question about jkd trapping

[DickHardman]

pardon my ignorance, but is trapping overcomplicating the more simple parry and counterattack that is found in western boxing/mt training?? or is there much more to it than i realize???

[Guest]

I believe that each person's definition of "Trapping" will have a strong bearing on the answer.

As taught to me - Trapping is the momentary immobilisation of your opponent's offensive or defensive structure to facilitate hitting. If you follow that definition then trapping goes way beyond Jun Fan, Wing Chun or Kali....it can be found in Boxing and Muay Thai (to quote your examples), is predominant in MMA, and to be honest can probably be found in any martial art - and definitely on the street.

However, I believe your post was specific to the Wing Chun influenced Hand Immobilisation Attacks found in Jun Fan. I can only speak from my own experience. Used by the wrong person, at the wrong time, against the wrong opponent - it can be a big mistake. Used by the right person, at the right time, against the right opponent - it can be very effective.

[g-bells]

tapping to me is this, if there is an obstacle in the way of my striking, i'll remove it by trapping

you will get alot of different arguements as to was trapping abandoned by BL, so some jkd'ers say there is no need to trap and others say it is the foundation of jkd

BL was so quick that he did'nt need to trap because he just hit!

[Tim McFatridge]

pardon my ignorance, but is trapping overcomplicating the more simple parry and counterattack that is found in western boxing/mt training?? or is there much more to it than i realize???

Depends... I love training trapping and working on it. That being said I prefer to train the simple traps. These are the traps that are one or two moves instead of the complex trapping that most people think of. A single trap can be a pak sao. For an example lets say you are standing in front of your opponent... for the sake of the example we are going to say that you are not wanting to fight but you know he is going to push it and cross that line and you are going to have to fight or do something.

The instant you see his hands move up.... BAM! you move in and pak da... trapping his hand to his body as you hit him.

That is an example of a simple trap. You are only trapping his hand long enough to deliver your strikes. Of course once you do this simple trap you can lock him up and take him down or lock him up standing giving him something think about.

I know that is a really simple example but the simple traps work if you train them. If you want to see some really good trapping in actual fighting then get a hold of some video footage of Jack Dempsey fighting back in the day. That man was awesome at trapping. Of course back then they called it the "Demspey Shuffle". He would slip his opponents punch move in and trap his opponents left arm and then hit him with an over hand right then use his right arm to trap both arms and land a really nice left upper cut and over hand.

Beautiful stuff man...

[Britt]

I know that is a really simple example but the simple traps work if you train them. If you want to see some really good trapping in actual fighting then get a hold of some video footage of Jack Dempsey fighting back in the day. That man was awesome at trapping. Of course back then they called it the "Demspey Shuffle". He would slip his opponents punch move in and trap his opponents left arm and then hit him with an over hand right then use his right arm to trap both arms and land a really nice left upper cut and over hand.

Beautiful stuff man...

Do you know any particular fights to look at for examples? You Tube has a lot of them on "Dempsey," and "Dempsey shuffle" turns up something completely unrelated, to say the least.

[Tim McFatridge]

I think one of the fights you can look at is his fight against Joe Lyons. I will double check and get back on it.

Tim

[Tim McFatridge]

Ok, I did some checking and one of the fights to watch his Dempsey vs. Firpo. It is a good fight and it shows him using his trapping in the fight. The only problem is if you watch the fight on Youtube then you are not able to see it very well because of the video. However if you have cable and have the Classic Sports channel they are always showing old fights. If you watch some of his fights on Classic Sports you will be able to see the trapping he uses because they will actually slow it down and have people like Burt Sugar talking about the Dempsey Shuffle.


Tim