Level 3 – TDDS

L3 Requirements

As students of L3 are starting to realise, Kung Fu is essentially efficiency and effectiveness of movement. We as civilised humans may think too complicated, because we tend to go about things the long way around. Big slow strikes and inefficient moves with slow heavy footwork and generally no idea of what or where ones center is. A student when starting will generally require total reformatting. When this reformatting has been achieved a student should be equivalent to L3 – Base. I am sure L3 will help in practice (fighting) but would imagine if tested by someone with good technique, more than likely won't have the backup plan and depth required. A student should analyse their technique and ask themselves. 'Has my original tenet changed?' One may think it has but generally, students are still not looking deep enough at the holistic approach, rather, still just plugging away with the same old, same old. As Funakoshi writes, 'be deadly serious in your training.'

There are other areas to look into that prevent a student from stepping out of green zone to the next red zone level. The mind is a sealed unit and people essentially don't like to think that they don't know something and consequently go defensive and block it out, 'Nup, I'll stick with what I've been doing for n years rather than try something else.' However, most of the improvement from here on end will be gained from the mind. A typical L3 strike is using less 'biceps strength' and more 'body strength' put into it, (Keelan P, 2004). The more a student can control technique from the mind, the more refined and efficient the style will become.

L3 Attainment

Utilising the aforementioned L3 Criterion steps will benefit:

• Maintaining Ones Axis
  • Both vertically and horizontally (body & strikes/blocks)
• Efficiency & Economics
  • Not telegraphing and diverting off line of the move (A – B)
• Removing Momentum
  • Not making assumptions of next move, keeping calm, one thing at a time and a derivative of the second point

All these points are refined recursively and continuously reduce the error tolerance and increase the power output. Benefits from this procedures are more power, better efficiency, less chance of injury and the good lines are good for ones health. These processes are controlled by the brain, adding physical power at this point will only cause the negation of these steps mentioned, and diminish the overall technique. Physical 'external' type technique is slipping back to ones default mode and will only make the move more inefficient. The fundamentals are just as important and should be reiterated; twist to ones full extent – feet, hips, shoulders and wrists whilst remaining balanced and within ones square parameters as seen in the L1 — DBW Web page (Keelan P, 2004).