Paul Vunak is a renowned martial arts expert, known for his innovative combat training and self-defense techniques. With over four decades of experience, he has trained elite military units for real-world scenarios.
Part 2 - The secret to creating safe range
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We continue are series on my secret to Bruce Lee's interception and if you missed part 1 you can read it here: Part 1 The Footwork That Makes Interception AutomaticNow here is my ace in the hole that is the secret to intercepting... For me, the epiphany that enabled me to stop kickboxing and start intercepting happened in the office of the old Kali Academy at about 2 in the morning with Larry Hartsell, drinking dark beer and watching Bruce Lee sparring footage (this was our routine every Tuesday and Thursday night). When Bruce Lee sparred, the way he moved forward and backward was not the way he described it in his books. In his books, we hear about a step and slide forward, backwards, and then slide-step forward and backwards, etc. The very first thing that stands out when watching Bruce spar is this freaky shrimp-like movement that he would do that would project him backward about 10 feet! When the normal person wants to go backward, they do a step and slide backwards. When Bruce wanted to retreat, he would do the shrimp-like movement. The best term to describe the biomechanics comes from gymnastics and is called piking. When one pushes off their front leg and pikes backward, this move is reminiscent of a shrimp (piking is the opposite of arching). I’m a firm believer that this was just a natural idiosyncratic gesture of Bruce’s freakish athleticism. (I seriously doubt that he knew consciously that he did this, and I can tell you for a fact that it was never memorialized in writing.) Now imagine Bruce’s opponent throwing some strike at Bruce. He retreats with our shrimp move and all of a sudden he would be at the other end of the room. The opponent would obviously encroach, chasing Bruce… And Shazaaamm! The interception would take place. This is when it hit me. I jumped up into Larry’s arms screaming like a little kid. “I got it, I got it, rewind!” Bruce wasn’t intercepting punches or kicks… He was simply intercepting the opponent perpetually encroaching on him! And the whole reason why the opponent continually encroaches on Bruce over and over boils back down to our shrimp movement. The opponent would encroach. Bruce would back up. The opponent would attack again. Bruce would back up again. Usually somewhere around the third time, this frustrated opponent would launch in again, and bingo… interception. From this point on, I understood the secret to the stop hit. And to put it in a nutshell, one’s footwork must be reminiscent of Mohammed Ali—perpetually going backward (however using the shrimp)—and not like Joe Frazier continually moving in. Drill: After I understood Bruce’s shrimp movement, I tried to pass this concept on to my students. In those days my most athletic student, with a lot of hard work, would finally understand this movement after about a year or two. The average student would take 2 to 4 years. And some just simply could never ever integrate it into their sparring. After about 5 years of sweat, tears, and blood trying to teach this movement, one day Inosanto caught my consternation out of the corner of his eye. He approached me and said: “Vunak… there is a much better way to teach this movement.” Then he went up to my student (who was not Michael Jordan), pulled out a knife, and took a slice at the student’s stomach… And I watched the most athletic, agile, and precise shrimping movement that I have ever seen. Dan closed his knife, looked me in the eye, gave me a wink, and walked away. In conclusion, the secret to intercepting is:
Paul Vunak |
Paul Vunak
Paul Vunak is a renowned martial arts expert, known for his innovative combat training and self-defense techniques. With over four decades of experience, he has trained elite military units for real-world scenarios.
If you missed the first or second write up to this series on Bruce Lee's secret to interception, you can find them here Part 1 & 2 === Encounters can be broken down several different ways. In this case, we are going to be emphasizing how a fight actually starts—and what to do in the very first minute. In order to facilitate this, we are going to divide a street fight into two areas. One is a mugging-type energy. In this sort of fight, you go from 0–100 in a nanosecond. In this sort of fight,...
Let me sing out some facts... Street fights don’t start the way most people imagine. Most people think the first shot is just a choice… like you’re picking a button on a menu: “Eyes or groin?”“Which weapon?”“Which lead?”“Do I fake first?” But the reality is different. The first minute of a fight is not about picking targets. It’s about controlling range, timing, and cadence before the other guy can get his hands on you. This report breaks down how that first minute actually works, in the same...