Can you become a good fighter by just sparring/wrestling only?

Gerry Seymour

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I feel like there's a cross-talk going on where one person is referring to being trained (which would commonly be understood to require someone else to do the training, since it's transitive), while the other is referring to training for something (which is intransitive, so you do it yourself). Both are common usage.
 

jobo

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I feel like there's a cross-talk going on where one person is referring to being trained (which would commonly be understood to require someone else to do the training, since it's transitive), while the other is referring to training for something (which is intransitive, so you do it yourself). Both are common usage.
training is the act of being trained by somebody or something else, practice is what you do in between

you cant train yourself as you dont have any more competence, than you all ready have, to pass onto your self

exsperiencial learning and training are different concepts, though perhaps of equal value, if you actualy manage to lean from the exsperiance, which is a rare skill with out an experiential learning facilitator
 
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Kung Fu Wang

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well if that's what you want to call it! but no it's not on it's own " training" ,
What will you call the following?

- You find yourself a archaeology book. you study it and write a final paper. the teacher then give you a grade.
- You take electronic engineering digital design course. You study 1 chapter at home, you then go to school to take the test. After you have finished all 12 chapters of the book and finished all 12 tests, you will get your final grade.

Can self-study MA be harder than self-study archaeology, or self-study electronic engineering?
 

jobo

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What will you call the following?

- You find yourself a archaeology book. you study it and write a final paper. the teacher then give you a grade.
- You take electronic engineering digital design course. You study 1 chapter at home, you then go to school to take the test. After you have finished all 12 chapters of the book and finished all 12 tests, you will get your final grade.

Can self-study MA be harder than self-study archaeology, or self-study electronic engineering?
depends, I can read books and pass tests with considerable ease, so much so I seldom turned up at college for my electrical engineering course, I just got a book from the library a week before my exam and took the test,, that of course was based on having an excellent short term memory and the test being knolledge and not skill or even competence based,

a skill based assessment would be some what more difficult to do, ma considerably more difficult in a week

but,,, your receiving 5he information from a book, that's not the same as making it up as you go along, which was your op
 

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Even with video or books there is no trainer though.

And less common now with youtube.

Of course there is. If the video/book was intended to teach something, then the demonstrator/author is the trainer.

Don't get me wrong. I still don't think this will ever be the best way of learning, but it's still learning.
 

Yokozuna514

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You can learn things by yourself through trial and error but that may not be an efficient way for most people to assimilate information in a way that they can develop a useful skill over a short period of time. Some people may be better at this type of learning than others but for the majority of people that aren't good with organizing information and analyzing personal feedback to put together a pedagogy need to seek a person or organization that can do this for them. Not everyone wants to take a lifetime of trial and error to get good at punching only to arrive at an age where they will lack the ability to test their knowledge in a competitive manner.
 

Ivan

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In another thread, people talk about if you test your fighting skill in a fighting club daily, you will become a good fighter.

The only concern that I have is, if you spar/wrestle the same way for the next 20 years, you will not improve anything. Can you develop a new throw skill such as "hip throw" from sparring/wrestling only? You can't.

So you still need a teacher to help you to develop your tools in your toolbox before you can start to test it. If you have not learned anything, you will have nothing to test for.

Your thought?
You'd become a great fighter, just a very inefficient one. The primal fighting style you develop from only coaching yourself through fighting is unlike any other. But if I keep winning every fight by doing the same thing, why should I improve? I'm winning aren't I?

The problem is the lack of technique.
 

Monkey Turned Wolf

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You'd become a great fighter, just a very inefficient one. The primal fighting style you develop from only coaching yourself through fighting is unlike any other. But if I keep winning every fight by doing the same thing, why should I improve? I'm winning aren't I?

The problem is the lack of technique.
To add to this, you become a fighter up to a point. You develop one good thing, and if it keeps working on people you continue using it. The trouble becomes that in an instant where it stops working, you don't have other tools.

I encountered this a lot with fencing. People who would spend 2 hours a day fencing, but not time drilling; once you bypassed their 2-3 tricks, became much easier to beat.
 

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As a side note. Industry people. Cops, soldiers,security go out into the world with almost no training and learn precisely via fighting people
 

Gerry Seymour

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You can learn things by yourself through trial and error but that may not be an efficient way for most people to assimilate information in a way that they can develop a useful skill over a short period of time. Some people may be better at this type of learning than others but for the majority of people that aren't good with organizing information and analyzing personal feedback to put together a pedagogy need to seek a person or organization that can do this for them. Not everyone wants to take a lifetime of trial and error to get good at punching only to arrive at an age where they will lack the ability to test their knowledge in a competitive manner.
And going a step further, it's hard to try stuff out for the first time in a sparring situation. Much easier to try things out in a training situation, where your partner gives you a chance to get to the technique, or at least feeds you what you need to get started. If you only spar, then there's never a chance to say "hey, that worked - let me walk through the steps and see what seems important".
 

Gerry Seymour

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You'd become a great fighter, just a very inefficient one. The primal fighting style you develop from only coaching yourself through fighting is unlike any other. But if I keep winning every fight by doing the same thing, why should I improve? I'm winning aren't I?

The problem is the lack of technique.
If you literally only spar, I'm not sure we could predict a good fighter coming out the other end. You'd only ever get to try to do things against someone who's trying to stop everything you do, so you might not get the same opportunity for 20 more sessions.
 

Gerry Seymour

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As a side note. Industry people. Cops, soldiers,security go out into the world with almost no training and learn precisely via fighting people
I expect there's more knowledge sharing than that. But yeah, they do have to work out a lot of it in the field.
 

WaterGal

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As a side note. Industry people. Cops, soldiers,security go out into the world with almost no training and learn precisely via fighting people

At the risk of this turning into a huge political thing.... I think the fact that many police officers lack the training and experience needed to be comfortable getting into a hand-to-hand situation is actually a major problem, and leads to them using their firearm when it could have been avoided.
 

WaterGal

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I don't know of any competitive sport where working with a good coach and doing drills to develop specific skills isn't hugely important.

Just sparring, rolling or wrestling, etc. every day without working with a coach or, at least, more experienced practitioners, and stopping to break-down, analyze, train, and improve what you do is not a very efficient way to learn.

This. There are exceptional people out there who may, with enough time and practice, intuitively figure out technique and strategy on their own. Just like some people can learn to write a song without much formal music instruction, or can teach themselves to cook really well by just messing around in the kitchen a lot.

But most people need some amount of explicit instruction and practicing basic techniques in order to really improve. For most people "figure it out on your own" is a frustrating experience, especially if they're paying someone for instruction.
 

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Admin's Note:

Folks, lay off the political discussions and personal snipes.
 

dvcochran

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At the risk of this turning into a huge political thing.... I think the fact that many police officers lack the training and experience needed to be comfortable getting into a hand-to-hand situation is actually a major problem, and leads to them using their firearm when it could have been avoided.
In the states at least, most officers have a 2-4 year college education, 1-2 years in-service training/education and 10-24 weeks of police academy beginning in the first 2 years. There are exceptions and I think (hope) that is what is being sensationalized in the media. On average, a patrolman job is a pretty low paying job and doesn't attract a lot of people.
My biggest question is how do you gauge what someone's reaction will be with an attacker who has the real probability to do harm and likewise the intent?
Too often the public thinks there is an unrealistic ratio of officers to assailants in the average encounter. Speaking from experience, I cannot overstate the change in the dynamic when you Know there is no backup coming soon enough.
I am not taking up for anyone. But we should not go drawing conclusions without knowing a story in full.

There is still a ton of truth about bring a knife to a gun fight.
 

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