Black Belt Boot Camp

[skribs]

In TKD the hours training are about the same. According to Skrib,s maths.

Also according to the author of the linked article.

My math was just to verify.

 

[drop bear]

Is it the same for your school? I mean it’s not a TKD boot camp is it?

MMA boot camp and they wouldn't grade to blue in bjj in that time.

 

[drop bear]

This is quite a leap in correlation, and not at all consistent with your usual scientific approach to measuring fighting skill. Is it because you are familiar with the instructor, or the program itself? I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here.

If we have an objective measure it would be different.

What we have is a bunch of black belts basically eyeballing it.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The 12 week program is determined a success by the organiser of the program.

Which is the same thing as 2 years in a normal class. The instructor determines the result.

So we just have to assume the 12 week program works as well as 2 years training.

You’re drawing a false equivalency- saying two measurements are equal simply because they are both set by someone. By that measure, any program is equivalent to any other, because a person always determines how success will be measured.

 

[drop bear]

You’re drawing a false equivalency- saying two measurements are equal simply because they are both set by someone. By that measure, any program is equivalent to any other, because a person always determines how success will be measured.

Ok. How are the programs separated?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Ok. How are the programs separated?

Since your prior post focused on how they're measured, let's focus there. They'd be better separated (or grouped) by the nature of the metrics, rather than the origin of them. Metrics taken from an organization are not inherently better or worse than those coming from an individual, which are not inherently better or worse than those coming from tradition. What matters is whether the metric is effective for what it's meant to measure (is it valid and reliable), and whether it measures what the program is intended to develop. If they are good metrics, they'd probably show whether the program develops what it intends to, which would be the point in this context.

Those measurements could focus on overall fight ability, specific principles of the art, controlled movement, fitness, strength, any other thing, or any mix of those things. If we're looking to categorize the programs, we'd have more meaningful categories by grouping those that purport to have the same focus, and measure them with similar metrics. So if two programs purport solely to develop fighting ability, that makes it somewhat simpler to compare than if one of them has that singular focus, while the other also has another focus (like promoting long-term mobility and ability for later in life, or whatever).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Ok. How are the programs separated?

Just so we can be clear on my previous post, before you go claiming I'm waffling or something, I'll use two example programs I feel confident in comparing: the NGA program I had, and the fight camp at the MMA gym you train at.

My program didn't last long enough to get anyone to BB, so we'll use a hypothetical example (don't worry, it'll be useful). I did test with progressive sparring (including ground fighting), so we'd have some overlap. But I tested a lot else, besides (specific techniques, NGA curriculum recall, and specific aiki body principles within the techniques, just to name a few). So it's clear I had a broader focus than the fight camp does. Even if all else is equal, we'd easily expect folks from the fight camp to be better fighters, because that was the sole focus.

I'm going to guess they'd fail everything on the specific aiki principles, because they'd be using other (also effective, and easier to develop competency at) grappling principles. They'd fail the entire NGA curriculum test, because they also haven't been trained at that. They might manage some of the specific techniques if they happened to be part of the fight camp training, though they'd be unlikely to know the names we use.

So testing the fight camp guys on my metrics would be a poor measure of the fight camp. Testing my students on the metrics of the fight camp would be more useful, but would ignore a large portion of their training, so would not be a very good test of the program, itself.

A much better comparison would be a 12-week NGA boot camp versus my 2-year students, and some 3-hour-per-week MMA 2-year students versus the fight camp. I suspect we'd find each pair didn't quite measure up equally - and there would probably be places where each part of a pair was better than the other.

 

[Flying Crane]

.

A much better comparison would be a 12-week NGA boot camp versus my 2-year students, and some 3-hour-per-week MMA 2-year students versus the fight camp. I suspect we'd find each pair didn't quite measure up equally - and there would probably be places where each part of a pair was better than the other.

There are some specifics in terms of the sample groups that would need to be taken into consideration, or the results will be meaningless. A large enough sample size for each group would need to exist so that it is legitimately representative of the untrained population at large and can be equated to a random sample, and the results can be interpreted to be meaningful in real life. If the groups are small, either group could have been populated with people who are naturally more athletic and physically talented, so their specific results may not be typical of the greater population. If one group was recruited out of a rugby league and the other group was recruited from a square-dance group, the results would probably be heavily skewed. That could be misleading and invalidate the results from the get-go. So talk of making comparisons is all fine, but proper sampling techniques and sample size would make this a pretty difficult task. You would need to get a bunch of people from all backgrounds to commit to the lengthy process of training, either for a few years or for 12 months but at a very intense level. I don’t think it will happen.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

There are some specifics in terms of the sample groups that would need to be taken into consideration, or the results will be meaningless. A large enough sample size for each group would need to exist so that it is legitimately representative of the untrained population at large and can be equated to a random sample, and the results can be interpreted to be meaningful in real life. If the groups are small, either group could have been populated with people who are naturally more athletic and physically talented, so their specific results may not be typical of the greater population. If one group was recruited out of a rugby league and the other group was recruited from a square-dance group, the results would probably be heavily skewed. That could be misleading and invalidate the results from the get-go. So talk of making comparisons is all fine, but proper sampling techniques and sample size would make this a pretty difficult task. You would need to get a bunch of people from all backgrounds to commit to the lengthy process of training, either for a few years or for 12 months but at a very intense level. I don’t think it will happen.

Agreed. We'd have to control for selection bias with random assignment for it to be meaningful. I mean, you'd expect folks who choose the bootcamp format to tend to already be in some sort of shape, or to expect they can handle it. Absolute beginners who aren't athletic are less likely to attempt that than to choose a less demanding format.

So, yeah, this is all hypothetical. It would be too difficult to control an experiment like this. Just controlling for what effect the drop-out rate has would be difficult, especially given the difference in program length (different reasons for dropping out).

 

[MetalBoar]

Setting aside whether 12 weeks is enough to be a BB or not, I think the boot camp idea really has some potential value if well thought out. If one were available in my area for an art or arts that I was interested in, I'd give it serious consideration as a means to jump start my journey with a new school, but not with any idea that it would do more than give me a good foundation to build from.

The problem I've encountered with many MA classes is the lack of a structured progression of the curriculum. Most schools I've trained with don't teach their programs as a sequential series of classes that build directly on the preceding class (as say an academic class would do). Rather, since they're ongoing, students pick things up as they can in the order that they encounter them. You might not get any reinforcement or correction for the technique you worked on last Monday for another 3 months, depending on the school, how many students are training at your level, and how consistently you're able to train. This can make the process of achieving a basic working competency with an art difficult and time consuming.

I haven't done any martial arts boot camps, but I did do an "Intro to Fencing" class with a friend that was 90 minutes, 3x per week, for 12 weeks and it was great. It was really nice to see a class structured to start with foot work, progress to the basics of attack and defense, and then progress to more advanced techniques, in a well thought out, ordered, fashion. I already knew how to fence, but my friend had zero experience and at the end of that time he knew enough to be able to fence with experienced fencers and had enough grasp of the fundamentals to be able to learn from those bouts and enough context to be able to fit new techniques into his existing body of skill.

That's not been my experience with many martial arts classes, nor does it sound like what @skribs and a lot of people experience with BJJ for example, where you just sort of "do it" until, after some undefined period of time, you start to "get it". If a 12 week boot camp could provide that sort of foundation, something that gave students enough of the basics to be able to really get the most out of the less structured format that might be the day to day, it seems like it could really accelerate your training.

 

[skribs]

That's not been my experience with many martial arts classes, nor does it sound like what @skribs and a lot of people experience with BJJ for example, where you just sort of "do it" until, after some undefined period of time, you start to "get it". If a 12 week boot camp could provide that sort of foundation, something that gave students enough of the basics to be able to really get the most out of the less structured format that might be the day to day, it seems like it could really accelerate your training.

I was going to quote an earlier part of your post and mention how it sounds like my experience with BJJ, but you did that for me!

That is one thing that I liked about my TKD school, was the classes are very structured for beginners. It's one thing I don't like about BJJ, that classes for beginners are very unstructured. And it's the opposite at advanced, I like [in theory] BJJ better than my Master's approach from TKD. Thus, my plan is when I open a TKD school, to be structured in the beginning, and less and less so in more advanced classes.

It's also part of why I temporarily left TKD to focus solely on BJJ. It had been about 7 months of just BJJ before I added in Muay Thai, and a month or so of that before I added TKD back in.

 

[Steve]

There are some specifics in terms of the sample groups that would need to be taken into consideration, or the results will be meaningless. A large enough sample size for each group would need to exist so that it is legitimately representative of the untrained population at large and can be equated to a random sample, and the results can be interpreted to be meaningful in real life. If the groups are small, either group could have been populated with people who are naturally more athletic and physically talented, so their specific results may not be typical of the greater population. If one group was recruited out of a rugby league and the other group was recruited from a square-dance group, the results would probably be heavily skewed. That could be misleading and invalidate the results from the get-go. So talk of making comparisons is all fine, but proper sampling techniques and sample size would make this a pretty difficult task. You would need to get a bunch of people from all backgrounds to commit to the lengthy process of training, either for a few years or for 12 months but at a very intense level. I don’t think it will happen.

It already has. Drop bears school does both and has for years. A direct comparison very much as described by Gerry. It kind of feels like you guys aren’t listening.

 

[drop bear]

Since your prior post focused on how they're measured, let's focus there. They'd be better separated (or grouped) by the nature of the metrics, rather than the origin of them. Metrics taken from an organization are not inherently better or worse than those coming from an individual, which are not inherently better or worse than those coming from tradition. What matters is whether the metric is effective for what it's meant to measure (is it valid and reliable), and whether it measures what the program is intended to develop. If they are good metrics, they'd probably show whether the program develops what it intends to, which would be the point in this context.

Those measurements could focus on overall fight ability, specific principles of the art, controlled movement, fitness, strength, any other thing, or any mix of those things. If we're looking to categorize the programs, we'd have more meaningful categories by grouping those that purport to have the same focus, and measure them with similar metrics. So if two programs purport solely to develop fighting ability, that makes it somewhat simpler to compare than if one of them has that singular focus, while the other also has another focus (like promoting long-term mobility and ability for later in life, or whatever).

Are we still discussing like to like training?

This is supposed to be TKD 12 weeks vs 2 years. Same number of training hours.

Obviously I would not suggest a MMA boot camp earns someone a TKD black belt.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Setting aside whether 12 weeks is enough to be a BB or not, I think the boot camp idea really has some potential value if well thought out. If one were available in my area for an art or arts that I was interested in, I'd give it serious consideration as a means to jump start my journey with a new school, but not with any idea that it would do more than give me a good foundation to build from.

The problem I've encountered with many MA classes is the lack of a structured progression of the curriculum. Most schools I've trained with don't teach their programs as a sequential series of classes that build directly on the preceding class (as say an academic class would do). Rather, since they're ongoing, students pick things up as they can in the order that they encounter them. You might not get any reinforcement or correction for the technique you worked on last Monday for another 3 months, depending on the school, how many students are training at your level, and how consistently you're able to train. This can make the process of achieving a basic working competency with an art difficult and time consuming.

I haven't done any martial arts boot camps, but I did do an "Intro to Fencing" class with a friend that was 90 minutes, 3x per week, for 12 weeks and it was great. It was really nice to see a class structured to start with foot work, progress to the basics of attack and defense, and then progress to more advanced techniques, in a well thought out, ordered, fashion. I already knew how to fence, but my friend had zero experience and at the end of that time he knew enough to be able to fence with experienced fencers and had enough grasp of the fundamentals to be able to learn from those bouts and enough context to be able to fit new techniques into his existing body of skill.

That's not been my experience with many martial arts classes, nor does it sound like what @skribs and a lot of people experience with BJJ for example, where you just sort of "do it" until, after some undefined period of time, you start to "get it". If a 12 week boot camp could provide that sort of foundation, something that gave students enough of the basics to be able to really get the most out of the less structured format that might be the day to day, it seems like it could really accelerate your training.

This is one of the things I think the standard curriculum in my primary art (Nihon Goshin Aikido) does well. There are definitely flaws and weaknesses, but you'd find a pretty standard progression that would seem similar across most schools (certainly all that I've been to or talked to someone about). The guy who brought it to the US built that structure and taught it to all the instructors he created, so it held up pretty well over time. I can go into any NGA school and have a pretty good idea what techniques (and other abilities) someone will have, simply by seeing the rank on their waist, then asking one question: "how many techniques do you have in X set?" (Where X is the set after their last rank test.)

It's handy when we would get together folks from different schools, or if someone transferred in from a different school.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It already has. Drop bears school does both and has for years. A direct comparison very much as described by Gerry. It kind of feels like you guys aren’t listening.

It feels like you're looking for a reason to be contentious.

There's no randomized control between those two programs, so while they make a reasonable comparison (having many of the same peopel involved, I'd expect), there are a lot of things that aren't controlled in a scientific way, which was the point of that little side discussion. We can get information, but not at a level we could quantify with.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Are we still discussing like to like training?

This is supposed to be TKD 12 weeks vs 2 years. Same number of training hours.

Obviously I would not suggest a MMA boot camp earns someone a TKD black belt.

Agreed. I was just responding to your vague comment earlier about programs obviously being the same because some person decidded the metrics for both.

So, getting back to the point you were deriving from, it'd depend what the intention of both programs was - and we'd have to have a reasonable evaluation to match the intention.

An interesting point here is that I don't think we'd need fully controlled studies to determine if each has an advantage, because I suspect each has an advantage to some of the people who'd select into that group, themselves. So someone who is highly driven and can take (and probably thrive on) the hard schedule of the bootcamp is probably best served by at least starting with that. While someone who isn't so driven (different priorities, or simply prefers to work at a methodical pace with time to think between classes) will likely do better in the long-form format. If I had the time to offer both (and enough students to make it worth doing), I think that'd be ideal to have both, so some folks could get that quick start. I highly doubt they'd have the same level of understanding as someone with the same training hours distributed over the calendar, but they'd get a fitness boost and a really good technical start.

 

[Steve]

It feels like you're looking for a reason to be contentious.

Here's the simple point, man. Drop Bear isn't speaking hypothetically. His school has been running both programs in parallel for as long as I can remember him posting on this forum. We know these types of programs work in general. I've shared multiple examples. And we know that these types of programs work on a very practical level in MA. Drop Bear's school demonstrates that and has for many years. He literally said earlier in this thread that some of the boot camp fighters out perform martial artists with years of experience.

It's time to move on from, "can it work?" to discussing how it works. The much more interesting and constructive conversation is about what would help make a program succeed and what might some of the pitfalls be? What are the pros and cons? What kinds of things lend themselves to a 12 week program and what kinds of things don't?

And maybe instead of arguing with Drop Bear, just listen to what he has to say. He's got actual experience on the topic. I'd like to learn more about what his school does and what pitfalls they've encountered.

There's no randomized control between those two programs, so while they make a reasonable comparison (having many of the same peopel involved, I'd expect), there are a lot of things that aren't controlled in a scientific way, which was the point of that little side discussion. We can get information, but not at a level we could quantify with.

I think we have enough data to support some meta-analysis. There are other kinds of valid analysis of data than a randomized control group. Through the sheer numbers and longevity of the program at drop bear's school, they have substantial apples to apples experience, combined with what we can see in analogous programs in other sports and non-sport activities, I think we're good. Where some analysis can help is to dig into why their program works.

 

[Steve]

Agreed. I was just responding to your vague comment earlier about programs obviously being the same because some person decidded the metrics for both.

So, getting back to the point you were deriving from, it'd depend what the intention of both programs was - and we'd have to have a reasonable evaluation to match the intention.

An interesting point here is that I don't think we'd need fully controlled studies to determine if each has an advantage, because I suspect each has an advantage to some of the people who'd select into that group, themselves. So someone who is highly driven and can take (and probably thrive on) the hard schedule of the bootcamp is probably best served by at least starting with that. While someone who isn't so driven (different priorities, or simply prefers to work at a methodical pace with time to think between classes) will likely do better in the long-form format. If I had the time to offer both (and enough students to make it worth doing), I think that'd be ideal to have both, so some folks could get that quick start. I highly doubt they'd have the same level of understanding as someone with the same training hours distributed over the calendar, but they'd get a fitness boost and a really good technical start.

Something to consider is that self selection isn't a good or bad thing. It's just a thing. In any program, there are going to be people well suited for it or ill suited for it. That may mean that those folks are not well suited for any 12 week program... or it may mean that those folks aren't well suited for THAT program.

 

[Yokozuna514]

Something to consider is that self selection isn't a good or bad thing. It's just a thing. In any program, there are going to be people well suited for it or ill suited for it. That may mean that those folks are not well suited for any 12 week program... or it may mean that those folks aren't well suited for THAT program.

As mentioned before most people wouldn’t even attempt a 12 week program of that nature. Most people don’t have the time or money but more importantly, most people are just not physically suited to train for 12 weeks under those conditions.

 

[Steve]

As mentioned before most people wouldn’t even attempt a 12 week program of that nature. Most people don’t have the time or money but more importantly, most people are just not physically suited to train for 12 weeks under those conditions.

Not sure I’m ready to agree that “most” people aren’t physically suited. We can definitely agree that some folks aren’t. But even that would depend on the program. Wouldn’t it?