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.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
^^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.
Last edited by YouKnowWho; 01-28-2013 at 11:23 AM.
http://johnswang.com
More opinion -> more argument
Less opinion -> less argument
No opinion -> no argument
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.
http://johnswang.com
More opinion -> more argument
Less opinion -> less argument
No opinion -> no argument
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.
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
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
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".
http://johnswang.com
More opinion -> more argument
Less opinion -> less argument
No opinion -> no argument