movement with a palm heel to the deltoid, it throws them out of wack long enough to break up a rythem, cease that forward direction, and have your shot land home, I don't know if this works with fighters of massive size difference but on the norm it does ok in practice, another good one is the low stop kick from savate or muay thai or JKD's jeet tek.

btw, the gunting is a nerve destruction to a limb, its an FMA trademark though the principle can be found all over the world in one form or another, its a scissor movement where a incoming strike such as a straight punch is "scissored" with a knuckle or knifehand strike to the soft bicep or tricep muscle, the other hand guiding the attackers strike even more into the blow, producing a serious numbness which deadens the effectiveness of the opponents punching and striking capability, followed by flowing up the attacker with strikes, takedowns, what have you.

The point is to take away the snakes fangs so he can not bite you. Anything that produces a impact on a limb in an effect to attack its major nerve pathways or break a joint is really a destruction. One I really like is to just hack at and move up the guys arm with edge of hand blows but don't go looking for the destruction, let it come to you, by focusing on it to much you might miss the chance to hit the attacker, and thats what your aim is in a destruction anyway, to distract, weaken and hit the attacker and vulnerable area.

[Merryprankster]

I like clinch and smother :)

[scotty1]

Merry, get your mind out of the gutter, we're talking about fighting.:D

[shaolinboxer]

There is a technique (actually a method of execution that may be applied to many techniques, ikkyo being the most direct) in aikido called irimi, in which you enter your opponent's space and seize his attack as it manefests (interecepting it). The result is your attacker winds up attacking himself (his own balance) as you guide him in the direction of your forward/circular pressure. The trick is you must see the attack before it is coming and get in there will full intent and extension, otherwise you just get a bloody face.

Here is an example of a demonstration of the irimi principal, particularly the first counter.

http://www.bujindesign.com/videoclips.html

Choose clip #3

[yenhoi]

Mat:

'gunting' is filipino for entering or opening or something along those lines. A 'gunting' is usually your reaction to your opponents attack and refers to how your counter movements will 'flow' it can be very complicated, but for simplicity - against a cross for example you would slip and check ("monitor") your opponents hand ("weapon") and then procede into a variety of different attacks usually on the 'weapon' (or 'weapons') then onto the rest of the body. The important thing is flow.
Next lesson: 'mousing.'

Stop hits and Jamming:

Very useful.

Structure is always important - when moving, being hit, stop hitting, hitting.. etc.

[fa_jing]

Oh yeah, we use these. Every punch you land needs to land with enough force to be a stop hit, BTW, else your opponent will just eat it and hit you back.

Interrupting his flow is a major principle of our art. And the famous saying is appropriate here: "Move second, arrive first." This means a jam, in my opinion.

-FJ

[David Jamieson]

yep, kicks below the knee are good to stop someone coming in. If you are already in a clinch it's different to get reasonable force out of them. Assuming your opponent is not a complete pylon.

a short sharp shock below the knee, your opponents one second of shock and distraction followed by a strike to the jaw.

Using the waist and shoulders works, especially in a tight area like a hallway. In an open area, you don't want to push away though as it can open you up to the parthion shot as your opponent moves back. So it's usually better to put them down and then back off to mid range advantage striking distance on them or if you want to dive on well that's up to you...

I think that toe stop kicks can you give you a moment to attack when someone is coming in. Such as thrusting into the solar plexus with your toes or the ball of your feet, then step down and in off of the kick.

anyway, there's always the good old uppercut :D

peace

[Black Jack]

The one thing I notice and maybe its just my way of splitting things up is that some people put stop-hits into the same category as pre-emptive strikes which they could easily be.

I am thinking more along the lines of "incedential" strikes that are within a stop-hit-check-pin-smoother or jam. Meaning that you are on the defensive because you were surprised by the attack but the suprise was not enough to get the attack in serious motion before you had a chance to spot its action and react.

An example might make my thoughts more clear.

You are at a bar playing pool. You do not know it but you ****ed off a patron who took offense to something he preceives you did or said during the course of the night, his anger just or unjust has been stewing with each flagoon of liquid courage he pours down his throat untell this man, now an angry drunk, has had enough of it and decides to walk over and rearrange your face.

As he pulls up behind you he growls out a few crude remarks. Turning around to see what is going on you find this red faced and very ****ed off man walking in on you fast, a serious right haymaker already rolled back for business, his left hand already grabbing the edges of your jacket.

Because of the mans laspe in attacking with your back turned, due to his brief woofing, and the telegraphed signals such as the pulled back haymaker, you have a brief second to react.

Here is the problem when you both fire off, that is if you decide to fire off a barage of strikes, his action will already be moving as well, he lost the pre-emptive but he is still moving forward and with aggression, you are both locked into the same initative.

Here is where a stop hit IMHO can come into play, you both fire off your strikes, but instead of both of you eating knuckles because you fired at the same time, you do a stop hit to break up his forward pressure, i.e. as he is moving forward he throws the haymaker but your chosen blow is a palm heel/push to his shoulder region thus throwing his commited direction off course which sends the haymaker past its intended mark-you.

After the interception you then climb all over the misdirected/confused bastage with secondary strikes, the kitchen sink and its whole family line of quality toliet products.

Didn't mean to rant so long-hope that made any sense. :D

[HuangKaiVun]

Of course it makes sense.

Lots of kung fu styles have the straight-out intercepting palm. This is a great scenario for that move.

Did this happen to YOU, Black Jack?

[fa_jing]

Our Wu sao (Budhha palm) is quite useful in this capacity. In the central plane it moves, towards the interception point. Targets: Shoulder and bicep against the hook, and cutting along the outside of an arm to absorb force quickly from the blow.

-FJ

[dnc101]

Good illustrative scenario. You can't step back because of the pool table, so you probably steped forward with your left foot (if you practiced Kenpo you'd step into a left neutral bow) and struck his right shoulder with a left heel palm. This disrupts his ballance, accuracy and power- but it will not stop his forward momentum. Therefore this is a jamming strike, not a stop hit.

Since you steped in and he still has forward momentum you are now probably too close for a good stop punch. So immediately and without loss of motion pivot into a left forward bow with a right inward handsword or inverted heel palm strike just under his left/medial rib cage to hurt him and stop his forward momentum. Your right arm should be a structural serries of 45' angles. This is a surprisingly strong/solid structure and is used in most martial arts. Leave your left hand and arm up as a positional check- the lower case checks his weapon ( right arm and fist) and the hand checks his head. Remember that there are two ways an opponent can hurt you: intentionally and unintentionally. If your strike lands even a hair low his head is going to come forward right at your face. An inward heel palm to the right side of his face will redirect his head, and the arm is in position to check this new forward momentum as well. You are now inside an opponents guard, he's hurt (momentary flinch) and he's stoped in his tracks. I leave it to you what to do next..., enjoy the moment, take his beer, move on his girl- the rest of the night is yours! Note that there's a lot of detail here, but this all occurs extremely fast (except the moves on his girl) and as with any martial art is pure reaction. The attack is not stoped when you heel palm his shoulder. It stops when you stop his forward momentum and cause that momentary flinch, not before. Until then you'd best be moving with the speed of Neo. because the attacks I'v seen of this kind tend to pick up spped as they get closer to you. Also, even though you are moving quickly you don't want to cheat your stances or structure. Unless you have the strength of thor that is what you are relying on to stop him. You may deal with the punch, but unless you deal effectively with his momentum you are about to be driven forcefully backwards and bent over a pool table.

Any way, let me know how it turns out with the girl.

[Black Jack]

dnc101,

Thanks for your input on how you feel that this is a jamming tech and not a true stop-hit. Which I can now see more accurately thanks to your post and for the record your description of the left foot forward/left palm heel to the attackers right shoulder was right on the money, that is exactly what I was thinking.

My attack after the jamming strike or the stop hit will not be by-rote sequence but for what its worth on paper I would of used either a edge of hand blow as well, my target to the attackers right jaw mandible/side o' neck or a piston tiger claw/face smash to the attackers face/eyes to break up the foreward movement.

From there who can really tell, but knowing myself I would either keep hitting the attacker with a barage of blows, trying to drive him backwards and out or to clinch/control and work the inside tools, elbows/knees/nutters/takedowns/tricks.

Huang,

No way bro, I am a lover not a fighter :D

[dre]

Stop hits are now, and have always been very essencial to my weapons practice. In Epee and Saber you'll use stop hits to intercept and score on an incoming arm/hand before it ever cuts you. There are many,many stop hit moves.

One that stands out in my mind is the "foream arrest". I've only managed it a few times. It's a very nice one to pull off though.
This is how it works :

Attacker makes stright lunge at shoulder area or lower.

Defender moves arm up and stabs hand/forearm of the attacking weapon before it touches him.

Very difficult to pull off. Very nice to see. One of the few times I have done it in competition, I was in front of an Audience, adn i got a lot of applause :)

[dnc101]

Black Jack;

Reaction is of course key in a timely defense. You are absolutely correct there. And your counter attack using a right handsword to his right mandible would work well. You are borrowing the force of his forward motion to add force and effect to your strike. Because you steped forward with your left your stance puts your torso at an angle toward his right, and your strike redirects his forward motion to his left. He will miss you, but he is still continuing forward, so this was not a stopping hit as much as a redirection. Both work, and to tell the truth I'd probably react similarly to what you described since I prefer to work angles and redirection. I'd probably convert the inward handsword to a crane of his neck and step left with my right foot into a twist stance, adding some torque to his momentum as I come out of it. Hopefully this would intimately aquaint him with the pool table, and all that torque adds a lot of power to my strikes. But I digress, your original question was about stopping hits.

In order to qualify as a stoping hit, you have to stop him in his tracks. Let's say the scenario is the same except that your girlfriend is standing next to you on the right and some friends are on your left. It wouldn't be cool to redirect him into them (and you loose the option of hitting on his girlfriend, but them's the breaks). So now you need to stop him, right in front of you, and then work him over. This is where the kind of hit you were asking about comes into play. And I'd only use it if the environment demanded it, such as in this scenario. That's just my preference though; I don't mean to imply that it isn't effective, because it is extremely effective.

If you have some kind of body armor/padding and a willing partner who will give and take solid hits I'd recomend trying some of these types of scenarios. Start slow and easy, but work them up to street force. You'll get a good feel for the difference. And there's no other way to learn how to deal with and stop that kind of momentum other than to do it.

[Black Jack]

dnc101,

I work with jamming but of late I have started to look at more direct stop-hits based on certain situational encounters for when you can not go pre-emptive and you are both basically moving at the same time in the enviroment.

Since your a kenpo guy and I really like classic edge of hand blows do you mind sharing some info on how your system does the swordhand.

I will go first, the edge hand blow I use is not karate based but old ju jitsu, taken from FAS WWII close combat methods and as seen in many other manuels of that and earlier time periods.

Ax-Hand. That name really describes it all for me, or at least how I was taught to do it, the hands pictured are the heads of the ax, the blade the hands edge, the strong forearms the wooden handle.

By using this visual I do not really distinguish between if I get the attacker with the hand edge or if it turns into a forearm blow, this little mental tweat makes the tech much more general in application.

Though I also dig another old western nickname for it- Judo Slash

The method I use to deliver the strike is with the fingers extended, close together, thumb flaged/upright and the wrist locked. The main striking surface is the cushioned part of the hand between the base of the little finger and edge of the palm where it joins the wrist. The thumb is raised to an upwright position because this automatically extends the fingers and prevents the hand from clenching.

It creates one MEAN and HIGHLY EFFECTIVE striking tool. The blow is made with the elbow bent, thus utilising body weight behind it, often coupled with a drop step/stomping, and delivered with a sharp chopping motion with the hand quickly drawn back so the power is not expended over a larger area.

Used more like tight and fast boxing blows than whipping shots but I also like swinging the chop out from across the body for certain stances and attacks. I practice with it from neutral stances, hands crossed, hands on hips, palms out hands in front of my face/the fence, the jack benny stance, odd positions.

Due to past arrogance I am actually a new-user to the weapon over this current year, always knew about it, used to make fun of it, always thought it looked to simple, thought the magic gold had to have a exotic name, fancy circles and use hissing noises to make it work. j/k:D

I got educated on the edge of hand blow and it made me a believer. You can nail anything with this bistach, it takes a ticking and keeps on licking, I work mine right now on anything I can find, but I like working it out on a tree I have on the side of my building, its the perfect size for a person, perfect to circle and work odd angles, perfect for conditioning.

After a good workout its inside for some pickle brine on the hands and a cold diet dr.pepper. :)

So now that I have written to **** much, what about the sword hand:D

[dnc101]

Your methods are pretty much the same. We don't leave the thumb flaged/ out because it could get hung up and dammaged. The hand is formed with a slight cup and the last two fingers have a slight curl. We also strike with the fleshy part of the hand, and have the option to convert to a forearm strike.

Kenpo strikes from point of origin- we don't normally chamber as that telegraphs and violates the principle of no wasted motion. But we learn the technically perfect strikes like most external arts. Outward right handsword chambered at the left ear and delivered torquing out and across, etc. We also do thrusting handswords which come straight in to strike more quickly. And reverse handswords which strike with the thumb side (another reason we keep it tucked). These are quick and generally follow an unexpected path, so they are effective additions to your arsenal.

The handsword we discussed in the scenario would be a thrusting outward handsword moving from a mid check position up across your body directly to its target- which is the right point of his jaw and the nerve that lies directly behind it. The handsword fits perfectly there and the small contact surfafe applies a lot of presssure to a tender and mechanically vulnerable area. It also applies force to his head, using it as a lever to redirect his body. Where the head goes, the body follows.

In this case, I'd slip on by and convert to a crane if I had room to redirect and maneuver. You could also snap the strike back into place as an automatic chek. Or if his arm (either one) comes up you could move it to a positional check on that arm. Lots of options, most of which come standard in most styles.