It's pretty sad that since the Covid-19, my class has no contact. When my opponent
Competition tends to raise the skill level of the group of participants, though not necessarily the skill of a given individual.
That statement doesn’t make sense to me. Are you talking about exceptions to the rule?
This is where I run into a problem with your narrow definition of "application". By your own sentence, someone for whom competition is not the goal, then competition doesn't qualify as application.
No. As you correctly point out, competition isn't training. An individual can compete and not learn from it, not make useful adjustments. In that case, they don't benefit from it, so it won't improve their skill.
possibly things that involve " team work" but even then not much to be honest.
My definition of "application" is expansive. It is literally that someone apply skills in their intended context. And to be clear, the issue isn't whether "sparring" can be an application of training. It's that sparring isn't an application of fighting skills. As I've said repeatedly, when you take any external application away, the training itself supplants that. Simply put, you can become an expert in the training exercises you create.
What? That's rubbish. If you train in BJJ 3 to 4 times per week diligently and compete 2 or 3 times per year regularly, you may not be the next coming of Rickson Gracie, but you will certainly become skilled enough to earn a purple belt. Absent injury or illness, you just simply can't fail. Though there may be some exceptions to this rule.
Also rubbish. There are all kinds of people who HATE competing who do it because they know how important it is to their development. There are people who compete and lose every time. Not everyone is a phenom, and there are sharks in every school. You are articulating an argument against competition based on, I believe, your own hang ups and insecurity about losing. The thing about a performance based art like boxing, BJJ, MMA, or any of the numerous others, is that in order to improve you have to get over looking foolish or feeling embarrassed because you suck. Everyone sucks relative to someone else. The only way to get better is to lose less often.
As Steve (I think) said, competition supports skill development in what's required in the competition. So, looking at the skills used in the competition, are the competitors (as a group) better than those who don't compete? And how much does that change over time?
I agree with everything except the implicit hard border between sparring and application. I simply don't think it's a binary thing. If the skill being developed is the ability to put someone on the ground who is trying to resist that, then doing that is application, mostly regardless of the context.
I can't really see the point of miming at a distance. I've converted entirely to movement drills and such, where there's some benefit without contact, and little chance of folks developing false expectations of what they're working on.
so hoe are you showing its the competition that improves skills rather than the training for competition
It's kind of like herd immunity.
Absolutely, assuming they're not insulated. So, let's take BJJ as an easy example. Let's look at four schools.
This is a discussion I've had before (with Steve, probably). You're correct that the competition doesn't directly improve skill. It's the feedback and input from competition that does the deed. Folks find out what works in a broader context, and probably see things done differently than they saw at their school.
They're intrinsically linked.
no they are not, i can go and train with my local rugby team with no intent to compete, repeat for a thousand sports including bjj
Two quick thoughts. First, I don't think there is any meaningful distinction between groups 3 and 4. They're the same.
