Compete to win or compete to train?
Deadhorse is a place in Alaska at the end of the Dalton Highway.
A dead horse is also something I would like to let lie and not try to resurrect, but that's the risk I'm taking with this thread. I have thought about bringing this up for a couple of years but saw no constructive purpose in any handy thread on training or the "old vs. new" banter. But, ******, I like this forum and I want to talk about it with my peers!
"It" is really just my own curmudgeonly attitude but if I phrase it as a question it might be this: Am I missing something by being uninterested in sporting competitions?
This has nothing to do with MMA vs. TCMA or sets vs. sparring. I get that. I train in TCMA. I train with my friends in sambo and jj. I train in koryu Japanese arts in which competition is unheard of. Competetive fighters who step into a ring to be declared a winner are doing something I don't really understand. I suppose it's good that they do it--it clarifies a lot of misconceptions about fighting. I'm simply not interested.
I've rarely met anyone with a similar high level of ignorance when it comes to sporting competitions. I have never seen baseball or football or basketball or golf. My only real experience with games played with spherical objects is that I've bowled a few times -- don't know anything about scoring, I just like to knock the little white thingies down. I've been at a pool table a few times and I like the physics of it, but I don't know any games. In college I was puttering around a pool table when a kid asked me to play a game. I reluctantly accepted but he had to tell me what to do. When I won he walked away muttering, "I think I just met my first pool shark." I felt insulted. As a spectator, I saw my 5-year-old daughter play Boys & Girls Club soccer a couple of times. I couldn't follow what was going on but that was okay because Mom was there to make the appropriate noises at the right times. My deep psychological trauma must have started when I was six years old and my mother gave my brother and me baseball gloves (or mitts or whatever they're called). She must have thought boys needed them for something but she didn't tell me what it was for. I thought it was cool but was disappointed that it fit only on my left hand. I had never heard of baseball and didn't own a ball so it stayed in my closet until we moved.
Never had p.e. in school. Never had family members who watched sports. Don't hunt or fish because I don't eat those things so I certainly don't want to kill them. Around here, that means I cannot hold a conversation with anyone of the masculine gender. I am embarrased when the grocery checker asks me what I thought of "the game" and I don't know if he means poker or croquet or what.
The sports I love are camping, swimming, canoeing, hiking, pistol shooting, knife throwing and archery. All stuff I can do without measuring success against someone else's performance. I know I'm not the only one with this preference, just the only one I know who loves fighting arts but doesn't care who does what in any commercial competition.
When I was six and my uncle taught me to box, it was great. Boxing seemed free from those mysterious game rules that other kids were apparently born with. All I had to do was hold my hands up and hit my brother or cousin as they were trying to hit me. When I was eight my stepfather, a long time Danzan Ryu guy, taught me jj and something called kung fu. I went nuts.
Some years ago, when the televised MMA thing started, one of my students was enthusing about UFC or whatever it was at the time. Sounded interesting, but I don't watch television, don't have television. I just like to train. Am I missing anything?
"Look, I'm only doing me job. I have to show you how to defend yourself against fresh fruit."
For it breeds great perfection, if the practise be harder then the use. Sir Francis Bacon
the world has a surplus of self centered sh1twh0res, so anyone who extends compassion to a stranger with sincerity is alright in my book. also people who fondle road kill. those guys is ok too. GunnedDownAtrocity