Hubad drills or free flow Q and A style?

[realg7]

My Guro and I are doing free flow question and answer strike and defend knife drills. I feel like these are better than rehearsed Hubad drills. I like finding the best way to defend against random attacks and also get creative on using different angles of attack. Better for on the fly improv in my opinion.

What is your preferred method of drilling in the Kali Arts?

He is a student of Marcaida Kali and Pekiti Tirsia and so am I by default!

Have a great day brothers of the blade..?

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[Danny T]

Free flow is good and in my opinion important...
We call it sparring.

 

[geezer]

Hubad is just a repeating platform from which you can launch a lot of different attacks and defenses. It's advantage is that it cycles over and over so you can get a lot of repetition in and really "burn-in" the movements into "muscle-memory".

The disadvantage is that it is a very artificial pattern that alternates between offense and defense. I think training to give up your offense to your opponent could lead to problems. I feel that flow drills where your coach or training partner feeds you a variety of unexpected attacks which you have to counter is more useful. That said, I still train both ways.

 

[Blindside]

The pre-structured platform drills are where I start guys and they all have particular lesson plans built into them. Once they have built reflexes using those drills I usually start mixing the drills and moving back and forth between them and once they are comfortable with that we usually just free flow it. Tonight's class was all free flow, no prearranged drill. I but a focus on the feeder's part and a focus on the receiver's part, but within those constraints everything was open.

 

[Rich Parsons]

Not Kali, Arnis and Escrima ,

I do not like Hubud for the harsh block while working with a knife. Empty hand no problem to get people started. Yet for a knife that hard or harsh block is to much feedback to your opponent to go somewhere else.

As Geezer and Blindside stated , repetitive drills are useful and I like them. I would just modify the repetition to be more passing / deflecting versus stopping.

Of course the random flow drills work nice once you have a few moves to practice.

 

[Touch Of Death]

No form of training is so good, you neglect the other idea. Decide what percentage of time, each deserves (or have someone do that for you), and move on.

 

[Danny T]

There is a time and place for both methods.
How much time is to be spent will depend on the individual's ability to grasp and apply.

 

[Charlemagne]

Drills such as hubud are just that, drills. They are designed to teach certain tactics for dealing with a particular angle at a particular range, and if done with proper intent and playing the drill true, they can be great teaching/learning aids for developing mechanics and attributes.

Hubud, like knife tapping, is about being behind in timing (otherwise, why would you be reacting to a strike from your opponent at that range?), and unfortunately, most places that I have seen teach the drill never even mention that aspect, let alone emphasize it in training, therefore the person who is being attacked is moving at the same time as the person doing the attacking. Combine that with a bunch of repetitions that are static in nature and intent, and you end up with a dead drill that does not lead to learning or the development of the attributes that it was designed to. Another problem that shows up regularly is if the timing is actually emphasized, a person's ego is often such that they get competitive and start trying to win the drill rather than playing it true (I think most have fallen into this at one time or another, myself included).

Yet another issue is that often, the person feeding fails to give a realistic attack. This is a common issue in FMA in all sorts of drills, not just hubud. If a strike is not coming in on a realistic angle and actually targeting you, it is very hard to work the mechanics and tactics that a drill is designed to teach. I see this all the time with knife tapping and with other drills, even with the long weapon. Sometimes this is intentional, as in the attacker changing the angle of their attack in an effort to win the drill and not get countered, and sometimes it is not, but the result is the same in that you end up with a meaningless drill that might look good at seminars, but has no chance of actually conveying the information it was designed to.

If taught and practiced properly, hubud should then eventually be taken out of the drill and practiced in a more random sequence, and then eventually in complete free flow/sparring.