Did a little training with Tony Dismukes

[marvin8]

He's doing what I often refer to as "Programming the opponent" That's where you feed your opponent a patter that they will recognize. so that they will instinctive expect the follow up punch in the pattern. He taps with the jab then throws hard. If we watch the entire fight, I'm willing to bet that was used often.

I watched the full fight. His program punch is the Jab. It takes longer to program this one because it's one punch.
The variation is the uppercut and hook.

I would not say "programming or feeding a pattern." Because, a good fighter may change their defensive moves. There are 5 layers of defense (not just grabbing/pulling the lead hand).

I will elaborate and attempt to connect the dots. An opponent may react to the 2 horizontal power punches by stepping back. Tony mentioned after awhile his opponent started to evade his Jow Ga attacks. Tony may have had more success by drawing his opponent in, as Floyd did. The Choy Lay Fut video shows some reactions and positions of opponents before getting hit..

Floyd follows the fighting concepts and principles that I already mentioned (e.g., lure, listen, control, dissolve, attack, stick, adhere, join & follow), which has depth. Floyd uses an "asking hand" to see how Miguel will react to the jab. Then, he punches inside the guard then outside the guard. Floyd does not use big power punches but finesse to control the opponent.

Floyd leads Miguel to move into his punches by controlling the space and body and hand positions. It may take further explanation and study for someone to understand.

Dominick Cruz drills controlling the space, luring an opponent to throw the rear hand, then times a takedown. I believe Cruz uses too much movement and speed but is still effective.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I don't believe you can learn hip throw through sparring without going through partner drill first. If you have drilled your hip throw 10,000 times with your partner, you then try to use it in sparring, whether you want to call that "learning", or "testing", it won't make any difference.

I agree with the overall premise (though the 10,000 seems hyperbolic). The point, though, is important. “Testing” and “learning” are not entirely separate. Your earlier post seemed to purposefully separate sparring from learning.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The reason that I feel strongly about "one can't learn from sparring" is the following:

Your sparring partner may use a certain strategy that contradicts to what you intend to learn.

Everybody who are right hand person, if they wrestle with me for a period of time, they will all turn into left hand person. The reason is simple. When I wrestle, I won't let my opponent to enter through my left (there right). But I won't stop them from entering through my right (their left). After a period of time, they all turn into left hand person.

In other words, if my opponent tries to learn his right-side technique, he won't have any opportunity when they wrestle with me.

This girl always uses left side hip throw because she and I had wrestled for many years.

What I got from that post was that your right-handed opponents learn to work left-handed.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

He's doing what I often refer to as "Programming the opponent" That's where you feed your opponent a patter that they will recognize. so that they will instinctive expect the follow up punch in the pattern. He taps with the jab then throws hard. If we watch the entire fight, I'm willing to bet that was used often.

I watched the full fight. His program punch is the Jab. It takes longer to program this one because it's one punch.
The variation is the uppercut and hook.

The jab programs his opponent to bring the gloves foward to protect against the jab. May weather probably knew when to change it by the amount of resistance to his jab. If the jab went through with not much trouble then he knew his opponent's guard was to the side of his head. If he felt a good defense against the jab. (jab hitting the gloves solid), then he knew the side of the head would be open for an overhand or hook.

No one is saying don't do partner drills.

I see this in a lot of MMA fights, too. A fighter will draw his opponent into a specific response by this programming. Then they use a counter that was made available.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Apparently, we have different definition of "sparring".

My SC teacher told me that even when he wrestled with his own father, he tried to defeat his father in every single round. I asked him why. He told me that there is no such thing as fake sparring/wrestling.

That’s someone being competitive to the exclusion of helping others develop. It’s a selfish approach, in my opinion.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

That’s someone being competitive to the exclusion of helping others develop. It’s a selfish approach, in my opinion.

How do you help your wrestling partner to develop?

When your opponent uses hip throw on you, will you not counter his hip throw, but to allow him to throw you even if his hip throw doesn't affect your rooting?

Do you help your opponent to develop false confidence? Do you consider that "fake"?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

How do you help your wrestling partner to develop?

When your opponent uses hip throw on you, will you not counter his hip throw, but to allow him to throw you even if his hip throw doesn't affect your rooting?

Do you help your opponent to develop false confidence? Do you consider that "fake"?

If they are significantly less skilled, I’ll leave more openings, move slower, and counter less forcefully. There are, indeed, times when I might even lower my defense enough for them to pull of what they couldn’t normally do against me. If I just crush them quickly or counter everything they do with my skill and experience, they cannot learn some lessons. Teaching them they are utterly helpless against me doesn’t build their skill.

Edit: I also make it clear to them (either in words or by occasionally overpowering them) that they are not working against my full skill.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

If they are significantly less skilled, I’ll leave more openings, move slower, and counter less forcefully. There are, indeed, times when I might even lower my defense enough for them to pull of what they couldn’t normally do against me. If I just crush them quickly or counter everything they do with my skill and experience, they cannot learn some lessons. Teaching them they are utterly helpless against me doesn’t build their skill.

Edit: I also make it clear to them (either in words or by occasionally overpowering them) that they are not working against my full skill.

Which way is better?

1. Low your skill level in order to help your opponent.
2. Force your opponent up to your skill level.

The concern that I have on method 1 is your opponent may develop a false confidence.

For example, If my opponent's head lock is not strong enough, I will not pretend that his head lock can crash my structure and make me to go down to the ground. If I do that, he may think that his head lock is strong enough and stop further developing. To me, that's not helping. That's hurting.

In the following clip, the BB girl uses "墬(Zhui) - Sticking drop" to counter white belt girl's hip throw. Should the BB girl pretend that she doesn't know how to counter hip throw and allow her white belt opponent to throw her?

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I might even lower my defense enough for them to pull of what they couldn’t normally do against me.

Here is another example.

If I try to spar with you and test my "rhino guard", During the sparring, you just throw random punches, and you are not serious enough to hit me, that kind of sparring will not help me. You may help me to build up a false confidence. That's not what I want.

My goal is trying to obtain a clinch on you (such as arm wrap) before your punch can land on me. The only way that you can help me is trying to hit me seriously (not lower your level for me).

In other words, during

- training, I have used my "rhino guard" to deal with plenty of "fake" punches.
- sparring, I want to use it to deal with "real" punches. The true testing record is important for me. I don't want to collect fake testing record.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Here is another example.

If I try to spar with you and test my "rhino guard", During the sparring, you just throw random punches, and you are not serious enough to hit me, that kind of sparring will not help me. You may help me to build up a false confidence. That's not what I want.

My goal is trying to obtain a clinch on you (such as arm wrap) before your punch can land on me. The only way that you can help me is trying to hit me seriously (not lower your level for me).

In other words, during

- training, I have used my "rhino guard" to deal with plenty of "fake" punches.
- sparring, I want to use it to deal with "real" punches. The true testing record is important for me. I don't want to collect fake testing record.

If I try to spar with you and am trying to practice dodging and weaving, but you spend the entire time in rhino guard, that is not helping me. By your definition, you choosing to train/test rhino guard in sparring means that it is not a true testing record for your opponent, and therefore not sparring.

Which doesn't really make sense to me, and why it might help to broaden your definition of the word. Everyone has things that they want to work on, and that happens in sparring.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Apparently, we have different definition of "sparring".

My SC teacher told me that even when he wrestled with his own father, he tried to defeat his father in every single round. I asked him why. He told me that there is no such thing as fake sparring/wrestling.

That’s someone being competitive to the exclusion of helping others develop. It’s a selfish approach, in my opinion.

I wouldn't go so far as to say someone who spars every round to win is necessarily being selfish. I would say that they are perhaps being counterproductive towards their own development.

For one thing, always trying to win every round means that you have to bring your "A" game every time - the techniques and tactics you are best at. This means that you don't risk trying out the techniques and tactics that you are mediocre or downright bad at. Which means that you never get the chance to develop those other approaches to broaden your skill set. There's a lot of value in forcing yourself to try techniques that you aren't confident with during sparring, so that you can discover the failure points and how to fix them. This is what I was doing when I sparred with my boxing friend using only Jow Ga punching methods.

This same concept also applies to putting yourself in bad positions so that you can practice surviving and escaping them. Perhaps you are the best wrestler in your gym and no one there can put you on your back. If you use this as an excuse to never fight from your back, then you are likely to be in trouble the first time you encounter someone who is better at wrestling and is able to put you there. (BTW, this is one of the approaches I use with new students - allowing them to start in an advantageous position such as mounted on me.)

The other consideration is that if you are so much better than your sparring partners that you are able to just shut them down completely, then you run the risk of stunting their progression, which in the long term will slow your own progress, because you need sparring partners who can challenge you and force you to grow.

My first BJJ instructor subscribed to the philosophy of going all out to win every round. The problem was that he was much bigger, stronger, and more experienced. When I rolled with him, he just shut me down to the point where I couldn't move or try anything. I was just locked in place waiting to be submitted. The result was that probably neither of us got any real benefit from those rounds. These days when I roll with new students who I can dominate easily, I give them openings to move and try techniques. That way I get practice countering the techniques that I have given them the opportunity for and they get to try things and discover the mistakes they make along the way*. Every so often I'll underestimate a student and give them too much of an opening and they actually catch me. When that happens, I congratulate them on a job well done and determine that I need to give them less of an opening the next time. (I also review my own performance to figure out why I failed to counter a technique that I knew was coming.) The result is that my students progress more quickly than I did and they are able to reach the point where they can legitimately challenge me and force me to improve my own skills.

*(Sometimes my students almost manage to catch me, but fail because of some minor technical error. In those cases after the round I try to take a moment to show them how they could have finished me with just a small adjustment. This way I have to do even better with my counters the next time.)

 

[JowGaWolf]

Tony may have had more success by drawing his opponent in, as Floyd did.

I'm not sure about that. I'm pretty sure Tony threw more overhands then Floyd did in that entire fight. I could be incorrect about the following assumption but I'm willing to bet that Tony's Boxing partner picked up on the pattern of the numerous long fists. It would have been like only throwing Jabs or only throwing hooks. If those are the only punches you are feeding to your opponent then your opponent will figure out what the next punch will be and how to deal with it.

Originally Tony had success with the punch because it was an attack that the user hasn't had to deal with. This is the same with the fight clips that were posted, where the overhand punches were thrown a couple of times. In Jow Ga those long punches aren't thrown just once or twice. They are main punches that can be thrown more than once but they won't be successful without variety and "programming" to keep the punches an unfamiliar attack.
In Jow Ga we use attacks to hide attacks.

You'll have to play this in slow motion to understand what is really going on.

I'm sparring against a boxer who always out jabs me. He knows it works so I want to stay with in that Jab Range so that I can get a jab. I want a pattern that I know I will get. Keep distance will encourage his jabs. Here I'm trying to get him to feed me a pattern that I can exploit. You can tell I'm reading a pattern, because I keep a high guard up until I'm ready to begin "loading" the technique. When I drop my guard, the punch goes for my head because there is a natural opening in the technique that exposes my head. This lures the attack to my face, but the technique is informed of this hence the clearing hand. You can actually see me load the technique before he punches (I knew what was coming because of the pattern).

Picture below shows what I'm referring to in terms of "the lure" being built into the technique. In reality it's not so much a lure that is built in, but an understanding that there is an opening in my defense and that I'm going to use a technique to fill that opening. @Tony Dismukes This is where rolling into a backfist becomes a valuable skill. Instead of trying to backfist his body, I'm going to "backfist" attacking arm so to speak by using the horizontal wheel punch Luk Choi.

You can see here that I'm wide open.

This is why I don't like the term "fix a technique" Normally someone would probably try to fix that big opening from the picture above and in the process screwing up the technique. But that's a different story. Here you can see me clear his Jab. @Tony Dismukes I'm not sure if you remember when I mentioned that Jow Ga hides the fist. If you take a look you can see that my right arm is hiding behind my body. This keeps my opponent's brain from processing a potential attack. We hide strikes with strikes. If your hand is to the side of the body then it will be read. The position of my right hand is the load position. I can throw any punch from this position. hook, jab, overhand, cross hammer fist.

The backfist was to his forearm and not the elbow so it didn't turn his body. He was able to re-establish the long guard but by that time. The over hand was well on it's way. So Jow Ga has"built in " lures so long as you don't edit them. To be honest it took a long time for me to get used to the feeling like I was about to get hit. The natural response is to tighten up the techniques but by doing so it breaks the technique..

I'm not sure how Tony was swinging his arms so I don't know if the technique was breaking or if he had a nice long swing. I'm assuming that this is the wheel punch that would have KOed his sparring partner. The problem with this one is that the swing targets only one spot, so even if the arms look crazy those punches are going to always go to the head, so the defense is to tighten up and guard your head. When your opponent does that then you have to include variation.

I'm not throwing fast punches and I'm not trying to hit my sparring partner so I can flow a little better instead of worrying about pulling power from my punches. Even though the punches aren't fast, the Variation is what is giving him trouble.

Does Jow Ga lure punches as you described. Yes. Do we lure that way with the long punches? No. Once you send the punch that is pretty much it. There's no need to draw people in with the long fist punches, since the punches work like a blender. You throw one and load the next one up. If you don't have one loaded then you kick or move to reset.

 

[JowGaWolf]

@Tony Dismukes I my last post reminded me of something that will probably help you. When you use long fist in sparring, Try to target a few inches in front of the face.. This will allow you to get swing in a more relaxed state. It helps with accuracy. The downside of this is that you won't have the benefit of your strikes landing and disrupting.. Only do this with a honest fighter who doesn't mind saying (yeah that would have landed).

Your sparring partner has to be able to acknowledge when a punch would have landed and then reset, instead of continuing to hit you as if that punch wouldn't have affected him.

If you don't have a sparring partner like that then you'll just have to hit them.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

@Tony Dismukes I'm not sure if you remember when I mentioned that Jow Ga hides the fist. If you take a look you can see that my right arm is hiding behind my body. This keeps my opponent's brain from processing a potential attack. We hide strikes with strikes.

Yep. I had some good success with landing punches with that hand which was hidden behind me. Typically I set everything up with a sequence of wide swings and then the hidden rear hand came out in a straight line right down the middle and landed flush.

I'm not sure how Tony was swinging his arms so I don't know if the technique was breaking or if he had a nice long swing

I didn't have anyone to record video, but it felt like I was getting some good long range swings.

The problem with this one is that the swing targets only one spot, so even if the arms look crazy those punches are going to always go to the head, so the defense is to tighten up and guard your head. When your opponent does that then you have to include variation.

Exactly the issue I was having. I wasn't using kicks and I wasn't using my boxing punches or my grappling, so the only variety I had to use was different combinations of angles for my swing and I didn't come up with enough variation to keep my partner confused after the first coupe of minutes. I've been experimenting since then shadow boxing with some different combos.

Once I've spent some time polishing my Jow Ga punches in isolation, then I think I'll have significantly more success by integrating the rest of my technical repertoire. I think my sparring partner will have a much harder time reading the long fist swings when they also have to deal with my jabs and crosses and kicks and sweeps and grappling.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

@Tony Dismukes I my last post reminded me of something that will probably help you. When you use long fist in sparring, Try to target a few inches in front of the face.. This will allow you to get swing in a more relaxed state. It helps with accuracy. The downside of this is that you won't have the benefit of your strikes landing and disrupting.. Only do this with a honest fighter who doesn't mind saying (yeah that would have landed).

Your sparring partner has to be able to acknowledge when a punch would have landed and then reset, instead of continuing to hit you as if that punch wouldn't have affected him.

If you don't have a sparring partner like that then you'll just have to hit them.

This doesn't work so well in a boxing environment where one of the primary methods of defense is to pull the head back just far enough so that the opponent's punch comes up just short. In that context, my swing which whiffs a few inches in front of his face is a legitimate miss.

Fortunately, my sparring partner is sufficiently used to getting hit that my relaxed swings land within the level of contact that we are comfortable with. I just don't have the granular level of control that I do with boxing punches where I can do anything from gently tapping the skin to blasting full power.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

This is a great and informative thread guys! Thanks!

 

[Balrog]

Today I had an opportunity to train with Tony and share a little bit of Jow Ga with him.

A "little" training? How many pints of sweat did you lose?

 

[JowGaWolf]

How do you help your wrestling partner to develop?

When your opponent uses hip throw on you, will you not counter his hip throw, but to allow him to throw you even if his hip throw doesn't affect your rooting?

Do you help your opponent to develop false confidence? Do you consider that "fake"?

Here's an example. Tony tried Jow Ga long fist strikes on me. I reacted in a way that most people react. I allowed my natural behavior to take over. This allowed Tony to see an honest reaction that most people will give when it comes to those type of punches. I can show that other people respond this way as well.

The benefit of me doing this is that it gives him insight on what happens. He could now use the technique and watch what was happening without the fear of me trying to knock him out. This allows him to take in more information about the technique and the mechanics of it. if I wanted to defend against him then I would have just thrown a kick up the middle. But that defeats the purpose of him trying the technique and learning about it. It would be like me wondering how a firecracker works and you tell me to hold it in my hand, then when it goes off you tell me "That's how it works." That's is probably the worst way to learn and understand fireworks.

Fighting is the same way. I don't want to learn by getting knocked out, get broken bones, facial damage. I want to learn in a way that is healthy and beneficial to my own growth.

In your example. If I'm wrestling. I would give my sparring partner opportunities to hip toss me. He still has to earn it, it's just that I'm not resisting as much. As my sparring gets better, I begin to increase my defense to match his level.

You may help me to build up a false confidence. That's not what I want.

This doesn't happen often when you are sparring to learn, because it's understood that you aren't bringing your A game to work on. There's no need for me to bring my A Game unless I'm trying to win or unless I'm trying to avoid getting KOd.

When I'm sparring to learn my training time is better spent when I train something that I'm not good in. If I want to polish my A game then I need to be competitive where it is understood that both me and my sparring partner are going to bring the best of our skills to use at a high level. But at that point you are no longer Learning. You are using what you already know.

 

[JowGaWolf]

A funny but realistic way of thinking about sparring to learn is that I can't learn much if Tony chokes me out and I find myself waking up every 10 minutes lol

 

[JowGaWolf]

- sparring, I want to use it to deal with "real" punches. The true testing record is important for me. I don't want to collect fake testing record.

I'm not sure how to respond to this one. The only you can get this type of test is in the competitive arena or in a street fight. People should however have enough analytical skills to know when a punch could have been dangerous. Like Tony knew that his punch had a KO potential without actually having to KO is partner. At some point in a person's training, he /she should be using analytical skills at a high level. Do determine the effectiveness of something even if they aren't using full force to apply it.