Fighting the person.....

[red5angel]

I was just reading through Kungfu/Qigong, out this month and came across teh articale by Phillip Ng "Fight the Person Not the Style."
It articulated how I feel about martial arts and this whole how do you fight such and such a style. Instead you should be prepared to fight the person. his last line says it best for me -
"However, as you will rarely ever know an opponents fighting methods, in advance during a real life confrontation, you must train to fight the person and not the style."
I guess this article just sort of gave me a way to articulate how I feel about it. What say you peeps?

[Johnny Hot Shot]

For years we have been saying something similar. That it is the person not the style that makes the Martial artist.

[red5angel]

I sort of agree with you there, it is definitely the person, but, I tihnk it is also the training. Training to fight styles, unless you have a match coming up and know what the guy is going to be using, is useless IMHO. That is to say it isnt a bad thing to spar with people from other styles, it gives you a good perspective on what is out there and what you might come up against, but at the same time, this whole thing about how do you fight against grappling, or how do you fight against muey thai, or whatevere the flavor of the time is. I think it isnt about that but about how do you fight the man/woman who is in front of you.

[apoweyn]

but are you any more likely to have that sort of indepth information about an individual combatant (competition aside)?

i don't think you train to fight the individual (who you presumably don't know) or the style (as you presumably don't know who trains in what style and wouldn't want to make many assumptions based on that information anyway).

my personal thinking is that you train to fight concepts. have something in your bag of tricks that addresses punching, kicking, grappling, blunt weapons, edged weapons, etc. any style will constitute a combination of such concepts. and any individual will use some combination of such concepts. so if you train to fight against the concepts, then the person you don't know and the style you don't train in will provide a minimal amount of surprise.

does that make sense? (not a rhetorical question)


stuart b.

[Justa Man]

i agree with apoweyn. i train for attacks coming at me from certain angles. so be they from a big muscular boxer or a skinny tkd head or a medium build wing chun fighter, it's all about which arm or leg is attacking me from what angle (or to what part of my body/face). when training is looked at like that, then the person and style becomes irrelevant. it becomes a matter of just arms and legs (and heads too) and how they come at me.

[apoweyn]

exactly. well said, justa man.


stuart b.

[red5angel]

Apoweyn, I would agree with you at first glance, but here is why I would say the person. The Wing Chun I do is very precise, we train to be very precise, whether the person we are fighting is or not. Now, to train to counter a certain technique, or combination of tecniques is egtting too involved in my opinion. What if I train with some larger guys who always do something a certain way, then get into a fight with a smaller guy, who does the same thing but drastically different, but not only that, to train against techniques, I would have to say that you would have to have a certian amount of premonition to do this. You can train your reflex to respond to particular actions in certain ways, drils do this. With basic drills I think this is a good thing. But in my class we dont train so much in drills as placement, you teach your body to be in the right place. What this does is heighten your ability to not commit.
For example, if you are a good martial artist, and you get the chance to se someone fight, you will probably notice certain patterns, you can think about it. If you are in a match, and you are fighting, you may sort of prod at each other a few times to get a feel for each other, then you cancompensate. But I believe there are too many unknowns in the world to train against certain specifics. We know what the human body can do, and we can train for that, am I making any sense?

[shaolinboxer]

I believe we train to fight the person...not the body, not the technique, but the unique individual.

[Ray Pina]

Echoing my master: "Don't fight the person, just beat the $hit out of him."

This is his way of determing who is ready to go fight at a tournament. If we are still fighting with our apponants, we're not ready. When one can beat an apponant like little boy, then you're ready. I've been with him now for a year. I'm training, training, training.

I agree with what you said actually, or what the article said. Just that this is what I think about, what rings out in my mind. To strive to just beat the other, no matter the style or size, just beat him. Not fight. Fight is too dirty and trouble some.

Unfortunately I'm not at that level yet. I'm still tinkering away in the lavorartory.

[apoweyn]

red5angel,

you're making perfect sense. and i think we're saying the same thing, essentially. but from different angles.

[nonsequitur: is the 'red angel' name a reference to the RAF team?]

you're suggesting that training against concepts (or gross groupings of techniques if you prefer) is too specific to be useful. and i'm suggesting that training against individuals is too specific to be useful. your point is that i can't tell ahead of time how any given individual will perform a technique, and that this could well affect how well my defense of that technique will work. my point is that the same problem exists if you don't know a particular individual (if i get accosted on the street corner, i have no idea whether said assailant is trained, in what, or how he will perform any action).

but when you're talking about training against the person, you're not talking about preparing for a particular person, but for human beings. you're suggesting that every human being is capable (and incapable) of roughly the same things (the same targets will yield essentially the same effects, the same joints will move in essentially the same directions, etc.) my point is precisely the same. as justa man pointed out, any technique is coming in on a certain angle. it's the angle, the method of deliver, the weapon being used, etc. that dictate my response. not a specific technique.

in other words, whether someone swings a pool cue, throws a ridge hand, or delivers a crescent kick, the angle of engagement is the same. the method by which power is delivered is the same. therefore, the response is the same. not precisely, obviously. but it provides a certain template to begin with. in any of those three cases, my first priority will be to zone either away from or into the force of the swing (to either dissipate or snuff the force, respectively). likewise, with a linear attack, regardless of the exact nature of the attack, my response will come from the same 'family' of techniques, regardless of whether it's a straight punch, a front kick delivered in a thrusting manner, a front kick delivered in a snapping manner, etc. certainly, it would be valid to have different defences for all of these cases. but for my money, i want to have 'strategic templates' for it. what do i do if a guy closes? if he keeps me at bay with kicks? if he...

here's where we're talking about the same thing: a human's elbow can only go in a finite number of directions. you base your tactics on that idea. a round kick can only deliver it's payload in a certain number of ways. that's how i base mine. and essentially, i think we're discussing the same theoretically person using the same theoretical style.

a person we don't know will be throwing some combination of techniques we can't predict in a manner we can't be sure of. so we prepare for what little we do know. people share common characteristics. and angles of attack share common characteristics in terms of physics, method of delivery, etc.

so basically, we're preparing for the person AND the concepts. but in either event, we're not making any assumptions based on style. (people have a nasty habit of leaving off the bit about their taekwondo teacher also being a golden gloves.)


stuart b.

[apoweyn]

shaolinboxer,

but how do you do that without knowing the individual? short of intimately acquainting yourself with all the potential troublemakers in your life, how do you do that?


stuart b.

[red5angel]

Apoweyn, after reading your post again I came to the same conclusion, we are saying practically the same thing, just different verbage.

[apoweyn]

always nice when we can agree to... agree. :)

cheers red5angel.


stuart b.

[red5angel]

Great minds think a likt ;)

[Tigerstyle]

"I'm still tinkering away in the lavorartory."

Is "lavoratory" a scientific bathroom? ;)

[Crimson Phoenix]

There is no way to have certainties about your adversary...he could be luring you into thinking he'll only box and take you down with a kick, he can lure you into thinking he's slow and pull out one you didn't even see come and go...since there is no certainties in a fight except that anything can happen, just train.

[rogue]

I'll go with Apoweyn on this, though I think that Evolutions master has the best response. The only thing that doesn't change in a fight is the angles somethings going to come in on.


PS to Philip Ng, please state that you're guard pass will only work on a BJJ beginner. I've tried that same move and never made it to where you're striking. BJJ guys have learned to counter that pass a long time ago. ;)