The "Value of Drills" debate is will no doubt be heard on many forums for many years to come. I came across an old post of mine (on another forum) while I was cleaning out my files and thought I might throw some more blood on the water by posting it here. Ive amended it slightly to reflect some further thinking on the matter (i.e., to make it less of a rant).
1. Drilling vs. Sparring
Full contact stick fighting is a lot of fun and teaches several practical lessons. Since it can also be very painful, it helps you learn about your own fear in a controlled environment. Its as close to fighting with weapons as we can get without seriously hurting each other. For this reason, there are rules that keep both participants from getting seriously hurt. These include a form of social contract that prohibits you from repeatedly stomping on someones head after youve knocked him unconscious with your rattan stick, for example. No one ever died from stick sparring - at least not here in the United States. If that ever happens, it will happen for the same reason that deaths sometimes occur in amateur boxing or collegiate wresting: the unfortunate result of a freak accident or congenital anatomical defect that no one knew about.
Its true that many of the drills you see in FMAs do not translate well to full contact stick sparring. Thats because have very specific purposes, IMHO, that have nothing to do with full contact stick fighting. The distancing and timing found in many drills that are completely wrong for sparring with rattan sticks, begin to make more sense in the context of avoiding a blow-for-blow exchange with an edged weapon. Full-Contact stick fighting would look a lot different if the contestants fought with pointed four-foot razors. Drills, when done properly, are for learning the safest, most conservative and most efficient manner of defending while attacking not the other way around. This means you have survival mindset, and not a fighting mindset. If you doubt me, go to Home Depot and purchase a pair of machetes, sharpen them up, and start sparring. I guarantee that your technique will change drastically, if only from a sense of self-preservation. For that matter, no one that I know of spars regularly with axe handles, or butter knives either its far too painful.
2. Drilling and Sparring vs. Fighting
All kidding aside (yes, the machete, axe handle and butter knife information above is intended for information purposes only please dont do this at home, etc.) - heres an exercise that makes the point: the next time you spar with sticks, make the rule that the match ends as soon as either party scores a thrust with the tip of the weapon, however lightly, on the torso of his or her opponent. Those two inches of imaginary steel in the chest just took the life of the aggressor, who may have won the match by crashing in and threw you to the ground - but died a split second later. Heres another one (seriously): take a banana and snip off the end so that the soft part inside is showing. Use this as you weapon while knife sparring. As soon as the whistle blows, make it your business to drive that banana as hard and fast as you can into your opponents ribs as many times as you can in 3 seconds, not stopping no matter what he does, unless he drops you to the ground first. (This drill works best if the guy being attacked doesnt understand any of the rules.) Now imagine that the banana is a 10 butcher knife (or a 6 butter knife), and youll understand why knife sparring may be a valuable drill in some contexts but less valuable in others. (Note: if you decide to do this, then keep it to yourself. I do NOT want to responsible for the potential banana sparring fad that might sweep the nation.)
Consider that no one ever survived a rapier duel in 17th century Italy (or any other epoch where men fought to the death with edged weapons) by rushing in and trying to either strike first or hardest, or the most number of times. Master duelists from this era were (a) incredibly efficient and (b) incredibly conservative with their movements, and delivered precise techniques that were honed to perfection through constant practice. Yes, they did drills and practiced their own versions of sparring but they did these differently then than most people do them today, since they appreciated the real consequences of mistakes in the real world.
Mindset (or attitude) is the single most important attribute necessary for surviving a violent encounter. No amount of drills or sparring will ever prepare you for someone who is dead-set on crippling or killing you, since you cant train to fight like this in this society. The best you can ever hope for is a 50-50 chance of survival. If 2% of the attributes you learned doing drills come out and that makes you a split second faster than the other guy, then that may have made the difference between surviving or not surviving. That means that the drills that you do should be plain, basic, fundamental. They boil down to: how do I stop his weapon from hitting me, and how do I stop him from swinging it again. In the context of surviving an edged weapon encounter, the thousand hours that youve spent working on a drill will usually come down to who gets there first with the most (without getting killed in the process). Edged weapon encounters are bloody, ugly, and messy. For this reason, the best drills are the most basic and practical ones.
Finally, let me point out that training for street fights is idiotic and delusional, if not downright criminal. Those who find themselves in street fights almost always go looking for them. Furthermore a street fight is a far cry from an ambush, in which someone has almost always calculated how far he or shere willing to go to hurt you, and have stacked the odds greatly in their favor. For my money, edged weapons are not the first tools Id reach for to counter such an assault. Theyre a second-choice at best, if nothing else is around. If youre serious about learning how to defend your life or the lives of your loved ones, get a gun permit and learn how to shoot in the most efficient and practical way possible there are scores of schools that can teach this. Just keep in mind that this martial art is just as hard as any other, and requires the same level of commitment. (Consider, for example, the thousands of hours you must spend drilling to get a consistent sight picture.)
Respectfully,
Steve Lamade
San Miguel Eskrima
