Sorry it's been a few days. I noticed that a few of you enjoyed the last post. Unfortunately, I took a break due to Christmas and travel to be with my fiance and her family. Now I can concentrate more on the school preparation and the blog.
Continuing along the comparison of Striking and Grappling I would like to address the similarities involving the most diverse of elements. The most diverse element is, apparent in viewing any fight, is distance. Directly derived from distance, with the addition of speed, is timing.
While even distance is comparable in both striking and grappling, timing is the most relateable. Therefore, timing is the best portal to understanding that most fundamental element.
A perfect example of timing is the clip in our previous post:
Let's analyze this.
Watch the victim of the wall kick at 8 seconds. Take a note of his positioning. He is entirely prone to Pettis closing the distance quickly. The first time that timing really makes a difference is a whole second earlier. While Henderson rests himself- on his heels, might I add.
As a short interject, this rest is a terrible thing. Just because you have distance, doesn't mean you can sacrifice your position. He was in a strong position, defended and balanced, to an infenrior one: standing, but on the heels. There is a time to recoup, but with being on the retreat, and not dying for energy, this kind of sacrifice begs for Pettis to take advantage. And, he does. This is the all important timing I brought to your attention. Without the mental speed that Pettis executes here, the half second window would be lost and Pettis would continue to retreat, freely.
After the brilliant sprint of Pettis at 7 seconds, he places himself in a great position to attack Henderson. He closed the range and took Henderson from defended to on the defensive. But Pettis didn't stop there. He again executes fantastic timing in conjunction with his ability to take advantage of the counter-fight.
We can see that Henderson amkes use of a counterfighitng tactic. He raises his arms to defend his face against what seemed to be a flying roundhouse to his face. Pettis, however, circumvents this with an amazing wall kick. By utilizing a hesitating motion, Pettis lets Hnederson's reactionary guard ascend, then pass, just in time to land his kick, before Henderson can recover. Taking advantage of the rhythm of Henderson, Pettis makes use of a timing tactic. Many fighters will fiegn to induce a response from a counter-fighter or simply to draw a defense. These same results can be drawn out in a second way: the delay. As an example, one may lauch a sidekick, but chamber it and hold the chamber a half second longer than your previous kicks. This is the equivalent of a pitcher sending a change-up pitch at 70 mph instead of 75 or 80 mpr as his usual fastball. The bat swings and the strike is gained- but in this case, the guard is placed, and the kick is landed.
This is Pettis' strike. It wasn't enough to simply dazzle and surprise Henderson. A fighter like Henderson has the strength to catch the kick, but when his hands are down, there is nothing to use to catch the kick. This is what Pettis takes advantage, here. He times it perfectly, and down went Henderson.
On a closing note, for today:
Speed like that doesn't just happen because you are clever. It does help, but the peed comes through training. Training makes a difference, don't fool yourself.
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