-
-
I definitely never understood why people are so afraid to tap. If anything tapping, tells you that there's a hole in your game and you damn well better fix it or you're going to tap again.
On a side note....
I have a very close friend of mine, Los, who taught me grappling (he's still eons above me, the man's a freakin' surgeon on the ground) and I remember the first time I tapped him out he was so excited. The man was bubbling over with excitement and was saying stuff like "I'm so proud of you man, etc etc etc." I guess it's like seeing your 9 month old baby take its first step.
-------
Shout out to my friend: Los, stay safe over there in Iraq. Hope you've been keeping up with your grappling whenever you can. -
The gym that I just left had a lot of guys that were afraid to tap. Because they were brand new and our coach really only wanted to train competitive athletes, they were never instructed in fundamentals. A couple in particular outweighed me but could never get position on me because I'd just slide out...or if they did get position, they didn't know what to do next. Since everyone was ignoring them and they didn't know what they were doing, they definitely didn't want to tap out to someone smaller or to a girl. And so they would roll as spastically as possible, trying to get a submission in before I shrimped or rolled out of their very very bad attempt at gaining position. I think people think if they do a good job they may get the attention or training they want as these are the same guys that would whisper questions to me when nobody was watching. But it really does create a shitty environment. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when some guy was upset because he was having a bad day and decided to resort to joint manipulation and that was the last straw for me. Oddly enough, I found a new gym the very next day--leap and the net will appear! The excuses I've made over the years to stay in shitty training situations because nothing else seemed available kind of flew out the window...
When I went to train outside the gym I noticed when people got position on me or did something really smart I'd stop for a second and be like, "NICE!" Suddenly my training partners were not my opponents; we were working together for a common cause... And I remember even stopping and telling a few of them that yeah what they were doing worked on me but if I was their weight it wouldn't and wow, you just gave me an underhook and I can take your back.
I thought it was interesting in Mike's thread that he said it should be about functional fighting and not spirituality, because I can't separate the two. Putting teachers on pedestals is maya, it is illusion. Figuring out what works is cutting through illusion, it is truth, and doing it along with other people on that same quest for truth is as close to a spiritual practice as just about anything I've experienced short of ceremony.
I watched the great but historically inaccurate movie the Great Debaters the other day and could've sworn that one of the lines was about martial arts... It was when they said "Eho is the judge? The judge is God. Why is he God? Because he decides who wins or loses, not my opponent. Who is your opponent? He does not exist. Why does he not exist? Because he is a mere dissenting voice of the truth I speak."
It doesn't completely make sense and of course I do believe in good and evil and in enemies and etc. and yet when you are in a healthy and functional environment, your training partner is not your enemy. You are just working together to learn how to move better. That's why I can stop and givepointers without concern. That’s why we could stop in the middle to rework an angle and try to figure out a technique. It seems so simple and intuitive, and yet it is a rarity in the martial arts world.Comment
Tweet
Comment