Psyche Out: Defeat Your Foe With Fakes!
Psyche Out: Defeat Your Foe With Fakes!By Benjamin Paris |
Fakes are also valuable by themselves, even without an immediate follow-up. Used properly, they can help you disguise the timing of your attacks, acquire information about your opponent’s defensive tendencies and plant false information in his mind. For those reasons and others, fakes should be a component of your arsenal. Throwing a Fake There are many ways to give your adversary the impression that you’re attacking. They include shifting your weight forward, raising your front leg, quickly rotating your shoulders or hips, and stomping your front foot. Those moves can be made even more convincing if you execute them with a sharp kiai. But above all else, you must make them look like an actual attack. A fake that doesn’t look real won’t fool anyone. Another key to success is making sure your fake doesn’t put you inside your opponent’s striking range. Moving there without hitting him is dangerous, which is why the best fakes get the job done without exposing you to attack. Disguising Your Intentions If you don’t throw fakes, you’re at a disadvantage. Every time you start an attack, your opponent knows that a real one is coming. Therefore, he can start his defense as soon as he sees you move. The best fighters are unpredictable, and fighters who don’t fake are very predictable. Throwing the occasional fake will help disguise the initiation of your next attack, and throwing more will prevent your opponent from knowing which attacks are real and which are decoys. Although throwing fakes occasionally is better than never throwing them at all, faking without more of a purpose wastes an opportunity to gather valuable information. Using fakes to collect intel on your opponent’s defensive strategy is a surefire way to improve your chances of scoring, and it’s relatively risk-free. Gathering Information When you execute a convincing fake, your adversary will believe that an attack is coming and most likely react. He needs to respond quickly because making a defensive movement—whether it’s blocking, stepping or countering—takes time. Unless he’s extremely fast or you’re extremely slow, he won’t be able to just sit back and see if the technique is real before taking action. The faster you are, the earlier he’ll have to move. Thus, if you’re a fast attacker, you can throw a convincing fake with just a slight movement. If you’re slower, you’ll need a more pronounced movement to convince him that a defensive reaction is necessary. When you throw a fake, your opponent will quickly realize that what seemed to be an attack wasn’t, but by that time you’ll know a little about how he intends to react. You may learn that he prefers to step or shift, or perhaps he likes to throw an instant counter. Maybe he likes to stand and block. No matter what the information is, you can use it to make your attacks more effective from that point on. In the example mentioned above, you can use the information gleaned from your fake to change the timing of your technique. By striking later than your opponent expects, you can goad him into counterattacking early, which will allow you to strike while he’s retracting his leg. Or, if you strike earlier than he expects, you can stop his counter before he even starts it.
Fakes can also be used to implant ideas in your opponent’s mind. Giving him a false impression of your intentions enables you to confuse him by striking with a different technique or to a different target. Example: Fake a body kick to cause your foe to expect a body kick. Once he has that expectation, you may be able to connect with a head kick or punch. Another way to use this strategy is to fake a high-risk move such as a spin kick or flying kick. Big moves always get an opponent’s attention. If he believes that you’re looking to connect with such a risky technique, he’ll watch for it, which may permit you to connect with a simpler shot. Fakes on Defense Although the discussion so far has focused on using fakes while attacking, you can also use them while defending. The big difference is that on offense, you can throw them fairly freely. On defense, if your opponent is about to hit you, you cannot merely fake a defensive move; you have to do something to block or avoid his attack. That being said, when your opponent starts to attack, you can fake a defensive step or instant counterattack to convince him to abandon his plan. If you’re successful, you’ll defuse the attack before it happens and implant a suggestion so that the next time he charges, he’ll look for you to use that tactic. Then, if you change your tactic, your chance of scoring will rise. Opponents Who Ignore Fakes Some martial artists refuse to react to fakes. They wait until they’re absolutely sure that an attack is coming before they take defensive action. Sometimes it’s because they have great confidence in their blocking reflexes, or it could be because they’re technically unsophisticated. In either case, continuing to use fakes against an opponent who ignores them is a bad idea. The motions won’t provoke a reaction, and taking the time to throw them can make you more vulnerable. Instead, consider the direct approach. Although people who refuse to react to fakes won’t be vulnerable to the deceptions described above, they have a different weakness: They wait a long time before reacting defensively. Therefore, a direct attack has a good chance of connecting. So once you discover that your opponent doesn’t react to fakes, your best strategy is usually a direct strike or combination of strikes. Intelligent Opponents In planning your strategy with respect to fakes, it’s essential to account for intelligent opponents who change their tactics on the fly. Even though most martial artists move in predictable patterns, you shouldn’t assume that they’ll react the same way every time. Good fighters change their behavioral patterns, and the best fighters change according to the information their opponent has collected. Therefore, when you use a fake and discover that your opponent is looking to counter-kick, he knows that you know that he’s looking to counter-kick. At that point, if you suspect that your technique won’t work, choose something else. Of course, the attacker may suspect that you’re going to choose a different technique, and on it goes. The analysis can continue forever, but it only proves the central importance of thinking while sparring. Fighting is as much a mental exercise as it is a physical exercise, and the person who understands that is the one in the best position to prevail. (This article originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Black Belt. For more on Benjamin Paris, visit www.westchestertkd.com or send an e-mail to ben.paris@gmail.com.) 
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