Keyboard Warrior
Head Administrator
Ze Führer
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Practitioner
Posts: 721
|
Post by Keyboard Warrior on Jun 19, 2012 21:29:46 GMT -5
Aliveness is a concept I feel is often overlooked by many martial artists. It's what separates great arts from sub-standard arts. Applying resistance to a technique is the key to committing it to your muscle memory properly. If you train with non-resisting opponents, then that gets applied to your muscle memory, and then you expect your opponent to not resist on the streets. This is what sets many martial arts students for failure. They operate under the assumption that the mugger is going to hand you his wrist, or he's going to let you throw him.
But at the same time, resistance is difficult to apply to all arts. Arts like Muay Thai, or Karate, or TKD make it difficult, because you can only apply resistance and train full out for so long, until your partner is beaten to a bloody pulp. You have to have some level of restraint or your going to run out of training partners, and then you become Ronda Rousey and you get kicked out of the Judo scene. Thats why arts like BJJ are cool, because you can go full out all day long, simply because there is no striking.
But its important at the same time to not overdo it. Many gyms/dojo's are so caught up in the concept of aliveness that they don't allow for the fostering of proper technique from taking place. It's important to get down a technique before attempting to work with resistance. I remember many of my training partners in my early days, would simply not let me try out a technique. They would muscle me, and not allow me to learn.
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 20, 2012 0:13:14 GMT -5
Lots of bullshido.net influence on the forum so far. I've been linking people to that video for years since seeing it there.
|
|
Chef Samurai
Global Moderator
Canadian Catch Wrestling
Posts: 843
|
Post by Chef Samurai on Jun 20, 2012 0:53:53 GMT -5
I don't know what to say except I hate semi live training lol
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 20, 2012 1:02:56 GMT -5
This was a big issue with my Wing Chun training. The aliveness wasn't really aliveness. It was just really fast and rough compliant drills. Just because you're doing a drill hard doesn't mean you're doing it with aliveness.
|
|
Chef Samurai
Global Moderator
Canadian Catch Wrestling
Posts: 843
|
Post by Chef Samurai on Jun 20, 2012 1:59:51 GMT -5
that sucks and isn't exactly what I meant but it's another great example.
and congrats on your yellow belt yo wheres my money for grading charges? lol j/k
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 20, 2012 3:13:19 GMT -5
I signed the premium 10 year contract where all my belts and equipment are paid for in advance, biatch. Nobody's gonna rip me off!
|
|
|
Post by youxia on Jun 20, 2012 7:58:23 GMT -5
Hi guys I'd just like to contribute with my experience from Wing Chun. I was discussing Chi sau (which if you haven't seen done properly looks like some weird touching, followed by what looks like very close range sparring with hands, this video at points demonstrates it well- www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3RdYkY3c_0&feature=youtu.be&fb_source=message), with my Sifu and he said the reason chi sau is played rather than sparring -although sparring is part of the system, but for advanced students, called lut sau.- is that if you put beginners in a situation with full speed and power thrown in, technique goes out the window. So you need to get techniques down before trying to fight with them Don't get me wrong, chi sau is unscripted and fast, but you don't actually get hit. Ip Man himself said " Lut Sau Kin Kung Fu", meaning "Real Kung Fu can be seen from Free Sparring". Sorry if I'm not supposed to post Traditional experience in the Modern part, but thought this was relevant.
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 20, 2012 18:27:48 GMT -5
Yup, wrong section. That's a big part of the Modern style mindset in my exprience. Whether you start sparring right away or at an advanced level, there's no avoiding having your technique fly out the window. You don't wait to spar until you've been doing other things for a year. You start sparring RIGHT AWAY and focus on trying NOT to let your form go down the drain while you do so. It's worked outstandingly well for Boxers, Muay Thai stylists, many Karateka, etc, and I'd be willing to bet money that it'd work better for Wing Chun stylists as well.
Remember that sparring doesn't mean going straight into pounding your sparring partners face into the floor. Sparring and fighting are not completely identical. You need to start out with more mild contact and use sparring as a tool to help you learn to use proper technique under pressure. Then as you get better at sparring, that pressure increases. There's no reason to wait. That's a big difference between the modern mindset and the traditional mindset. Too much philosophical thinking and theorizing about how best to build a fighter, but not enough experimenting with different training methods to see if those theories really hold up.
EDIT: I'm going to grab your quote and mine and make a thread in the General Martial Arts Board so that the discussion isn't here where it doesn't belong.
|
|
|
Post by youxia on Jun 20, 2012 19:07:19 GMT -5
Ok I'll discuss there then
|
|
|
Post by jaskey on Jun 21, 2012 9:41:48 GMT -5
While I appreciate the importance of aliveness drills, I don’t think resistance is actually what is most important in these aliveness drills. I think the spontaneity that is required in the aliveness drills is much more important in developing the habits to perform correct techniques when needed. For example it is much more important to focus on structure, set-ups, timing, reading intentions, and opponents focus in these aliveness drills, than to try to apply a technique to a fully muscle resisting opponent. I think full resistance training is getting a lot more credit than its due, and there are a lot of injures being caused because of this over zealousness of this method of training. Of course I’m not saying that full resistance is needless or completely harmful in one’s progress. In fact I think a regular dose of full resistance training is very important. But it doesn’t need to be everyday/every class thing. More of every week thing, and keep more of light sparring with full resistance in mind.
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 21, 2012 15:19:21 GMT -5
I get where you're coming from and I agree that full contact should really only be done once or twice per week, but I disagree on full contact getting more credit than it's due. There are some things in the martial arts that can ONLY be learned through full contact training. One of them is extremely important to every fighter's foundation: Knowing how to react to taking a good hit. Getting hit hard doesn't always stop a fight, heck it doesn't always even get somebody dizzy or slow them down, but it's definitely enough to get somebody to doubt themselves and to cause a whole lot of bad habits that haven't been ground away yet to surface. If you were to walk over to a student and say "I'm going to hit you, and when I do I want you to do such and such technique" they sure as heck wouldn't learn this properly. Doing a Chi Sau with hard contact won't do it either. It takes dealing with it in a simulated fight over and over again to get a real feel for how to handle taking a hit. There is no other training method that replicates this.
That said, of course it's not the only training method that matters. But it is very foundational, and it's extremely saddening that so many schools nowadays are willing to omit it completely thinking they can train great fighters without it.
|
|
Chef Samurai
Global Moderator
Canadian Catch Wrestling
Posts: 843
|
Post by Chef Samurai on Jun 21, 2012 21:37:02 GMT -5
I don't think a lot of people understand drills like chi sau.
For me it's just a sensitivity drill for your sense of touch.
Like when I'm clinching with someone chi sao taught me to feel their movements as opposed to watching them so my eyes are free for other things and it teaches you to move from deflection to deflection the most efficient way.
The only problem I have with it is some schools teach it at face value of arms rolling against each other which works great in a fight against someone trying to roll their arms up against yours lol
|
|
|
Post by Glutton4Punishment on Jun 21, 2012 22:21:27 GMT -5
For me it's just a sensitivity drill for your sense of touch. That's exactly what it should be! Although it's also somewhat meant to help you learn to spot incoming attacks in general, with or without contact, because you can see what your opponent is doing as well as feel it. But the problem is that the VAST majority of Wing Chun practitioners think that the art is "too deadly" to actually spar with and claim that Chi Sau is their alternative to sparring. That, to me, is laughable.
|
|
|
Post by friendlyvirus on Jun 21, 2012 23:15:02 GMT -5
by the way i think you have forgotten to mention a important stuff on aliveness, if you are punched or kicked and are not used to it, you might get scared, angry, shocked, confused, etc. that's why i also like the idea on aliveness.
edit: seems like I've missed the point since it was mentioned already, anyway i think its very important.
but i would like to see an aikidoka sparring against another dude, maybe a boxer, i have seen videos on youtube, but with things like, aikido is his base style, but he knows others, and stuff like that, i want to see a pure aikido fight against someone.
|
|
|
Post by youxia on Jun 22, 2012 5:27:25 GMT -5
It is both a sesnitivity drill and a sort of hands only mini sparring.
Although I also find it laughable that it could be an alternative to sparring, and the claim that the techniques are "too deadly" is ridculous. Even without the gloves I doubt someone would just get killed with punches and palm strikes unless they were some kind of master.
|
|