Fixing the training model

[dvcochran]

Maybe my sense of direction is confused but I'm in Massachusetts and BJJ and it's corresponding competition is all around.

Like I said, I am sure it is out there. Must be more of a Northern thing.

 

[Steve]

Like I said, I am sure it is out there. Must be more of a Northern thing.

According to google, BJJ is all over Mississippi. Maybe you just aren’t looking for it.

 

[drop bear]

specifically im not saying either of those. skills are learned at a fixed pace that are determined by the individual. i do not think that any style or MMA is any quicker than any other style BUT some styles, including MMA are more effective at creating good fighters. i do have a problem with using anecdotal evidence like most MMA guys do, saying MMA has good fighters ....therefore MMA is superior to other styles in creating good fighters because of competition.
the US Navy Seals are an elite group within the military, why??? using the MMA logic, one would answer that Seals are elite because of superior training but this is not true. the Seals are elite because of their selection process. the price to pay for admission is greater than all other branches (exception Green Beret). in the same way MMA as a full contact sport has a higher price of admission. not many people are willing to except injuries and pain as a normal everyday cost of training. those that are willing are a small group of people within martial arts. if karate had a higher price to pay for training (which it used to have) then the results would be the same as MMA. you wouldnt see a 45 yo mother of 4 doing karate to get back into shape to wear her bikini for the summer. styles like karate have lowered the "cost" as a business model to be "inclusive" for everyone not just the amped up 25 yo who wants to take his hormone testosterone anger out in the ring. karate schools actually frown upon that 25 yo guy punching the 45 yo mom in the face. in an MMA school the mom realizes very quick this is not the place for her and she washes out with all the other people who knew better to not sign up in the first place.

You can have complimentary effects. Strong guys can be technical. Easily trainable people can also be well trained.

If I am a physical dud. I can still benefit from good training.

 

[Hanzou]

Certain arts show proficiency faster because they're doing hard contact sparring, and because they're practical. In BJJ for example, you can begin using skills in a practical situation within 6 months of continuous training. Why? Because the techniques are practical and not filled with nonsense and fluff from ancient Asian traditions that hinder your fighting ability.

 

[hoshin1600]

Certain arts show proficiency faster because they're doing hard contact sparring, and because they're practical. In BJJ for example, you can begin using skills in a practical situation within 6 months of continuous training. Why? Because the techniques are practical and not filled with nonsense and fluff from ancient Asian traditions that hinder your fighting ability.

practical is good, but fluff and nonsense is not synonymous with Asian traditions. a Judo throw will work fine after 6 months as will many things in many arts. krav maga and the keysei / defense lab system has many things in it i would consider fluff and nonsense. Muay Thai is Asian BTW and very ancient. your bias is showing in your comment. practical is practical and fluff is fluff, there is no style out there who is immune to this. there is really no reason to "call out" ancient Asian traditions.

 

[Hanzou]

practical is good, but fluff and nonsense is not synonymous with Asian traditions. a Judo throw will work fine after 6 months as will many things in many arts. krav maga and the keysei / defense lab system has many things in it i would consider fluff and nonsense. Muay Thai is Asian BTW and very ancient. your bias is showing in your comment. practical is practical and fluff is fluff, there is no style out there who is immune to this. there is really no reason to "call out" ancient Asian traditions.

I wouldn't consider Muay Thai, Judo, or Krav Maga "ancient".

 

[marques]

I am just starting watching this and I thought some of you would like to watch this as well. The audio is a pain, but they are touching good points...

PS: It may be relevant as well: The Science of Training Young Athletes | Coursera.

For the sports side there are some good materials available. For martial+arts we really need wise people, but where are they (near me)?…

 

[hoshin1600]

I wouldn't consider Muay Thai, Judo, or Krav Maga "ancient".

Muay Thai can be traced back to 1560CE according to Wiki, how far back do you want to go? Judo and karate is about the same age. Aikido is relatively new. Could you define what ancient means in your mind?
Next I would suggest you actually read and understand written posts. I didn't say Krav and defense labs was ancient. I was saying they are modern but include things you would call fluff...thus your equating a systems age with effectiveness is invalid.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Certain arts show proficiency faster because they're doing hard contact sparring,

Certain art can be learned faster because they don't train those "time consuming" skill.

For example, the Chinese wrestling "head lock" strength is very difficult to develop. Without the head lock strength, the head lock is almost useless. But if you spend a lot amount of time to develop your head lock strength, you can spend that amount time to develop many other useful MA skills too.

 

[wab25]

One thing that needs to be considered is what type of competition and what you get from the competition. Your end goal, should help define what you compete in. You can win every kata competition you compete in, but that still doesn't make you a competent fighter. So, if you want to be a fighter, it makes sense to compete in something similar to a fight. But, TMAs already did this. Karate and TKD came up with "fight like" competitions, which people won and got very good at. (they even developed skill) But, now we throw these guys in an MMA ring, watch them get crushed... and then pretend that MMA is different than the TMA competitions. Well, sure, its different, it has different rules and you have to be good at different things to win. But, having an awesome side kick, won't help you win a Judo competition any more than a great arm bar from guard will help you win a boxing match.

Remember this: Here's what happened when UFC fighters took on Marine Corps martial-arts experts This is an article, with video, of MMA stars going to train with the Marines, and the Marines beating them silly. All the "MMA training will make me good at a real fight" stuff went out the window, as soon as there was more than one guy, a weapon, no rounds... I get it. These were Marines, and knowing they were bringing in MMA stars for the event, these were probably hand picked Marines. But go find the video of the other MMA guys in gas station getting in a fight with some drunks. They reacted the same as these guys did to the Marines, ignoring multiple attackers and weapons. One got nailed in the back of the head with a 2x4 and ended up in the hospital. (I don't remember what happened to him after that)

My point here is that you have to understand your end goal, before you adjust your training and or your competition. No matter what art you train in, you need to understand what you are training for. I think that arts that are competition heavy, are just as prone to misunderstanding what their end goal is. They are very good at training you for their style of competition. You need to be honest in what you are doing and what you expect to get.

I get it. MMA training will give you the skills to throw down with someone else, and gives you a pretty good set of options to use. But, its not preparing you for a life or death hand to hand combat situation in the street. Now, you can add things to it... like awareness and some weapon familiarity. But, you can add things to each art out there. At the end of the day, its the fighter that succeeds or fails not the art. Further, I believe all these different styles of competition, can help you develop different things that can make you better at fighting. Just make sure that you understand where you want your training to take you and where your training is actually taking you. Then you can adjust accordingly.

And before I get the hate replies... yes I do think the MMA training will get you closer to actual street fighting than other arts. (it will get you even closer if you can identify what it lacks for the street fighting situation, and adjust your training accordingly... if street fighting is where you want to go)

 

[drop bear]

as soon as there was more than one guy, a weapon

That pretty much. Nobody does well against multiples with weapons.

If you look at a guy like forrest griffin. He has lived a life outside the sanitory confines of MMA. And when people make these points they conveniently forget that.

So to say that he was effected by some sort of lack of real world experience is wrong. As he probably has more street than the guys making the critique.

 

[dvcochran]

According to google, BJJ is all over Mississippi. Maybe you just aren’t looking for it.

You are right about that.

 

[DaveB]

Certain arts show proficiency faster because they're doing hard contact sparring, and because they're practical. In BJJ for example, you can begin using skills in a practical situation within 6 months of continuous training. Why? Because the techniques are practical and not filled with nonsense and fluff from ancient Asian traditions that hinder your fighting ability.

No, bjj shows quicker results because it is grappling training aimed at submission, thus techniques can be trained with full resistance without hurting anyone.

You can't punch someone in the face at full power and still train with them for another hour and fifty minutes.
Nor can you break their wrist more than once in a session.

An undesirable outcome isn't always the result of stupidity.

 

[Steve]

No, bjj shows quicker results because it is grappling training aimed at submission, thus techniques can be trained with full resistance without hurting anyone.

You can't punch someone in the face at full power and still train with them for another hour and fifty minutes.
Nor can you break their wrist more than once in a session.

An undesirable outcome isn't always the result of stupidity.

And yet people who train boxing, muay Thai, san shou and kyokushin karate build reliable skill in a very predictable manner relatively quickly while some other arts take a very long time, if ever, to do same. Its not grappling or striking. Its applying or not applying.

 

[dvcochran]

And yet people who train boxing, muay Thai, san shou and kyokushin karate build reliable skill in a very predictable manner relatively quickly while some other arts take a very long time, if ever, to do same. Its not grappling or striking. Its applying or not applying.

Give us examples of the arts you imply never teach anything?

 

[Steve]

They all teach something. Just not fighting ability .

 

[DaveB]

And yet people who train boxing, muay Thai, san shou and kyokushin karate build reliable skill in a very predictable manner relatively quickly while some other arts take a very long time, if ever, to do same. Its not grappling or striking. Its applying or not applying.

We all agreed it's applying, I was pointing out that the more close to real life that your application can be, the more effective it is.

This gives submission grappling arts a training advantage and it's why boxing gyms have heavy bags.

But this idea that only sport heavy styles regularly apply their art in training is nonsense.

If your yard stick is who produces mma fighters, why would you expect schools that don't market themselves as combat sports to produce as many combat sportsmen as actual combat sports???

The people who go to one are not the same as the people who go to the other.

The karate school I go to currently has about 5 adults, and around 30 kids who's numbers decrease by age.

The muay thai school I visit has almost all young men 18-35 plus a few outliers and you can spot the fighters a mile away.

And of all the striking martial arts I've done they all did application work at around the same level. In fact I think I've spent less time in front of a partner in the combat sports since cardio and pad work are such big parts of the class.

Generally 1/3 warmup/cardio, 1/3 solo techniques 1/3 partner work with sparring once or twice a week is normal. Maybe it's much more in most combat sports.

 

[Steve]

We all agreed it's applying, I was pointing out that the more close to real life that your application can be, the more effective it is.

This gives submission grappling arts a training advantage and it's why boxing gyms have heavy bags.

But this idea that only sport heavy styles regularly apply their art in training is nonsense.

If your yard stick is who produces mma fighters, why would you expect schools that don't market themselves as combat sports to produce as many combat sportsmen as actual combat sports???

The people who go to one are not the same as the people who go to the other.

The karate school I go to currently has about 5 adults, and around 30 kids who's numbers decrease by age.

The muay thai school I visit has almost all young men 18-35 plus a few outliers and you can spot the fighters a mile away.

And of all the striking martial arts I've done they all did application work at around the same level. In fact I think I've spent less time in front of a partner in the combat sports since cardio and pad work are such big parts of the class.

Generally 1/3 warmup/cardio, 1/3 solo techniques 1/3 partner work with sparring once or twice a week is normal. Maybe it's much more in most combat sports.

I would agree with the first paragraph, but would rephrase it slightly to say that every style applies something. When the application of the training is consistent with the intended goal of the training, the training can be deemed effective. For example, ninjutsu is an easy target for being considered ineffective. But guys who train ninjutsu learn to do things. Those things just aren't fighting skill. Aikido is the same.

You might argue that boxing doesn't correlate directly to a random attack on the street. But you must acknowledge that boxers are skilled at applying the skills the learn through boxing. This is because the skills they intend to develop are consistent with the skills they are applying . has nothing to do with striking vs grappling because we see this relationship and predictable development of skill in every physical acticity. No exceptions .

To bring this back to the topic, styles which are not effective will be those styles which suggest that they are teaching skills which are not used by the average student outside of training. Its like learning to cook by playing with your child's cooking playset . Sure, you're physically mimicking a stirring motion in a pot with a spoon, but no reasonable person would suggest you are learning to cook. In the same way, if your training doesn't lead to application either on the job or in competition, there is a practical disconnect between what you are learning and what you think you're learning.

 

[Steve]

Give us examples of the arts you imply never teach anything?

They all teach something, but to be more specific, any art that suggests it isn't suitable for mma because it's too complicated or deadly is likely relevant to this discussion.

 

[FriedRice]

Remember this: Here's what happened when UFC fighters took on Marine Corps martial-arts experts This is an article, with video, of MMA stars going to train with the Marines, and the Marines beating them silly. All the "MMA training will make me good at a real fight" stuff went out the window, as soon as there was more than one guy, a weapon, no rounds... I get it. These were Marines, and knowing they were bringing in MMA stars for the event, these were probably hand picked Marines.

I remember this. This article was mostly BS. The US Marine Corps was like the biggest sponsor of the UFC, especially when the Fertittas Brothers bought it cheap for $2 million because it was in the process of going completely under. The UFC still continued to be a money pit for many years and the Fertittas reportedly dumped in $50 million cash, so their own money....otherwise it would go into bankruptcy. Without paid ads from the USMC, they'd be in much worse trouble...but this was during the peak of the Iran/Iraq war where the US Military needed lots and lots of recruits. USMC ads were freakin' everywhere in the UFC.

You think that Dana Mr. Clean White, was going to let his Fighters go in there and trash his biggest paid advertiser????? Not only that, many soldiers were into the sport, buying tickets, merchandise, etc.

It wasn't until 20 years later that I heard Urijah Faber slightly mentioned Joe Rogan's 3hour podcast about how they could've wrecked those Marines so easily when training with them for that publicity stunt. Faber was one of the Fighters who was there.

Tons of soldiers and cops train at MMA gyms? When they first come in with nothing more than what they've been taught by their perspective military branches, ie. MCMAP, etc....then they usually are just a little better than the average noob. They can have all the combat experience and many tours, but that's pulling a trigger and calling in air strikes. But for choking and/or knocking someone out w/o weapons, then a male nurse who trains 3x/week for a year will beat these Marines' ***.