No. Confidence. Doesn't matter where it came from. Someone who has self-confidence. I'm not talking about confidence in their fighting ability, which is why I didn't use that term.
Yeah. I've railed against the lack of resistive training and interaction between styles because I've seen exactly what can happen if that's not there. It's why I now favor the idea of students competing (which is not the view of anyone I trained under in my primary art). Even competing in a ruleset that doesn't favor the training is useful.
We have self-defense experts here? I haven't seen that title used.
No. I'm suggesting desire to compete is not a product of training. People choose training that suits their objectives. If they don't want to compete, they don't join a school that requires competition. Heck, if they don't want to compete, they are less likely to join a school that encourages competition if they know that in advance.
Um, where was there input from an industry guy in your post I quoted and mentioned selection bias???
You entirely misread that post, then. You've now misattributed two different things in reply to it.
"Open to" isn't the full selection. People select their place to train and the system they train in. That's where the selection bias is. Go look at the average age at an MMA gym, then compare it to the average age of folks training at traditional schools. If my not-random personal sample is any indicator, you'll find about a 10- to 20-year difference in the average age of the adults training between the two. And that's only age, not accounting for ambition, fear of injury (whether it's well founded or not is immaterial), competitive personality, etc.
Well, first I'd need "a bunch of students".
Competition can be in many different format.
This makes me wonder why everyone the same things aren't happening in all styles. There is good and bad in all of them.
Damn, that is well said.
okay. I think we got to the heart of it. If we don’t agree on this, that explains everything. I think false confidence is very dangerous. If you don’t, everything you’ve said so far makes perfect sense. I get it now. Well, I guess suffice to say, I don’t think selling people false confidence is healthy or productive.
This actually varies quite a bit from school to school. Some require tournament experience, some do not. Some require that you be winning or placing in those tournaments before you get promoted.
When you say "false confidence", you assume I'm talking about confidence in their fighting ability. People get more confident from playing sports, without it needing to affect their fighting ability. People gain confidence by developing public speaking skills. None of that is "false confidence". Nor is the general self-confidence that is gained from overcoming challenges, developing discipline, and learning the skills in a MA class, regardless of the orientation of the program.
And this requirement of sparring/rolling is something I think every system can benefit from. I think I'd have learned and refined a lot more quickly in NGA if that had been more prominent in my training.
To the age thing, as I said, it's a personal observation from a limited sample. Yes, people of all ages participate in MMA and BJJ. You see fewer young folks at many of the traditional schools, with the (possible) exception of those with a strong kids' program, where they may have a stream of folks graduation from the kids' program to the adult classes.
There's your argument from the extreme again. You're just not capable of discussing factors without them being absolutes, are you?
