Indigenous Ability

  I open with the vanity & rationale behind using my own photos as “ the proof most oft in the pudding be found.” ·         The photos are from one day before my 55 th birthday after a post-cliff jump/kayak session. ·         And…peeling a wetsuit off post-manatee dive one month later. ·         The first set is in the midst of a training cycle, the second set is after one week of zero training while on vacation with no appreciable loss of gains. ·         I will call your attention back to the photos in a mo’. My historical combat studies have led to some mighty interesting adjunct revelations in the area of physical training [PT from here on out.] The early boxers, wrestlers, pugilists, rough ‘n’ tumblers did not have memberships to Globo Gyms, frequent your local Box, or clear out their log cabin garages to fill with Rogue F...

  When it comes to kicking our minds often becomes subject to the cognitive fallacy known as the availability bias. That is, we conjure the most common images of kicking and overlay these as our general understanding of what kicking is in general or as a whole. For many of us that availability bias chooses images from sportive environments [UFC, Muay Thai, the Jean Yves Theriault days of the PKA.] For some of us our images come from Tom Laughlin’s [Billy Jack] stunt-double, Hapkido Master Bong Soo-Han or an updated reference in the vein of Jet Li, or some other high-kicking, fast-spinning martial arts cinema we have consumed. Whether our minds have gone to sport or cinema there is not a wide gulf between the two as to what overall kicking “looks like.” There may be technical differences in how the kicks in the two available domains are delivered but, overall, our images of “kicking” in the mind’s eye are not too dissimilar. Now, let’s step out of our available images an...