Non-Wing Chun

[jobo]

I think you misunderstood, then.

to be clear, this isn't about whether it was a successful fight or not. It's whether his skills transferred from one context (training/sparring) successfully to another (fighting). BJJ has real issues in a fight. Alone, it can be a problem. That's not my point. I'm not arguing one style over another. I'm strictly talking about transfer of learning. Does a person's skill in one context transfer successfully to another. A BJJ guy, good or bad, is skilled enough that you will see those skills clearly in a fight. A boxer or MMA fighter is skilled enough that you will see those skills clearly in a fight. They translate clearly. Emin Boztepe's WC was unrecognizable as WC in the real fight we have on tape.

So, yeah, transfer of learning is all around us. You provided several examples yourself.

so the,weight if yoyr aguement is two vague assurances that you cant back up and one dodgy vid and from that youve reached a conclusion for all tmas

im still waitibg for your claim it all around us,

 

[Hanzou]

so the,weight if yoyr aguement is two vague assurances that you cant back up and one dodgy vid and from that youve reached a conclusion for all tmas

im still waitibg for your claim it all around us,

Wouldn't MMA, Bjj, and Boxing back themselves up? We see them in multiple street fighting contexts, and MMA is considered the objective standard of Martial Arts effectiveness.

 

[jobo]

Wouldn't MMA, Bjj, and Boxing back themselves up? We see them in multiple street fighting contexts, and MMA is considered the objective standard of Martial Arts effectiveness.

no they wouldnt back up the specific claim he made, why dont you makes your own points instead of just misunderstanding steves points, it doubling my work load having to explain what Steve said to you

 

[Hanzou]

no they wouldnt back up the specific claim he made, why dont you makes your own points instead of just misunderstanding steves points, it doubling my work load having to explain what Steve said to you

Projection?

 

[drop bear]

Projection?

Rejecting reality and substituting his own.

 

[Steve]

so the,weight if yoyr aguement is two vague assurances that you cant back up and one dodgy vid and from that youve reached a conclusion for all tmas

im still waitibg for your claim it all around us,

Get used to disappointment.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Look, at this point, I'm frankly tired of arguing the theory. The difference between training (including sparring) and application is all around us. We can see examples within MA training and in literally every other practical skill human beings learn from childhood to adulthood. We can agree to disagree, but it really seems like you're the one who feels attacked, and that's not my intention. I'm not arguing anything at this point. I'm just repeating the same points over and over in different ways in a vain effort to help you understand them. So, when you say I am willing to argue my point but not help you understand it, I take exception, because I've been trying to explain this concept to you for months. I've written hundreds of words trying to explain this to you in different ways to help you understand.

I believe you won't or can't understand it because it would mean that you would need to reevaluate your training model, which I believe you won't or can't do.

My last point on this, just for clarification. This has all been wholly academic to me. You've tried at least twice in this thread to make this discussion about my approach, but it isn't. I've mentioned several areas distinctly not related to my own teaching and training, and you've largely chosen to ignore those. My belief is that you have a strong emotional attachment to your point, but no real logic behind it. I've come to that conclusion because you ignore what should be the easy areas for discussion, and keep trying to bring it back to something that is more personal.

I'll just let it drop, because I'll never manage to get out of you what you have refused thus far to discuss.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

e a clear, black and white difference between competition and sparring. They are not the same thing. One is training and the other is not training. Honestly, and I'm being completely serious, I do not understand how this is controversial or confusing in any way. To me, it's like saying fish are not frogs, even though they both like water

Could you break this down a little more specifically, rather than just reiterating how obvious you find it?

I certainly agree that sparring can be very different from competition. In fact, I encourage my students (most of the time), to make their sparring different from competition in certain ways which I think will speed their progression in various skills which will help them in competition and elsewhere. But that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, sometimes it’s definitely not.

Let’s take BJJ, for example. Start two people on their feet, have them try to take each other down, achieve positional dominance (with an eye towards the assigned point values of the various positions), and submit each other. Is it sparring or is it competition?

Typically in sparring I might encourage my students to experiment with new techniques and tactics rather than just focus on their A-game. If they have superior physical attributes I might encourage them to focus on winning with technique rather than exploiting their physical superiority. I might encourage them to focus on being playful and learning rather than on “winning”. When I offer such guidance and the students follow it, then the sparring would indeed by qualitatively different from competition.

The thing is, it doesn’t always have to be that way. Sometimes I (or another coach) will encourage the student to bring everything they have to a match on the gym mats - physical attributes, their best techniques, their full motivation. Sometimes the students will do this regardless of what you tell them to do. (When I’m sparring with newer students it’s not uncommon for me to be in “learning” sparring mode while they are in full blown competition to win mode.)

My question to you is, when two practitioners in the gym are both sparring with full intent on winning (rather than just having fun or exploring a certain aspect of their game), how is that not competition just because an official tournament has not been declared?

I prefer to mostly spar for learning rather than “winning”, but I’ve certainly had my share of BJJ and Judo sparring matches which ended up indistinguishable from tournament matches. (BTW, in my Sumo experience there is really no distinction between practice matches and tournament matches. The short, intense nature of the matches doesn’t lend itself to my “sloth-jitsu” experimental learning sparring approach. Everything happens too quickly and you really have to push yourself as hard as you can.)

In striking arts like boxing and Muay Thai, it does make sense to clearly distinguish sparring from competition so that fighters don’t get concussed or otherwise injured before they get to their official matches. Nevertheless there are gyms that don’t believe in that approach. (Pat Militech’s gym was notorious for making every sparring session a real fight and fighters regularly got knocked out in sparring.) Even in gyms with a more sensible approach, things can escalate and I’ve seen people get knocked out in regular sparring. (Not to mention that some pros operate at a level where their controlled sparring is still hitting harder than less advanced amateurs are hitting in their official fights.)

In summation, I’m saying that while I personally believe in keeping sparring distinct from “competition” most of the time, the two domains have fuzzy boundaries and can overlap considerably. If you disagree, I’d like to see the details of your analysis.

 

[Graywalker]

So who do you think is better at defending themself? A MMA fighter, or some guy who does a kata with knives?

Depends, if the guy that trains with knives, is using his knives during the fight...an MMA guy, would be pretty stupid to fight him.

Without the knives, that would depend mostly on the individual, not the sport/art trained in.

 

[Steve]

My last point on this, just for clarification. This has all been wholly academic to me. You've tried at least twice in this thread to make this discussion about my approach, but it isn't. I've mentioned several areas distinctly not related to my own teaching and training, and you've largely chosen to ignore those. My belief is that you have a strong emotional attachment to your point, but no real logic behind it. I've come to that conclusion because you ignore what should be the easy areas for discussion, and keep trying to bring it back to something that is more personal.

I'll just let it drop, because I'll never manage to get out of you what you have refused thus far to discuss.

Well, for what it's worth, it seems to me that you have a vested interest in validating your non-fighting training model, and so you are either unwilling or unable to consider that what you're doing might be great training, but that you can't be an expert in something you are inexperienced at doing. I've explained this concept to you in at least a dozen different ways with different examples, patiently (I believe) answering all of your questions, and adapting the vocabulary from thread to thread in an effort to use the words in the same way you do. So, when you say that it's emotional, I want to assure you that the emotion is occasional frustration. When you ask the same questions over and over, and don't understand the answer, over multiple threads over the course of literally years, I honestly think it's absurd for you to say that this is about me ignoring anything.

But saying I have an emotional attachment to this point is like saying I'm emotionally attached to the rules of math. If a person who doesn't speak English decides he's going to teach English to other people, I think we'd all recognize that he's not qualified. If he insists that he IS qualified because he can recite phonetically every Tony Award winning Broadway musical for the past 50 years, plus the collected speeches of the last 6 presidents, I think we would still say that he's not qualified. Even if he insists that he's saying the words, he's not speaking the language. I wouldn't say in that case (as in this case) that we have an emotional attachment to the point, whether that guy ever admits his lack of expertise or not.

Here's an abbreviated summary of this discussion over the years. Disclaimer, this presents as a linear progression, but this has actually been a looping, overlapping discussion that we've had in different ways in multiple threads, so most of the points are presented once, but actually were discussed many, many.... many........ many times, in different ways.

Me: I don't think folks who are inexperienced with self defense should be teaching self defense to others.
You (and others): Wait... I teach self defense! How dare you?
Me: Do you have any experience? I mean, it's a basic thing... people shouldn't teach things without some expertise.
You (and others): But I have trained for X number of years in this system that is badass and tailored for self defense. We don't do that namby pamby sport stuff. This is the real deal, when your life is on the line.
Me: Has your life ever been on the line? Nevermind. It's simple. You have to actually do the thing you're learning in context in order to become an expert in it.
You (and others): {Scoff!} What about CPR?
Me: Okay. Let's look at CPR success rates overall and by people who are not in the medical field (actually shares statistics). But more to the point, would you want someone without any medical experience teaching even a simple procedure (not a skill) like CPR? It's like flying a plane. Who would you want teaching you to fly a plane, someone with only simulator experience or someone with hours actually flying planes?
You and others: But what about a plane crash? How do they learn that? What about Sully?
Me: Okay, what about him? He was able to land the plane in the Hudson because he had accumulated a lifetime of experience flying planes AND he was very well trained. If you're going to learn to pilot, he would be an expert among experts... AND if you're going to learn what to do in an emergency, his experience would be invaluable as an instructor. Like Sully, if self defense is about fighting, and neither you nor your students are doing any fighting, how can you expect to apply those skills under pressure in a different context?
You: Well... I still don't like how you use the term "application" and if you're saying I can't use my skills in self defense, I disagree.
Me: How many times have you self defensed?
You: I'm going to ignore that question. You're making this personal.
Me: Okay.
You: You're ignoring my questions.
Me: Fine. Here are more examples and yet another explanation of the same thing.
@dvcochran: Everything you say is so obvious, and you say the same thing over and over in different ways.
Me: I know you mean that as an insult, but I completely agree.
You: You're ignoring my question.
Me: You have to fight to learn how to fight. The more you fight, the better at it you'll get (especially if you have a good coach).
You: But what about sparring?
Me: Sparring isn't a fight, but it might be really good for training.
You: But what if I'm really mean when I spar?
Me: That's fine... might be better training. [insert explanation with examples ranging from cooking to driving a bus to piloting an aircraft, and an invitation to provide an example of any activity or skill outside of "self defense" where people can accumulate expertise without doing something]
You: I've sparred with people who don't even do Aikido.
Me: I mean, did you? (and if you recall, we had a long discussion about sparring at that time, where we talked about things like how someone isn't likely to shame you or make you look bad when you meet up for friendly training. It's collegial, friendly, and positive... in most ways the opposite of a fight. If I seem reluctant to rehash that, it's because I AM reluctant to do that again, but I encourage you to go reread it).
You: But, I mean... you're using the term "application." Isn't sparring an application?
Me: Okay, fine... I'll start using your definition of application.
You: Yay... so, I'm right!.
Me: No, there's actually a ton of information available about how to design training, and how experience and application fit. [Shares a lot of basic information and explanations, with sources, of instructional design theory, various training models, and where really great training can help people. Also explains a very simple, but often misunderstood concept of transfer of learning... along with more examples.]
You: You're ignoring me. it's really good sparring. Surely that counts, right?
Me: I'm frustrated.
You: Why won't you answer my questions?
Me: Let's try something new. Obviously examples, analogies, explanation of learning theory and instructional design principles, and a lot of creative writing aren't resonating. I'll share my hypothesis. I'll try to encapsulate everything we've discussed and distill it into three sample groups (plus a control group), eliminating as many variables as possible, to focus not on style but on the training model.
You: I think someone who trains in a TMA can be super ripped... as much as a guy in CrossFit.
Me: Well, theoretically... but if you walk into a school that doesn't apply the skills in context, outside of the insular group... such as a typical TMA, and compare the 1 yr, 3 yr, and 5 yr students vs people who have been doing CrossFit for the same length of time, the fitness levels will not be comparable.
You: You never answered my question about sparring.
Me: Yes I did. What about those groups? The proof is in the pudding. Lots of styles spar. Here's an example of what a high level WC person looks like sparring and here's what he looks like fighting.
You: But can you provide examples? If not, I think you're just being emotional.
Tony: Yeah, how about examples?

In a nutshell, this is how I've seen this conversation progress. It doesn't help that every thread seems to start from scratch, and in this case, a thread where this discussion is entirely on-topic was abandoned and this poor thread was hijacked.

 

[jobo]

Get used to disappointment.

its not a disapointment i oredixted you would not be avke to justify your statements, to that end its nice to be proved correct, but then i nearly always am

 

[Steve]

My question to you is, when two practitioners in the gym are both sparring with full intent on winning (rather than just having fun or exploring a certain aspect of their game), how is that not competition just because an official tournament has not been declared?

Good points. How constructive the sparring will be is entirely dependent upon how much experience the students have, how much experience their training partners have, and how much experience their coaches have?

Simply put, two people can spar with full intent on winning, and lack the foundation to learn anything constructive.

Edit: Just to add real quick, the point here is that we're not in a vacuum here. Your post includes a lot of elements that ground the training in real world experience in many different ways. This isn't a point about training (and what you describe is good training). It's about connecting the training in different ways to things outside the training. Those threads, whether they are amateur or professional, are venues for application. Cops apply fighting skills, but not in the same way an MMA fighter does. Though both are applying those skills, and can bring that experience back into training.

 

[jobo]

Good points. How constructive the sparring will be is entirely dependent upon how much experience the students have, how much experience their training partners have, and how much experience their coaches have?

Simply put, two people can spar with full intent on winning, and lack the foundation to learn anything constructive.

well no, not really, youl learn to move to not get hit and youl learm to hit people who keep moving, thats a natral outcome of the activity, provided your reasonably evenly matched otherwise its to short to have a lot of benfit in the short term for either party

 

[Highlander]

Sure, I'll give one example of what I mean.

Emin Boztepe sparring:

Emin Boztepe fighting:

Few points here.
1.I can see the transfer of the training that Emin had in this video. The 'fight' started past punching range and went straight to grappling. So you won't see the striking from the first 2 videos and he used the WT principles very well. Dropped into a good stance. When we he was about to be thrown he sat his hips back and counter threw. Followed his opponent down while keeping spine straight. Didn't wrestle but got to a point where he could punch and threw several pulled punches to the face.
2. The reason I said 'fight is because I'd agure this is more of a sparring match. Emin was sent there to show him up (we won't get into the controversy of why) but he wasn't there to really hurt him. So it was a non-friendly sparring match.
3. Emin grew up getting in multiple street fights as a young adult so he has fighting experience and experience in multiple other styles.

Even if we take the WC is awesome vs WC is crap stuff off the table. This is a video of a guy with alot of fighting experience vs someone who probably hasn't really pressure tested his training in his life (he sorta just flopped around on the ground) the video still proves your point to an extent. But from the opposite side. Emin had the upper hand because he had pressure trained his art.
That being said I disagree that the only way to get good at fighting is to fight (ring or street) you just need to do what I call "pressure train"

 

[Steve]

Few points here.
1.I can see the transfer of the training that Emin had in this video. The 'fight' started past punching range and went straight to grappling. So you won't see the striking from the first 2 videos and he used the WT principles very well. Dropped into a good stance. When we he was about to be thrown he sat his hips back and counter threw. Followed his opponent down while keeping spine straight. Didn't wrestle but got to a point where he could punch and threw several pulled punches to the face.
2. The reason I said 'fight is because I'd agure this is more of a sparring match. Emin was sent there to show him up (we won't get into the controversy of why) but he wasn't there to really hurt him. So it was a non-friendly sparring match.
3. Emin grew up getting in multiple street fights as a young adult so he has fighting experience and experience in multiple other styles.

Even if we take the WC is awesome vs WC is crap stuff off the table. This is a video of a guy with alot of fighting experience vs someone who probably hasn't really pressure tested his training in his life (he sorta just flopped around on the ground) the video still proves your point to an extent. But from the opposite side. Emin had the upper hand because he had pressure trained his art.
That being said I disagree that the only way to get good at fighting is to fight (ring or street) you just need to do what I call "pressure train"

Thanks, and to be clear, this is NOT intended to be a WC is great vs WC stinks example.

When you say "pressure train" maybe it would help to reframe my point just a little. Someone in a really good training program will make progress. But in a year, will they make enough progress to apply skills successfully? What about in three years or five years? Depends, for sure. If it's a complex skill set, like self defense, we see guys with a year or three or even five years of MA training in all kinds of styles that can't apply those skills in a fight. In the Cheung vs Boztepe example above, you mentioned that Boztepe had experience fighting but the other guy didn't. You mentioned that he "just sorta flopped around on the ground." I agree. Now, as a lay person to WC, I didn't see anything resembling WC in Boztepe's fight, but I'll take your word that it's there. But I assume that Cheung has sparred and trained. Right? I didn't look for videos of Cheung sparring, but can we reasonably assume that he trains in a similar manner to Boztepe? How long has Cheung been training? More than five years, I'm guessing, but in a fight, he just sorta flopped around on the ground.

The overarching point that I always try to reiterate is not about whether a person can eventually, successfully use WC or some other style in a fight. That's definitely part of it, don't get me wrong. But the real point is whether that's a reasonable way to teach people something as critical as how to fight, whether it's efficient, whether it's reliable, and whether, ultimately, it could ever produce an expert (i.e., someone who is skilled enough to teach other people). I would say that if we're talking about a training program absent any kind of external application of the skills, the answer to all of those is no. Can you teach someone to drive a bus without ever allowing them to drive a bus? I don't know... maybe? But is that a reasonable way to do it? Is it efficient? Would it be reliable? And could a person who has never driven a bus, given any amount of time and training, ever be considered an expert?

 

[Highlander]

Thanks, and to be clear, this is NOT intended to be a WC is great vs WC stinks example.

When you say "pressure train" maybe it would help to reframe my point just a little. Someone in a really good training program will make progress. But in a year, will they make enough progress to apply skills successfully? What about in three years or five years? Depends, for sure. If it's a complex skill set, like self defense, we see guys with a year or three or even five years of MA training in all kinds of styles that can't apply those skills in a fight. In the Cheung vs Boztepe example above, you mentioned that Boztepe had experience fighting but the other guy didn't. You mentioned that he "just sorta flopped around on the ground." I agree. Now, as a lay person to WC, I didn't see anything resembling WC in Boztepe's fight, but I'll take your word that it's there. But I assume that Cheung has sparred and trained. Right? I didn't look for videos of Cheung sparring, but can we reasonably assume that he trains in a similar manner to Boztepe? How long has Cheung been training? More than five years, I'm guessing, but in a fight, he just sorta flopped around on the ground.

The overarching point that I always try to reiterate is not about whether a person can eventually, successfully use WC or some other style in a fight. That's definitely part of it, don't get me wrong. But the real point is whether that's a reasonable way to teach people something as critical as how to fight, whether it's efficient, whether it's reliable, and whether, ultimately, it could ever produce an expert (i.e., someone who is skilled enough to teach other people). I would say that if we're talking about a training program absent any kind of external application of the skills, the answer to all of those is no. Can you teach someone to drive a bus without ever allowing them to drive a bus? I don't know... maybe? But is that a reasonable way to do it? Is it efficient? Would it be reliable? And could a person who has never driven a bus, given any amount of time and training, ever be considered an expert?

I didnt take it as an attack on WC at all. And I appreciate the 'take your word for it comment' takes a whole discussion off the table so we can focus on the overall topic.
As far as how Cheung trained I honestly have no clue. But I'm willing to bet, off this video alone, that he doesn't train the style under pressure. Emin, I know for a fact, does. Often.
When I say train under pressure it can be a lot of things. Maybe you focus on a single attack, say a hook, and have the partner come in throwing the technique at you at full speed. If you don't stop it or move youre getting hit, hard. You raise the quality and power/speed of the attack based on the training MA guys skill level. The idea is to slowly make this more free where you have one guys throwing whatever they want as hard as they want and the MA must stop it. We keep this different from sparring by doing short burst. Say 3-5 secs then reset. This gives you a pretty good idea of how to use the MA under some real pressure. Is it a fight? No. But this training well help in a fight

 

[Highlander]

@Steve I had a student that we trained for a while with this idea. Maybe roughly a year or more. We pressure trained and drilled and hit eachother. One day he got attacked by a guy with a machete (road rage incident) he had a collapsible baton in his car and used it to defend himself... BUT. He had never pressure trained with it... he swung at the guy and missed.. he said he had a flash of 'this is gonna get me killed so he dropped the baton and stepped in on the guy. He grabbed his arm and proceeded to defend himself with his fist. Something he had trained under pressure in class. He took the guy down and got away unscathed. Training under pressure gave him the skills he needed to fight and saved his life

 

[Hanzou]

Emin Boztepe fighting:

Willy should have learned some jiujitsu.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Well, for what it's worth, it seems to me that you have a vested interest in validating your non-fighting training model, and so you are either unwilling or unable to consider that what you're doing might be great training, but that you can't be an expert in something you are inexperienced at doing. I've explained this concept to you in at least a dozen different ways with different examples, patiently (I believe) answering all of your questions, and adapting the vocabulary from thread to thread in an effort to use the words in the same way you do. So, when you say that it's emotional, I want to assure you that the emotion is occasional frustration. When you ask the same questions over and over, and don't understand the answer, over multiple threads over the course of literally years, I honestly think it's absurd for you to say that this is about me ignoring anything.

But saying I have an emotional attachment to this point is like saying I'm emotionally attached to the rules of math. If a person who doesn't speak English decides he's going to teach English to other people, I think we'd all recognize that he's not qualified. If he insists that he IS qualified because he can recite phonetically every Tony Award winning Broadway musical for the past 50 years, plus the collected speeches of the last 6 presidents, I think we would still say that he's not qualified. Even if he insists that he's saying the words, he's not speaking the language. I wouldn't say in that case (as in this case) that we have an emotional attachment to the point, whether that guy ever admits his lack of expertise or not.

Here's an abbreviated summary of this discussion over the years. Disclaimer, this presents as a linear progression, but this has actually been a looping, overlapping discussion that we've had in different ways in multiple threads, so most of the points are presented once, but actually were discussed many, many.... many........ many times, in different ways.

Me: I don't think folks who are inexperienced with self defense should be teaching self defense to others.
You (and others): Wait... I teach self defense! How dare you?
Me: Do you have any experience? I mean, it's a basic thing... people shouldn't teach things without some expertise.
You (and others): But I have trained for X number of years in this system that is badass and tailored for self defense. We don't do that namby pamby sport stuff. This is the real deal, when your life is on the line.
Me: Has your life ever been on the line? Nevermind. It's simple. You have to actually do the thing you're learning in context in order to become an expert in it.
You (and others): {Scoff!} What about CPR?
Me: Okay. Let's look at CPR success rates overall and by people who are not in the medical field (actually shares statistics). But more to the point, would you want someone without any medical experience teaching even a simple procedure (not a skill) like CPR? It's like flying a plane. Who would you want teaching you to fly a plane, someone with only simulator experience or someone with hours actually flying planes?
You and others: But what about a plane crash? How do they learn that? What about Sully?
Me: Okay, what about him? He was able to land the plane in the Hudson because he had accumulated a lifetime of experience flying planes AND he was very well trained. If you're going to learn to pilot, he would be an expert among experts... AND if you're going to learn what to do in an emergency, his experience would be invaluable as an instructor. Like Sully, if self defense is about fighting, and neither you nor your students are doing any fighting, how can you expect to apply those skills under pressure in a different context?
You: Well... I still don't like how you use the term "application" and if you're saying I can't use my skills in self defense, I disagree.
Me: How many times have you self defensed?
You: I'm going to ignore that question. You're making this personal.
Me: Okay.
You: You're ignoring my questions.
Me: Fine. Here are more examples and yet another explanation of the same thing.
@dvcochran: Everything you say is so obvious, and you say the same thing over and over in different ways.
Me: I know you mean that as an insult, but I completely agree.
You: You're ignoring my question.
Me: You have to fight to learn how to fight. The more you fight, the better at it you'll get (especially if you have a good coach).
You: But what about sparring?
Me: Sparring isn't a fight, but it might be really good for training.
You: But what if I'm really mean when I spar?
Me: That's fine... might be better training. [insert explanation with examples ranging from cooking to driving a bus to piloting an aircraft, and an invitation to provide an example of any activity or skill outside of "self defense" where people can accumulate expertise without doing something]
You: I've sparred with people who don't even do Aikido.
Me: I mean, did you? (and if you recall, we had a long discussion about sparring at that time, where we talked about things like how someone isn't likely to shame you or make you look bad when you meet up for friendly training. It's collegial, friendly, and positive... in most ways the opposite of a fight. If I seem reluctant to rehash that, it's because I AM reluctant to do that again, but I encourage you to go reread it).
You: But, I mean... you're using the term "application." Isn't sparring an application?
Me: Okay, fine... I'll start using your definition of application.
You: Yay... so, I'm right!.
Me: No, there's actually a ton of information available about how to design training, and how experience and application fit. [Shares a lot of basic information and explanations, with sources, of instructional design theory, various training models, and where really great training can help people. Also explains a very simple, but often misunderstood concept of transfer of learning... along with more examples.]
You: You're ignoring me. it's really good sparring. Surely that counts, right?
Me: I'm frustrated.
You: Why won't you answer my questions?
Me: Let's try something new. Obviously examples, analogies, explanation of learning theory and instructional design principles, and a lot of creative writing aren't resonating. I'll share my hypothesis. I'll try to encapsulate everything we've discussed and distill it into three sample groups (plus a control group), eliminating as many variables as possible, to focus not on style but on the training model.
You: I think someone who trains in a TMA can be super ripped... as much as a guy in CrossFit.
Me: Well, theoretically... but if you walk into a school that doesn't apply the skills in context, outside of the insular group... such as a typical TMA, and compare the 1 yr, 3 yr, and 5 yr students vs people who have been doing CrossFit for the same length of time, the fitness levels will not be comparable.
You: You never answered my question about sparring.
Me: Yes I did. What about those groups? The proof is in the pudding. Lots of styles spar. Here's an example of what a high level WC person looks like sparring and here's what he looks like fighting.
You: But can you provide examples? If not, I think you're just being emotional.
Tony: Yeah, how about examples?

In a nutshell, this is how I've seen this conversation progress. It doesn't help that every thread seems to start from scratch, and in this case, a thread where this discussion is entirely on-topic was abandoned and this poor thread was hijacked.

Again, you're trying to make this about me and my training model (which you don't actually know). I'm just trying to understand a specific point.

Beyond that, you've put several weak arguments into my mouth that I never made. That's borderline strawmanning. You've lost your objectivity on this, in what appears to be an attempt at something directed at me (because that's who you keep bringing it back to), though I'm not sure what. What you think of my training model no longer interests me. It did when you were giving good, objective input I could learn from. You've stopped doing that.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Good points. How constructive the sparring will be is entirely dependent upon how much experience the students have, how much experience their training partners have, and how much experience their coaches have?

Simply put, two people can spar with full intent on winning, and lack the foundation to learn anything constructive.

Couldn't the same be said for competition?