Hardest part of mimicing your style

[Robinhood]

do not lie. i can smell your kind. you smell like a woman during her period, when her estrogen is maximum. nice microaggresion u got there, warrior.

LOL, Maybe you need to take a bath !

[sanjuro_ronin]

The sooner students start free style sparring the sooner they learn to adapt their system as natural AND get rid of horrible tendencies they already have and those that "point" and "controlled" sparring WILL create.
Students start sparring as soon as they can in many other systems like boxing, MT, Kyokushin, KB, Judo, BJJ and so forth and the one thing all those styles have in common is they produce good fighters AND they fight (look) like they train.

[Bacon]

The only way to maintain the "mantis flavour" is consistently sparring hard with "mantis flavor".
You need to re-wire the bodies natural moves to be "mantis" and only consistent hard contact sparring does that.
You must also expose your mantis to non-mantis, the law of specificity demands this.

^^This

You want to defend hands, defend against the boxer. You want to defend kicks, knees, and clinch, defend against Muay Thai. You want to defend takedowns, defend against the wrestler. You want to defend against a well integrated fighter, defend against a bunch of different mma fighters.

When you can do this and maintain your mantis style you will be well on your way.

[YouKnowWho]

"mantis flavour" ...

To me, the "SC flavour" is to "force a striker opponent to play the grappling game".

[sanjuro_ronin]

To me, the "SC flavour" is to "force a striker opponent to play the grappling game".

Sure and one of the best ways is to out-strike him

[Robinhood]

The sooner students start free style sparring the sooner they learn to adapt their system as natural AND get rid of horrible tendencies they already have and those that "point" and "controlled" sparring WILL create.
Students start sparring as soon as they can in many other systems like boxing, MT, Kyokushin, KB, Judo, BJJ and so forth and the one thing all those styles have in common is they produce good fighters AND they fight (look) like they train.

I don't agree to starting to early, it usually just helps natural abilities improve, not to learn the do the so called art.

The idea of an art is to reprogram the body to respond differently from its natural responses, and to do that takes more than just free sparring.

[YouKnowWho]

Sure and one of the best ways is to out-strike him

That won't be "SC flavour" IMO. I though "flavour" means to use the strong part of your style, and not to use the weak part of your style, or borrow skill from other styles.

"Cross training" guys don't talk about "flavour" for that reason.

[LaRoux]

I find my students look great when doing application slow controlled techniques etc etc, then when we go at it and I expect a change during free fighting but it seems as they loose most if not all the mantis flavor and look like uncontrolled slap boxing exchange.

How does you/ your school. and teachers train adn spar fights while still having the flavor of your style?

If the students aren't fighting "with the flavor of the style", the problem isn't the students, the problem is the style and the instructor.

If you are trying to get your students to "look" a certain way, you've missed the whole point of effectiveness.

I'd say this need to "look like your style" is one of the main things that differentiates a less effective traditional style from a more effective modern one.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I don't agree to starting to early, it usually just helps natural abilities improve, not to learn the do the so called art.

The idea of an art is to reprogram the body to respond differently from its natural responses, and to do that takes more than just free sparring.

You learn to fight by fighting and the sooner the better and that has been proven to be the case over the centuries.

[sanjuro_ronin]

If the students aren't fighting "with the flavor of the style", the problem isn't the students, the problem is the style and the instructor.

If you are trying to get your students to "look" a certain way, you've missed the whole point of effectiveness.

I'd say this need to "look like your style" is one of the main things that differentiates a less effective traditional style from a more effective modern one.

There are distinct advantages about fighting with a style "outside the box".
The issues is that the more "distinct" a system is the MORE "cross-testing" they need.

[Robinhood]

You learn to fight by fighting and the sooner the better and that has been proven to be the case over the centuries.

There is training and testing, knowing the difference is good.

[sanjuro_ronin]

There is training and testing, knowing the difference is good.

Quite true.

[maxattck]

I was rolling day one in BJJ, and sparring day one in Kyokushin. Yes you take some beating in the beginning, but I believe you learn faster what works and what does not. There is no fantasy of how great a fighter you are, you know exactly where you are at compared to others. A very humbling experience.

Compare this to when I traind wing chun and all we did was forms, chi sau and maybe the dummy. We had guys who where total not in fighting shape. They could not do fifty push ups, had bellies and in general looked soft. But they all walking around like the just won the UFC title. I think with out contact one becomes deluded about ones abilities

[sanjuro_ronin]

I was rolling day one in BJJ, and sparring day one in Kyokushin. Yes you take some beating in the beginning, but I believe you learn faster what works and what does not. There is no fantasy of how great a fighter you are, you know exactly where you are at compared to others. A very humbling experience.

Compare this to when I traind wing chun and all we did was forms, chi sau and maybe the dummy. We had guys who where total not in fighting shape. They could not do fifty push ups, had bellies and in general looked soft. But they all walking around like the just won the UFC title. I think with out contact one becomes deluded about ones abilities

Indeed.
You do NOT get pummeled and beaten to a pulp when you start sparring BUT you do get introduced to TWO of the most important things you will have to deal with in a real fight:
Getting hit and pain.

[YouKnowWho]

I was rolling day one in BJJ, and sparring day one in Kyokushin.

In articifial intellegence, this is called "backward search". You start from the leaf and search all the way back to the root. Since for any leaf, there is only 1 root. For any root, there can be many leafs. The "backward search" is always faster than the "forward search".