Fixing the training model

[Martial D]

Two aspects happen through this combative learning process.

You get a closer approximation to what you are trying to understand. Which gives you a better appreciation of a complex issue. (I like the Muslim reference here.)

And the students advance the concepts which means there are twenty people in the class developing the martial art rather than one. Bigger gene pool stronger organism.

The muslim reference burns at both ends though. Yes you can get a more intimate understanding by befriending muslim people. You also might get desensitized to what islam does as a whole.

The same can be said for martial arts. Maybe you know that one yellow bamboo guy that can actually fight...

 

[hoshin1600]

That is kind of OPs point. You get people fighting and they would be better martial artists.

Kind of...maybe, but that's not what he said. What I read was that competition makes it quicker. In that I don't agree. I feel your either in an environment that fosters an effective result or your not. The only asterisk to that would be those people who train in something less than effective who slowly progress to the point where they can graduate to something better.
I could say I agree with the OP but my thoughts are a bit more nuanced. I don't see competition as the important factor but rather the immediacy and urgency of the needed result. However competition does fill that requirement but it could be something else like a job that involves dealing with violence.
Another important factor is checks and balances to insure that what your doing is not lotus eating chi balls. Again competition fills that need but could be achieved in other ways.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Losing is irrelevant for me.

I have 2 students. One who

- won all the time. Later on he became IBM manager.
- lose all the time. Later on he committed suicide.

IMO, it's a bad idea that one gets used to lose all the time. English has the perfect word "loser".

When a new champion was announced on the stage, the referee asked if anybody under the stage who wanted to challenge the new champion (old Chinese tradition). The old champion was sitting under the stage. His friend asked him if he was willing to get on the stage and challenge the new champion. The old champion said, "I prefer to lose right down here than to lose up there."

 

[Martial D]

However competition does fill that requirement but it could be something else like a job that involves dealing with violence.

Is this not also competition though?

Maybe the source of some of these disagreements might boil down to term definition.

Competition can also be the lion against the hyena for the zebra carcass. It can be the bouncer facing off with the drunken tough guy. It's not just official competitions or tournaments or matches. Competition is all of the us vs them stuff in life, really.

 

[hoshin1600]

This seems weird to me though. In every martial art, at least the vast majority, there are at least overtones of learning some sort of fighting skills. Even if you never want to use them, you still want the skills. Otherwise what are you even doing?

Often it's more than overtones, it's a stated promise.
"Sign up now and learn to defend yourself"
I always say this and I'm sure people dislike it,,most people don't want to fight and don't want to train hard. They like the self delusion of being a bada$$. They want the image without doing the work. And they want to delude themselves to feel better and curb their fear.
Thousands of people went out, bought a gun, locked it up in a safe and will never take it out and train with it, just so they can feel safer at night.

 

[Martial D]

I have 2 students. One who

- won all the time. Later on he became IBM manager.
- lose all the time. Later on he committed suicide.

IMO, it's a bad idea that one gets used to lose all the time. English has the perfect word "loser".

Ehh. I agree in a sense. In a sense I don't

Say you join a BJJ club as a guy that has never grappled. You will lose. you will lose a lot. You will be ragdolled and made to feel like nothing you can ever do will work.

Then I guess you can quit.

Or you can keep doing it until one day, something works against a guy it didnt before. Then another thing. And another, etc. That's how you get good at BJJ.

 

[Martial D]

Often it's more than overtones, it's a stated promise.
"Sign up now and learn to defend yourself"
I always say this and I'm sure people dislike it,,most people don't want to fight and don't want to train hard. They like the self delusion of being a bada$$. They want the image without doing the work. And they want to delude themselves to feel better and curb their fear.
Thousands of people went out, bought a gun, locked it up in a safe and will never take it out and train with it, just so they can feel safer at night.

You nailed it man. Both learning how to use a firearm and using how to use your body take real effort, the latter adding a level of sacrifice and dedication to the mix. The fact that there are plenty of people 'selling' the super effective street lethal skills that can be learned during a 4 hour seminar doesn't really help matters either

Our society has sort of moved more toward a quickfix mentality, or maybe it just seems like that to me because I am becoming more of a grouchy old man every day.

 

[hoshin1600]

Is this not also competition though?

Maybe the source of some of these disagreements might boil down to term definition.

Competition can also be the lion against the hyena for the zebra carcass. It can be the bouncer facing off with the drunken tough guy. It's not just official competitions or tournaments or matches. Competition is all of the us vs them stuff in life, really.

maybe but thats not how we usually define competition, in general we usually mean a sport. but what i am pointing out is that sport competition fills underling requirements and if you know what those are then you can fulfill those in other ways.
but this conversation is mixing two concepts.

1. the speed of gaining effectiveness.
2. the ability of gaining effectiveness.

i dont see the MMA model as being faster in skill building, more effective yes due to the need for immediate and proven results. the only way its faster is that your not wasting your time trying to throw chi balls at the other guy for 20 years.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Ehh. I agree in a sense. In a sense I don't

Say you join a BJJ club as a guy that has never grappled. You will lose. you will lose a lot. You will be ragdolled and made to feel like nothing you can ever do will work.

Then I guess you can quit.

Or you can keep doing it until one day, something works against a guy it didnt before. Then another thing. And another, etc. That's how you get good at BJJ.

Everybody will lose during skill development time. After you have developed your skill, you should not lose that easy. If a white belt BJJ guy can choke out a black belt BJJ instructor all the time, there is something wrong with that BJJ black belt instructor's training.

So for that BJJ black belt instructor, he should not say, "I don't mind losing on the mat". The reason is simple. His BJJ students faith may depend on him.

After my senior SC brother C. K. Lin's student Omar had won 6 tournaments in the past 3 years, David told Omar that Omar is not allowed to lose in any tournament for the rest of his life. Since Omar is David's best student, Omar's lose may reflect on David's personal MA reputation.

Mike Tyson will never say, "I don't mind losing."

 

[hoshin1600]

The fact that there are plenty of people 'selling' the super effective street lethal skills that can be learned during a 4 hour seminar doesn't really help matters either

Our society has sort of moved more toward a quickfix mentality, or maybe it just seems like that to me because I am becoming more of a grouchy old man every day.

the problem is not what people are selling but what people are buying. im not convinced its from the quickfix mentality. i think its more from the societal disconnect from violence in our daily lives. men in general still have an ingrained need for that aggressive outlet but in todays society they no longer understand what real violence really looks like. and even if they found it in a school they wouldnt want it.

 

[Martial D]

the problem is not what people are selling but what people are buying

Maybe you have more faith in humanity than I do lol.

I see these things are quite closely related. Advertising works, people are generally told what they want and tricked into thinking they decided that for themselves. I don't see any reason it wouldn't include this particular product. If you are looking to be able to defend yourself with 0 prior experience, and you are looking on google, or the phone book(do those things even exist anymore?), whats going to sound better? 'Learn street lethal techniques fast in this one hour seminar!' or 'join my boxing gym for ten years so you can talk like rocky balboa when you're 35'?

The fact that the former thing is vapourware isn't apparent unless you know about this stuff.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Boxing and wrestling is not quicker to learn.

You can learn single leg within 6 months. The single leg is the easiest wrestling skill to learn since it requires no leg skill. Some TKD instructor told me that within 6 months, you can also learn a good side kick.

With an effective "single leg", or "side kick", you will have better chance to be a good fighter than someone who has learn 10 MA forms.

When a Taiji guy spends 3 years trying to learn "how to sing Qi", you spend 3 years trying to learn "how to land your fist on your opponent's face." Of course you will get better result from your training.

 

[JR 137]

Ehh. I agree in a sense. In a sense I don't

Say you join a BJJ club as a guy that has never grappled. You will lose. you will lose a lot. You will be ragdolled and made to feel like nothing you can ever do will work.

Then I guess you can quit.

Or you can keep doing it until one day, something works against a guy it didnt before. Then another thing. And another, etc. That's how you get good at BJJ.

That’s how it went when I started training in a Kyokushin offshoot.

My first full class I sparred with everyone, including my sensei who was gearing up for his 4th dan test in 2 days. I had a straight line of bruises down my sternum, already visible when I changed out of my gi in the locker room. My sensei was it (he was responsible for most of them) and said “don’t take any of that personally. You did a great job tonight.” All I could think was “I really suck at this. I’ve got to get here everyday so I don’t suck anymore. It’s going to be a while.”

That was literally the conversation I had with myself. About 90% of the people who tried it didn’t come back for a second class. Typical bare knuckle percentage. In retrospect, I think I was one of the smart ones. Maybe not though

 

[drop bear]

Kind of...maybe, but that's not what he said. What I read was that competition makes it quicker. In that I don't agree. I feel your either in an environment that fosters an effective result or your not. The only asterisk to that would be those people who train in something less than effective who slowly progress to the point where they can graduate to something better.
I could say I agree with the OP but my thoughts are a bit more nuanced. I don't see competition as the important factor but rather the immediacy and urgency of the needed result. However competition does fill that requirement but it could be something else like a job that involves dealing with violence.
Another important factor is checks and balances to insure that what your doing is not lotus eating chi balls. Again competition fills that need but could be achieved in other ways.

In my experience people who are good at competition are good at professional violence. Generally.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I think we are talking past each other here. I am not suggesting that winning or losing is the key. Edit, I just did a quick scan of my previous posts, and I didn’t see where I mentioned winning at all. I did mention the tremendous amount of feedback one gets from losing, which I stand by.

Nope. We aren't talking past each other. It was mentioned by someone else and you talking about the feed back from losing just gave me an opportunity to share a perspective of my training. My comment wasn't directed towards you.

I just didn't want anyone think that I had an either or perspective, which is why I stated that winning as a motivator is something I can accept. Winning / losing motivation and feedback are the same to me. In terms of competition learning how to deal with losing is equally as important as learning how to win. There are lessons in losing as well and as you stated the feedback from losing is valuable.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There are lessons in losing ...

Old Chinese saying said, "百万军中无白旗 - A white flag should never be allowed to even exist in the army."

When battle starts, soldiers have to fight to win.

 

[dvcochran]

I disagree with the premise. Boxing and wrestling is not quicker to learn. Adding a competitive element does not increase the rate of skill building. However it does put a limiting factor on who is going to participate in the training and the focus on that training. In a cross section of 100 martial artists I would say very few would participate if they were punched in the face every class, however that is the expectation when you do MMA. MMA has a very condensed appeal with a bell curve of mostly young fit guys who actually want to fight. Put that group in any martial art and the results will be similar.

Wrestling is certainly one of the faster fighting techniques to learn on a beginners level. That is why you see it prevalent in middle and high schools. It is a select few who get proficient enough to take it to the collegiate level or beyond. It is only logical the styles that practices only fighting/sparring are going to learn said faster than the more comprehensive traditional MA's. Conversely, ask a MMA person to show very well rounded self defense skills and many will come up lacking. Not attacking anyone, just stating the obvious.

 

[dvcochran]

I think this is a great point. However, it's a common assertion that is accepted by many people, I think as a way to make their own lack of progress in their arts more palatable (i.e., "They're getting so good because what they're doing is easy. What I am doing is hard, and so it will take much longer to demonstrate progress.")
I hear what you're saying, but would disagree. Resistance training is the means to the end. Competition is the end goal. If you don't have an end goal, the training becomes the end goal, which is exactly why some arts fail to produce reliable results. My hypothesis here is that, if you add an end goal to any training, it will make the training more effective, and the result will be faster, more reliable results.

I think you're cautions with regards to competition are spot on. These came cautions could be applied to any application. Whether you're a bouncer, cop, or mafia enforcer, you will need to adapt your skills to different contexts depending on the specific self defense situation.

I think @JR137 made a very good point talking about getting outside of your same classmates and testing your limits. So the end game will and should change as we improve.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I have 2 students. One who

- won all the time. Later on he became IBM manager.
- lose all the time. Later on he committed suicide.

IMO, it's a bad idea that one gets used to lose all the time. English has the perfect word "loser".

This is how my brain works. If I can:
1. stop you from landing successful strikes
2. stop you from successful grappling attempts.
3. Land successful strikes of my own
4. Have successful grappling attempts.

Then how are you going to win against me?

Notice 1- 4 says nothing about winning or losing. Every sporting event I've ever won was because I focused on that tasks that needed to be done. Almost every time I've lost was because I was too concern about winning, when I should have been focused on the task at hand either during the game or in my training.

If a person loses all the time then it's due to
1. the person competing against someone that they won't be able to beat because the skill gap is too large.
2. the person not learning and using their failures to improve.

As for your student who committed suicide, his problem wasn't losing. His problem was not being able to deal with losing. (granted that losing was the actual reason why he committed suicide. It could have been other things in play other than losing)

When I first ran track in the 7th grade. I don't think I ever placed first in a race. If not placing first means that I'm a loser then, it means that I lost every track competition I was in for 3 years straight. My next 2 years wasn't much better. As a teen I was fine with losing so long as I always improved. By the time I was a senior (6 years of track), I had a big performance increase. I started to win every track event I competed in. The only reason I could win, is because each time I lost, I wanted to put in twice the amount of work that I did before so that I could improve. I've never focused on winning. I focused on improving so bit by bit I became better.

Was I good in all track events? Of course not. I picked the ones that I felt that I could improve in and avoided the ones where my improvement would be much slower.

My fighting is the same way. If I can always improve in 1-4 then I know it will be more difficult for my opponents to "win" against me. When I do competition, I'm not thinking about winning. I'm thinking about 1-4. If I want to hit someone in the face, I'm thinking, How can I hit that person in the face while doing #1 and #2. If I'm trying to win, then the process is How can I hit that person in the face really hard while doing #1 and #2

 

[JR 137]

Meh, winning, losing....it doesn't matter.

Like hell it doesn't. Like bloody hell.

What It Takes to be Number One
"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second.

Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization - an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win - to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there - to compete. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules - but to win.

And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don't say these things because I believe in the ‘brute' nature of men or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour -- his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear -- is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."

- Coach Vincent T. Lombardi

What It Takes to be Number One | Vince Lombardi