On Self "Training" In Martial Arts

[skribs]

Judo has no kata? Some guy named Jigoro

Kano said something to the effect that 1/3 of your judo should be kata. But you say there is none, so he probably doesn't know what he is talking about. It could be argued that shadowboxing is a form of kata, in the same way wrestling drills could be looked at as two man kata. Of course, kata is an Eastern concept, so in Western arts when you repeat a sequence of movements to ingrain the pattern, they are referred to as drills.

Technical note. If you want to break up a quote, you have to put the code around it. For example:
[.quote=frank raud,post: 1991163, member: 8489"]Segment A[./quote]
Discussion A.
[.quote]Segment B.[./quote]
Discussion B.
It will automatically fill in the name, post, and member number. Just add the [./quote] at the end of each segment you are quoting, and [.quote] at the beginning of the next segment. That way you can easily see the quotes and the replies. Don't use the period "." inside the bracket, I only did that so you could see the code I was writing.

I think a big difference between drills and kata is that drills are generally much more directly applicable than kata. Kata are typically stylized, and/or designed as a cross between a neuromuscular exercise and direct martial training. Drills tend to be more direct. Most kata I've learned are not performed the way you would fight, but drills are most often done as you would use the technique in a fight.

 

[Ivan]

This should be fun, prefrace for this: training is in quotations as i dislike calling it such. To "train" in martial arts by its literal definition all you need to do is any activity to aid your fighting skills.

Right, now to start my rambling on the subject.


So to begin with, i dont fully comprehend why it gets so much flak, somone generally does self study either alongside lessons or in lieu of them because they cant find anyone to teach them it. The obvious limitation is what material you are refering to when you self study. And if you can access any sparring partners and equipment.

Pending what is taught, would also matter as some skills are obviously easier to pick up and retain, some others arent.

Tieing back into the first statment, the only issues i see with it is: Quality and quality of material you are using. Both of which can vary in a school.

This is a fairly short rambling as there really isnt much to write on the matter. Self study has its place and isnt a choice for some people. ie, like HEMA, the martial art could only exist in treatises therefor you need to disect the sources to learn it, and have to learn it from a book.


If anyone else has any sort of rambelings on the subject, i forgot to cover diffrent sorts of media, but i dont think that has much of a place. As you should use it alongside doing it if you intend to learn any skills in this regard. That should fill in some blanks, and use (if possible) muiltiple diffrent kinds (of media).

Addendum: I dont really know how to fit this in after writing but: Goals also matter to its usefulness, if your goal is just self defence, you dont have to fight proffesional boxers in a ring or combat athletes, just the average person. (now if the average person where you live is one of them, you probbly could learn from one of them ) In a similar way if you just want to loose weight and stay healthy you dont have to run a marathon, or get into bodybuilding, powerlifting etc.

A lot of the stuff I know about fighting I learnt myself. Much of it was instilled by my father when I was young, some by the boxing coaches, some in my Taekwondo sessions and so on. But without me having the motivation to practice at home every now and then, I'd be rigid. By this I mean, I wouldn't fight like me. I wouldn't use what I would find more natural for me to use, I would use what I was taught to use. There is a difference. Sometimes they intertwine; you might that something you learn is actually more suited to you than what you have been using up until now. But someone who can only repeat movements that he has been taught is not a martial artist or a fighter. Self learning is an essential process in which everyone discovers who they are when they get in the ring.

I am all for strict, militarised training in the sense that I give anyone who does not follow my instructions, when I undertake warm ups or drills, a lot of push ups and in the sense that I feel like structure is needed in training. But a personal element is like the meat in your steak - essential.

 

[drop bear]

No comment for the first sentence, it would be down to opinion and i disagree on said matter.

Second sentence, that is argubly what fighting is.

Third: In which manner are you using you? As this is entirely detached from personal experinces etc and isnt really based on anything I do. If you mean it in the other way, i support a statement and agree about one made earlier about you can self teach yourself up to a certain level, that level would vary on person. And going back to earlier where i made the statement its on a scale, you self study in formal training as well, as they expect you to go home and practice. (i have another rant on that, but for another time and place)

Fourth: In my view and focus, that is suffcient. Given i would be in it for learning how to fgiht to defend myself, being better at that than any other chum, would be meeting my goals and suffcient for me. By such criteria it would be good if it met my goals.


And if he is the guy who is assaling me, and he is deemed to be above average for the area. Then it would be suffcient to be better than him.

You are taking the idea that a huge bulk of self defence training is probably worthless and using that to justify self training.

Where I traditionally have not seen the justification in either.

Now that aside if you wanted to try it I am interested to see the results because as an experiment it would be kind of interesting.

So how will you test it to see if your idea works?

I still think the BJJ comp is the go. Here is a quick list of the moves you would need.
The 16 Most Important Techniques for the BJJ Beginner

 

[Dirty Dog]

My secondary experience is watching HEMA be resurected mainly from books by a variety of people, some of which havent had any fencing experience. And as no martial systems exist (or many) to apply any of the principles etc to it, they just studied the material they could find and sparred.

Watching someone else do something doesn't really count as experience.
HEMA never died out. The things found in the surviving written works had evolved as part of modern fencing, but being able to deconstruct and reverse engineer things made a big difference.
You're also making the unfounded assumption that these reconstructions are essentially correct. It's entirely possible that if Silver were alive, our efforts would result in a massive facepalm.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Watching someone else do something doesn't really count as experience.
HEMA never died out. The things found in the surviving written works had evolved as part of modern fencing, but being able to deconstruct and reverse engineer things made a big difference.
You're also making the unfounded assumption that these reconstructions are essentially correct. It's entirely possible that if Silver were alive, our efforts would result in a massive facepalm.

Just want to add to this that the people who initially reconstructed hema included trained martial artists with weapon experience prior to the endeavor, along with professional historians whose job it is to reverse engineer things from history.

 

[Headhunter]

Apologies for the double post.


Common sense and observation is the stem for this. If you only do kata, you will not beat somone who has only fought. They are not better or a prerequisite to "normal" exercise, and S&C commonly done might even surpass them. the Spirtual side of them is useless to somone who isnt spirtual or doesnt express it that way.

The only 2 things that i think they stand up to on their own merits without anything else added, is they are a form of spirtuality and calisthenics. So thats the only thing i will agree they can stand up to on their own merits. And plenty of other fighting systems and sports dont include them and do plenty fine without them. So they can indeed be effectively eliminated for fighting purposes, exercise purposes and spirtuality purposes.

Example of a few combat sports: Boxing, Kickboxing, Judo.


Second: The main issue here is that, there isnt a study or many studies done on training methods and the like. And several places claim to have done personal study, but i dont think many of them publish any proper papers etc on the matter, so effectively worthless.

But with that in mind, some skills are factually easier to pick up than others. and you do have some fighting instints built into you. So, if you have access to some material (more than what the first humans who codified systems had) you could learn some of the skills in it. the amount would be individual.

My personal expereince in such a matter is picking up a few things fairly easily and following defendu and other things like it. Basically the concept and thoughtl ine you only need X amount of techniques to cover the most common issues you will find. And said techniques being easy to pick up, retain and use under stress. My secondary experience is watching HEMA be resurected mainly from books by a variety of people, some of which havent had any fencing experience. And as no martial systems exist (or many) to apply any of the principles etc to it, they just studied the material they could find and sparred.

You arent going to be technically perfect and we can dipsute if you can call yourself "good", but you only need to know enough to essentially put your fist into the person until they stop being a threat to you.

Addendum: I for some reason thought, you were the same person as the person i orginally quoted, so some of the wording might be off, didnt catch it until a read read.

You got asked what your experience is and you just rambled out a load of nonsense without answering the question because you don't want to say the real answer...no experience

 

[Headhunter]

A lot of the stuff I know about fighting I learnt myself. Much of it was instilled by my father when I was young, some by the boxing coaches, some in my Taekwondo sessions and so on. But without me having the motivation to practice at home every now and then, I'd be rigid. By this I mean, I wouldn't fight like me. I wouldn't use what I would find more natural for me to use, I would use what I was taught to use. There is a difference. Sometimes they intertwine; you might that something you learn is actually more suited to you than what you have been using up until now. But someone who can only repeat movements that he has been taught is not a martial artist or a fighter. Self learning is an essential process in which everyone discovers who they are when they get in the ring.

I am all for strict, militarised training in the sense that I give anyone who does not follow my instructions, when I undertake warm ups or drills, a lot of push ups and in the sense that I feel like structure is needed in training. But a personal element is like the meat in your steak - essential.

No one is saying self training isn't important but what OP is saying is that he can learn without any teacher

 

[skribs]

A lot of the stuff I know about fighting I learnt myself. Much of it was instilled by my father when I was young, some by the boxing coaches, some in my Taekwondo sessions and so on. But without me having the motivation to practice at home every now and then, I'd be rigid. By this I mean, I wouldn't fight like me. I wouldn't use what I would find more natural for me to use, I would use what I was taught to use. There is a difference. Sometimes they intertwine; you might that something you learn is actually more suited to you than what you have been using up until now. But someone who can only repeat movements that he has been taught is not a martial artist or a fighter. Self learning is an essential process in which everyone discovers who they are when they get in the ring.

I am all for strict, militarised training in the sense that I give anyone who does not follow my instructions, when I undertake warm ups or drills, a lot of push ups and in the sense that I feel like structure is needed in training. But a personal element is like the meat in your steak - essential.

Like @Headhunter said, it's not about whether or not you do your homework when you're not in class. This question is whether you can become competent without ever going to class.

The funny thing is that while the OP doesn't think going to class is worth it (because the class might be low quality), he's perfectly willing to assume that all of the other resources he uses are high quality.

 

[frank raud]

Technical note. If you want to break up a quote, you have to put the code around it. For example:
[.quote=frank raud,post: 1991163, member: 8489"]Segment A[./quote]
Discussion A.
[.quote]Segment B.[./quote]
Discussion B.
It will automatically fill in the name, post, and member number. Just add the [./quote] at the end of each segment you are quoting, and [.quote] at the beginning of the next segment. That way you can easily see the quotes and the replies. Don't use the period "." inside the bracket, I only did that so you could see the code I was writing.

I think a big difference between drills and kata is that drills are generally much more directly applicable than kata. Kata are typically stylized, and/or designed as a cross between a neuromuscular exercise and direct martial training. Drills tend to be more direct. Most kata I've learned are not performed the way you would fight, but drills are most often done as you would use the technique in a fight.

Thank you for the technical correction on quotes. First time using that function on my phone, will stick to my laptop.

I won't disagree with your definitions of kata and drills, but they do have more in common than what separates them.

 

[skribs]

Thank you for the technical correction on quotes. First time using that function on my phone, will stick to my laptop.

I won't disagree with your definitions of kata and drills, but they do have more in common than what separates them.

I prefer to make my more complicated replies on my computer, too.

 

[Flying Crane]

Why do folks continue to have the same circular, pointless discussion with the same OP? This has all been hashed out before. Nothing comes of it. A new thread like this ought to get the sound of crickets.

 

[frank raud]

One of the most commonly performed judo kata. It is a requirement for belt testing in many countries.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Why do folks continue to have the same circular, pointless discussion with the same OP? This has all been hashed out before. Nothing comes of it. A new thread like this ought to get the sound of crickets.

There are a few posters who just keep making the same posts with different phrasing. It's not against the rules, although I too sometimes wonder why anybody responds. Then I remember that some of them might not have been around last time it was hashed out.

 

[Flying Crane]

There are a few posters who just keep making the same posts with different phrasing. It's not against the rules, although I too sometimes wonder why anybody responds. Then I remember that some of them might not have been around last time it was hashed out.

Ahh, true dat!

 

[skribs]

Why do folks continue to have the same circular, pointless discussion with the same OP? This has all been hashed out before. Nothing comes of it. A new thread like this ought to get the sound of crickets.

There are a few posters who just keep making the same posts with different phrasing. It's not against the rules, although I too sometimes wonder why anybody responds. Then I remember that some of them might not have been around last time it was hashed out.

Because when a newbie comes to the forum and sees his insane rantings, they also need to see all of these ludicrous ideas debunked.

 

[Flying Crane]

Because when a newbie comes to the forum and sees his insane rantings, they also need to see all of these ludicrous ideas debunked.

Or, if there are zero responses to his thread, that might also send a message.

 

[skribs]

Or, if there are zero responses to his thread, that might also send a message.

That there was nothing to refute?

The internet is built on people correcting everything.

 

[Flying Crane]

That there was nothing to refute?

The internet is built on people correcting everything.

Refuting the nonsense on the internet becomes more than a full-time job, and last I looked it did not come with a salary. People like Rat just want you to engage. Lack of engagement sends a message, when it is universal (which admittedly is probably not realistic).

At any rate, I’ve given up trying to correct all the wrongs. I can do a little here and there, I’m more willing if it’s a newbie, but I can’t do it over and over with those who are hell-bent on it. Let them believe their own nonsense. I’ve got more important things to do. Like just about anything.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Why do folks continue to have the same circular, pointless discussion with the same OP? This has all been hashed out before. Nothing comes of it. A new thread like this ought to get the sound of crickets.

Slow day at the office?

 

[jobo]

Ok
Ok. I tend to forget I,m talking to a bunch of low iq morons who relentlessly train B's martial arts holding to it like a 5 year old not wanting to relenquish there pascifer. I am a Kung Fu founder, when my system is ready I will do "TRIAL" testing. Before I release it to the public,. When you create a prototype you test it before realease it to public .

who are you going to test it against ? id be interested to read the methodology for the testing