Inosanto and Bustillo teaching method

[BIG Sean Madigan]

OK, I have a statement and a question.

Hi All,

I am a firm believer that there is good and bad in all of the major families of JKD, and that a student should find the place where he/she feels most at home. More often then not you will receive good information both places.

Now, about the drill. Some of you are shitting all over this drill, even refering to it as some sort of "trick" and yet, from what I am told, this is one of the first drills that is taught at Dan Inosanto's Jun Fan Gung Fu classes. The "non-telegraphic straightlead drill" is an old drill, granted, but it is not a 'trick'. Sorry, I must disagree with you guys on this. This is a good drill.

Having the ability to throw a non-telegraphic strike is one of the first qualities needed to deliver a Simple Direct attack, the most sophisticated of the Five Ways.

Hey, we are all allowed to have our own opinion here. Mine is that this is a good drill for several reasons. One of which is that both JKD practitioniers are training at the same time. The "feeder" is learning to pick up slight telegraphic movements in the "trainee" and the "trainee" is learning (we hope) to lesson the amount of telegraphic movements he/she has.

Anyway, good luck in choosing a school. Go with what is in your heart, and I am sure you will do fine.

All the best,

BIG Sean Madigan

http://www.bigjkd.com

[Monkey]

I agree with Sean, totally.

"Don't perspire over the minutia. Just friggin' train baby, at the end of the day that is all that counts."

I disagree with this sort of thing, it leads to complacency. I mean, how did that Lee dude get so friggin' good? He perspired over the minutia, he made it an obsession to be the absolute best he could, regardless of what any so called experts of the day told everybody, and then some and then some. Because it may be life and death. You need to be absolutely scientific and relentless in your refining and sharpening of all your movements.

I say this because I see people from karate or boxing or whatever, training very hard and training for ten years or so, without actually analysing what they are doing, and the results are just not impressive, because for example, you or I can just hit them with a straight right lead to the face at will, because although I am only 20 and only trained in the martial arts for 2 years, I have trained for speed and power with a non-telegraphic structure, that is, by myself before I started training with a JKD instructor. I mean these people that train like dogs (much harder than me) but without analysing what they are doing, have all these terrible habits like being telegraphic and they dont train as if they are really fighting for their lives, not putting 100% into their strikes. I would rather throw 10 strikes as if it was real and then take a break, than just go at it for an hour and sweat but be sloppy and untechnical. It just comes from making unneccessary assumptions, like the rear side is the only side with any power, or it has to be defense, then counter, etc. Which are not neccessarily true assumptions. So training very hard does not get you very far if you are not training EFFICIENTLY.

Which leads me to another thing, "Everything is telegraphic". Well, of course no attack will connect the moment that your mind wills it to, but there is such a thing as minimizing the amount of time it takes to get there. And there is such a thing as inefficiency and wasted movement. Telegraphing an attack means adding unneccessary movements such as a withdrawal or foot movement or facial expression or twitch, anything that signals the delivery of the attack. Even something small like this may mean the difference between an effective attack and an ineffective one. I think that people just forget about this all the time, but I think it's important. I saw in Burton Richardson's book, that for it to be JKD it has to be simple, direct and non-classical, yet I saw him demonstrating a knife hand strike to the neck in this book, which was very telegraphic, i.e. he withdrew it behind his head, and it looked quite classical, i.e. almost exactly like a karate/taekwondo one.

People just dont seem to focus on the simplest and most obvious most common-sense aspects of JKD, but I think that they are the most important.

"Punches should be felt and not seen."
- that Lee fellow

[BIG Sean Madigan]

Hi Monkey

Hi Monkey,

Thanks for the support.

One of the first things that I learned from my instructor (Steve Golden) was to look for the 'reason' why we do certain drills before we decide if we plan on using them or not. Hell, we should know the 'why' of a drill before we even know the 'how'.

About Burton Richardson's book. He will be the first to say that there are a few things in there that he no longer practices, I believe he is working on a new one at this time. I will say this though, when it come to the JKD Concepts family, Burton Richardson is one of the few guys that I am really looking forward to training with one day. He puts it on the line and test what he does. Trust me, that is a rare quality.

All the best,

BIG Sean Madigan

https://www.bigjkd.com

[thekuntawman]

in the beginning, you need repetition more than anything. i agree if you are really sloppy you will be wasting your time, but i dont think the teacher he is with now will have him that sloppy. details dont do you any good until you put in enough training time, and for a beginner to think about those small details is a waste of time, because they are things he's not gong to have to deal with at that level.

i disagree that 10 correct tecniques are better that 100 sloppy ones. if thats the case then a guy can get a black belt in those "10 easy lessons".

[Paul Sharp]

Monkey,
If you can actually hit a pro level boxer at will, than you need to contact Don King post haste. There are some big rollers in Vegas that would pay serious money to see your phenom like attributes in the ring with Roy Jones Jr.

I don't recall suggesting that one train in a piss-poor manner.., which is what you imply I stated.

I also stated the standard by which Kenjeet should judge his ability to jab. Can you make it land and can you make it hurt? Against an opponent attempting to do the same to you. Thats performance and that is all that matters.

Forget the rest, that is the area for arm chair quarter backs.

Seriously, if, after only 2 years of training, you possess attributes of that level..., You really should be contacting a high level promoter. You could make some serious cash and get out of the business before your 25. Especially if you can stop a guy cold, with one hit, that gets hit every day as part of his training regime. I have to say thats pretty damn impressive. I have yet to meet anyone that has this incredible athletisicm. And I have sparred with at least 100 different boxers over the last 15 years. I know guy's that would kill to be that gifted.

Anyway..., I still say,


FORGET THE MINUTIA, JUST FRIGGIN' TRAIN

-Paul Sharp

https://www.straightblastgymillinois.com

[Paul Sharp]

Monkey,
Your right, it does pay to focus on the details.. up to a point. Here is an example. If you spend months throwing jabs at a focus mitt and the entire time I tell you not to let your hand drop as it returns, most people will eventually stop letting their hand drag back, maybe. Now if I take the same person and after a month on the mitts or just long enough to get the mechanics down, I gear them up and put them in the ring and let them spar. Now if they are getting hit right after they throw their jab, I will point out to them that it is because they are letting their hand drag. They will make an immediate correction and it will "stick". That is Experiential Learning and its a proven method. Thats why I say to forget about the minutia and just train. If you train with Aliveness you will be able to make all necessary adjustments to throw a "correct" jab, for that opponent.

Think of it this way, Everyone plays the game differently. If I, in all my mighty sifu-dom, tell you this is the ONE TRUE WAY to throw a jab..., what happens when you spar a guy that isn't fazed by my gift of the Holy Grail to you? You will quickly make adjustments or you will have a hard time chewing for the next week.

That is why I am talking about Aliveness. Hitting a mitt is dead and will only take you so far. Getting in the ring and training with a resisting opponent will give you the chance to face a myriad of "energies" and attributes. You will hone your game to the point you can adjust to face anyone. That only comes through Aliveness, not through hitting a mitt as the guy tries to pull it away from you.

Drills are all well and good, to a point. The drill must possess elements of timing, movement and resistance. You can take away resistance for a time to focus on mechanics, you can slow it down so timing isn't as crucial for a short while and you can even slow down or eliminate movement long enough to smooth out some rough edges...., but as soon as possible you need to restore life otherwise you run the danger of falling into the same pit so many martial artist's are in and can't get out of... Dead Patterns. The excuses are always the same, self-perfection, attention to detail and on and on. Its all meaningless because, usually, they can't fight, haven't sparred in years and are too out of shape to even train with any degree of Aliveness.

Monkey,
I hope this helps you to understand where I am coming from. I think I understand your side of things now.

-Paul Sharp

https://www.straightblastgymillinois.com

[Paul Sharp]

How in the heck did that happen?

My post appeared in the wrong order?!

[Monkey]

"i disagree that 10 correct tecniques are better that 100 sloppy ones. if thats the case then a guy can get a black belt in those "10 easy lessons"."
Who said anything about 'correctness'? Or what 'level' anybody is at? And I never said anything about being qualified or getting a belt or whatever. I was saying that I would rather train a 100% concentrated punch, how I would do it in a fight, 10 times, than 1000 ones that were done just for the sake of it, mechanically and without putting a ferocious effort in, and without any believe that it is the real thing, just because that is the way it is supposed to be done. I.e. training one way and fighting another.

I didnt say dont train in a piss poor manner, I just said dont forget the minutia, nay, focus on getting every bit of minutia you can, as good as you can get it, scientifically and based on your own performance standards.

I wasnt talking about pro boxers, or instructors, or real veteran fighters, thats different. I meant maybe what you could call one of those black belts in 10 easy steps. Im talking about the second hand type martial artists that are everywhere in clubs and whatever who just dont have that drive to really be the best figher they can, because they think that they just have to work up the ranks, technique at a time, rather than just looking purely at themselves and what they can do, which takes self confidence and JKD helped me to make that step. I cant pretend to even be a competent fighter! Yet! But I can hit hard and fast, and thats a start. I mean Im sure that you, Paul, for instance would probably cane me into oblivion! But I just think it pays to analyse what you are doing. For instance, just because a jab lands and hurts, i.e. it performs, does that mean that it can not be improved? Or that the delivery was not as efficient as it could be?

Anyway I just hope that you can see what Im saying.

[asinger]

This is a great disscusion. In my years of training the best way to learn has been having my coach watch me spar and correct things during the sparring.

Adam

I agree with nothing Paul says.LOL

[Chad W. Getz]

The great thing about sparring and working on your techniques while you spar is that you immediately "know" if your jab(tech, whatever) is not hitting hard enough or is to slow, etc. You don't have to think or wonder if it is good enough or what you need to work on, you know because you either performed or...well, you didn't. When I want to work on my jab, I jab spar. I know that focus mitts are a great tool and alot of boxers use it, and that's great, but I personally enjoy and feel that right now I get more out of jab sparring, etc. And then from there, just to make sure you sharpened that one particular tool, you spar and slowly add other tools to your opponen and/or yourself until its everything goes.

Great post about training, Paul.

[Paul Sharp]

Adam,
That hurts, deeply...., but I .. I will survive... as long as I know how to love I know I will survive... I've got so much love to give I've got so much more to live...I will survive.. hey.. hey.

My favorite rendition of this classic tune has got to be the Peter Tosh version.

Chad,
Thanks. I talked to Dee. He's sounds like a really cool guy and we are looking forward to training with him.

and Adam, I reported your trouble making post to the moderator. You won't be stepping any shit off on this forum.

-Paul Sharp

https://www.straightblastgymillinois.com

[Paul Sharp]

Okay, I'll be serious for a minute.

As Adam and Chad have both pointed out, their most lasting "lessons" have occured during sparring.

My theory is that training with real Aliveness is an evolutionary process. During evolution a species does not need a perfect result to survive, it needs a workable result. The difference between life and death is not perfection or non-perfection, it is workable or non-workable. So if we apply this concept to a 5 minute round of NHB sparring it greatly simplifies things. Rather than looking at my jab as honed to perfection because I can hit a stationary target with picture perfect body mechanics, I will look at my jab as Workable if I am able to use it as an offensive and defensive tool against a resisting opponent. With the exception of a few fundamentals my jab will morph to suit the opponent I am facing. So in the enviroment fostered by Aliveness my jab will never reach a state of laboratory perfection, but it will of necessity become workable. No drill with mitts will ever acheive that. Each round of sparring in this manner causes the Athlete to move forward another evolution, quickly surpassing the martial artist that spends the majority of his time training in a vacuum, ie; dead drills.

Matt Thornton said something that applies here, "Take a boxer and let him hit mitts for 3 months, now take another boxer with the same amount of prior experience, have him train in a sparring environment for 3 months. Then have them fight. The boxer with ring experience will win every time".

The reason is simple, the boxer with ring experience will continually evolve. The other guy will just look really cool hitting mitts.

Hope this made sense. Ultimately Athletics is about the evolution of the Athlete. Nothing else should or can matter. Evolution always comes down to Workable vs. Non-Workable.

You know what we call those that refused to evolve don't you? Fossils.

-Paul Sharp

[Chad W. Getz]

One more quick point on experiences and live experiments. About a year ago, I had three young guys(I'm not that old, but these guys were just out of high school and still had that high school mentality) come and ask me to teach them stickfighting. The first two times I said, yea, later, but the third time they asked, I gave them my gear and the camera, told them to go stickfight for two minutes rounds, and remain friends at the end of the day. There is alot of emotional and self searching and learning that I experienced from watching these guys do that, but thats for another story..for another time. Anyway, they came back to me bruised up with smiles and a tape full of fights. I went out and fought with them the next day, and while they may not have produced much of a problem to me at that time, these three guys, one 17 and the other two 18, produced more game with about 5 fights each as experience, than any of the "new guys" that came out with anywhere from a year to 10 years of FMA/JKD practice experience.

I think that they are a perfect example of fighting. Free of classical mess, with no "training" or techniques, deflections, etc. to worry about. They went out with sticks and tried to hit each other without getting hit. Stickfighting in it's raw basic form. Simplicity.

Off my soapbox. Adam, hope to see more of you around here also.

"You can tell by the way I do my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time for talk.....ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, staying alive" ...damn, Paul, see what you started. BTW, please work Dee's kicks, for a short guy, he can kick high and fast and has caught me off guard more than once(the little punk ), and choke him for me. Thanks, Paul.

[Kevin]

workable...

Paul said..

>>Rather than looking at my jab as honed to perfection because I can hit a stationary target with picture perfect body mechanics, I will look at my jab as Workable if I am able to use it as an offensive and defensive tool against a resisting opponent.<<

Workable vs perfection...
Nicely said!

[Monkey]

I believe that everything said here is valuable knowledge.

And that is true, about giving somebody a days worht of fighting experience counts for more than a days worth of solo training.

I have also made this same argument that I am about to make in another thread, a while ago.

Take the example of those old bare knuckle gladiator guys. Who had more real fighting experience and hours of really seeing what they could make work and what they couldn't, than them, with aliveness and all? But could they really fight well? The fights went on for days, and nobody would win!!

To increase your physical skills, training solo or whatever, does take a longer time and more repetition than sparring, because sparring will give you other crucial skills like timing and judging distance and just general perception and testing things out.

But you wont get very far with just one or the other, I think you need to find a balance, to really get the best efficiency. I didnt say train in pattern, I said train scientifically with attention to detailed, in an open minded way, doing whatever gets the best results. That is different from 'fussing' over stylistic aspects, i.e. thinking that there is one perfect way.

I just think that Bruce was an example of somebody who found a very good balance between and sparring and drilling and training for skill with attention to detail. He was relentlessly obsessive about getting his movements as efficient as they could be, that is just looking at himself. But of course the sparring is necessary because they go together, like yin and yang because if you only train solo, then there may be bad habits and holes in your method that you are unaware of because you are not training with an opponent, that sparring will make obvious. But if you only spar, you will only use what tools you can make work at that time, with no thought as to what possible developments you could train. There has to be thought, wether alone or sparring. So a lot of the evolution in one's method would probably come while a person is alone, analysing their own body movements and habits, which is difficult while sparring because you have to rely on whatever fighting instincts and conditionings that have been built in your mind by training.

Sparring is like an exam, a test. Now you can study for this test as much as you can and go through examples and examples and theories and formulas, and practice, but during the test or the exam, you just write down what you know, do what you can, and use what knowledge and skills you have acquired. The development comes after this test, when you find out what worked, what was right, what was wrong, and what skills you were able or unable to use in the test. That is why the test is necessary for one to develope oneself. But if all you do is test, test, test, without developing the skills that it tests, then you will not really evolve, because every test will be different, and you will not progress beyond the test. So you need to spend time developing urself. The test itself will not develop you, just give you direction for your own analysis.

How do you think Bruce Lee developed his skill in speed, power, quickness, reflexes, etc to the level that he did? By just sparring and moving around in the ring all the time? What about his killer side kick, his one inch punch, etc? They weren't born of sparring, they were born of his own deep scientific thinking, analysis and fanatical training for efficiency. But you can bet your ass that he put it all through testing under real conditions to make sure that they were workable.

So I think that there has to be a lot of development by oneself, in conjuntion with sparring and training with others, to get the a constantly improving level of skill.

"If somebody fights wilth only instinct, then they will be very unscientific and they wont develop beyond what instincts they have, whereas if they fight with only control, in pattern, they will be a mechanical fighter, a robot, without aliveness. So the problem in the martial arts is to find a balance between instinct and control"
- Bruce Lee

The quote may not be exactly right but thats the idea. He said that in an interview.

I do agree with everything that you guys said though, it's all good. I just think its not the only way of looking at it. I just think these days people dont like doing petty training by themselves and paying attention to detail, that is in the freestyle MA community - if it works, it works, if it doesnt, it doesnt. In the classical community, it is opposite, they just pay attention to superficial details and never test it or progress scientifically because they dont train with aliveness. I think both approaches are unscientific in some ways, and I think that we can learn from Bruce's approach which I believe was a very good balance and never lost the science, because even if something was not immediately workable in sparring, then that didnt mean that it wasn't possible to make it workable through relentless training and analysis, or even if it was workable, that it couldn't be improved by further development, in training between sparring/fighting.

PS
Science, to me, and as I use the word, means impartial and uncompromising search for the truth.