Tweet
I saw this article on another website thought it was interesting. Although I’m taken back by the tidal cuz’ I’ve seen plenty of other styles specially people in karate do this.
By Arthur Sennott
Taken from Inside Kung Fu May 2001 Issue
By Arthur Sennott
May 2001 Issue of Inside Kung Fu
If you are a kickboxer, there is nothing wrong with your sparring looking like kickboxing. In fact, that would be quite desirable. If, however, you are a kung-fu practitioner, sparring that takes on the form of kickboxing is quite a problem.
Unfortunately, the majority of kung-fu practitioners look primarily like kickboxers when they spar. Falling into this practie is the "kickboxing Trap". But there is a way to avoid the trap altogether or at least escape if you've had the misfortune to fall into it.
This "Kickboxing Trap" is primarily the result of ego. People fall into this because they fail to see or understand that sparring is a learning and training process, not a competition. When a fighter sees it as a competition, the ego takes over and he becomes concerned with winning. When he becomes concerned with winning, he feels the need to "beat" the person who now has become his "opponant".
When we feel the need to beat someone, certain psychological phenomenon tend to affect us. Thhis leads to a variety of small snares that play a significant role in combining with several other factors to form the kickboxing Trap. Below is a list of these individual traps, and more importantly, their solutions.
Trap 1: Trying Not To Lose
The desire not to lose makse our attacks less fequent and more cautious, one might even say, hesitant. This approach leads to attacks, characterized by a "probing" type of offense.
While this method may be indicative of what's seen in some major sporting events, most notably boxing, it is generally the antithesis of what happens in a real-life situation. It is important to realize that when someone attacks you in the real world, he is doing so because he wants to hurt you! He is not interested in scoring points. He is interested in not losing.
He is not interested in lasting the full time period to comply with the rules! He is attacking you! At the very least, he is trying to hurt you. He will throw strong, determined attacks. While he might not be over extended, he will generally be committed. If sparring is to be an effective drill to teach fighting, it must be reflective of this.
When we resort to the "hesitant offense", we severely limit our opponents ability to counter attack. While this is in accord withour wish "not to lose", it does nothing beneficial for the drill, our partner, or ourselves. When we cease to attack our opponent, we deprive him of the chance to truly defend himself. Sparring without the necessity or ability to defend oneself is at best a one-sided drill.
As we become the hesitant attacker, we tend to psychologically manipulate our partner into one of two roles. Either he mirrors our approach and makes the drill completely useless, or he becomes overly aggressive, in the hope that "something will happen". Creating the overaggressive attacker has more benefit than the passive participant, but not much.
The overly aggressive attacker changes his methods and ceases to practice his art, depriving him of the ability to practice aht he needs. This again makes it a one-sided drill at best. Furthurmore, the aggressive and careless attacks you are likely to get at this point are of lower skilllevel than your partner is really capable of, which decreases the value of the drill for you as well.
Trap 1: Solution
So how do we fix the trap? By subduing our ego. WE fix the trap by offering our partner some legitimate attacks to work against. we shouldn't worry so much if he scores. We need to create an atmosphere where it's understood that people will "offer" such things. Hopefully, your partner will begin to participate. When you become non-competitive, he will have nothing to compete against; then the training can begin.
Furthurmore, by giving your opponent something he can potentially defend against, it allows you to develop your counterattack skills and learn to work from a disadvantageous position. Now we have a drill that is not only beneficial to two sides, but beneficial to those sides on multiple levels of depth.
Trap 2: We Try To Move Faster Than The Opponant
In our desire to score of look good, there is a tendency to try to speed up faster than the opponent. At first glance this may seem advantageous and desirable, but it is actually counterproductive.
If we do not closely examine the concept, we may be fooled into thinking that commonsense tells us that "beating the opponent to the punch" is ideal. However, if we eexamine this idea more closely, especially in terms of sparring, we will see that this is not true.
There are two aspects of this trap. They can manifest individually or jointly. They are:
* If our opponent is moving slower than full speed when sparring, or is a slower opponent than we might face on the street, then scoring a technique by speeding up creates a false sense of success. Had the real - life opponent been moving at full speed, the technique would not have worked. SOme may argue that you could just speed up too, but this is erroneous, because you are already moving at full speed and cannot go faster than you can ultimately go.
When sparring, you must move no faster than the tempo of the present relationship. To do otherwise will lead to an incorrect view of skill and a false sense of success. IF we achieve a false sense of success, then we have received incorrect feedback and our training will be flawed.
* As we move closer to our fastest speed, the ability to see new things and emerging opportunities decreases. Our speed of movement is proportional to our "speed of sight". If we move slowly, we see other things move slowly. If we move quickly, we see other things move quickly. If we move slower than our partner, we will see more openings and opportunities. We will have a greater chance to explore and try new things.
This opportunity to experiment is one of the things that allows good kung-fu practitioners to apply the movements of their forms to their sparring, rather than falling into Kickboxing Trap.
Further more, when we practice at too fasta a pace, we will tend to revert to "what we know". This keeps us from exploring what we do not know (i.e. how to use proper kung-fu applications). In addition, this reduction in the ability to see new opportunities will mentally reinforce our belief that there is not place to insert those "fancy" applications from the forms. We have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms us to the "Kickboxing Syndrome."
* Attempting to move too quickly during sparring decreases the amount of mental and physical control over our bodies, and forces us to divert too much attention into this regulating process. When this attention is diverted it is frequently taken away from our ability to remember our assigned/chosen roles for the individual sparring session.
Ceasing to play our assigned role for the other participant in the sparring session, we in effect become his opponant rather than his partner. This leads to many of the same problems that result from the "Trying Not To Lose Trap".
Trap 2: Solution
There are two very simple fixes for all aspects of this trap. The first is to ask your partner to go as slow as you need to go to keep your eyes open to all possibilities. The second is to always move at the same speed of slower than your opponent regardless of the rate he is going.
Trap 3: Undefined Goals
The last major issue, which tends to drag sparring down to the level of a poor - quality kickboxing match, isundefined goals. Remember, in a real situation the attacker has a goal, otherwise, he wouldn't be attacking you. That goal might be to hurt you, kill you, rape you , kidnap you, detain you, or a variety of other intents. When we spar without defined goals, we once again deprive our partner of anything to defend against.
Some may say the goal of sparring is to win. While tht may be a goal for a competition, it is not a goal of proper sparring. Even if winning were a legitimate goal of sparring, it is too broad-based an idea to be of substantive value in training. Winning and scoring points do not represent concrete achievable tasks for combat preparation. What wins a point of match in a westling bout could ultimately lose you a Judo contest, so you see winning and points are arbitrary and theoretical.
When trying to practice productive sparring, it is necessary to have defined, concrete goals that can be seen, felt or discussed, and that are specific. Only in this way can success be measured, and appropriate benefit be given to our partner. There are an infinite amount of these types of defined goals.
Trap 3: Solution
To fix this trap you must cease to engage in vague sparring practises. Create and practice goal-oriented sparring exercises. It's useful sometimes to have a referee secretly assign goals to the participants; this keeps them from falling into Trap 1. Think of it as a game of capture the flag. It's always more fun if the flag is a little hidden.
Included are a few examples, but it should be understood that the list is limitless. These goals are for one of the participants, but it ususally works better itf the second participant has a different, but complementary goal.
Sparring Goal Examples
1. Attempt to get a headlock
2. Attempt to go to the ground
3. Keep from going to the ground
4. Evade opponent without any contact (and without running away)
5. Trap or immobilize your opponent's arms
6. Defend without moving your stance or legs
7. Try to drag or push your opponent over a defined line (good for anti-kidnap work)
8. Avoid using any striking techniques, while your opponent tries to strike you.
By Arthur Sennott
Taken from Inside Kung Fu May 2001 Issue
By Arthur Sennott
May 2001 Issue of Inside Kung Fu
If you are a kickboxer, there is nothing wrong with your sparring looking like kickboxing. In fact, that would be quite desirable. If, however, you are a kung-fu practitioner, sparring that takes on the form of kickboxing is quite a problem.
Unfortunately, the majority of kung-fu practitioners look primarily like kickboxers when they spar. Falling into this practie is the "kickboxing Trap". But there is a way to avoid the trap altogether or at least escape if you've had the misfortune to fall into it.
This "Kickboxing Trap" is primarily the result of ego. People fall into this because they fail to see or understand that sparring is a learning and training process, not a competition. When a fighter sees it as a competition, the ego takes over and he becomes concerned with winning. When he becomes concerned with winning, he feels the need to "beat" the person who now has become his "opponant".
When we feel the need to beat someone, certain psychological phenomenon tend to affect us. Thhis leads to a variety of small snares that play a significant role in combining with several other factors to form the kickboxing Trap. Below is a list of these individual traps, and more importantly, their solutions.
Trap 1: Trying Not To Lose
The desire not to lose makse our attacks less fequent and more cautious, one might even say, hesitant. This approach leads to attacks, characterized by a "probing" type of offense.
While this method may be indicative of what's seen in some major sporting events, most notably boxing, it is generally the antithesis of what happens in a real-life situation. It is important to realize that when someone attacks you in the real world, he is doing so because he wants to hurt you! He is not interested in scoring points. He is interested in not losing.
He is not interested in lasting the full time period to comply with the rules! He is attacking you! At the very least, he is trying to hurt you. He will throw strong, determined attacks. While he might not be over extended, he will generally be committed. If sparring is to be an effective drill to teach fighting, it must be reflective of this.
When we resort to the "hesitant offense", we severely limit our opponents ability to counter attack. While this is in accord withour wish "not to lose", it does nothing beneficial for the drill, our partner, or ourselves. When we cease to attack our opponent, we deprive him of the chance to truly defend himself. Sparring without the necessity or ability to defend oneself is at best a one-sided drill.
As we become the hesitant attacker, we tend to psychologically manipulate our partner into one of two roles. Either he mirrors our approach and makes the drill completely useless, or he becomes overly aggressive, in the hope that "something will happen". Creating the overaggressive attacker has more benefit than the passive participant, but not much.
The overly aggressive attacker changes his methods and ceases to practice his art, depriving him of the ability to practice aht he needs. This again makes it a one-sided drill at best. Furthurmore, the aggressive and careless attacks you are likely to get at this point are of lower skilllevel than your partner is really capable of, which decreases the value of the drill for you as well.
Trap 1: Solution
So how do we fix the trap? By subduing our ego. WE fix the trap by offering our partner some legitimate attacks to work against. we shouldn't worry so much if he scores. We need to create an atmosphere where it's understood that people will "offer" such things. Hopefully, your partner will begin to participate. When you become non-competitive, he will have nothing to compete against; then the training can begin.
Furthurmore, by giving your opponent something he can potentially defend against, it allows you to develop your counterattack skills and learn to work from a disadvantageous position. Now we have a drill that is not only beneficial to two sides, but beneficial to those sides on multiple levels of depth.
Trap 2: We Try To Move Faster Than The Opponant
In our desire to score of look good, there is a tendency to try to speed up faster than the opponent. At first glance this may seem advantageous and desirable, but it is actually counterproductive.
If we do not closely examine the concept, we may be fooled into thinking that commonsense tells us that "beating the opponent to the punch" is ideal. However, if we eexamine this idea more closely, especially in terms of sparring, we will see that this is not true.
There are two aspects of this trap. They can manifest individually or jointly. They are:
* If our opponent is moving slower than full speed when sparring, or is a slower opponent than we might face on the street, then scoring a technique by speeding up creates a false sense of success. Had the real - life opponent been moving at full speed, the technique would not have worked. SOme may argue that you could just speed up too, but this is erroneous, because you are already moving at full speed and cannot go faster than you can ultimately go.
When sparring, you must move no faster than the tempo of the present relationship. To do otherwise will lead to an incorrect view of skill and a false sense of success. IF we achieve a false sense of success, then we have received incorrect feedback and our training will be flawed.
* As we move closer to our fastest speed, the ability to see new things and emerging opportunities decreases. Our speed of movement is proportional to our "speed of sight". If we move slowly, we see other things move slowly. If we move quickly, we see other things move quickly. If we move slower than our partner, we will see more openings and opportunities. We will have a greater chance to explore and try new things.
This opportunity to experiment is one of the things that allows good kung-fu practitioners to apply the movements of their forms to their sparring, rather than falling into Kickboxing Trap.
Further more, when we practice at too fasta a pace, we will tend to revert to "what we know". This keeps us from exploring what we do not know (i.e. how to use proper kung-fu applications). In addition, this reduction in the ability to see new opportunities will mentally reinforce our belief that there is not place to insert those "fancy" applications from the forms. We have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms us to the "Kickboxing Syndrome."
* Attempting to move too quickly during sparring decreases the amount of mental and physical control over our bodies, and forces us to divert too much attention into this regulating process. When this attention is diverted it is frequently taken away from our ability to remember our assigned/chosen roles for the individual sparring session.
Ceasing to play our assigned role for the other participant in the sparring session, we in effect become his opponant rather than his partner. This leads to many of the same problems that result from the "Trying Not To Lose Trap".
Trap 2: Solution
There are two very simple fixes for all aspects of this trap. The first is to ask your partner to go as slow as you need to go to keep your eyes open to all possibilities. The second is to always move at the same speed of slower than your opponent regardless of the rate he is going.
Trap 3: Undefined Goals
The last major issue, which tends to drag sparring down to the level of a poor - quality kickboxing match, isundefined goals. Remember, in a real situation the attacker has a goal, otherwise, he wouldn't be attacking you. That goal might be to hurt you, kill you, rape you , kidnap you, detain you, or a variety of other intents. When we spar without defined goals, we once again deprive our partner of anything to defend against.
Some may say the goal of sparring is to win. While tht may be a goal for a competition, it is not a goal of proper sparring. Even if winning were a legitimate goal of sparring, it is too broad-based an idea to be of substantive value in training. Winning and scoring points do not represent concrete achievable tasks for combat preparation. What wins a point of match in a westling bout could ultimately lose you a Judo contest, so you see winning and points are arbitrary and theoretical.
When trying to practice productive sparring, it is necessary to have defined, concrete goals that can be seen, felt or discussed, and that are specific. Only in this way can success be measured, and appropriate benefit be given to our partner. There are an infinite amount of these types of defined goals.
Trap 3: Solution
To fix this trap you must cease to engage in vague sparring practises. Create and practice goal-oriented sparring exercises. It's useful sometimes to have a referee secretly assign goals to the participants; this keeps them from falling into Trap 1. Think of it as a game of capture the flag. It's always more fun if the flag is a little hidden.
Included are a few examples, but it should be understood that the list is limitless. These goals are for one of the participants, but it ususally works better itf the second participant has a different, but complementary goal.
Sparring Goal Examples
1. Attempt to get a headlock
2. Attempt to go to the ground
3. Keep from going to the ground
4. Evade opponent without any contact (and without running away)
5. Trap or immobilize your opponent's arms
6. Defend without moving your stance or legs
7. Try to drag or push your opponent over a defined line (good for anti-kidnap work)
8. Avoid using any striking techniques, while your opponent tries to strike you.
).
Comment