Many to One Relationship

When you have one or two children, it’s easy to handle them because each parent can hold a child’s hand and keep an eye on them. Using a sports analogy, the parents have man-to-man coverage. On that fateful day when you have three (or more) children, the man-to-man technique doesn’t work. You, the parents, are outnumbered. That’s when you move to a zone defense, you handle children by area—herd them into what they need to do. There are many of them and only two of you. It is worse for single parents who are doing the work of two parents.

This analogy also applies to self-defense. There are an infinite number of ways to be attacked. Learning a defense or two for each one of those ways would be impossible. I’ve done a lot of computer programming and database design in my youth. There is a concept of relational links between data types. When designing relationships between data, you ask yourself, “Is it a one-to-many or a many-to-one relationship?”

Hash Table or Relational Data

An example of a one-to-many relationship is a customer identification number. The customer has one number, but it links to all their orders. That’s one too many. In a way, it is a method of sorting the information into smaller chunks or sets. This is what we apply to our martial arts. We take a move that works well and apply it to a range or a group of attacks.

Angles of Attack

We group a range of attacks or an angle of attack into a category. One particular attack or an infinite amount can come from that angle or group of angles. This limitation allows us to reduce the infinite attacks to a set of perhaps nine or so attack groups. Nine groups are a much more manageable number of things to learn and remember. You can get good at this reduced set of attack types. Anything is better than knowing an infinite amount of something.

Zone Defense vs Man-to-Man Coverage

You can’t learn a technique for every situation you will encounter. Instead, you know pieces of defense to apply to your problem. Modifying on the fly represents a skill the best warrior develops. Adaptation helps you keep your zone free from dangerous attacks.

In your quest to be a good student, take concepts from other walks of life or other fields. Can the idea be applied to your martial art? Can that way of thinking open up new ideas and concepts? In this case, zone defense is borrowed from basketball and applies well to martial arts.

This concept is implemented in Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) or Philippine Combatives through their angles of attack, defined zones, and the use of the same movements for stick, knife, fist, or foot attacks. Adapting and implementing this concept to Kempo has aided the effectiveness of the art.

Join our Philippine Combatives course to utilize this concept to enhance your fighting ability. Sticks and space are limited, so enroll now.