How do you make your training "real"?

[premier]

People often talk how training should be reality based and it's no use training other ways. They make it sound like a magic component that makes you a top-notch fighter no matter what. And without it there's no way you can make it out on the streets or even fight your way out of wet paper bag.

So how does training "real" differ from the standard ineffective traditional kungfu training? What is you do to make your training real? Lots of sparring? Certain way of doing two man exercises? Lots of conditioning? hitting your partner for real? what?

[WinterPalm]

I think traditional kung fu prepares you for the street. However, if you accept lessons from a charlatan, whether it be karate, kung fu, jiu jitsu or baseball, you will not get what you are looking for. Many people feel that you should compete in order to become a good fighter, others feel that you should just spar in order to become a good fighter. If you are interested in protecting yourself and you like kung fu, then try to make the drills and sparring as real as possible. Have your opponent try and really take your head off and then you'll get some reality into it. By the way, reality based training, as seen and sold on TV, is a fad and a marketing scam. Just like the ninja in the 80's...

[bung bo]

What WinterPalm said. Do your 2-person exercises hardcore. Getting knocked in the head or thrown hard really gets one thinking fast. Pain can be a good teacher sometimes.

[FngSaiYuk]

In the past, mostly conditioning - strenght and speed training, body toughness conditioning, body weapon toughness/conditioning (knuckles, palms, palm edge, backfist, wrist, forearm, elbows, ball of foot, heel of foot, foot edge, instep, shin, knees).

Nowadays I'm doing full contact sparring with gear. Other than that I really don't have any avenues for making my training any more 'real'. As in I REALLY don't want to injure my training partners, and I don't want to get seriously injured myself.

IMO, unless you're a criminal, guard (including bouncer), military or gov't enforcement, it'll be unlikely that you'll be in regular realistic combat. Closest for anyone outside those categories would be full contact sport combat competitions.

[Dark Knight]

By the way, reality based training, as seen and sold on TV, is a fad and a marketing scam. Just like the ninja in the 80's...

Judo and Boxing are good examples of reality based training, its not a new idea.

Since the late 70's early 80's we have had new training gear introduced. Now you can do yourtechniques and not hurt each other (within reason)

Every year we get better at it, every year better training methods are refined.

reality training will always be there, right now its a catch phrase, I was doing it in the early 80's, we didnt have a name for it, we just put on pads and sparred.

(BTW) I was reading one of Danny Inosanto's books in the 80's and he talked about senario training with pads.

As far as what are we doing to be realistic.

Sparring, forms techniques, drills,.... are all a circle around fighting. Each one has its purpose, dont neglect them.

I like to put on gloves and fight a couple times a week.

[Royal Dragon]

Go to Division and Cicero in Chicago at about 11:00 Pm, and wear alot of skin head type cloths and shout racial slurs at the crowds of brothers that gather on the corners.





















:eek:
















:D

[Shaolinlueb]

ask sifu ross ;) :o :D

[David Jamieson]

training is training. the methods should be built out of real encounters and situations.

having said that, if you want to reallyget into rbsd training, then it is the scenarios that you need to build.

realistically speaking,what are likely scenarios you will find yourself in and how can you train for best defense in those situations.

yes, sparring helps, but after a while it has served it's purpose ie: you know how to hit, you know what it feels like to be hit. You don't want to thoroughly damage your sparring partner because that means you don't get to spar as much. Go to hard= you are stupid and will always have off time which will hurt your overall training path.

incorporate weapons, seated defenses against non-linear attacks, multiple attackers helps you learn how to keep your back to more than one person, how to use one of your attackers to shield you from the others etc etc.

awareness training is big too. There are a lot of ways to train this into a normal everyday thing you do. Walk in a room, count the exits, how much clear space, who is in the killing mood?(sar chi), how do you identify that in people and how aware are you of the 360 degree globe you are in and that can be penetrated. at what point of penetraion to your globe do you act?

sparring and ring training alone is NOT reality based. In fact, all you have to do is ask yourself what reality you face regularly that may at some point require you to be physically responding?

Think first, develop a method, train it and always know that you will never be able to know each and every variable of a confrontations outcome.

weapons are important to incorporate as well. If you've ever been up against a baseball bat you will know how that changes almost everything your previously learned and will MAKE you think about how to deal with that ****. I would suggest you begin with something a little softer than a for real bat, but don't get to comfortable with foam. Because you will be able to handle what you train for given a little luck and a bit of skill and ability. So if all you know is foam, that's all you're good for.

RBSD is a catch phrase ultimately and amounts to nothing more than fear tactic marketing. However, it is a necessary evil to use marketing to put bread on teh instructors table. So long as the method is sound, you will be one step up on the attacker who is certain his weapon makes him king.

[Hua Lin Laoshi]

Royal Dragon
"Go to Division and Cicero in Chicago at about 11:00 Pm, and wear alot of skin head type cloths and shout racial slurs at the crowds of brothers that gather on the corners.'

In my youth flipping the bird usually did the trick. :D

I think that's the USA standard fight challenge and it saves you voice so you can tell stories about it later. ;)

[Ray Pina]

Without getting into style arguments, there is only one way to insure that what you are training is affective ... real or "unreal" doesn't aply here. It's whether your stuff works, and I guess if it works for what you want. Wushu works for what it is intended to do, please the eye.

If you want to KNOW your MARTIAL material works you HAVE TO test it. That's it.

1) Learn a concept
2) Drill the concept
3) Increase the intensity of the drill
4) Utilise the concept in free play against a resisting foe

Now you own the concept. Get 3 to 4 concepts like that and you're good to go.

I suggest boxing gloves and head gear as a minimum requirement. Chest guard, shin guards, elbow pads, forearms pads don't hurt either.

[Water Dragon]

I'm curious as to what defines "real."

[IronFist]

You spar against resisting opponents that are trying to avoid your strikes and hit you back. This means that they aim their punches to actually hit you if you don't move or block. This means that they don't leave their arm out there after a punch so you have time to do your secret ninja move on them. This lets you find out what will really work and what won't work in training so you don't find out in a real fight that the "deadly" move your sifu taught you won't work.

[yenhoi]

www.straightblastgym.com has alot of marketing hype abut real ''alive" training.

You can play around with different levels of real "alive" training, and should. The SBG III (Isolate, Intensity, Integrate??)method is a good way of explaining how most persons training should progress regardless of style.

We call this progressive sparring. An example would be, after an hour of learning and drilling a basic hip throw from various positions and entrys and offbalances you then ramp it up by sparring with one person limited to only defending himself and setting up/executing hip throws, where the other guy can do pretty much anything, or is limited in one (or many ways) himself.

You can (and should) sparr in this limited fashion at many intensity levels, from near-cooperation to near-full contact. After a few sessions of this type of limitation or isolation training, you go back to all vs all sparring and vary the intensity there.

The monkeys at SBG post this stuff all the time everywhere. Its basically what all like-minded full-contact groups do.

:D

[FngSaiYuk]

heh, I love the stories of how 'in the old days' techniques were tested out in 'real' situations by picking fights with people. I've heard stories of how in asia, a typical method would be to leave a new bicycle in an alley and wait for someone to try and steal it, then go and beat them up to see if the techniques work.

Now I'm all for violence and all... but I'm also all for justice and what not, so I'd rather not sucker people into fights to test out techniqes and I'm not about to be a vigilante... but some people are into that kind of thing... consequences is the thing...

I really think the best thing to do short of any of the 'uglier' methods is to condition your body heavily and test your techniques safely in full contact competition.

Note: this is purely the melee aspect of the 'reality' training - awareness and just plain common sense (ex. avoid walking dark alleyways alone in the bad part of town) are really the best defences

[SevenStar]

I haven't read this whole thread yet, so this may have already been said. It's not really an issue of "real". If it were, we'd be training with glocks and desert eagles, knives and multiple attackers, etc. Why? because things happen. A person may or may not be armed. the issue though, IMO is effectiveness of your technique... which I guess can be a definition of real. If you drill with a cooperative partner all the time, but do not spar, you really do not know how you will hold up against a resisting opponent. If you've never been hit or thrown really hard (especially in the head), you really don't know how you will react once you go into fight or flight mode.

Some people use the term "real", others use "pressure testing", etc. but it's all referring to the same thing - using your skills in an unfriendly, uncooperative environment...like a ring. It's not in the comfort of my school (unfriendly) and my opponent is not my friend - he actually wants to pound my nads into the dirt.

[IronFist]

Originally posted by yenhoi
www.straightblastgym.com has alot of marketing hype abut real ''alive" training.
:D

I trained at their gym for 3 months before I had to move :(

It was awesome. Theirs is the standard to which I hold all other gyms at which I might potentially train.

[Ai Lek Ou Seun]

Originally posted by SevenStar
It's not really an issue of "real". If it were, we'd be training with glocks and desert eagles, knives and multiple attackers, etc. Why? because things happen.

I couldn't have said it better myself. :D

[Vash]

SBG has some kick-ass stuff. My only complaint, aside from the bashing of the evil and useless forms, is the advertisement seems to compare the JKD concepts as the second coming of Christ.

*continues swimming on land, like a land shark*

[yenhoi]

hay man, marketing = life.

:eek:

[Vash]

Oh, I don't blame them - they have an excellent system, and it obviously works.

But I can't go "alive" 100% of the time - as much as I get injured now, I'd be in a body cast after a week of BJJ and boxing.

[IronFist]

You can train "alive" without training full contact. I can hit you hard enough to let you know you've been hit without doing serious damage.

[Vash]

Indeed. I should have restricted my comments to certain aspects of training in which i cannot actively participate.

of course, I don't think 100% alive training is completely conducive to becoming skilled at combat using a "classical" system (there's a thread about training methodologies in the JKD (http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33751) forum). As such, seeing as how I gravitate towards classical fighting methods, SBG and related training is not something I would include in a permanent training regimen.

[LeeCasebolt]

of course, I don't think 100% alive training is completely conducive to becoming skilled at combat using a "classical" system

Can you explain why that is?

[SifuAbel]

Too much is made of this "alive" buzz word. You have to, at one point , learn the technique first before you throw the chaos factor in. Contact is whats needed to make things "real".

It should be a progression.

It not that aliveness is a bad thing, its that aliveness is being introduced as if its some new concept. There is a reason people buy whats "new and improved" even its the same old stuff wrapped in a shiny new box. Which is a sad refection on the MA sceen. Since it implies that some schools are in fact doing techniques on "Mr. Frozen Man". Which they are. And of which isn't "traditional" by any means. Side note, when I was coming up the word "traditional" was simply a term used to differentiate the other fighting styles from modern Wushu. Now its become some ugly catch all.

To me, aliveness is a matter of course. When we drill tactics and techniques its always first the slow "how to". THEN we step it up with broken rythms, surprise and resistance. The whole point of a technique should be to get a person out of his resistant base enough so he can't resist. Or to open a hole enough to strike where he can't defend.

Finally ending with sparring to get that final bit of chaos and contact.

To harp on a word, even when people are agreeing with you indirectly, is obsessive.

[Ai Lek Ou Seun]

Another golden post! This thread rocks keep it up!:D

[IronFist]

Originally posted by LeeCasebolt
Can you explain why that is?

I'm also interested in knowing why.

"Aliveness" is probably an overused buzzword, and you do usually need to learn a technique alone before you can train it with aliveness. However, this "learning it on your own" step should not take very long, and by "not very long," I mean not more than a few minutes. If it takes you longer than a few minutes to learn it, it's probably classified as a "super-secret-deadly-ninja-too-deadly-for-the-ring" technique that wouldn't work in a real fight anyway.

[Ai Lek Ou Seun]

Originally posted by IronFist
However, this "learning it on your own" step should not take very long, and by "not very long," I mean not more than a few minutes. If it takes you longer than a few minutes to learn it, it's probably classified as a "super-secret-deadly-ninja-too-deadly-for-the-ring" technique that wouldn't work in a real fight anyway.

Or you just haven't encountered the situation for which it was intended.

[IronFist]

I suppose. I don't suppose many people would encounter a situation where their attacker throws his punch and leaves it out there, tho.

[Ai Lek Ou Seun]

Originally posted by IronFist
I suppose. I don't suppose many people would encounter a situation where their attacker throws his punch and leaves it out there, tho.

Who trains like that?

Answer, beginners.

And why do the train like that?

Because their reflexes are not fast enough to react with something at full speed (there are "naturals" who are the exception).

So you have to start somewhere.

Do you start with a full speed punch or do you start with something that's easier to deal with....like leaving an arm out to give the student something to block on?

Both methods have there upsides and drawbacks. The full speed punch smacks the student in the head a few times and he learns very quickly to keep his hands up.

However, as much as this more approximates a real life encounter, you can also develop bad habits this way.

What I mean by bad habits is, for example, deflecting an attack that sets you up in a bad way for a follow up attack. (This might be Ok when it's beginner on beginner, but when you meet someone that can deflect and put themselves in the better position than you...then you have a very big problem. )

Kung fu is much more logical than learning this way. You learn sequences that teach you to deflect so that you are still in an advantageous position 10 moves down the line. Its fighting ahead of the game.

On the other hand.......

Advantage: The slow motion punch presents not as much risk but the student can work on more effectively setting up his defense and counter.

Obviously, the problem is when students take this type of training to approximate a real life situation....which that comes much faster and harder. Then its reality check time. How well, did they learn the move? How well can they apply it? Does it need to be modified from the exact form?

(You see some so-called "masters" teaching entirely this way because they probably never reached the higher levels of training and are not really qualified to teach.)

But this is the stuff of beginners. Both of my kung fu teachers were taught to be very, very fast in the later stages of training.

My CLF sifu's favorite style of fighting is to never even block your attack. He simply moves out of the way at an off angle and pummels you before you know what hit you. (But he doesn't teach this to beginners.)

My Hung Ga Sifu Eddie Lane (student of Buck Sam Kong) used to have arrows shot at him by his teacher. Yes, he had to be very fast.

The low levels, yes, you go slow and work on form and strategy. The higher levels you work on reaction time when you already have the basics in place.

But I follow the traditional method of form first and free hand later. Some people choose not to.




:D

[SimonM]

I love forms.

They are fun to do, they work you out and they teach you technique in an integrated format. Not just "how do you do this move" but also "under what circumstances should this move be used" can be communicated in a form if the form is taught correctly. That means that a group of different form related activities should be performed:

1: Break it down, teach one section at a time.
2: Build it up - drill the entire form over and over and over and over ad nauseum.
3: Break it down again - drill individual moves or small sets of moves from within the form. Focus on application.
4: Apply it - Start with cooperative applications. Over the course of a training session (and a training career) gradually increase the level of resistance during the sparring drills.
5: Isolate in application - Drill with limited sparring (I believe this was mentioned by somebody in a previous post) limit people to only using one technique or group of techniques. Mix it up, one attacker, one defender, etc.

Now I have also noticed that even at very good schools some people make certain mistakes with forms. Often these happen because a: the Sifu can only be one place at a time. b: people who are new to martial arts tend to form opinions on their own that take time and training to break down, many of these people quit before they learn that they were wrong and go on to disseminate misinformation to everyone they meet. These mistakes include:

"But I already learned it" - Learning the basic movements of the form is the first step to applying it, not the last. People who "learn" a form and then move on to the next before they have gained anything from the form are making a cardinal mistake. They should be encouraged to practice what they already believe the know more.

Sloppy form work - Often this goes hand in hand with believing that you are done with a form. You see people practicing a form with an arm bar/knee kick move and the arm bar looks like they are wrestling with a piece of wet pasts and the kick is more of an ankle sweep than a knee kick but is positioned so poorly that they would never actually sweep an opponent's foot. Well, you get the point.

"Forms are stupid" - A few things on this.
First it suggests impatience and vanity on the part of the person who expresses this shallow opinion. Forms are an important part of martial arts training. Second it is selling short the history, heritage and nature of martial art If it were not an art form as well as a fighting system we would just call it fighting.

"Forms are everything you ever need to learn" - Mabey if all you want to be is a dancer. Forms empty of meaning are just movements through space, nothing more, nothing less. In addition, a person who ignores sparring, conditioning and physical fitness activities will never become a good fighter and being a good fighter is one of the goals of most martial artists. Forms are an important tool but they are in the end just one tool of many used in the education of a martial artist.

[Vash]

Originally posted by LeeCasebolt
Can you explain why that is?

I think SifuAbel's post pretty much explains that.

[canglong]

originally posted by Water Dragon
I'm curious as to what defines "real."

Water Dragon,
Your question is the starting point for us all. In terms of Human anatomy there are 4 ranges of hand to hand combat. That is real. Portraying these 4 ranges of combat as anything else such as categories of style, arts of ethnicity, cultural dispositions and alike are what seem to be moving us (gung wu) away from reality.


originally posted by premier
How do you make your training "real"
1. Understand what is real.
2. Study principle over technique.
3. Train in a way that challenges your ability to comprehend against your ability to apply.
4. Find an experienced teacher.