Originally posted by apoweyn
It's not that I disagree with your feelings on the matter. I disagree with your categorization. Learning a martial art vs. learning to fight. To my mind, it's a question of which you consider the horse and which you consider the cart.
For me, real life is the horse. It has to lead. And I'm not talking about some over-dramatized urban jungle nonsense. I'm not suggesting that my life is a day-in day-out struggle for survival on the mean streets of Alexandria.
What I'm saying is that we all learned moves in our martial arts classes. Maybe we learned them in a mirror, through forms, on a bag, whatever. In any event, we very often hit a point where we spar (or actually fight) and start receiving new feedback. The techniques don't come off the way they did in the mirror. They don't hit as solidly or cleanly as on the bag. They don't flow as well as they did in the form. Whatever.
Now, at this point, there are basically two avenues. Some people will reason that they've failed to internalize their art sufficiently. So they'll go back, focus more vehemently on their training, walk the walk, etc. In the hopes that, next time, they'll have absorbed the style sufficiently that it'll manifest itself the way it should.
Other people reason that adaptation is the key. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and all that. The basic principles are sound, but the execution needs to be less idealized. It needs to be guided by the way things really are. The way people really are. So modifications are made around those basic principles and theories. They don't bulldoze over them.
Some people are going to make that observation and then choose their avenue earlier than others. And some styles are likely to do that sooner than others as well, depending on where in the curriculum sparring begins. So it's not (in my opinion) that a boxer has no patience for the finer points of martial arts. (I chose boxing, but this may not be fair to your point. I apologize if it isn't.) It's that the boxer is brought into contact with the non-idealized mess of sparring very early on, so he has to make the choice very early on regarding his training. Try harder to internalize the style? Or make modifications to fit "reality"?
Either is a valid approach. And what bends me out of shape is the insinuation that one produces less of a martial artist than the other.
Stuart B.
Seems like the correct is contaigious... Ap has caught it also.
i'm nobody...i'm nobody. i'm a tramp, a bum, a hobo... a boxcar and a jug of wine... but i'm a straight razor if you get to close to me.
-Charles Manson
I will punch, kick, choke, throw or joint manipulate any nationality equally without predjudice.
- Shonie Carter