Matt Thornton talks about the greatest factor in MA training

[Yarg!]

The principle of "Aliveness". Chances are if you are going to a gym and you they train you thru dead patterns you are not going to be prepared to face a resisting opponent. If you are doing martial arts for the love of the sport or for the spiritual aspect, then that is fine, however, if you are training for fights or for self defense, you will NEED live training. So heres the video:

http://s10.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=07R7ZYBSL7CGL2RR8SB7GEOT85

I really love this video and I think everyone who practises martial arts can benefit from viewing this. Enjoy!

 

[Kane Fan]

so he said sparring is good
I agree

 

[Micker]

Very basic concept, but overlooked by many. When I took karate when I was younger we would learn self defense techniques. In theory they worked great, we would practice on each other staticly. If a real situation came up and we need to use one of those techniques, we would have been all done. No way can you take something practiced staticly and use it effectively against a live opponent.

The key is to learn the movements/techniques slowly, then practice them against people who aren't willing to let you do that to them. Practice the basic movement, speed it up little by little. Once you have the movement down, then the HARD part is learining how to setup someone in a fight to apply that technique. Anyone can learn a choke hold, not everyone can successfully apply that hold in a fight. Learning how to postion yourself, how to setup and disguise the hold is very hard. Learning body postion and when you are in a good or bad postion to try certain techniques or what techniques to apply is only achieved through live sparring.

Often people will not realize that when they apply a certain hold for instance, they need to tuck in their chin to the persons body to avoid punches or how one move is used in a chain of moves, like in wresling, to arrive at your final finishing/submission move. How to sucker someone into grabbing your leg or head in order to set up a move. How to use opposite body movement in order to help you throw/move your opponent in the direction you really want. All things that can onl be taught by fighting a NON WILLING opponent.

 

[Judo Tom]

i think this is great once you already have the basic skills down really good.

i mean i think its too risky / ineffective to teach some things w/ resistance or movement until the person is proficient in doing the technique.

for example in judo we normally teach 1 of 2 throws to people on the first night. they learn under ideal conditions with no resistance. there partner will move easily for them and stay off balance as long as it takes for the person to fit in and throw. they will do this many times the first nite w/ no resistance. after the basics are learned we then move to teaching them the throw while moving but w/ no resistance. then after some more time and some practice falling they are then able to try to get the throw against a resisting partner.

but again for most people w/ ANY experience i agree

 

[ass_face]

so he said sparring is good
I agree

Yeah, I learn more in sparring than the drills... although the drills are meant to condition the muscle memory... but I find that sometimes they are impractical for me.