Distance

[Emma]

In training recently,instructors have said over and over again that we’re not committing our selves to the attack and that we’re to far from the target. I try to put everything I’ve got into the attack but I can see that my opponent doesn’t even need to block because I’m not close enough to the target,which is not good at all .This is a major issue for me in Jiyu Ippon,but it's a problem in Kihon Ippon too.So earlier I thought I’ll go and hit a wall and extend my distance further and further away from it so my body gets used to hitting a target from a further distance. But then I stopped and thought how far from your opponent do you need to be able to attack successfully from? Is there an average distance? If someone could answer my question I can mark the distance on the floor and tell myself ’Ok I need to be able to hit the wall from here.’ I've got it all planned out.

[Moley]

Wow ! Emms.. What a MATURE post !
We only learned and tackled this as late as 1987 in our training.
What you are doing is exactly what we did to begin with. i.e. made it difficult for ourselves to hit from a greater distance BUT made sure we did, then extended the distance.
I have a great exercise that will help you with this. Will do it next Thursday.

P.S. Ask Mole Bach about the "Biggles" episode.  Exactly what you are on about regarding a "somebody" who commented on another forum somewhere about how we (Seki)  attacked from a greater distance and could not possibly connect from such a distance,
Mole bach found the posting and....
In Eryl's words.
"Biggles got a "Flying lesson".

Take a look at this..What does everybody think ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38XQJgK7W0

[Emma]

We only learned and tackled this as late as 1987 in our training.
What you are doing is exactly what we did to begin with. i.e. made it difficult for ourselves to hit from a greater distance BUT made sure we did, then extended the distance.
I have a great exercise that will help you with this. Will do it next Thursday.

OK, but I've got time to work on it a little bit before Thursday, so, if you trained like this, did you tell yourself that you needed to hit the wall from a specific distance or did you experiment each time and see how far away you could go?

Mole bach found the posting and....
In Eryl's words.
"Biggles got a "Flying lesson".

I've got to hear this story.
I take it that this certain 'somebody' isn't alive anymore then!

[siwan]

Are you using the wall to stop just before hitting it, or hitting something on the wall? I'm assuming that you aren't actually punching walls   

[Moley]

Mole bach found the posting and....
In Eryl's words.
"Biggles got a "Flying lesson".

I've got to hear this story.
I take it that this certain 'somebody' isn't alive anymore then!

Hope he's still alive,
Nice chap really, he just totally underestimated the  Seki. He was already a dan grade (so was his wife) when they joined us. As he had trained in places all over the world including Japan and the USA he must've thought we were a bunch of pushovers running a twee little club in rural Wales 
After his "enlightenment" he realised that we were far better than anything he had been to before and accepted that he had a lot to learn from us. He stayed with us for some time and we all got on well. But as he was an RAF pilot in Valley he had to leave to go to the "first" Gulf war. We never saw or heard from him again.Hope he's O.K.