Training half of martial arts bugs me.

[Gerry Seymour]

As I read dvcochran's post, he was talking about more of a demo or a sample taste for people who want to see what it would be like to pursue training. For a short one time session, that's all anyone could realistically deliver, so kudos to him for being honest about it. Teaching of functional skills would only be possible during longer sustained training, so that's where any "accountability" would be found.


I've thrown people who don't want to be thrown during sparring/randori hundreds (thousands?) of times. The only thing different about doing it in an official tournament is some extra adrenaline. (I've done that too, but not nearly as often as I've done regular sparring in the gym.)

@Steve, Tony gets at exactly what I’m talking about here. He’s often clearer than I, so maybe his post will make more sense than mine.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Hhhh

Not if it is done with scientific method. Because to improve your ambush you will improve your counter ambush.

I used to know some airforce defense guard. And their training was to oppose the SAS. So both elements got covered.

That sounds like it includes training from NOT attacking first. So not the same as his description. The scientific method doesn’t change that, so I’m not sure why you brought it up there.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

There is a concept called exeptionalism. Which is this ironic American trait that makes them all offended when American is not painted as the bestest most awesome thing in the world.

They are just super sensitive about some subjects that the rest of us would take on the chin.

Call someone a liberal and see what happens.

Another interesting stereotype.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

This is where subjective language like "doesn't want to be thrown" causes problems. I mean, sure, your training partner might not want to be thrown. But how much training value does their sincere desire to stay upright give you? If your instructor hasn't ever applied their skills, and no one else in the school applies the skills, then how do you know what you're learning. There's no independent, measurable result. Just a giant feedback loop.

Throwing someone who is trying not to let you throw them (and who is trying to throw or strike you at the same time) is the application of the skill. If your instructor has done that, then they have applied the skill. If your sparring partner who you manage to throw today is the same guy who managed to throw you yesterday during sparring, then they have also applied the skill.

You can make the point that "what if everyone in your school just sucks?" But then you could make the same argument even if you went to a tournament for an official competition - maybe everybody who came to that tournament just sucks.

In my experience, most people have a lifetime of experience with keeping their balance and not being made to fall over easily. Sure, you find klutzes with poor balance, but if you train with a reasonably large set of people you will find a good percentage that require some work and some skill to take down when they're fighting back. Even if they aren't particularly skilled to begin with, the act of doing randori on a regular basis will make them harder to take down and better at threatening you with takedowns of their own. Honestly, even if the instruction is crappy - if you regularly spar full out takedowns with thirty other sparring partners, at least some of whom are reasonably athletic and bigger or stronger than you are, and you regularly have success completing takedowns - then you probably have at least the basics of some functional skills.

One advantage that competition does have is diversifying and increasing the size of the talent pool you are practicing against. If you've only sparred with 5 out-of-shape guys who all have the same background, that isn't much of a basis for comparison or improvement, If you've sparred with 100 fit guys from a variety of backgrounds, that's significantly better.

My competition experience isn't that extensive. If you put together the different types of tournaments I've been to where throws are part of the allowable techniques, then I've been up against maybe 26 different guys, mostly in my weight class, from maybe 10-12 different schools.

On the other hand, in my regular sparring I've been up against 100s of guys, with a wide variety of shapes and sizes, with backgrounds in Judo, wrestling, Sambo, Sumo, BJJ, other forms of jujutsu, MMA, other martial arts, football, rugby, powerlifting, and who knows what else. I'm pretty certain that if I was able to count up the number of different schools that those sparring partners had trained at, it would come out to way more than the number of different schools I competed against in tournaments.

Comparing the two sets of experiences, I think I've learned a lot more from my non-tournament sparring than my official competition experience,

Think about it like this: what's the difference between learning a grappling technique from a bujinkan taijutsu instructor and the same technique from a BJJ instructor? They both teach people to throw other people, and I'm sure, if asked, the student would say, "Hey man, I've thrown hundreds of people who didn't want to be thrown." The technique is the same. Let's say the training is the same, too. I mean, randori/sparring, a sincere desire to learn and apply the techniques... for real.

The difference is that in the Bujinkan Taijutsu class, they don't spar. They don't randori. They don't throw someone who is actively fighting against being thrown. If the student said "Hey man, I've thrown hundreds of people who didn't want to be thrown" then they would be lying.

 

[dvcochran]

And when are you ever throwing someone who doesn't want to be thrown? Only time I ever did was in competition. The one thing training, no matter how good, can ever do, is simulate application. Further, and this is the key, a BJJ black belt who has no actual, practical experience applying skills shouldn't open his own school. Just like a random karate master or ninja or aikidoka who has no actual, practical experience applying skills should probably not be teaching self defense.

Simply put, if you're not applying your skills, you aren't the pilot in the analogy. You aren't cooking actual food. You aren't playing a round of golf or riding an actual bike. You're never taking the step out of training and into performance. And without application, there is no expertise, and without expertise... honest to goodness expertise... you will never get to the point of innovation, where you can take skills you have mastered and apply them in a completely different context, even under extreme stress. This is what it takes to land a plane in the Hudson River.

Training ---> Performance --> Expertise --> Innovation
You .................................................................Capt. Sullenberger
Mocking isn't quite right, and dislike is completely the wrong word. Disagreement isn't mocking, and it isn't disliking. At most, I'll give you sincere amusement. I used the language he used, which was (paraphrasing slightly) that he taught no usable skills, and told them at the outset that this was an introduction in which the best they could hope for was a nugget of some kind. I mean, that's really the nut of the issue here, and he articulated it very well.
There's a real difference between addressing the post and addressing the poster. You seem to want to make this personal, which I frankly don't get. Well, that's not entirely true. I understand why, because you've shared that you conduct seminars in which you do not expect to teach any functional skill. Like I said earlier, as a trainer, that's one heck of a gig if you can get it. There is zero accountability there.

It's analogous to professional trainers we see all the time who work for these national training corporations. The corporation has these packages on various topics, from managing virtual workgroups to coaching to you name it. The facilitators they have are professional facilitators, with varying expertise. Sometimes, they send a facilitator to teach subjects that he or she is just not qualified to teach. And you can tell. They will facilitate their way through the session, but regardless of how well they know the material, their lack of depth is revealed the first moment someone asks a real world question. In professional training, I personally don't think someone without real world experience coaching and supervising employees has any business teaching others to do so. If you've never managed a virtual team, I don't think you have any business teaching others to do so.

And presuming the instructor is fully qualified, if you're not managing a virtual team, you will get very little out of the training on that subject because you aren't applying what you're learning. If you're not managing employees, training on coaching subordinates is going to be pointless, because you aren't applying those skills.

There's an evaluation model commonly used in professional training called the Kirkpatrick model. Lots of information on it if you google it, but essentially, there are four stages to evaluating the effectiveness of training: Reaction, Learning, Transfer, and Results. I'll leave it to you guys whether you are curious about the model. To the point here, seminars such as @dvcochran described can only be evaluated at the first stage. Training without application can only ever be evaluated at the second stage. That's the best one can do without application.

If you have application, it's really easy to think of how the training can be evaluated to the Transfer level. Results might take some planning, because it involves thinking about measurable results at the outset. This is easy if it's considered at the outset, but can be tricky if you haven't thought about measurable results up front.

I cannot remember if I specifically used the word seminar. A 2-3 hour class hardly constitutes a seminar. I did clearly say it was an introduction, not the full course meal.
Your obsession with wanting to shoot holes in My (yes that is you making it personal) comments is baffling. How you think specifically calling me out is not personal is even more baffling. You are consistent, I will give you that.
Yet, you still have not identified what you think a SD teacher or class should be. Instead you jumped into misdirection using a teaching model.
Yes I know it is still heavily used but the Kirkpatrick model is pretty old, 50's I think. It gets a Lot knocks for being self edifying within the teaching/learning industry a not much of anywhere else.
I have always heard it is where the saying 'paralysis by analysis' originated from.

 

[Steve]

@Steve, Tony gets at exactly what I’m talking about here. He’s often clearer than I, so maybe his post will make more sense than mine.[/QUOTE

LOL. Okay, man. I'll avoid accusing you of ignoring me.

Throwing someone who is trying not to let you throw them (and who is trying to throw or strike you at the same time) is the application of the skill. If your instructor has done that, then they have applied the skill. If your sparring partner who you manage to throw today is the same guy who managed to throw you yesterday during sparring, then they have also applied the skill.

You can make the point that "what if everyone in your school just sucks?" But then you could make the same argument even if you went to a tournament for an official competition - maybe everybody who came to that tournament just sucks.

In my experience, most people have a lifetime of experience with keeping their balance and not being made to fall over easily. Sure, you find klutzes with poor balance, but if you train with a reasonably large set of people you will find a good percentage that require some work and some skill to take down when they're fighting back. Even if they aren't particularly skilled to begin with, the act of doing randori on a regular basis will make them harder to take down and better at threatening you with takedowns of their own. Honestly, even if the instruction is crappy - if you regularly spar full out takedowns with thirty other sparring partners, at least some of whom are reasonably athletic and bigger or stronger than you are, and you regularly have success completing takedowns - then you probably have at least the basics of some functional skills.

One advantage that competition does have is diversifying and increasing the size of the talent pool you are practicing against. If you've only sparred with 5 out-of-shape guys who all have the same background, that isn't much of a basis for comparison or improvement, If you've sparred with 100 fit guys from a variety of backgrounds, that's significantly better.

My competition experience isn't that extensive. If you put together the different types of tournaments I've been to where throws are part of the allowable techniques, then I've been up against maybe 26 different guys, mostly in my weight class, from maybe 10-12 different schools.

On the other hand, in my regular sparring I've been up against 100s of guys, with a wide variety of shapes and sizes, with backgrounds in Judo, wrestling, Sambo, Sumo, BJJ, other forms of jujutsu, MMA, other martial arts, football, rugby, powerlifting, and who knows what else. I'm pretty certain that if I was able to count up the number of different schools that those sparring partners had trained at, it would come out to way more than the number of different schools I competed against in tournaments.

Comparing the two sets of experiences, I think I've learned a lot more from my non-tournament sparring than my official competition experience,

That's an interesting thought. Thinking about it, I'd agree that sparring 100 of guys with a wide variety of backgrounds from a wide range of schools, it checks the boxes. It is objective and independent of the training environment. Just to bring this back, as an instructor, your experience is what you bring to the table. If you didn't test your skills against these 100s of guys with varying backgrounds from dozens of schools, you couldn't pass the benefits of that to your students. AND, your students, while they can benefit from the quality of your instruction, cannot substitute your own experience for theirs. So, do you encourage your students to go to different schools and replicate your own form of application? Why or why not?

There's also a whole lot of calibration that forms the foundation for your training. You train in a school with a qualified instructor in a style that encourages calibration, with people from widely varied backgrounds who all apply their skills in different ways (except for maybe the jujutsu guys... who knows about them?). Internally, I think you mentioned you have students who compete in all kinds of different rulesets. Remove all of that calibration, and things start to break down fast.

Which is where we are with the Bujinkan. It's been just a few generations... I mean, the founder is still alive, for Pete's sake. What happened?

The difference is that in the Bujinkan Taijutsu class, they don't spar. They don't randori. They don't throw someone who is actively fighting against being thrown. If the student said "Hey man, I've thrown hundreds of people who didn't want to be thrown" then they would be lying.

But, just as some "self defense oriented" aikido schools do, let's say this one does. They spar... a lot. Every class. The technique is the same.

Let's take it one step further. Let's say that the instructor comes from a strong Judo background, where he routinely applied the technique. He teaches ninjutsu, but blends his Judo into the training, including randori. We've seen this before. It's not unrealistic for this to happen. Could he "throw someone who doesn't want to be thrown?" Maybe. Let's say probably. What about his students? I think it's a crap shoot. What about their students? I'd say odds are long.

 

[dvcochran]

Yeah but what is the point?

This comes up Lot and it is a very strange outlook.

Let's go back to our flying analogy.

So now for whatever reason we only have two weeks to learn to fly a plane. And instead of just saying no it can't be done. We set up a flying school that doesn't work.

And when we have plane crashes it is ok because we only had two weeks?

I see no logic in that analogy. Would you not be an absolute idiot to think you are going to learn how to fly a plane in 2 weeks?
I am Always very clear not to plant seeds of competency. More food for thought to get them to the next step. Nothing at all innocuous. It is factual, not a rah, rah class.
If I say something like 'try before you buy' or an intro to psychology do this make more sense to you? The SD classes I mentioned would be no different. In no way were they 'buying' anything or gaining a level of proficiency. They were however getting exposure to many of the 'standard' what if's and an idea of what teaching curriculum would be like.

 

[Steve]

I cannot remember if I specifically used the word seminar. A 2-3 hour class hardly constitutes a seminar. I did clearly say it was an introduction, not the full course meal.
Your obsession with wanting to shoot holes in My (yes that is you making it personal) comments is baffling. How you think specifically calling me out is not personal is even more baffling. You are consistent, I will give you that.
Yet, you still have not identified what you think a SD teacher or class should be. Instead you jumped into misdirection using a teaching model.
Yes I know it is still heavily used but the Kirkpatrick model is pretty old, 50's I think. It gets a Lot knocks for being self edifying within the teaching/learning industry a not much of anywhere else.
I have always heard it is where the saying 'paralysis by analysis' originated from.

Kirkpatrick is specifically intended to evaluate whether training is working. Self-edifying? What does that even mean? I mean, it's an evaluation model. By definition, it's intended to understand the effectiveness of training. It will either support the training (which I think is what you mean by self-edify, but that's an odd turn of phrase) or demonstrate that the training was not effective.

Regarding a self defense program I think is really solid, I think I mentioned earlier in this thread a program from a few years back in Canada. The goal was to reduce the incidence of sexual assault and to reduce the number of assaults that were successful. It was a 12 week program that was demonstrably successful.

I think crossfit is also a really solid self defense program.

If I remember correctly, you did read and respond to this with some snarky comment about it being common knowledge.

Dude, I think I'm going to have to break up with you. You're unfriendly and unreasonable. I just don't think we have a future, you and me.

 

[dvcochran]

Kirkpatrick is specifically intended to evaluate whether training is working. Self-edifying? What does that even mean? I mean, it's an evaluation model. By definition, it's intended to understand the effectiveness of training. It will either support the training (which I think is what you mean by self-edify, but that's an odd turn of phrase) or demonstrate that the training was not effective.

Regarding a self defense program I think is really solid, I think I mentioned earlier in this thread a program from a few years back in Canada. The goal was to reduce the incidence of sexual assault and to reduce the number of assaults that were successful. It was a 12 week program that was demonstrably successful.

I think crossfit is also a really solid self defense program.

If I remember correctly, you did read and respond to this with some snarky comment about it being common knowledge.

Dude, I think I'm going to have to break up with you. You're unfriendly and unreasonable. I just don't think we have a future, you and me.

Well, we agree on something.
I am saying this as a sincere advise, you really need to 'hear' what you write. Snarky would be putting your content lightly.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

So, do you encourage your students to go to different schools and replicate your own form of application? Why or why not?

Yes! Absolutely! The more experience with a wide variety of sparring partners the better.

I will add that I'm lucky enough to teach at a gym where we have a large number of tough practitioners from a variety of backgrounds come through. A student who only trained at our gym for the last 10 years would have had the opportunity to spar with wrestlers, judoka, jiujiteiros, MMA fighters (pro and amateur), sambists, sumotori, capoeristas, kyokushin karateka, boxers (pro and amateur), thai boxers, and more. (Unfortunately the majority of students don't take advantage of most of those opportunities, but they are there.)

Even so, I encourage students to visit other schools and train with other people when they have the chance.

But, just as some "self defense oriented" aikido schools do, let's say this one does. They spar... a lot. Every class. The technique is the same.

Let's take it one step further. Let's say that the instructor comes from a strong Judo background, where he routinely applied the technique. He teaches ninjutsu, but blends his Judo into the training, including randori. We've seen this before. It's not unrealistic for this to happen. Could he "throw someone who doesn't want to be thrown?" Maybe. Let's say probably. What about his students? I think it's a crap shoot. What about their students? I'd say odds are long.

I think that if the students in the school sparred regularly every class, they would develop usable skills. I think they would also modify many of their techniques and they would learn the difference between the high percentage, low percentage, and no percentage moves in their curriculum.

Now would they be as good at applying those techniques as equally hard working practitioners of Judo, BJJ, Boxing, or MMA? Probably not for a while. I expect it would take a few generations of students sparring to refine the knowledge base, training methods, and curriculum. If only one school did the sparring it would take even longer, because they just wouldn't have enough of a talent pool working on it. But if all Bujinkan schools engaged in high-quality sparring on a regular basis, then they'd get there eventually.

Of course if only the one teacher did that and then his students didn't spar and their students didn't spar, then you are right - functional skills would be unlikely.

 

[Steve]

I think that if the students in the school sparred regularly every class, they would develop usable skills. I think they would also modify many of their techniques and they would learn the difference between the high percentage, low percentage, and no percentage moves in their curriculum.

Now would they be as good at applying those techniques as equally hard working practitioners of Judo, BJJ, Boxing, or MMA? Probably not for a while. I expect it would take a few generations of students sparring to refine the knowledge base, training methods, and curriculum. If only one school did the sparring it would take even longer, because they just wouldn't have enough of a talent pool working on it. But if all Bujinkan schools engaged in high-quality sparring on a regular basis, then they'd get there eventually.

Of course if only the one teacher did that and then his students didn't spar and their students didn't spar, then you are right - functional skills would be unlikely.

just to confirm. You're saying a school that spars could independently rediscover practical grappling skill without any sort of external application? Just by sparring? I disagree.

I would say, however, that introducing some external application, if the training made some sense, they could get up to speed pretty fast. Not the same thing, though.

 

[Gweilo]

There is a concept called exeptionalism. Which is this ironic American trait that makes them all offended when American is not painted as the bestest most awesome thing in the world.

They are just super sensitive about some subjects that the rest of us would take on the chin.

Call someone a liberal and see what happens.

Yes I got that

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I think crossfit is also a really solid self defense program.

This is an interesting comment. So good fitness is effective for SD, but not good fitness + some fighting skills? This suggests I’ve missed something in your basic premise.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

just to confirm. You're saying a school that spars could independently rediscover practical grappling skill without any sort of external application? Just by sparring? I disagree.

I would say, however, that introducing some external application, if the training made some sense, they could get up to speed pretty fast. Not the same thing, though.

I have to disagree with you, from my own experience. I’m quite good at the Classical forms in NGA (the stylized versions for teaching the principles without resistance) because I spent a lot of time training the hardest ones. That was time without much resistance. Applying some resistance later, I quickly figured out which were just technical drills and which were applicable. Then that went deeper, to which were more reliable.

That’s with only one person doing the work. Put a whole school (even a small one) to that task, and it almost certainly gets refined faster and more deeply, even if it’s all done internally to the group. It’s the attitude that matters, a desire to dig in and see what works and why (something I was probably first introduced to by a BJJ/MMA guy). And if the techniques are learned well (even from a classical, low-resistance model) the counters are also understood, which makes the resistive training effective.

 

[Steve]

This is an interesting comment. So good fitness is effective for SD, but not good fitness + some fighting skills? This suggests I’ve missed something in your basic premise.

Lol. We've seen nothing that shows that studying ninjutsu or any self defense "oriented" art will help you any more than avoiding risky behaviors and being fit. I've provided anecdotal evidence in the past where people have credited their parkour training for American Ninja Warrior competitions as saving them from being raped.

So, it's kind of the other way around. I default to the idea that most people, particularly where students are routinely applying the skills, aren't really learning to fight. But being confident, having high self esteem, being fit, and avoiding high risk behaviors (e.g., taking oxycontin recreationally, hanging out in alleys looking for heroin, looking for fights at the bar) are very practical, attainable things that most people can do to be safer.

Further, I think believing you can fight, when you can't, can actually make you less safe. I mentioned the stakes before. The stakes for thinking you're learning to cook, but not really cooking food... those stakes are pretty low. If someone gives you real food to cook, and you burn the veggies and overcook the meat... no big deal. You realize that you don't know what you think you do and move on. You might look like one of those kids on the singing shows who is being told for the first time in their lives that they are tone deaf. But that's just embarrassment.

Thinking you can fight when you cannot could lead to all kinds of trouble for you. It's very likely to turn a bad situation worse.

I have to disagree with you, from my own experience. I’m quite good at the Classical forms in NGA (the stylized versions for teaching the principles without resistance) because I spent a lot of time training the hardest ones. That was time without much resistance. Applying some resistance later, I quickly figured out which were just technical drills and which were applicable. Then that went deeper, to which were more reliable.

That’s with only one person doing the work. Put a whole school (even a small one) to that task, and it almost certainly gets refined faster and more deeply, even if it’s all done internally to the group. It’s the attitude that matters, a desire to dig in and see what works and why (something I was probably first introduced to by a BJJ/MMA guy). And if the techniques are learned well (even from a classical, low-resistance model) the counters are also understood, which makes the resistive training effective.

As I said before, what you're essentially doing is selling the process of rediscovering something that already exists. Unless you are a bone fide expert, there are big problems with this. 1, you have no external application, so there is no way to see if what you're doing works at all. 2: because no one really knows what they're doing, you will waste a lot of time, learning really, who knows what? and 3: you will have huge gaps and blind spots that you are completely unaware of. There's a certain level of trust in every school. The student can't do what the instructor can, so the student has to trust that when the instructor says, "keep your elbows in tight," that even though that feels wrong and doesn't work for you, it will eventually work. When the instructor says, "Okay, now put your left leg in, and now take it out... put it back and shake it all about," that it looks silly, but you do it for a reason, because even though you can't make it work now, you will eventually.

Ever heard the term crappling? That's what happens when schools independently attempt to rediscover their grappling without knowing what they're doing. All kinds of examples of this on YouTube, if you're interested. The point is, the issue with "classical" training is that it is so far removed from application, who knows whether it makes any sense at all. The craziest things have come out of the Bujinkan and that's only a few generations from the founder who had studied Judo, wrestling, and western boxing. In these crappling videos, we see the instructor teaching the technique, and the students earnestly trying to learn the technique, confident that if they keep at it, it will eventually work. That happens where there is no application, because you're not learning the skills in pursuit of some kind of measurable, objective goal.

Also, the entire idea of selling a something that puts the onus of inventing the product on the student is galling to me. "Hey guys. For $75 per month, I'll teach you some things that probably don't work. But together, we'll figure it out. Try extending your arm... oh, that didn't work. I'll drive you to the ER. The rest of you, snap to it. I'll be back in a few."

 

[Tony Dismukes]

just to confirm. You're saying a school that spars could independently rediscover practical grappling skill without any sort of external application? Just by sparring? I disagree.

Absolutely. How do you think any sort of "practical grappling" was developed in the first place? A bunch of guys set some parameters for victory (putting the opponent on the ground, pinning them, making them tap out, whatever) and then spent a whole bunch of time trying to beat each other according to those conditions - i.e. sparring. Unlike something like swordfighting where any sort of sparring has to be a watered-down simulation of the real thing, in pure grappling sparring is the real application.

Not to mention that the Bujinkan actually has a foundation of valid techniques to start with. (They also have a bunch of crap which has been added over the years, but sparring is the quickest way to identify the difference between the crap and the valid material.)

I would say, however, that introducing some external application, if the training made some sense, they could get up to speed pretty fast. Not the same thing, though.

What do you mean by external application here? Do you mean sparring with folks outside the school or the art? That would certainly help speed up the process, but it's not 100% necessary. The majority of folkstyle wrestlers don't go out sparring judoka, jiujiteiros, sambists, sumotori, etc., but they generally have pretty functional skills. (More to the point, the development of folkstyle wrestling didn't require testing against all those other arts.)

Where you have a point is the relative number of people in the talent pool working to develop the art. I tell my students that every one of them is a scientist in the huge research lab we have going on to identify problems, discover what works and how to improve the answers we already have. If your total research team for your art is 20 practitioners, then you're going to have a hard time ever catching up to systems like Judo, wrestling, or BJJ where hundreds of thousands or even millions of participants have been working for decades to improve the art. (I still think they could develop some functional skills, they'd just be way behind compared to an average Judo dojo, for example.)

On the other hand, if every X-kan school incorporated good quality sparring that would probably raise the talent pool to probably tens of thousands of practitioners, which is enough to make some solid progress.

Another factor to consider is that once you have good sparring as a regular part of your training, then the external validation frequently comes to you. Part of the reason I've been able to spar wrestlers, judoka, sambists, etc isn't just that I've gone to other schools. They come to BJJ because they know they'll get some good grappling in. Right now the Bujinkan isn't really getting much benefit from all the former wrestlers, judoka, etc in their ranks because those guys don't get to spar and show their fellow students the limitations of what they're doing. Let them all spar and use what they already know and they'll make everybody improve. In addition, more students will sign up who have that sort of prior experience.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Absolutely. How do you think any sort of "practical grappling" was developed in the first place?

The only issue for this approach is that you may produce many students who has the throwing skill, but don't have the solid foundation. To use their skill to against average opponent, it will work. To use their skill to against the best of the best, their skill may not work.

To train a MA system, you have to go through the foundation building process. Just to train SD, you may not have to.

Example of foundation building.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

just to confirm. You're saying a school that spars could independently rediscover practical grappling skill without any sort of external application? Just by sparring? I disagree.

Agree with you on this.

Give your students 10 years to wrestle on the mat, they will never be able to develop "hip throw".

Give your students 30 years to wrestle on the mat, they will never be able to develop "leg twisting" throw.

Confucius said, "I have spent 3 days in thinking and ended with nothing. I prefer to spend those 3 days to study instead."

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Hhhh

That sounds like it includes training from NOT attacking first. So not the same as his description. The scientific method doesn’t change that, so I’m not sure why you brought it up there.

He assumes if self defense is in the name, there is no way anything is being done with the scientific method.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

The only issue for this approach is that you may produce many students who has the throwing skill, but don't have the solid foundation. To use their skill to against average opponent, it will work. To use their skill to against the best of the best, their skill may not work.

To train a MA system, you have to go through the foundation building process. Just to train SD, you may not have to.

Example of foundation building.

Agree with you on this.

Give your students 10 years to wrestle on the mat, they will never be able to develop "hip throw".

Give your students 30 years to wrestle on the mat, they will never be able to develop "leg twisting" throw.

Confucius said, "I have spent 3 days in thinking and ended with nothing. I prefer to spend those 3 days to study instead."

Yeah, but the context was discussing schools that already have a technical foundation, but have lost understanding of application due to generations of not sparring and not fighting. They’re not having to start completely from scratch.

Of course, even well established effective grappling arts started out with taking the lessons learned from live wrestling and systemizing them into a technical foundation so that every new student didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I don’t think anyone is proposing just sparring without studying, drilling, and building foundational skill.