When watching young children at play you can see traces of our primitive selves. Before we “un-learn” all our ancestral instincts growing up in modern society we can observe many movements that complement our design. When children play or “fight” the natural instinct is to grab, wrestle and roll around. Children do not know, naturally, to make a fist and swing at another. Even in adults, your common, untrained individual will often lean towards words in a fight. Or they do a halfhearted swing but ultimately end up grappling or wrestling one another in a scuffle. Striking with the hand is not natural.
Looking back on the primitive sapiens, each person in the tribe had a job to do. If you wanted to show dominance within the tribe you would grapple, throw, or place your opponent into submission. If you struck with your hands and hurt yourself or your opponent then you or your opponent couldn’t
fulfill their role in the tribe. You became a liability and therefore dangerous to keep and a waste to feed. The whole tribe is now at risk. By wrestling, people are able to show their dominance in a way to say “I win, you lose” without anyone getting seriously hurt.
Even when violence between tribes happened, our ancestors would use tools and weapons to strike. It wasn’t worth striking with hands and risking damage to our most useful tool. In any fight, our “Primitive Brain” wants to prevent all harm to self. This is another reason striking with the hand is not natural.
To the untrained person, striking with the hand feels so unnatural. We must train and focus to over ride our primal side to strike another with a closed fist. So, the next time you are frustrated in your training, do not fret. Know that you are working against thousands of years of survival DNA.
All our paths are different, our journeys are different, but as we get closer to the peak, we become more and more similar. Patience my friend and keep up the hard work!
Read more thoughts from Valerie:
Disrupting the Pattern: More Than Just a Martial Tactic
Finding your “Why’s” in Life