Y isn't my opponent like my mook jong?!!

[Rolling Elbow]

I finally finished my mook jong and mounted him in the garagge..not the pretiest looking fellow.., but he is mounted on wood slats, bounces back nicely, and allows me to condition my arms and hands on his hard wood arms.Unfortunately, i have come to realise that a real life opponent is not as dynamic or as alive as the mook is :-/!

In an art such as mine where striking, grappling, and groundwork are all emphasized, I have been coming across more newbies in our dojo who possess prior training or simply have tremendous strength. These guys are solid..some have trained inteh military, others have been wrestlers or done hard karate for a number of years. They usually all work out and can hit hard.

Now, granted I think their movement sucks and the strikes do not flow as well as someone who is trained (and at times are quite predictable), I still cannot beleive how **** strong these guys are and how strikes or balance getters never really work as I would have hoped. Now I am not going full tilt on these guys and maybe I should, and they know the technique that is about to be applied but jesus, I really find myself feeling light and unable to really put anything into these guys. I've spoken to my instructor about this and he told me that i've got good movement and reaction but that i have been doing too much slap-trap-and hitting without using my mobility and just swallowing the opponent. Once you get these guys off balance they usually go down quite easily..getting them there though, is a b$%h!

So have any of you guys run into this feeling? How have you worked though it? There are no guarantees in martial arts but I'd hope there were some no?

Thanks fellas!

[KC Elbows]

Whenever anyone looks like they'll be a problem, I'll just shoot them, especially if they're a good grappler.

Aside from that, whenever I run into people with more strength than me, I find I have to improve my footwork and change my techniques. After all, I don't really fight a big person the way I fight a little person. Little people, I might even weather blows in order to get in to finish them. Big people, I have to be more cautious about that, but there's targets that are more accessible on them.

For instance, against the little folk, attacking the groin is usually left for my feet to deal with unless my opponent just messes up, and it's harder for me to get body shots on them because of the downward angle from my hands to their torso. However, head shots are generally easier, at least in my experience, though not easy against a good opponent.

With big guys, there's so many more accessible targets.

Don't know if that has anything to do with what you're talking about, but there it is. Do with it what you will.

Another drill I've done is this:

At one point, I mounted a very heavy spring on my garage wall and had a pole coming out of that. I would practice peng on that by performing deflections on the pole and holding those deflections for extended periods. This helped quite a bit.

[No_Know]

Do you mind some relevant words from someone who doesn't go against opponents?