Follow-up on levers

I got an email in response to my post about Sonny’s centerline roll, asking, “Do you know if this fulcrum type of striking is implicit in CSE?” (Cabales Serrada Escrima). Good question, so I took a stab at it.

“To answer your question, there are little levers and big levers. We should know how to use each one as necessary. The cross block on angle 3 is no different than for other angles once you have countered the strike, so your roll could be against a 1, 2, 3, etc. You could use your wrist, as you said, or if you drop down a bit and turn your hand up (drop your elbow) maybe even use your forearm for the lever as you expand your check to move the person's arm away. Anthony Davis did the move more like this.

The basics are the basics. They are tools to competency on a fundamental level. Learn those rules innately, then you can go beyond them knowing how to navigate your way back when things get confusing. As an example, a senior Serrada practitioner recently described to me a technique that Angel showed him once. It didn't even sound like Serrada, except he could describe it in Serrada terms and I could follow the concept. It wasn't anything I'd ever heard before, not in our basics anywhere, but knowing angles 1 and 3, I got it."

My correspondent wrote back that I said, “Anthony Davis did the move more like this,” asking “Is this detail taught in the basics as you teach it?”

My reply:
“No. I appreciate what Anthony showed me, but it is different in details than what Angel did and I prefer to focus the basics on the latter. That doesn't invalidate other ideas.

In the cross block I do what I call tilt-and-turn. The basic hit from the block position is a tilt a of the body forward towards the lead shoulder, using the waist and legs to dip the shoulder but still oriented with centerline towards the opponent's weapon hand. The whole body is the lever. This helps bring your weapon hand back in even as you are striking outward like the (Snap! blog) From the strike to the arm, one then turns the body to face forward. That brings the left shoulder clockwise, thus projecting that hand outward and opening up the opponent's centerline by pushing their arm away. What Anthony does from the block is push out with his hand to open the opponent first, which then also uses the left arm as the fulcrum for a levered strike. See the difference? Both work, but it changes. Ultimately it's good to understand them both. Anthony's is maybe a bit quicker, Angel's more powerful."