Posted by jessb | 5 Comments
A small piece of what I learned over the weekend.
Like many at SMAC, I attended the 9 Cuts 9 Powers over the weekend. The seminar was truly an amazing experience and I took a lot from it.
At one point in the seminar I was working with my sister, Melissa, who I kept over powering when I was her uke. So she hunted down Mrs. Hayes to ask her why this was occurring… what was she doing wrong. We were doing some technique that required the uke to throw a MMA style cross punch.
Mrs. Hayes kindly came over, watched us do the technique, then had me be her uke. At this point all I could think of was “oh man I actually have to try to hit her. I CAN NOT be a bad uke for Mrs Hayes…. this is going to hurt, a lot.” So I focused on Mrs. Hayes center and threw that punch. And for a brief moment, nothing…. she disappeared. Seconds later, she reappeared and hit me multiple times with some part of her body… not sure what… all I know was it was powerful and if I was a real bad guy it would have really really hurt. It was the most amazing thing of the seminar for me.
My sister’s issue ended up being her alignment. In addition, Mrs. Hayes explained to us about having a triangular base. This base makes you strong by grounding you.
On Monday, I attended class (apparently I just didn’t get enough over the weekend). We worked on stomach crunching punches. Dennis told me this is how to make my punches more powerful. To my surprise, once I figured it out, it worked and was pretty effortless! Later in the night, I learned kicks can be done the same way.
I realize this blog is all over the place and probably poorly communicated. But I write it here for 2 reasons.
Reason #1 As a woman, you don’t need to be super strong or large in size to be powerful. Being smaller than the attacker has its advantages. If you don’t believe me, watch youtube videos of Mrs. Hayes. She is amazing. I promise you those guys in the videos are not pretending… they are getting thrown around.
Reason #2 is my goal is to work on these few things- having a triangular base and stomach crunch punches/kicks…Its pretty cool, I kinda almost sort get it, and these things will help me in defending myself.
Thank you again Mr. and Mrs. Hayes for coming to NH and sharing with us. Thank you to Dennis, Darryl, and Theresa for making this event happen. Can’t wait for the next one!
Jess Burleigh
SMAC Student
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Looking forward to sharing what we all learned this weekend; especially on Darryl and Dennis!
I wish I had read this post weeks ago! Great stuff and well put. I just learned something now reading it, and I was there for the seminar. Once again, Mrs. Hayes gets mentioned. She is amazing and inspiring.
The women’s self defense blog is on fire…. you should cruise it more often :p
I have the RSS feed updating my blackberry with every new entry.
Overpowering is stating it kindly… I felt like I was going up against a brick wall (and that should be taken as a complement because I was being flopped around like a rag doll by a few people at the seminar). That being said, once I started using that triangle base it was harder for people to pick me up and flop me around. I went back to a couple of people who were flopping me around and tried the triangle base and it worked!!
Once I applied what Mrs. Hayes taught me on you, it became effortless to be able to do the “technique” on you. It felt like I did not even do anything, which from what I have been told, a million times, that is when I am doing right.
As much as we were shown at the seminar, the couple of things that I took away that I really want to work on are my alignment and my movement. Also, I would like to work on using my triangle base to ground myself, but also work on being able to move freely and effortlessly. I find that I think too much and that my intellectual brain, as Mr. Hayes calls it, NEVER shuts off. I get wrapped up with concentrating on one thing, and “forgetting” about the rest. Then when I am done with whatever it is I work on I say oh I forgot to do this. So I have to learn how to control that as well.
One question that I took away, that Mr. Hayes seemed to go back to is, do you believe this works for you. Prior to the seminar I knew To-Shin Do worked because I saw Dennis and Darryl perform “techniques” that were successful. I started believing that it really worked for women when I saw Theresa flip Dennis and Darryl around. I wasn’t a true believer in myself until I watched Mrs. Hayes and decided that if she can defend herself against Mark Davis, then I can surely learn to do the same.
Thank you again to Mr. and Mrs. Hayes for coming to NH and spending time with us. Thank you to Dennis, Darryl, and Theresa for working so hard to make it happen, which gave us all the opportunity to have this awesome experience.
How many sleeps until the next one?
*** I used the term “technique” for a lack of a better word.
A friend of mine takes MMA classes which she loves. I was talking to her the other day about the seminar and her classes and what not. She was telling me that she simply can not win against some of the men because they are 200 lbs and have been training for years. I then told her about how Mrs. Hayes tossed around Mark Davis like it was nothing so I do not believe she “cant” defend herself against these men. I told her she needs to go to the spaces they are not and create space…. go to where the danger is not (as we learned this weekend). She of course said its impossible.
I then informed her she was coming to the next LIVE seminar with me so she can get a better understanding of what I was talking about because nothing is impossible.