Training/fighting in a rule set

[goju]

This is exactly what happens when someone who has never competed tries to pontificate about competition.

Competition is all about superiority. The main strategy for most competitors is to develop superiority by playing to their own strengths, minimizing their own weaknesses, exploiting their opponents' weaknesses, and avoiding their opponents' strengths.

Anyone who has competed knows that the idea is to overpower the opponent with your superiority as fast as possible.

^^This this this

[wenshu]

This is exactly what happens when someone who has never competed tries to pontificate about competition.

Competition is all about superiority. The main strategy for most competitors is to develop superiority by playing to their own strengths, minimizing their own weaknesses, exploiting their opponents' weaknesses, and avoiding their opponents' strengths.

Anyone who has competed knows that the idea is to overpower the opponent with your superiority as fast as possible.

They have competitive Hot Pocket eating now?

[David Jamieson]

^^This this this

is nonsense nonsense nonsense.

because of: provenance which means equality in weight classes

sport fighting eliminates superiority.

except where one guy doesn't belong, otherwise, an unequal race is boring to watch.

Superiority= guy brings gun to knife fight. No sport about it at all.

That's not to say that Kung Fu isn't trained just for fitness. It addresses a lot of maybes and probables in scenarios and settings, concepts etc. It drills, it does a lot of the same things you'll find anywhere else. It is simply different and it isn't likely to change over to the modality these chaps seem to be advocating. Which is another thing altogether.

[HumbleWCGuy]

My general thought is that it is necessary to train with some rules in order to avoid permanent injury. Also, training with rules allows the action to be faster and harder which helps people to develop timing. Moreover, this type of training encourages attribute training.

Having said that, most sport oriented schools train with more rules than they need. You can certainly train in real time and pull hair, groin kick, or work weapons. With a little more equipment, you can also train eye jabs and and such in real time. The sport schools tend to forgo that sort of training and assume that they will do it all when the time comes which just isn't the case.

People have this idea that training to fight with less rules is always LARPING and training with timing and power is purely the domain of schools that tend to run a lot of guys to smokers. Neither is true and I get tired of hearing it.

Bottom line if you are only training to the rules of a sport or doing slow motion LARPING, your school has a problem. Ideally, a school should be striving to do as much in real time as possible even if that expands beyond the domain of competition. All things being equal, a person who has trained to go beyond competition rules in real time has an advantage over a strict competition fighter.

I don't want to down play the competition experience though. There is something to going into a ring or cage in front of God and everybody where there is no retreat or surrender. But, let's also not pretend that a school has all the answers just because it tends to run guys to smokers regularly.

[goju]

is nonsense nonsense nonsense.

because of: provenance which means equality in weight classes

Have you ever trained in a fighters camp? There's an assortment of guys bigger than you and smaller than you to spar therefore preparing you to fight size differences. if you are attacked outside of the ring

[David Jamieson]

Have you ever trained in a fighters camp? There's an assortment of guys bigger than you and smaller than you to spar therefore preparing you to fight size differences. if you are attacked outside of the ring

I've trained in a lot of different scenarios. With people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and levels of skill.

Bottom line is that when you are in it, you're in it and it has everything to do with that and nothing to do with this.

all fighters camps are not the same.
all training halls are not the same.
but, it's a safe bet if you train to a venue, that's what you train to.

even in places where the skillsets taught are wide, if members are going to actively compete they train in a different fashion than others. Especially in a Kung Fu school that gets involved in san shou for instance.

mma is mma. It's not traditional chinese martial arts and one doesn't diminish the other. You have to go train in mma if that's what you desire and if you want to learn traditional chinese martial arts, you won't find it there.

that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

[Lucas]

mma is mma. It's not traditional chinese martial arts and one doesn't diminish the other. You have to go train in mma if that's what you desire and if you want to learn traditional chinese martial arts, you won't find it there.

i know some people dont like you or what ever, but this is just plain truth here.

besides, people kill people with guns, not fists.

[Yum Cha]

I think the error is to always take it back to style. To me its about weight and power. Being able to make a totally committed move, with full weight and power. So often, the only difference between a 'deadly' move and a standard one is an adjustment, using a finger or phoenix instead of a fist, or targeting a more vulnerable point in the same region, stuff like that. You can do a lot with body protection and gloves, head hunting becomes a field in itself.

This is where you gain from full contact experience, live sparring, but it doesn't have to be MMA, or even without rules. If you never train to pull your strikes, you strike hard. I find that hitting isn't the problem. Getting into proper range, having the right timing, anticipation and footwork more important in making an excellent fighter from a good one, or even a poor one. Ringcraft. This is why I like 'live' practice, but I also like controlled practice too. Building the components towards a complete fighter.

The "Straw Man" or the 'begged question", depending on your point of view, is that MMA is the only way to get this training, because a lot of good fighers come from MMA (?). A lot of good fighters go into MMA too...

The proof of the pudding has to be in the taste. How well does a student defend themselves on the street, and in what manner. My boys have always done as advertised when attacked on the street, dropping the opponent in seconds and getting away, or almost....one guy got caught by bouncers and accused of being the culprit, but the other guys's knife was out and chained to his belt, so it kinda gave it away.

You fight like you train, end story. In real fights street violence you almost never see the opponent until they hit you, two guys squaring off outside a bar....pulllleeeeze, a couple of hard guy wankers hardly represent, its almost always fast and furious, and by surprise.

[Lucas]

its almost always fast and furious, and by surprise.

yep. in almost every fight ive seen or been involved in one party was thoroughly suprised for at least a moment. most people have got into a fight and didnt even have any idea wtf was going on until the fight was over, as to the who and why. sometimes you dont find out.

and in your post you really just nail it imo. if you train to deal with violence, and to deal violence, then you do. to one degree or another you will deal with it.. in real life, thats all that matters. is competition important? i believe so. but there is also no need to try and make a career out of it.


as for mma or tma...you know i really laugh, all this time on this forum ive seen all these arguments and debates about tma, mma, cma, etc.. there has been a lot of traffic here over the years, and it always just makes me want to lower my head, close my eyes and shake my head. there really is no point. the more you learn and figure things out the more you realize that. you will never see me take a side and say cma is better than this or that or mma is better than this or that, because thats not the reality of the situation. now...which one do i think is cooler..totally different question. kungfu, no contest.

[sanjuro_ronin]

MMA, as it WAS in the past ie: a testing venue was great.
It was a way to put what you know to the test in an environment as close as possible to the "real thing".
It lose that when it became "something else".
I disagree that TCMA is not MMA.
TCMA is the original MMA mindset, we see that in the history of all those systems that are combination of other systems.
What TCMA is NOT is the MMA that most here have come to dislike and that is the marketing of the MMA sport.

Most TMA want more out of their system then just "self defense" and they don't see that in the MMA that is marketed to the masses.
Of course if you got to a MMA gym you will see what you typically see in most any MA dojo:
People of all types doing MA for various reasons.

What gives MMA a bad name in TMA are those MMA nutriders that seem to want to make it clear that if you are not doing MMA, you are doing something inferiour and that is incorrect.

That said, one can't deny the effect that MMA has had in the world of MA and to attempt to do so makes no sense.

[MasterKiller]

[wenshu]

[Northwind]

Although I am totally not getting the foreskin joke, those images are hella funny.

[Ray Pina]

Something to consider:

If you love baseball, devote your time to it, you may be in an organized league. You may play pick up games with friends. You may play stick ball with your nephews. Soft ball at the company picnic.... you enjoy swinging your bat at pitches. Fielding hits. Etc.

If you are a chessman, consider yourself good, you seek out games with other likeminded players.... to compare. To demonstrate your knowledge but also to learn, expose your own weakness.


Whatever venue it may be martial artists should be striking, throwing, sweeping, submitting and generally "fighting" with other like minded people. Yes, there's room for everything else. But what separates martial arts from Yoga and dance in the fighting.

Youtube Kung FU champion 2010 and Youtube MMA champion 2010... that demonstrates the huge reality gap.

[wenshu]

Flinch in the ring?

Flinch in the street.