Originally posted by YongChun
If you have never kicked someone's knee out or really hit someone in the back of the head or side of the neck to cause a real knockout, you might be surprised that in real what you thought worked in intensive sparring doesn't work. I have seen a few cases like that from experienced competitive fighters.
yeah, it's funny how that works...when adrenaline is rushing and heart rate increases, you will only retain that which is ingrained into you muscle memory. If nothing is ingrained, you will either freeze or flail, most likely. Contact helps to overcome freezing and teaches you to retain control in high adrenaline situations. By doing the basics over and over, they get ingrained quickly.
Sparring with lots of protection gives you a false sense of reality. The Dog brothers are a step closer to reality but according to those Esrimadors who have fought for real, not close enough. Two tough guys hammering each other in the ring with protection without knocking each other's brains out, are swimmming in the bath tub instead of on dry land. Those who learn to fight in jail or have millitary combat experience are the ones who really swim. All the rest is just various forms of dry land swimming.
not really. if you were only referring to point sarring I would agree with you. But, hard contact is hard contact. If you don't think so, find some local fights and enter them. 12 oz. gloves aren't that big and headgear isn't that thick. If you get hit hard yhou know it. KO's are still produced in the amateurs, where protection is still worn.
that said though, I take it you are training against real knives all the time, doing eye gouges and throat strikes in training all the time, groin shots on a regular basis, fighting multiple opponents full contact, balls to the wall,etc. all the time, right? If not, perhaps the sport fighter's pool is a bit more real than yours...
The real the fight, the more confidence that you will get. The main problem is just how to do that safely. The more safe, the more it is dry land swimming. Training with a wooden stick is totally different than training with a sharp edged weapon.
so you admit to being on dry land. cool.
There is play fighting which any kind of sparring is and then there is real fighting where you intend to seriously hurt your opponent.
hmm....like being in the ring?
Ring fighting is also very different from street fighting.
that is true.
Mixing it up in the ring with your buddies only prepares you for that kind of fighting and makes you comfortable in that realm of play.
Not really. There are lessons learned from contact fighting that carry over into the street.
Unless you mix it up with fighters of all kinds and not just MMA, BJJ and boxers, you will never be aware of what some humans can do to you in a fight. MMA, BJJ, Boxing and Thai boxing are exellent for ring fighting. reported street attacks and killings are never like ring fights.
you may have stepped on the toes of more than half the guys on the forum with that one.
street attacks and killings are not like your safe cushiony training and chi sau either... It kills me when people say things like "thai boxing isn't like a street fight. In my class, we train against multiple attackers and learn weapons" Whatever... That said, however, a real fight is sudden violence. An opponent or opponents who want to take your head off as fast as they can, however they can. As I said above, ring fighting will teach you valuable lessons in dealing with that.
Real fighting is three guys trying to smash you or stab you with sharpend pipes. If you aren't training for that, then what are you training for? Will working out with boxers help that?
you know what though? That's NOT reality...not necessarily. I've been in several fights, some involving multiple attackers, none involving multiple people who all had weapons. I've gone to the ground in fights and not been "stomped by the guys buddies" I've chased down a mugger while his friends waited for him to get in the car so they could get away - no shots were fired, none of them got out of the car. I've had a friend that was stomped by eight guys. I've had friends that were shot and killed. I've got friends that are in jail for killing people.
What's the point? That reality is different for everyone. More than half of the people involved in MA will never have to use their skills. That's the reality. you are training for a possibility. Sport fighters train for an inevitability. They WILL fight again. people tend to always take an extreme situation and say "this is reality - this is what we train for"..that's BS. That's the reality of it.
I think playing around with BJJ people to see if your Wing Chun will work in that environment is also a waste of time in the same way that BJJ would waste their time training Chi sau. If you like that stuff then just train it for five year. If you like Thai boxing then train it for five years. Just mixing it up with those guys is not that useful. Those things are sports. If you want to fight, try walking into a Silat club in Indonesia with an attitude.
I have a greater chance of getting taken down than I do of ending up in a trapping match with someone. When you get taken to the ground, how do you get up efficiently? How do you get up at all? you've got a big, 300lb killer with boulders for hands raining punches down on you like bombs, and his buddies are circling up, preparing to stomp you into the dirt (see the exaggeration there?) How do you get back to your feet? That's where grappling comes in. Grappling has it's own sensitivity training, as does thai boxing, they don't need chi sau. what they do need is what they lack. For the former, striking, and the latter, grappling. That's why people cross train.
Reply With Quote
