The following was recently posted by Don Roley and it should give you insight. Plus it might be thought-provoking. Read, digest and think about it for a bit. Try not to have an immediate reaction. Digest it a bit.
If you can practice what you do full force against a resisting opponent, you are not doing self defense or combat arts. Enjoy your sport, but don’t mistake it for more than what it is.
You can’t hit full force to the eyes, trachea, and other areas. You can’t do things that will cripple someone all the way to the end. If you want to do free style practice, you have to take things like that off the table.
If you understand that, and realize that (as the late Bob Orlando put it) all training is a simulation of combat, the key word being SIMULATION, then you can work within the limitations and use other drills to work on stuff you can’t bring to free flow drills.
You can put on helmets with face masks and work on going for the eyes. You can do half speed sparring and limited power to make sure no one is crippled or dies. You can do things under controlled circumstances that can’t be done safely at full speed and power.
If you don’t do any of that, sticking to what is allowed under a set of rules, then you are not using sparring as part of training, but instead devoting your training with the purpose of sparring.
And as Bob Orlando pointed out, nothing short of combat is actual combat. Sparring then, is not combat. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that doing well in sparring insures you will also do well when your life is on the line. It can be quite the opposite.
Do you want to win in training, or do you want to learn? Since you tend to learn more from your defeats than from your wins, challenging yourself against much more skilled opponents is extremely valuable training. You can also get similar results from giving an advantage, like a rubber knife, to the other guy. Your chances of defeating someone armed with a rubber knife, club, or whatever is very low, but you typically walk away with more insight than if you stick to situations you have a better chance in. You just do not get the ego boost you can from a clear win. Is the ego boost what you really want?
And it also matters what you are training against. Are you training for some meth head that will stab you with the knife he is concealing if he gets a chance? Or are you going to do that ritualized battle young bucks have used to prove they are the alpha male ever since we roamed the plains of Africa? If you devote yourself to the latter, then you will do very well in fights you could have walked away from, but probably won’t when the other guy doesn’t want to play by the ‘no weapons or friends’ policy.
Years ago, I was at a self defense seminar run by a friend who has a reputation in the industry. For a drill, I was teamed up with a guy that does BJJ. In the middle of training, my partner stopped, rubbed his trachea, and said, “It is like your default setting is to punch someone in the throat.”
“It works,” was my reply.
“Point taken,” he agreed.
And yes, I kept punching him (lightly) in the throat for most of the drill because it was such an easy target with him. He just could not seem to be able to defend it. It was like after years of no one ever going for an off limits target, he became blind to the idea that anyone could punch him there.
As you train, so shall you do.
What are you trying to do? Do you want to prove yourself an alpha male to the ladies? Or are you beyond such idiocy and just want a chance to enjoy your life without injury or legal troubles?
If you like sport, great. But dealing with your girlfriend’s lunatic ex who may be carrying a weapon is very different from dealing with a shirtless bald guy under the eyes of a ref. The foundation everything is built upon is very different indeed. Don’t think that skill in one will carry over to another and be clear in what you want to get out of training.
Don Roley
