Steve
Mostly Harmless
Whoa, back up. Take a deep breath. I called you out for making baseless presumptions about MMA athletes and TMA athletes. We judge ourselves based upon our intent, but judge others based upon their actions. In other words, you know you were conflicted but presume that MMA athletes are not because you have a bias.I stand by my comment on loyalty. You may disagree, and have examples in your area, but my experiance has not been the same as yours. Firstly You called me out for leaving and feeling conflicted. You wanna know why i left big shot, fine ill tell you. I left becuase i am in it for a hobby and fitness and to learn some self defense. I was not the lowest skilled but not any were near the top of our gym.
We have had a number of other hobby guys come in and leave after only a short while. We had one guy, a TKD WTF black belt that stuck around. He made the near perfect sparring partner for me. He was different then me, i was a infighter, he was obviously a outfighter. I learned much from him. I Was at the point in my striking training and flexibility that there was no more technical things for me to learn. Things like the blocks and the strikes, i had been shown and taught them all, as far as my flexibility would allow. The only things left were coaches more fancy kicks but they were not critical or even needed.
I was at the point were the only way i could keep learning my striking skill set for this school was in sparring. Now for months and months i had my tkd bb parnter, i learned much about closing the gap on a guy who loves to spam front kicks and other linear kicks to keep me at range. He got much needed practice on using his hands and defending himself up close. It was funny for me at the time. He had at least 4 years martial arts experiance on me, yet in sparring we were evenly matched.
Then came the day, he had to leave. He got a new job out of state and had to leave immediately. I dont blame him it nearly doubled his then current salary.
This was a problem for me, seeing as everyone else there was a veteran fighter with 3+ years mma experiance on me, and they all were getting ready for a fight.
I remember my last sparring match there, it was humiliating. It was the reason i quit. It was a round robin sparring session. We had a couple of guys come that had trained there previously and had come back to train more after some time off. The session also included sparring with the assistant coach, and my final sparring session was with the head coach. I had in all maybe a hour of sparring that day..
I steped up and it seamed as if all my training got tossed out the window. I just could not react fast enough. I felt like a rank newb all over again. I could not make any of my defenses work against any of them. I got hit way more then i was used to, as my defense was spot on previously. I was getting hit harder then i was used to, but i think i may have been going harder then i should have..
It was like my defense skills all got tossed, nothing was working, and they could hit me at will. It was so humiliating, i am better then this, i told my self. I felt like a mobile punching bag. I dont know why all my skills evaporated during that time, I have a feeling it was just the disparity of skill between me and them.
I stayed over to train more with head coach that day, and he wanted to go 3 more rounds. So we did, and it was even worse then the last session. I literally could not touch him, he was so fast. He didnt even have to effect a defense on me, he was so quick. I think i hit him one time, with a leg kick, but that was it.. When the session was over, he told me i was doing just fine. But i was nearly in tears, i was so upset. I didnt cry or anything but man i was close.. I felt like a failure, so totally a failure.... Like everything i did up till that point was a waste of time.
I am still conflicted because my coach would tell me to clean the sand out of my xxxxxx and to keep sparring. So knowing that i let him down i feel like a failure. I feel i failed to man up and take the harder sparring and enjoy it. I made the decision to leave because i felt i was no longer learning anything with regards to my striking.
They no longer have any hobby guys at that gym, only competing fighters, one of which is close to breaking into the big leagues. They were so fit, so amazingly confident, that is what i wanted so badly for my self. I left because i failed my self.. Up till recently i blamed it on taking a hard shot that rocked me, but i know that was just a excuse i made up to my self, to feel better. It did not work.
During my time there i saw many come and go, some were hobby guys others were competing fighters. Only the core group stayed, which was a small one. The rest had no loyalty at all..
As for whether you were truly conflicted or not, believe me, I don't care at all. Really. I have no reason to doubt you, and don't honestly care to know the details.
Regarding whether or not you will continue to have an unfounded and easily disproven bias against people who train in styles outside of your own, such as MMA, that's fine too. They're your hangups and you're entitled to have them. We all do.
But if you're interested in looking objectively at the situation, read Xue Sheng's post. People are people, and there is loyalty and disloyalty in any activity. If you look at MMA athletes from the elite levels all the way down, you will quickly find that many people train with the same guys throughout their careers. And those who do change camps don't do it lightly. It's a big deal when an elite MMA athlete moves from one camp to another precisely because it doesn't happen all that often.
And at lower levels, I can tell you that the men and women training in gyms are usually fiercely loyal to their teams. The nature of the training creates a strong bond.
Point isn't that MMA is better or worse than TMA. It's to point out that you're taking your own myopic beliefs and applying them to hundreds of thousands of martial artists throughout the world. As though your own experiences (true or not) are representative of an entire style.