Peripheral Vision.

            An aggressor is before you and there is no place to run. He has a knife or broken bottle in his right hand. Where should you be looking to gauge his next move?

            An obvious answer may seem to be to keep your eyes on the weapon, since that is the bit that can harm you. In truth many other parts of his body can attack you and some foes will use the weapon to fixate your attention so they can land an attack with another body part. Watching the eyes “the windows to the soul” may seem logical but some fighters will use these to feint, distract and deceive. In the Bando section of the book the technique of looking at one part of the body and attacking another was described. Some Asian martial arts include mesmerism techniques, tricking the foe into a staring competition to make him vulnerable.

            To attack with his hands a foe must first move his elbows and shoulders. He may first move his feet to change position or balance. He may or may not look at his intended target. To kick he may first move his shoulders to shift balance. Which body part do you watch?

            The answer is, as many as possible. A foe may feint with his eyes but if other parts of his body indicate he is going to do something different his true intentions are more likely to be ascertained. How can you view areas as remote from each other as the hands, eyes, elbows, shoulders and feet all at once? The solution is to make use of your entire visual field.

            The visual field can be divided into your central vision and your peripheral vision. Central vision is your high resolution colour vision and the part of the visual field you use to look at anything you are interested in. It is the part you use for reading, watching television, appreciating paintings and checking out member s of your preferred gender.

What is interesting is that your central visual field is only about 13° of you visual field, with you foveal only about 3°! If you are unfamiliar with how the eye and the visual processing system work this may seem hard to believe, so go ahead and do some background reading on the subject. Vision is a fascinating topic. While the central vision takes up only a small part of your visual field the fovea alone uses something like 50% of the nerve output from the eye.

Peripheral vision is the rest of your visual field. For each eye it is about 60° on the nose side and 100° on the temporal side of the eye. The shape of your face will affect this field at different angles so the visual field of each eye varies from 135-160°. Since most of us have two eyes side by side we have a total visual field of about 200°. Try this out for yourself. Keep looking straight ahead, hold your hands out to the sides of your head and wiggle your thumbs. You can see the movement.

Your peripheral vision lacks the high definition of your central vision. Most of the photoreceptors responsible for the peripheral vision are the Rods, which cannot see colour. If you move a coloured light into someone’s peripheral vision some people will first see it as a white light, and only be able to identify the colour as it moves further into the field. A more practical application is that if you want to see something in dim light, looking past it can often make it clearer. This brings the more light-sensitive Rods to bear rather than the more daylight orientated Cones that predominate in the part of the retina used for central vision.

Another thing that peripheral vision is quite good at is motion detection, which is brings us back to the subject of this blog. Centre your vision on your foe’s upper chest and learn to use both your central and peripheral vision to detect movements of the rest of his body. If a foe attacks you do not look at the attack, then deflect or avoid it. You react as soon as any part of your vision detects it, then change your focus as you counter attack. With a little practice you will be able to make defences and attack just using your peripheral vision. By looking at his chest you can detect telltail shouder movements and are less likely to fall for tricks from his eyes. Also helps keep your chin tucked in against uppercuts. Next time your girlfriend complains you talk to her chest just explain you are practicing self-defence!

Practice using your peripheral vision more in everyday life. Pick things up without looking at them directly. More challengingly, put them down. At the crossing, operate the button without looking directly at it. Word of warning though. Your colour perception is not so good at the periphery so don’t use it to see if the lights or crossing sign have changed!

Here is the late, great Erle Montaigue talking about peripheral vision.

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Press-up woes

            Researching for my book lead me to discover many interesting things. One of the things that I discovered was that the traditional push-ups we were made to do in school are not very good for your health. If you think about this a little it will soon be obvious why this is true. Bend you hand back as far as it can comfortably go without assistance and you will see that it does not form a 90 degree angle with the forearm.  Putting all your body weight on it to make it do so is not  a good idea. Push ups are a good way to build upper body strength but if you do them invest in some push-up handles or use some asymmetrical dumbbells that you can grip without them rolling away. Not only do handles keep your wrist in a more natural position, you can exercise your grip at the same time.

            Today I came across this article in the British Medical Journal. A 23yr old kickboxer  was performing a form of reverse press-up putting pressure on the backs of his hands. Not sure what the intended benefit of this variation is, but the result was he ruined a tendon along the outside of his forearm and needed reconstructive surgery and a transplant.

            Very nasty, and his competition days are probably over for a few years if not permanently.  In the book I caution against the common but dubious practice of punching with weights. There are a lot of other exercises out there that can cause you more harm than good, so be careful. Good exercise improves your condition, not reduces it.

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The Battle with my Terrible Enemy Continues!

            ....or in other words, I still have my cold. Actually it seems to be on the way out. Most of my colds in recent years have been mercifully brief, which I suspect may be due to the protocol I adopt. Since this blog is about keeping you out of harm, I will pass on what I have learnt:-

·         “Feed a Cold” really is good advice. Recent studies seem to indicate food increases levels of Gamma Interferon, which is useful in fighting viral infections.

·         Eat foods containing vitamin C. That taking vitamin C will prevent you getting colds is total bunk, but once you have a cold vitamin C will help you fight it. Usually I would caution you against drinking a lot of fruit juice since they are a way to take in lots of calories without feeling full. If you have a cold calories and vitamin C are what you need so go get a carton. Get some fresh fruit too for deserts and snacks.

·         Eat curry. Chilli and garlic are both very effective against colds. Turmeric has useful properties too and the onions are even a good source of vitamin C. I’ve been eating curry since this cold hit and it is already on the retreat. A high intake of garlic does seem to have some properties in preventing colds, but use a good deodorant too.

·         For those really nasty infections that hit your throat, take honey and garlic. Buy a pot of honey and a bulb of garlic. Peel, crush and chop the cloves and place in the honey. Keep in the cupboard until needed. Both honey and garlic have antiseptic properties so take a spoonful when you throat feels bad. It doesn’t taste as bad as you might think and is actually nicer than many throat medicines. Also can be used as a great glaze for grilled chicken, which is why it is in the kitchen and not the medical cabinet!

·         Oil of Olbas. This is fantastic stuff and a bottle is a permanent part of my travel kit. Sniff the stuff to clear your nose, but make sure it does not touch your skin directly, this is potent stuff! Sprinkle some on your bedcovers and pillow at night. A few drops on the dressing gown when sitting around. Run a hot bath and add a few drops while the water is running

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Quadrants of Parrying II

            My apologies if the last post on “Quadrants of Parrying” was below the usual standard. I was in the early stages of a cold and that is not the best time to try and wrestle with explanations. Some further thoughts on the topic, hopefully a little more coherent.

            Which defensive technique you use against an attack will depend not just on what quadrant  it comes from but also from the relative position of the hand you intend to use. It will be recalled that the original description was in a book on knife fighting and the assumption was that the defender would start in the recommended knife-fighting stance, which for that author had the hand in line with the elbow that was the hypothetical intersection of the quadrants. You may not be in a perfect stance when you have to use your hands to defend yourself, so let us look at attacks from the four quadrants once again, this time with some consideration of where the hand begins:-

            High Outer Attacks. Most High Outer Attacks can be dealt with by the various high outward parries. The Karate Outside thrusting parry was mentioned previously and more circular parries such as the “Wave” or “Window wiper” can be used too. Parries with the radius side of the arm, such as the Wing Chun Tan Sau, using the hand in a palm up position can also be used. An inward parry might be used if the hand started in a low outside position but it is likely that to achieve this you would need to step back and would have avoided the attack anyway.

            High Inside Attacks. High Inside Attacks can be dealt with by any of the inward parries mentioned in the previous post. If you hand was positioned well to the inside, such as near your opposite shoulder then an attack in this quadrant might be deflected with an outward parry.

            Low Outside Attacks. Attacks to the low outside quadrant are dealt with by low outward parries. Very low attacks may be parried outward with the leg instead of the arm. As with all attacks, evasion and avoidance are better than contact.

            Low Inside Attacks. The Low Inner Quadrant is occupied by a considerable proportion of the body. How to parry attacks to this quadrant will depend on the relative starting position of the hand.  If the hand is by your side then low attacks such as to the stomach or groin are deflected by the low inward parry. This is effectively twisting your waist so your forearm swings across, removing the intended target and knocking the attack across the inside gate to empty air. If the attack is at a slightly higher level then the Bong Sau type technique is used with the elbow raised and the hand hanging down. What is interesting about this is the bent elbow allows the arm to fold on contact, absorbing force but still redirecting the attack. If the hand was above the elbow when an attack was made to the Low Iner Quadrant then a low outward parry can be used to sweep the attack out into the low outer quadrant.

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