Who should you be training to beat?

[darrianation]

Alright this is a shorter more to the point version of does your martial art stack up? It seems some of have complained (PMs) that it was to long to read so I re-did it here to make it more user friendly and for the reading impaired.

Who should you be training to beat?

The short answer is although you will never be able to beat some people you should always strive to train to beat someone better than yourself.

This will force you to train harder, and smarter as you get better because the better you get the harder you will be to beat.

[osopardo]

Clever answer: You should always be striving to beat....Yourself.

Assuming you're training full effort and everyday you know you couldn't possibly have done any better, tomorrow you should be trying to beat that performance.

On the other hand, training with people who are better than I am always pushes me beyond my assumed limits, as I try to best them, or even just keep up.

[Thai Bri]

Depends if you are sport of self protection oriented.

If self protection, aim to beat 4 Mike Tysons, all armed with guns and knives, all wanting to kil your family in front of your eyes. Train for that.

No. Make it five.

[m.artist]

different situations call for different training methods
if your training for self defense, go for what bri said
if your training because someone said your weak, train to prove them wrong. that's motivation. don't go out and beat them, but you'll know when you have proven them wrong
if your training because of problems at home, then train to get those things out of your system and to make you a better person
the only person you have complete control over is your own self
train to beat yourself
train to prove yourself wrong
train to make yourself a better person
that's who you should be beating

[Hikage]

My soke.

-Hikage

[darrianation]

Here's another excerp from Does your martial arts stack up?

Pro (the alpha male bad ass)
You are sitting there with a buddy from work having a cold pint enjoying the music and conversation when a large muscled guy with tattoos from head to toe walks in. He looks like he just got out of prison and all he did there was spend time in the weight room. He goes by Bubba he is mean with an attitude and even his friends are afraid of him. He has no fear of anything or anyone including the police or the justice system, and he is definitely not afraid to escalate the violence to the point it becomes extremely serious.

You hear a glass drop behind you, you instinctively turn and a couple of tables over Bubba make eye contact with you. He’s pissed off because he just found out his girlfriend has been messing around on him so he came to drown his sorrows. He jumps up and yells what the F*** are looking at. You say nothing but he comes towards you anyway.

Now Bubba is the kind a guy who will pick up a pool cue, or break a bottle to cut you with, or approach you with his finger of the left hand swinging around pointed in your face and a knife in his right hand hidden behind his back. He will club you, cut, you, sucker punch you and when you are on the ground he will continue to stomp your head into oblivion.

Does your martial art prepare you for Bubba?

So what kind of people does your martial art prepare you for? A martial artist who defeats a person from the amateur category and then says “see my training, art, or style is effective in self-defense”. I say fine, but it should be for that category but Bubba is the person you need to be training for if your self-defense is going to be worth a damn. We can scenarioize (new word) Bubba all we want too but your training has to built around modern scientific principles with realistic hard core and training.