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TMAs VS. Reality based self-defense

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  • #61
    [QUOTE=chris davis 200]
    I do forms in the internal systems i practice - they are not there to develop street fighting moves - but to develop the tendon and sinew structure of the body - this gives you more power than just building muscle in the gym, as tendons hold far greater potential energy. Sports scientists are coming to the realisation that tendon development can be extremely important in efficiency and power in athletes. they are trying to develop methods of working on tendons - these methods have been around for years - in the internal martial arts.

    Having strong tendons mean i have strong striking abilities and excellent explosive power.
    I meant to adress these issues too, I just got a little side tracked earlier.

    About kata/forms- You are saying basically anyway that it is used as a attribute development exercise, I can buy that. However then karate kata, and KF forms are done for the same reasons. The problem with the kata is it reinforces bad neuro-muscle memory and habits, as long as your forms do not do this then they are acceptable as a form of attribute development exercise, but there are better ways. The boxer/MT shadow boxing is used the same way and they do not develop bad neuro-muscle habits.

    I wonder how live your training really is - if you were attacking me full pelt even in training i would respond with equal force - both of us would probably get hurt in some way. I am guessing you are expecting your students to pull punches, knee's, kicks, headbuts, elbows etc due to the need for saftey. May i ask what the difference is between this type of false practice where after a headbut you continue attacking instead of thinking about your caved in face, and the point sparring tappy tappy stuff you so dispise.

    I see lots of combative stuff and modern street stuff which doesnt actually train with much contact or real consideration of what their strikes will do - attacks just ignoring the kidney punch and the head but or the knee and continuing to attack like nothing has happened - and yet some still consider it the yardstick by which all systems should be measured.

    cheers
    chris
    False practice huh? Hmmm…lets see I have several reinforced lacrosse helmets that we use so we can head but full speed and power, punch, elbow, knee to the head. We can use them to practice raking the eyes, we also use swim goggles to practice eye attacks as well. For weapons I have various lengths and widths of padded PVC pipes that we can use to go full force as sticks or pool cues, and etc. I have safety knifes. I have knives with markers on the end to see where you were stabbed and how many times. Other equipment 16 oz and 14 oz. Boxing gloves as well as several pair of MMA gloves. I also have other sparring equipment so we can go hard, like MT shin guards, elbow and kneepads, boxing headgear. As my students get more experienced I ask them to use less and protective gear but we always use headgear and MMA or boxing gloves for fighting drills. I have hanging bags and free standing bags, wrestling mats, as well as a BOB. I use MT pad training and literally drive my students to collapse; I also hit them with the pads (I believe in a live pad holder).

    I use mostly live drills, I often intentionally distract my students by various methods to keep them guessing and on their toes. Our sparring is usually very hard, but for the beginners I mix hard with more skill-oriented lighter drills. I use High intensity stress inducing adrenal conditioning drills and scenarios, both simple and complex. We go on location to shopping centers, bank ATMs, parking garages, we set up our school (a school gym) as a bar seen with all the props, and etc. We train in civilian clothing wearing shoes; in the winter we often train while wearing heavy coats. I often bring in guest attackers some with MA experience others without to vary the styles of attacks and reduce familiarity of the same bad guys time after time. My number one training motto is “Go hard or go home”!

    I try do be careful so my drills don’t get into “gaming” as so many TMA drills do (predictable/semi predictable, recognizable patterns in familiar partners, set up so the defender wins, dueling, or the drills break down into a competition between partners). I do all I can to make the drills realistic and I do all I can to mess with their heads during the drills. Our sparring often begins in disadvantageous positions, surprise/ambush, and I use as much trickery as I can. During sparring we run the full spectrum of fighting ranges from weapons to ground fighting.

    One other thing I have noticed, when I start teaching a student with prior MA training they often pick up the techniques and tactics very fast. At the lower to intermediate intensity drills they are fine, using the things I have taught them very well. But when I turn it up during high intensity adrenal training they go back to their prior training and become less effective than they were with the less intensive drills. Just an observation, I think it has to do with improper reinforced neuro-muscle conditioning from their prior training that takes over in high stress situations.

    Anyway we do not do the false training tappy tappy stuff in which you mentioned. We do not do a lot of dueling. Now, if I have a student for whatever reason who doesn’t want to go hard, I respect his or her wishes, but I also make sure they understands the limitations that it brings.

    The way I have my training set up is I do private lessons and they can have as many lessons as they want per week, or every other week, or what ever they want (most do once a week), with the average lesson being 2.5 hours long. I go to their homes and teach. I also have an open session group class once per week. A group class is usually broken down like this: Attribute devlopment, Skill work (pad/bags, and fighting drills), grappling (clinch work, throws/takedowns, and ground fighting), weapons (knives,sticks, and improvised, as well as defenses), sparring drills (attack/defend, mini scenarios, and or free fighting), and if time permits a simple scenario or adrenal training. I hold a special High intensity complex scenario session once per month, usually on location. Once every two to three months I hold what I call a hell day. It is a group session with extremely hard and long sparring sessions; only a couple of my hard-core students even want to attempt this (since only a couple of students show up for it I have to particapate in it and it takes me 2-3 months to recover from it). It is much like Geoff Thompson’s animal days.

    Last week we did a simple scenario where I had a police officer friend of mine come in and talk about legal issues and the scenarios we did involved handling a police interview after a SD situation. My police officer friend actually interviewed my students as if they were a suspect in an assault, this is a simple scenario, complex scenarios go into more depth.

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    • #62
      Dar,

      If you ever make it around Memphis, let me know. It will be a pleasure to demo for you in whatever format you like. Good luck to you.

      Comment


      • #63
        Majority of early kung fu masters gain their reputaion in their martial skills by having expereinces in actual combat. They were involve in fighting band of bandits or fighting the manchu dynasty, fighting against the Japanese during WWII, surviving racial riots & clashes in Southeast Asian countries.

        And all of them were trained kung fu fighters specialising in their respective styles. And many of their kung fu styles would soon be imported to other countries with modification & more modification.

        It use to be the word tradition that martial artist were using to sell their style now its combat, reality fighting & street fighting whats next military fighting?

        The thing is what is reality fighting?, scenario training isn't that another form of prearrange training?

        We use to have this " initiation" at my almater ngo cho kun kung fu club in Manila. And this intitiation is something that is not sunction by the school but they know its going on its like the military code red thing.

        And it goes like this, a student once they have train for some time & reaches at least level 6 ( usually 3 yrs+ ) & want to proof his skill. He has to go out to the streets of Manila & pick a fight against street bullies or toughies or muggers & its not that difficult to find one, for those who have been or are from third world countries would know sometimes we fight against security guards.

        A lot of times it would end up in a multiple fight becuase most of those "evil" street people stay in a group of not less than 3 & a lot of times they are armed.

        Two things can only happened in this kind of scenario, you fight ferociously scaring & chasing them away or they fight back & somebody get seriuosly hurt.

        Now, that's what I call reality, unpredictable, not pre arrange fight training.

        Comment


        • #64
          meant to adress these issues too, I just got a little side tracked earlier.

          About kata/forms- You are saying basically anyway that it is used as a attribute development exercise, I can buy that. However then karate kata, and KF forms are done for the same reasons. The problem with the kata is it reinforces bad neuro-muscle memory and habits, as long as your forms do not do this then they are acceptable as a form of attribute development exercise, but there are better ways. The boxer/MT shadow boxing is used the same way and they do not develop bad neuro-muscle habits.
          Please note that i was specifically refering to Internal Chinese Martial arts forms - such as tai chi, Ba gua and Hsing i.

          You make a good point about bad muscle memory situations - but in a taichi for there is no stop start motion - it is quite a bit more comples than that! By relaxing and trefining the 'fireing' ability of your limbs and body you actually increase the speed your body can work at due to the slow practice. You learn to use the mechanics of your body to a higher degree that simply punch or kick as found in many Karate kata.

          the sensetivity training is there to establish an understanding of the opponents whole body movement - not just how someone punches or kick - but how the whole body moves as a single unit - this is obviously very benefitial.

          Hmmm…lets see I have several reinforced lacrosse helmets that we use so we can head but full speed and power, punch, elbow, knee to the head. We can use them to practice raking the eyes, we also use swim goggles to practice eye attacks as well. For weapons I have various lengths and widths of padded PVC pipes that we can use to go full force as sticks or pool cues, and etc. I have safety knifes....
          Have seen this sort of stuff - and trained in it. Lots of pads, lots of tools to aid development. But i have also seen how they are thoroughly misused. With people taking a full head butt to the face when wearing a helmet and ignoring the fact that they would be seriously injured by such a strike, just standing there throwing a few more punches. I have personally seen what most strikes can do in a real situation.

          you sound like you have a success rate, i am pleased for you.

          I am not trying to make up for any lack of ability found in the systems i train in. As stated before i have trained many systems, i have worked as a doorman for some time, i have had numerous street fights away from the door - with sober resitiing opponents, on one occation with 5 opponents, and with traditional training i have survived with very little injury and no convictions against me! This is testiment enough for the training i undertake. You may wall have had problems with the 'traditional systems' you have encountered - but i would say that you have not encountered many and you version of traditional MA's seems to be based on very few traditional systems.

          Happy training.

          Regards
          Chris

          Comment


          • #65
            Originally posted by konghan
            Majority of early kung fu masters gain their reputaion in their martial skills by having expereinces in actual combat. They were involve in fighting band of bandits or fighting the manchu dynasty, fighting against the Japanese during WWII, surviving racial riots & clashes in Southeast Asian countries.

            And all of them were trained kung fu fighters specialising in their respective styles. And many of their kung fu styles would soon be imported to other countries with modification & more modification.

            It use to be the word tradition that martial artist were using to sell their style now its combat, reality fighting & street fighting whats next military fighting?

            The thing is what is reality fighting?, scenario training isn't that another form of prearrange training?

            We use to have this " initiation" at my almater ngo cho kun kung fu club in Manila. And this intitiation is something that is not sunction by the school but they know its going on its like the military code red thing.

            And it goes like this, a student once they have train for some time & reaches at least level 6 ( usually 3 yrs+ ) & want to proof his skill. He has to go out to the streets of Manila & pick a fight against street bullies or toughies or muggers & its not that difficult to find one, for those who have been or are from third world countries would know sometimes we fight against security guards.

            A lot of times it would end up in a multiple fight becuase most of those "evil" street people stay in a group of not less than 3 & a lot of times they are armed.

            Two things can only happened in this kind of scenario, you fight ferociously scaring & chasing them away or they fight back & somebody get seriuosly hurt.

            Now, that's what I call reality, unpredictable, not pre arrange fight training.
            There is no reality fight training there is only real fighting or “Reality based” fight training. We can train students to fight hard under incredibly stressful conditions that are as real as possible, but still not completely real. The biggest hurdle to overcome in self-defense training in my opinion is that of expectancy. How do I set up drills so the student will not expect or anticipate the attack, of course some drills should elicit this response, most MAs use these types of drills. Anyway I can train him under as real and stressful of conditions as I can, using highly dynamic and unpredictable attacks, but unexpected attacks, now that’s is easier said than done. To try to circumvent this problem I do drills where the defender may or may not be attacked, not all drills and scenarios end in fighting. So he doesn’t know if he will be attacked or not. But he still may expect or anticipate the attack.

            So, then I began a campaign of ambushing my students. For example I have a student working the heavy bag and I walk over to him and I start talking to him, like “keep your guard up, transfer your weight…. Bam I attack out of the blue. However now they know I do this, they expect an attack whenever I am near. So keeping to the principle of overload I had to change the stimulus. I began sending over other students to do these surprise attacks, but know they are on to it. My options here are now limited, but it does keep my students at a higher level of awareness while they are in class than they would be otherwise. I try to keep things as real as possible but there are limitations to that end. So real, No! Reality based? Yes!

            The only way you are going to get it to “real” would be to go out and get into real fights like you said, of course I would never recommend this to anyone for obvious reasons. The first thing any respectable SD teacher should teach is how to stay out of fights. If I ever caught wind that any of my students were involved in such activities they would not be my students for long. I tell my students regardless of you training there is still a very real chance that you can either be severely injured, permanently maimed or disabled, or even killed in such scoffs. You should only engage when there are no other alternatives (And I teach them what the alternatives are) because whatever the reason you are fighting, it better be worth dying for, or killing another person for. Now that’s the realty!

            So, anyway expectancy/anticipation is one of the main problems we faced with when it comes to stress/adrenal training. Another problems that I am faced with and I have to be very vigilant about are “gaming” in the drills. Gaming is a term we use to describe some of the many inherent flaws in drilling. That is: Predictability, semi predictability or recognizable forms of attack, familiarity with partners, familiarity with the drills, Pre-determined attacks/pre-determined defenses, having a pre-determined end or the design is such that the defender always wins, dueling, competition between attacker and defender, and of course expectancy. We do everything possible to rid our drills of these things, but if I am not creative, watchful, and ever vigilant some of these destructive/counter productive things can sneak in.

            Of all the challenges an instructor faces when teaching, I think my biggest personal challenge is to know when to change the stimulus and how. We work with the principles of individual learning, overload, periodization, and specificity. Overload doesn’t just apply to muscle training it also applies to many other aspects of training including psychological/mental attribute development. Students can become accustomed to the level of anxiety and stress put forth in the drills and scenarios and plateau, even advanced students are not immune to this, in fact they are far more likely to suffer from this effect. We need to know how and when to change the stimulus to overload them again so the student can continue to develop and grow, this can be quite a challenge at times.

            Anyway thanks for all of your replies (and I mean all of you guys) I respect your opinions, I just wish we weren’t on opposite sides of the fence so often.

            Comment


            • #66
              [QUOTE=chris davis 200]


              Have seen this sort of stuff - and trained in it. Lots of pads, lots of tools to aid development. But i have also seen how they are thoroughly misused. With people taking a full head butt to the face when wearing a helmet and ignoring the fact that they would be seriously injured by such a strike, just standing there throwing a few more punches. I have personally seen what most strikes can do in a real situation.
              I just want to address this a little; yes it's true about receiving injuries from some of these blows if it were to happen for real. But at the same time in a real life or death situation you have to continue to fight as long as you are able even if your arm is broke or blood is gushing down into your eyes and you are half blind.

              I do not let my student stop fighting for any reason unless of course their injury is legit or the drill is over. If a student stops because he gets the wind knocked out of him or got his bell rung I tell their partners to go for the kill because this is what will happen in real life. If one of my students trips and falls I expect his partner to stomp on him or jump on top and nail away.

              If a student takes a good shot from his partner and stops to shake his hand and tell him what a great technique that was, His partner better nail him, always continue to fight and congratulate him later. I think we can figure out for ourselves if a technique in training would have caused real damage or not but that is not an excuse to ever stop.

              Anyway, peace!

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              • #67
                .......................

                bump

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                • #68
                  Personally, I think they are helpful in giving the average woman an idea as to the types of attacks, and basics for breaking those attacks, but that’s it. That could be helpful in the context of the types of attacks the average woman may experience in her life, which is a sexual or other physical assault from someone she knows. In those instances, a palm to the nose and a knee to the groin may be enough, as long as she then runs away and calls the police.

                  However, the classes that I have seen that essentially try to teach women to respond aggressively in a “self-defense” context, by striking aggressively at a man wearing body armor to allow the woman to fully experience and execute her attack, are problematic. That’s because if you are forced to use that much violence to break an attack you are not practicing “self-defense”. You are in a fight. In a fight, the attacker hits back — or hits first.

                  When I was a young black belt (in my mid-twenties) I had this conversation with two women friends of mine who had taken a self-defense class. One thought it had given her the tools that she needed, in combination with her own confidence, to protect herself against a stranger. The other, who by nature was a bit more thoughtful, wasn’t so sure. I asked them to show me some techniques, which they did. I pointed out a couple of problems with these, from the perspective of a trained fighter.

                  These techniques assumed, as mentioned, that the attacker is not hitting you. He is standing there, taking a palm to the nose and a knee to the groin. He is basically a stationary target. He is not grabbing his victim by the hair and slapping her around, he is not pushing or throwing her off balance. Most important, because sexual assault is about the violent domination of the victim, not about sex, he hasn’t started his attack by punching the victim three times in the face and abdomen. When I asked my friends how would they respond if someone my size at the time (6′, 180 lbs) began the attack with a hook punch to the face and a sweep to their legs to smash them to the ground, they were confused. They hadn’t learned to respond to that.

                  For me, if you want to learn “self-defense” you have to learn how to fight. You have to learn how to hit, get hit, and hit back; to block and deflect an attack while counter-attacking; to break a hold, choke or grab while inflicting damage on your attacker to prevent a follow-up strike — all with the intention of hurting him enough so that you can run without being followed. There is no easy way around that. The technique has to be instinctive, reflexive. It takes several years of training and constant practice. You don’t have time to think, two years after you took the class, what was the move when a person tries to choke you.

                  Self-defense courses can help you understand the need for training, but on their own, they provide a false sense of security to anyone who thinks they can defend themselves because they took 10 self-defense classes and kneed an “attacker” in the groin through heavy padding.

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