Shudh Farsla - a key foundational principle of combat in SV
In the above video there are many attributes to pick out. The mastery shown is the correct application of many such attributes - but one in particular seems the key to making the others work. That is the correct judgement of distance.
In combat there is a dichotomy. You are either disengaged or engaged. There is a boundary between these two and it can be ‘fuzzy’. In this blog I will consider armed combat such as the above only, but the principle applies to all forms of combat.
There is a distinct distance at which your opponent’s weapon can reach you for the first time. Though this doesn’t mean it can hurt you (being tickled with the lightest brush of even a sword isn’t deadly in battlefield context). So one element of the ‘fuzziness’ is where the stick/weapon hurts you for the first time. This understanding comes from one's own understanding of correct techniques and structure.
But once ascertained, we have an X that marks the spot. This is extrapolated from the first point of meaningful contact. Once the opponent's reach has been calculated from the posture they are in and the weapon in their hands (no mean feat!) then you can rest assured you are safe.
Being safe by 1 metre or 1 millimetre is now the same from the point of view of disengagement. But not so for the purposes of engagement. Therefore the master achieves the above with the smallest margin. This is part of a skill set which has infinite scope for improvement - one of the reasons martial arts can be a never ending pursuit for perfection.
With this now clearly defined, hopefully one can see how Gurdev was able to stay calmly on the end of Kam’s striking range and then enter with clean straight forward attacks.
This ability of judging distance to such a fine degree allows the transition from disengaged to engaged to be blurred to the opponent. It allows one the time to remain calm, to seek the perfect striking time and angle. To read and anticipate. It leaves the opponent in two minds as to whether they should attack or not.
There’s so much more to discuss about this short clip. But at the very least I hope I have impressed upon you how key the judgement of distance is.
Many thanks to Kam Dhiman.