Wushu Watch: The Dumbest Ideas in Martial Arts

You arrive home from work. The wife isn’t in, she’s gone line dancing, and she’s probably left the house in the state it was when you headed off this morning too. Maybe she’ll have left something on the side for dinner at least. As you approach the front door, you hear a shuffling from the side of the house. You pause… something is off. You edge along the wall to the corner of the house, check your pants at the knee for some freedom of movement, and WHAM!

Your ura-mawashigeri hook kick lays out an armed assailant. What are the chances? That’ll show the doubters for all the times there wasn’t someone there. Chisholm and Enoeda add that you should position yourself so that as you kick you can peak around the corner.

Here’s a nice defense against a wrist grab from Eric Dominy’s 1974 publication, simply entitled Karate. Faced with a same side grasp on the wrist grab, Dominy simply circles his arm outward and down to his side, twisting his opponent’s wrist all the way over, forcing them to bend down and expose themselves to the knee. Look solid? Try it.

Weirdly enough, when someone grabs a hold of you they tend to work to restrict your attempts at counter movements. If your escape technique requires them to not use the tremendous strength advantage they have working with their pectorals and weight against just your shoulder, it’s probably tripe.

Obligatory Dillman

No article on flim flam in the martial arts would be complete without a quick look at kyusho-jitsu or pressure point fighting. To be clear, I believe in the so-called ‘vital points’ or the solar plexus, sternal notch, the jawline, the orbital bones. It is undeniable that hitting some areas causes more damage than others nearby—that’s why good fighters aim. When you start pretending that all you need do is probe three of four points in connection to lay out an aggressor of any size, we’re getting into the realm of silliness.

The king of this lunacy is George Dillman. I must confess that I’ve probably spent more money on Dillman’s books than any sceptic should, but if I see one in a book shop I have to snap it up. They’re comedy gold and make a long flight a great deal easier. Dillman has gone off the deep end in recent years, claiming to have mastered the art of toate—the no touch knockout. Normal procedure for this discovery involves the wearing of robes and hiding among a cult of your own followers as the formerly great Shigeru Egami did towards the end of his life. Dillman, breaking with tradition, had the good grace to stick around and allow science to test him. You can watch that debunking here:

Spoiler Alert: He tells you how to counter it at the end!