Corporeal dyslexia & thinking with my feet

Corporeal dyslexia. This is my own homemade term to describe my predicament of how I can perform a certain combative when the attacker is on my right side, but cannot perform it when the attacker is on my left side. Same attacker. Same attack. Different result, with that result being failure. I call it corporeal (body) dyslexia because I tend to reverse my movements when facing an attack from the side I’m not accustomed to. Here’s an example: last night we practiced avoiding the right-handed straight punch. To avoid it, we step to our left and punch to the body with our right hand. OK. All well and good doing that. I’ve been doing it right for three months. Then, we switched to avoiding a left-handed punch. We’re supposed to do the exact same thing, move to our left and punch to the body with our right, except that I couldn’t convince myself to keep stepping to my left. Over and over again I continued to step to my right and found myself in a no-man’s land where I was entirely out of position and had no clue as to what I should do from there. Had I done that in a real fight, I would have to call a mulligan and ask the guy to please try and hit me in the face with his left-handed punch one more time.

In this instance I have an idea why I was getting it wrong. Dodging the left-handed punch Haganah style conflicts with dodging a left-handed punch boxing style.  In boxing, avoiding that left hand would mean slipping to my right. I can understand why I’m getting backwards, I’m confusing the two fighting styles. But with the other moves I get backwards … that’s just me being confused.

One thing I’m not confused about anymore (OK, really only less confused about) is how to maintain proper form when punching rapidly. “Think with your feet.” This sage advice from Mr. Stuart has greatly simplified the process. Punches start in your feet, so let your feet guide you. Punches don’t start in your hands, so just keep the hands out of this.