Nimravus said:
Thing is, with the swimming analogy, when things go too fast people often start confusing their backyard pool and the ocean.
Nice analogy. But there is of course more to the situation.
I think the big problem is ego. People want to win and have other people know they won. It has been my experience that when people start to do things that let them be one up on another person in the dojo, things are going to evolve into who can do better in that situation. And I would like people to recall that Darwin did not really say that sparring made living organisms
improve. Rather it merely made them
better adapted to the enviroment.
The enviroment in the ring is not combat. But people who notice who does better in the ring tend to adapt what they do for the ring and lose sight of the street. They leave things hanging out that will get cut off in a real fight and if it is pointed out to them they will give the excuse, "oh- I won't do that in a real fight."
The hell you won't.
I went drinking with some guys who do budo here in Japan and one guy who did MMA was talking about how he easily knocked out Kyokushin guys in his class. Kyokushin does some pretty horrendous things in their tournaments. But they do not allow punches to the face. These guys that went into my drinking buddy's place knew that they had to watch their heads, and still got clobbered. Months after they started training in this guys MMA dojo they still could not cover themselves in the head after a few years of training themselves to not think about punches to the face.
Oh yes, I am sure everyone says that the cure is more realistic rules. But no rule is near the level of realism of a real fight. No one worries about the guy pulling a knife out in a sparring session anymore than the Kyokushin guys used to think about someone throwing a punch at their face. And we tend to adapt to that reality and ingrain it into us.
Hence, (trying to rap this up in a hurry) we should get rid of the idea that someone should "win" in a sparring match and try to prevent people from being able to recognize who is better than who in training. And we should try a variety of situations and rules, none of them enough for people to start reallly adapting to the rules. For example, half speed trainign with goggles on and taps to the eyes being permited might make people concious of how oepn they leave themselves to an eye gouge while doing scenario training where a few students in a teaching role may jump in unexpectedly or produce weapons unexpectedly.
Hatsumi dropped sparring because he found that it was causing his gaijin students to develop bad habits. We need to think about that, and the resons behind it, if we are to use sparring.
