Breaking it down, to improve

[eXcessiveForce]

For many this is common sense, but I thought I'd share for those who may not have had the benefit of having it shown to them or who haven't discovered it from themselves.

Most people here know their are different ranges of combat. Some people choose to specialize in one range while others seek to round out all the ranges. The idea for being effective in an altercation is of course to be able to flow seamlessly from one range to another, integrating their entire skill set.

So I like many started working on integrating my skill set through the ranges. After several years I've found that the overall package improved significantly, but then I realized something. the sum was not greater than the parts. In fact it was less.

When we trained only hand work, our skills improved. Eventually we all stalemated and training started to drag a bit. So we moved on and added another range, and then another and then another. So As we improved on the base, by adding ranges to it, we got better, but as a byproduct we got worse.

After a long time of integrated sparring one day we went back to hands only and guess what. It sucked. Timing was off, easy shots got through that would never have landed a few years before.

So what the heck happened? Well it's simple we didn't break it down. Hands only forced us to constantly improve our hands, but when kicks were thrown in, kicks improved, and integrated with hands, but the hands in a stand alone environment lost precision. So while our combat effectiveness went up, our actually ability with a particular tool in a particular range decreased.

Or simply by becoming better fighters, we became worse boxers.

So the answer (which was known previously but somehow managed to escape our collective experience) was it is a mistake to only train with every tool in an integrated fashion. You need to break it down. Train sometimes with only kicks, other times with only hands. Others only ground. Work just throws, work on defense only, work offense only. Only by breaking down the parts and training them can we improve the parts that we then combine again into the whole.

By breaking it down, each tool is honed, and over time this leads to the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

[Michael Wright]

Very interesting thoughts, and from my experience I fully agree.

JKD (I know you weren’t talking about JKD per say, but just to offer my example) has always credited itself with the ability to flow through the ranges. I spent a lot of time, certainly in my early years, focussing on the flow and blend from weapons to kickboxing to boxing to trapping to grappling. It feels great to flow like that and it is a very effective way to train a vast amount of material efficiently.

I stopped one day and thought, hang on, am I actually any good at any of this? If I walked into a Boxing gym tomorrow would I get handed my arse, or a Thai gym, or a BJJ gym etc. Now I know people say that’s not the point, we aren’t trying to be Boxers or Thai Boxers, we just need to know their game so we can flow and counter. But I just somehow didn’t buy that. If you are only as strong as your weakest individual link, then surely my game wasn’t strong at all. It looked good, and it felt good, but was it all an illusion built from training with our guys, our way, all playing along?

About 8 years ago I realised that my grappling sucked. I had a base in BJJ and could handle a bit of ground in the overall chain, but as am individual link it was very weak. I spent 2 to 3 years making grappling my sole personal focus, training with people like Erik Paulson and some good BJJ and Ne waza guys. Its still not great, I’m just not really a grappler, but when I came back to the blend I was much stronger for it. About 5 years ago I went back to the beginning with my Thai and absorbed myself in that art again, at one point spending a year on nothing else but Thai. My overall game benefited enormously. At the start of last year I walked into a Boxing gym, started again from scratch, and realised that I knew nothing about Boxing. That’s the learning curve I am in right now, and I’m sure will be for some years.

I guess to support your experiences of breaking down each element Excessive my point is this: I still love to blend and mix and flow through the arts, the point is that I’m trying to build a chain made of strong links, steel as opposed to paper. I realise now that you need to be very careful in JKD, or any similar concept that quickly encourages a wide mix, blend and flow. It may look great, it may feel great, and may offer the illusion of being very complete. If you aren’t careful it can be just that - an illusion. I think lots of people hide behind their “street effectiveness” as a reason why they don’t need to enter each world in depth, it’s the old line of “we know their game and we counter it”. From looking at the good Grapplers, Thai Boxers and Boxers I have met – I think my “blend” of old would have serious problems getting anywhere near these guys. The simple reason being, no matter how good it all may look, they have been through the war - and I have just been playing Army.

[eXcessiveForce]

I think blending is very important, But like you, it just seems when try to do everything at once over the long term things get left out. Skills degrade.

My training is very odd, I don't do drills, I only spar. Seems my brain can't wrap itself around the idea of doing the same things over and over without the proper stimulus. So as I spar, I find myself working on only high percentage techniques, the ones I'd really use, But I have found that by going back, some old stuff that wasn't considered as high percentage at the time are now much more usable in a live environment.

[Michael Wright]

Originally Posted by eXcessiveForce

IMy training is very odd, I don't do drills, I only spar.

I don't think that is odd at all sir. There is simply nothing better for learning and development than putting the gloves on and facing a live opponent. In my opinion.

Drills are there to swell curriculums which swell classes which swell bank accounts. In my opinion.

[Tom Yum]

EF,

When I was training boxing/muaythai/grappling - I could only maintain other ranges while slowly improving on one, so that makes sense.

For me progress was slower since I had to maintain kicking, punching, clinching and grappling while working on another.

When you're focused on one thing and one thing alone you can make major progress, the only problem is that you loose out on everything else.

You either become a pretty good, well rounded fighter or a very focused, single range fighter.