"Breaking" your opponent

[Andrew Green]

n order to win you have to break your opponent, Usually this means hurting them. But there are other ways to break a person.

In the traditional styles there is often a idea of training physically, mentally and spiritually. In fighting this is no different, and if you break one of those three legs, the person will fall.

Physical is easy to understand, hurt the guy till he can no longer function. When that happens you win.

To defeat a person spiritually you have to make them NOT want to be there. Could be something as simple as landing a good, clean, hard blow right off the start. Could be taking everything they got to unload and keep comming with a smile on your face.

When teaching self-defence this is a hard one to overcome, once someone feels like the victim, and feels like the best they can hope for is to stop trying and hope to survive they have lost.

That final fight in The Ultimate FIghter was a good example of two fighters who refused to have there spirit broken, even when there bodies where beat.

Mentally was Royce Gracie's game in the early days. Right in that first fight when he took Art Jimmerson to the mat. His opponents wanted to fight, there bodies where capable, but yet they had no idea how to go about doing it.... Because of that there spirit broke, and then there body.

Now when it comes to strategy we often say take advantage of the opponents weaknesses. If they are a boxer take them down, if they are a grappler keep them up, etc.

But a even smarter fighter can find holes in other places as well

 

[lonecoyote]

I think most people break themselves. They carry around so much baggage and crap from other training, old street fights, things that happened to them far in the past. All you have to do is trigger it, remind them of their old defeats. Most people do it to themselves, regardless of what you do. All you have to do is not fall into the same trap. Every day is new, every challenge, every opponent is a new chance to impose your will, live your dream, no yesterday, only right now.

 

[Paul Genge]

The funny thing is that most people that are preoccupied with self defence break themselves and not their opponents. Years of thinking about the worse case senarios can have a detrimental efect on the personality, spirit and soul.


Likewise some practices that are aimed at developing and testing skills believed necessary for this moment of life and death struggle do far more damage to our bodies than a one of thrashing may leave us with. The damage is often done when young, where our natural instincts for self preservation are dulled by the aggression and energy of youth.

For anything to be truelly self defence it must not only provide us with the skills to keep ourselves, friends and families safe, it must heal us physically and mentally. Anything less will not do.

Paul Genge
Russian Martial Arts Northwest

 

[Andrew Green]

The funny thing is that most people that are preoccupied with self defence break themselves and not their opponents. Years of thinking about the worse case senarios can have a detrimental efect on the personality, spirit and soul.

Yup.

 

[Sin]

When I go into a match, after I get on my pads, and before I put in my mouth peice, I do a little bruce Lee bounce and say...."lets have some some fun" To me hitting and being hit is fun, its the ultimate high...Even if I'm bleeding, spitting out blood, or doubled over...I am smiling...to be beaten is to learn and to learn is to be great...