A MT argument while at work

[FearlessFreep]

OK, I'll pick another such as driving in heavy traffic. When one first starts driving it is scary as hell as there is so much going on. Years later (provided one learned) one can drive for miles in heavy traffic and often not even remember doing it. It doesn't have to be remembered consciously as in Step 1, step 2, step 3 and so forth. One learns to see the spaces between the cars and not the cars themselves. One begins to feel the spaces grow and shrink as the cars move about. If they pay attention to the cars, it can become intimidating.

Oh and be completely relaxed while doing it, making casual and smooth fluid movements and corrections.

There are lessons here that can be applied to training.

Actually. I think what is being learned here is not in learning anythin really in terms of fine motor control, etc... I think what you are simply doing is learning not to be stressed.

I'ma musician, and over the years I've played many many shows, concerts, etc... The killer is stress, it's nervousness. I can practice my scales and y solos for hours and hours, but the first time I get on stage, if I cannot control the rising pressure of facing all those people alone, then all those hours of practice fall apart. Some people can..somne people can mentally go back to the place where they were practicing and ignore the audience. Others it takes just getting up in front of peopl eover and over to get to the point that they don't make you nervous any more.

When I am in situations I'm familiar with, I am relaxed, and I play relaxed. But I can still get stressed if I'm playing new music or if I know there is a really good muscian in the audience or something.. Then I have to work mentally against the stress because it's the rising nervousness and self-conciousness that keep my fingers from doing what I want them to do. It has nothing to do with the training of my fine-motor skills, it's all about training my mind to stay relaxed and focused.

MA is the same. I mean, the first time I sparred my legs felt like lead; they wouldn't go where I wanted...I breathed way to fast ad got short of breath and winded. I mean it was a mess. The second time I sparred, the very next week, I had not trained hours and hours to increase my motor skills, gross or fine, I simply was more relaxed because I knew better what to expect. I was mentally more relaxed so I was physically more capable.

And that's the thing abouut MA, and about self-defense and fine-motor skill vs gross-motor skill. It's not about teaching your body to execute under stress, it's about teaching your mind to relax and not be overcome with the pressure. You execute because your mind is in a state of "hey, this looks familiar...' and you body can execute the same moves you've drill a thousand times, rather than your mind saying "oh, crap, I'm going to die..." which robs your body of the abililty to move.

 

[FuriousGeorge]

I would say that the "ego boost" you were referring to comes from willingly, and constantly getting into fights, not from Kanji, Gi's, belts and wooden swords.

Lol...touche...thats a good point. I've been thinking about this a lot since I posted yesterday and it occured to me that there must be dozens of MMA clubs full of macho fools who are all about fighting for the ego boost it gives them. so I guess no matter what you train in, the quality of your dojo and the mentality of the people you train with must be crucial. At my gym we all train in the spirit of fun and mutual support. We do a lot of sparring, and occasionally one of us has a fight, but there is a difference between entering a competition and getting into a fight. The latter implies a loss of control IMO, whereas the former can be about a lot of things. Sure there is ego involved in fighting, winning and losing both present interesting challanges to your ego, but if you approach it in the right spirit thats not a bad thing. Its when you let being a good fighter go to your head that the ego gets carried away. For me, the fight is something sacred, where we put our bodies on the line in order to see how effective our skills are. Its crude and violent, yes, but its real, and I'm not convinced you can get that kind of reality check any other way. When I fight someone, I see it as an honor, after all, they are agreeing that I may hurt them in the interest of progressing as a martial artist.

For the record, I just want to clarify too, that I don't mean to sound like I'm bashing TMAs, I have total respect for the traditional martial arts, I just feel like many of them are no longer practiced in a manner that actually breeds skilled martial artists. But this gets back into what I was saying about the individual school, the people you train with and how you train. I souned kind of judgemental in my last post, but I didn't mean to come off that way.

 

[Hand Sword]

No worries, I got what you were saying, that's why you got the "wink". However, what you're talking about, is what I touched on earlier. When We had the original debate at work, I got that the McDojo, watered down Training, family oriented version is what they based their views of the TMA's. It's all they grew up with, and all they had to compare. (yeah!, it, and us have been around that long-lol) They didn't know what it was like back in the day. Upon comparison to the MMA's for fighting, that version of the TMA's fails miserably.

 

[Tez3]

Furious George, I don't know much about the MMA clubs your side of the pond but on ours, and I know most of the clubs here, they are not in the least full of macho fools driven by their egos, far from it I would have to say! They are the least ego driven people I know. There are one or two fighters I know with large egos but trust me they are in the very small minority. I and we fight because we enjoy competing against fellow fighters, we enjoy playing 'physical chess' as Ian Freeman calls it. Call it fights or call it competing whatever, the atmosphere at shows are great, the audience knows and appreciates what is going on, we rarely have trouble and the fighters are a great bunch of people (we have several women fighters including Rosi Sexton who recently competed in Las Vegas)who go out of their way to help and encourage each other.

 

[FuriousGeorge]

Furious George, I don't know much about the MMA clubs your side of the pond but on ours, and I know most of the clubs here, they are not in the least full of macho fools driven by their egos, far from it I would have to say! They are the least ego driven people I know. There are one or two fighters I know with large egos but trust me they are in the very small minority. I and we fight because we enjoy competing against fellow fighters, we enjoy playing 'physical chess' as Ian Freeman calls it. Call it fights or call it competing whatever, the atmosphere at shows are great, the audience knows and appreciates what is going on, we rarely have trouble and the fighters are a great bunch of people (we have several women fighters including Rosi Sexton who recently competed in Las Vegas)who go out of their way to help and encourage each other.

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Did you catch my post before my last one? I am not in any way trying to bash MMA, MMA is what I do and I have a great love and respect for it. I was just trying to acknowledge for Hand Sword that what I am familiar with at my gym isn't necessarily how it is for everybody. My gym, and the people I train with are exactly how you're describing, friendly, mutually supportive, etc. And I tend to believe thats typical of the sport, but to be honest when we compete in local fights I am pretty unimpressed with the conduct of most MMA gyms in the area. There is a lot of bravado, bad sportsmanship, etc. I tend to think that experiences like yours and mine are typical of mma, that overall its about mutual support and growth and fun and friendly competition, but I think there are probably plenty of places where thats not the case. I guess in the end I just think there are good places to train and bad places to train, and thats true for every faction of the martial arts.

 

[Tez3]

We probabably don't have as many MMA clubs as you do but knowing and working with them I'm hard put to think of one 'bad' one. The biggest such as Wolfslair (where Bisping trains) has regular training sessions where people outside of their club can come and get more experience. London Shoot which may be the biggest club is very friendly and open, I can recommend going there if anyone is visiting London. Leigh Remedious' club is also a friendly open place to train, as is Quannum and the Northern Cartel, I wonder if the fact that we all train at each others clubs also makes for a good atmosphere? We rarely get incidents of bad sportmanlike behaviour, it simply gets squashed! Perhaps as MMA gets bigger in the UK it will change as more people we don't know get into it but at the moment its a relatively small community that is attracting so far (touch wood!) decent people.