Have fun at AMC. They have some good fighters and world class instructors there teaching their “very simple stuff”. Simple of course does not mean easy.
I've visited their classes. It's not that hard. No harder than judo or karate. Actually a lot less hard than judo and a lot of karate I've been to. Perhaps that's why Salaverry lost his last UFC fight, although he's opened his own place too now.
What do you see as the difference between training and studying?
Brian
Studying would imply a teacher to student relationship. Training just means doing drills and working on techniques. I'm not looking for anybody to teach me anything.
Does that make sense? I'm not looking for somebody to say this is a block, this is a punch, this is a knife-hand strike ... rather there's no place where you can go and work on techniques in a partner environment except sparring, and sparring is usually too competitive to work on techniques.
I've gone to perhaps 30 different schools in the Seattle area and talked to many more instructors and they all want to teach. They do not want to have anybody who just trains. There was one place in Bothell (dragon martial arts or something) that has a MMA technique/sparring night but he tried to get me into his JKD derivative classes and was pretty insistent I take those before doing the MMA sparring so I didn't go for that.
Bottom line is teachers are there to make money and teach classes. They have little reason to have any open practices unless it's to recruit new students. There are a few places who do open sparring in Seattle but that's not drilling or working on techniques.
And instructors (such as yourself) do not want people just working on techniques. You're there to teach a class, you have a system (no pun intended), and you want to teach that, get people to pay for learning that, etc.
If somebody from karate is going to come to your Systema classes, you're going to want them to do Systema, right? You're not going to want them doing karate and practicing with your Systema people, and even if you allowed that (and I've gone to some practices like that), there's a lot of making the other people look bad in an attempt to prove the art at the school is better. It is perhaps subtle or not so subtle but the hazing is always there, because instructors want to promote their art, their school, make money, etc.
Every school I've gone to that claimed to have some open-ness or open practices always turned into a recruitment and sales speech. Every one. About 9 different schools in the Seattle area all claimed to be open but when I got there it was a sell job.
I've also tried training partners but it turns into social hour. Very little actual work gets done. Especially as you add more people into the mix.
