Before and after I got my black belt. Before and after I took up training in kickboxing, BJJ and MMA wrestling, people always said my movement was slow and awkward, but somehow I landed well and I defended well.
But I was never described as explosive. Weird timing, good fundamentals once they understood what I was doing, but never seen as a fast guy.
In fact one reason I got good at breaking distance, and focussed on it with my teachers was a combination of chance(My taiji teacher was really good at exploding from long distances back in his kumite days, and Rick Wilson was good at reading an opponent and being hard to read) and the fact it was a focus of mine, because I never had the explosiveness to do it myself. So my teachers taught me how to on my request, and my own research.
Now this post has alot to do with the concept of ‘peng’ from tai chi, but in our school we interpret it as natural elasticity of the body.
We have always studied this concept for years, and I applied it mostly when somenoe pressed against me or my fist, but in my movement only sporadically.
Fast-forward to a month ago, and my Taiji and Karate teacher explored the concept more, and freely applied. They realized and how the body behaves like springs at different joints. Like springs, the body can be compressed and released to explode, it can be stretched which causes an elastic pull back, moved to the side to spring back into position, or torqued.
More importantly, they discovered when one type of compression or stretched happened one place, the ‘opposite’ would happen in another.
How this manifested in me is that it meant I could explode in any direction, because there was a form of natural, effortless force going in all places.
I do not manifest it like the other guys who train with Rick, but I explored the concept in my own way, but on a principle level it was the same.
I knew it improved my movement, but I didn’t think anything else about it.
However, the last two times I did strike with students, they commented that ‘I’m explosive for a fat man my size, and move well’
I asked them what they meant about that, and they pointed out when sparring with me, I would twich and suddenly explode, forward, back, to the side, shift stance explosively. I was catching them off gaurd, and they did not know what direction I would move at.
Now the only difference in my movement is changes in how to release the foot, and using elasticity to direction change.
That got me thinking, just how do people define athleticism?
They define it by direction change.
I am not a professional football or rugby player, and I sure as hell don’t have the footwork of willy pep.
In fact for years people said I was awkward, and assumed I was never athletic. Which I am not.
But no one had told me they could teach me to be athletic, never. That I could learn to do direction change without doing some physical exercise or plyometrics, and even those that said I could learn mobility exercises and plyometrics said there were limits.
And yes, there will always be limits.
But taiji and karate teacher didn’t set out and say “We will cheat athleticism” but instead said “We will find ways to move, effortless ways”
In fact, they went out of their way to make sure we did not exert effort. The effect of athleticism was there, but if actual muscles and explosive effort was used, they would make you do it all over again, until you did it. It’s almost a cliché among our training group, but they say, “Don’t do it. Allow it to happen. Chase how to do it, not the effect” which is something I still struggle with.
However, the result is, especially with their recent discoveries is to fine a spring, and when springs are released, they explode.
Athleticism is exploding, in multiple directions. By finding different ways the springs of the body moves, there are different directions.
It allowed me to create the illusion of being ‘light’ on my feet, when in reality I’m rooted and heavy, but as I root into the ground, a spring is pressed or stretched.
I’ve been told from the beginning I’m evasive, but now apparently I’m fast now with it.
Thing is though, this isn’t limited to sparring.
This guy isn’t even doing it properly like the football players, but in multiple opponents or if someone is aggressively coming toward you, instead of doing a first strike, you can juke or change direction. Either they arn’t aggressive and just stand there bewildered, or like in the clip above the guy attacking over extends, and now you know you’re in a fight, but your opponent is out of position. I stole the concept by Steve Morris, who due to his cranky personality, tends to have clip after clip after clip demonstrating a concept as he rants. Videos of people being aggressive, and someone Jukes and walks away, or the attacker tries to chase them and gets out of position, where they get clobbered.
Now imagine if the guy above was actually athletic, or learned to explode with the springs of the body, he would look better but probably explode better. The fact even doing it unskilled gave the result above in the GIF file shows how good a tactic it is.
While the concept of Juking in an assault or multiple opponents’ scenario is something I first saw from Steve Morris, Rick Wilson introduced the concept of moving through empty space and understanding it. If you learn to utilize the natural springs in the body and you’re aware of space, you can move through a crowd well trying to get at you by juking, and you would use different springs compressing or stretching to shift direction.
I don’t have a clip of it, but at WISE WARRIOR GYM I did some classes on multiple opponent training where people wander in a crowd trying to touch or grab a hold of you. I looked for the space, and I compressed my legs, then exploded into space.
The comments I got was that I performed the drill well.
Knowing where to recognize space, and being sensitive to it, combined with body mechanics and springs, one can cheat athleticism.
Or one can learn how to use football and Rugby in self-defence.
My teacher doesn’t like teaching this, because it’s not winning it’s prolonging loss.
But I’m not going to come at this from the perspective of ‘should’ or ‘should not’ do.
But rather I want to say ‘what does covering indicate?’
Chances are, if you’re covering or blocking in a fight, in that specific moment you are losing or in bad position. It doesn’t mean you’re losing the whole fight, only in that moment you are. I am both speaking from my own experience and observation. When I or others are doing well, they often are slipping, parrying, palming, bobbing and weaving strikes. Their defense is often as my Taiji teacher would say , attacking while evading. They are dictating the pace, they are acting and not reacting, for action always beats reaction.
But when I have covered or seen others do it, often the speed and intensity of the strikes is too overwhelming to parry, slip, attack or counter. When I’m in this situation I am trying to reorient and not just stand there and get hit in the face. Now if you have a strong chin, you can probably ignore covering and just start brawling, like milling in the army. Hell from a self-defense perspective that surprisingly isn’t a bad idea considering how violence expresses itself.
Steve Morris was the first one to point out the self-defense value of army milling on my radar.
But other than milling, you probably will cover if paniced.
The question is, do you want to make a habit of this? Do you want your first reaction to be to cover the moment aggression is used on you?
My answer is no, you do not. If you can hit them the moment you see a pre-attack cue, do that. Don’t block of cover. If they already attacked, attack them while they are attacking(Sen no Sen) if you are behind the eight ball, parry or redirect and attack. Covering should not be your first choice.
Because as I said, you may eventually end up winning the fight, but in that moment you’re losing, you’re vulnerable. And in that moment it can easily end.
The problem with covering is, while you want to avoid it, it ‘happens’ depending on what or who you are dealing with. But you’re on the edge of being knocked out when it happens.
Only cover if you truly truly lose perception, and only do so to get your perception back. You certainly don’t want to stay there. Make distance and run, or go in and clinch. Or better yet, crash in. In the clip above is Mohammad Ali. He rarely ever covers, he usually uses distance, head movement and rolls, and when that fails he usually uses extended frames to block or parry(Similar to George Foreman but not nearly as obvious)
Yet even though Ali avoided covering like the fucking plague like most strikers do, he still ended up having to cover. What was the rope-a-dope? It won him the fight, but man was it risky. People forget Ali had one hell of a chin, and that was one reason it worked so well for him. And this was without take downs, so foreman couldn’t exactly double leg him or dump him like in Muay Thai.
What do we do with this information?
One thing is to make covering more of a last ditch effort, not a primary strategy to deal with strikes. Build up your pre-emptive or interruptive strikes, head movement, rolling, parries and palming more than covering. You don’t want to react, you want to act, and even your defense should be an ‘act’ rather than a reaction.
The second thing to do is to turn covers into absorptions or crashes as much as possible. The crash in particular is good, because it’s active and pro-active, often leading to a better position and pushes the pace. Petyr Yan is very good at this, he will cover, but use it to control distance and gain ground.
Notice how Petyr uses the block almost as a bait to ‘bounce’ off of Aldo’s punch to counter and land? His mindset is aggressive. It’s good to have strong defense, because you want aggressive, attacking defense. That’s what being able to block or slip ten punches does, it allows it to be very easy to focus on attacking. It caused a ‘break’ in Aldo’s Rhythm, a pause. It made him react instead of Yan.
There are better examples of using covers to crash and break than this one, but I can’t find any GIF images related to that.
The next best thing to do if you have to cover is to absorb. Once again Petyr Yan shows covering doesn’t mean your losing, if you use to create opportunity.
Firstly he attacks the punches yes, but he also rolls with it a little bit. This continues the momentum of the punch, causing it to slightly over extend, which causes Yan to take over a little bit and begin throwing his own combinations.
But sometimes you can’t crash or absorb when you’re caught off guard or overwhelmed.
And then you’re just covering and hoping you can get your bearings.
Why should you learn to cover and stone wall? Not because it’s ideal, it isn’t. Almost anything else is better. Not just in boxing but especially MMA and combat sambo, because if you’re covering while a blitz is coming, you’re probably getting double or single legged. And in a street fight that’s getting slammed on concrete.
No, you learn it because sometimes it happens, and it happens because the only alternative is to get cracked in the face.
A friend of mine did Muay Thai with a well decorated guy, and he said that his Muay Thai coach said, “If you’re covering, you’re not doing good.”
Whether it’s combat sports like MMA or RBSD, many people who study eastern martial arts(With exception of Muay Thai) will look down on western martial arts.
Today I saw a guy I respect, who generally has intelligent takes, exclaim how offended he was that MMA now has mainstream acceptance as Boxing. Says it’s offensive to people he knows devoted to combat sports and martial arts. Maybe he if was talking about MMA twenty years ago. But today? Amateur boxers, dutch kickboxers, lots of Karateka and kung-fu guys who do Sanda are showing up at the highest levels of MMA more and more. If anything you see more Kung-Fu and karate doing well in MMA than boxing, which he did give respect to.
What, so those arts he loves sucks now because they have success in MMA? He praised boxing but also took shots at the ruleset of MMA being bad. But boxing only allows striking with the front of the fist. MMA allows much more than that. What exactly is combatively bad about MMA in that sense?
Another guy I talked to was offended that people who study Chinese martial arts and Karate would dare to find benefit in RBSD or western arts. This I find very strange, as modern combatives has actually validated traditional martial arts to me more than blasphemed against it. I study Kata for exploration of movement and structure not applications as they are traditionally taught, but RBSD does put some of this ‘library’ view of kata into perspective. So much of Kata applications make sense when you look at how modern military and civilian defensive tactics look like, whether interceptors or close quarters combat.
Most kata is for close quarters combat, you learn that by looking at RBSD or military combat, because the movement and mechanics of the forms match that more than the long distance game of tag so many traditional arts play with. Traditional arts already close range learn how to drill them better through both combatives or MMA.
Why is any of this a bad thing?
It’s foolish to think looking at another cultures military and sport combat has nothing to offer. The masters so many Kung-fu people love, like some guy named Wing Wan Wu or some Karate fighter named Goshi Nakamura often looked to other styles, even other cultures and how they fought. They were never content to look for all wisdom only in their traditions.
All these Okinawan karate guys getting mad people look to modern martial arts like Combatives or combat sports fail to understand that Savate and boxing greatly influenced modern karate before it was again influenced by Muay thai, MMA and reality based self-defense.
That’s just normal guys.
I’m surprised this is even something that has to be argued.
We live in a secular society, we live in a society where parents without any creed or religion, or even belief in a supernatural are raising children that are generally good people and generally productive members of society.
There has been much good in critique of religion, I admit this even though I consider myself an orthodox Muslim. The ottoman empire did crappy things, Muslims need to admit that. Catholics need to admit that despite how bad the Mexica/Aztecs were, the Iberians basically did terrible things including cultural genocide. Not to mention residential schools. As for protestants, don’t get me started on right wing evangelicals, calvinism and prosperity gospel.
So yeah, critique of religion can be good, or even warranted.
And pop culture/media is a good way to do it. Sometimes they do it very well, but other times they don’t. I’m mainly going to talk about where they screw up, though I will give an example of where media does a good job attacking religion.
First I’m going to talk about the show ‘Preacher’ which is based on the comic by Garth Innis. Now anyone who knows anything about Garth Innis will tell you his comics are not exactly subtle, it’s full of constant weird sex jokes, violence to the point it’s absurd. And constant blasphemy. I don’t think Innis himself tries to present most of his work as high brow.
Yet in interviews, while he seems proud of his teenage edgelord humour and violence, at times he seems to imply his critiques of religion are profound, or what he does in his stories are great statements.
The Amazon live action version of Preacher feels like an adult animation cartoon with sex and violence acted out in live action. Meaning it feels like a faithful adaptation of Garth Innis’s work. Now considering it’s a work called ‘Preacher’ written by an avowed atheist, most people can guess where it ends.
I knew that starting to watch the show, full well knowing most likely God was going to be the villian in the end. I was curious how these characters would overcome God, and how they would answer questions of human suffering and the afterlife.
The problem is the show acts like it’s so clever bringing up questions challenging belief in God and religion, as if no one has a response, as if no one asked these before. Yet these questions that have been debated by philosophers, thinkers and theologians in most of the worlds thiestic religions, and there are some decent responses, even if you don’t agree with them.
Now most of you who watch and read preacher will say, “It’s not meant to be smart, it’s dumb. YOu said it yourself” which I agree, it is intentionally stupid. But man on these topics the goofiness of the show is suspended, and we’re given an impression in the narrative there is some grand statement.
But hey, pop culture isn’t even considered literature by many, so why don’t I judge it by it’s pure entertainment value?
I guess I will!
NITPICKING BEFORE DEEPER CRITIQUES: THE SCALE OF SHOWS LIKE PREACHER AND SUPERNATURAL ARE TOO SMALL
Frankly I find some of the ideas lazy, especially the scale. The scale of God is small, the scale of the Devil is small. The scale of the angels and demons. In older periods of hollywood there were budgetary restraints on special effects and sets, no such thing as CGI. As a result that affected the scale of the story teling.
But this show was made in the beginning of the Trump era on Amazon. They got decent budgets. Yet Angels can’t bust planets like Dragonball characters. God isn’t like the living Tribunal in Marvel or even much like Thanos. Satan isn’t tossing celestial bodies like toys. They have this character called the Saint of Killers with a cheap backstory that you can find from survivors of war torn regions in the world, one of many. Nothing unique. Yet somehow this guy shoots God in the head, with a gun. This guy doesn’t seem to move faster than sound or light.
Even if the Saint of Killers can kill anyone, why didn’t God just move the fuck out of the way? Or dodge the bullet? He’s God! Speed was created by him!
Supernatural intentionally made God very slimy, but they didn’t have to make God completely stupid and weak either. Hell Supernatural was a great show, but the character designs were basically just acors wearing regular clothes, they really didn’t take advantage of their budget, and they really screwed up commentary on the introduction of the darkness, the ‘divine female’ aspect of God. They could have done a great commentary on how Judaism, Christianity and Islamic cultures erase concepts of divine female.
To kill God, these shows often have to power him down, or make him way to anthropomorphic.
If you’re going to make GOd into a mythological being like Zuess, you might as well go the route of Asura’s wrath. In Asura’s wrath Chakravitrinan(God) throws solar systems and super-novas at the main character, and Asura(The hero) smashes the shit out of it and beats the shit out of God, without a plot McGuffin, without powering him down.
Look at taht shit! THe hero is fighting gods the size of the earth, and he blows them the fuck up! Why the fuck can a small game from Japan do that, but not Hollywood with all it’s money?
Japan ‘killed God’ without making God weak.
A good critique ofReligion: Lucifer Comic and even the show.
First lets talk about the comic: Neil Gaiman is the author, known to be a highly respected writer. Unlike Garth Innis he isn’t known to be juvenile, nor is his religious critique pretentious. In the comic Lucifer is a rebel against God. He doesn’t make people do evil things, though he has no real love for humanity. The comic is about people asking Lucifer to do favours, make dreams come true, desires. Lucifer int his comic is a real powerful being, he can do almost anything as he is second only to God.
(This comic does not have a problem with scale. The comic is aware of the fact that biblical Angels and God make reality warping characters like Galactus or the living tribunal look weak)
In the comic we examine issues like free will, examine how God sometimes unfairly restricts it through religion, how maybe we should sympathize with Satan since he’s rebelling against a tyrant with absolute power. God however isn’t petty or crappy like in Preacher or Super-natural, he’s largely absent. We know he’s not completely bad or tyrannical, yet some of Lucifer’s critiques are valid. God really didn’t value freedom as he wanted, humans really did self sabotage, and frankly Satan wasn’t entirely wrong in being sceptic toward humanities place. More over it answers why God doesn’t help us, because God believes we don’t need him, the comic however kind of proves he is needed and God maybe made a mistake being so hands off.
The Lucifer T.V. show on the other hand is…fun. But very much full of issues. Angels for instance are more like X-Men characters than things that can move planets out of orbit like the bible. It’s not exactly the most thematically rich show, and it’s insulting it says ‘based on the comic by Neil Gaiman.’
But what’s great is, you see it genuinely critique God, God can’t answer the critiques and it’s obvious God makes mistakes. Yet people who believe in God are not blind fanatics, at least not all of them. It points out the bible often has a very biased narrative on life, showing life is much more complicated than what religion says it is. It even shows that God maybe did love Lucifer, his true calling is to rehabilitate people. It makes GOd look like a good guy, but clearly shows disagreement with traditional Christian and Muslim narratives of what hell is supposed to be and why one goes there.
But man the God and Angels in this show are shitty. A nuclear bomb is more grand and great, more worthy of worship than them. They had a hollywood budget and yet again were afraid to show the scale of GOd and Angels. DO they think viewers can’t suspend disbelief? All of them went to church or are in a religious culture. They know the scale it’s supposed to be. It’s not a bad idea.
Midnight Mass: A very good critique of religion and God.
(Scale is not a problem in Midnight Mass since God and angels are not direct antagonists)
When Midnight Mass came out, a vox reporter claimed it was bad horror because horror is enjoyed by anti-religious and counter cultural people, and the show was too pro-religion.
So I watched Midnight Mass and did not understand how anyone could come across this show and think it was pro-religion. The main villain is a priest and fanatical woman, the entire plot is technically a blasphemy of sacraments from the catholic church. Religious fanaticism leads otherwise good people into believing something clearly evil is from God. But the show is nuanced, and then I realized the authors problem was the fact that nuance was precisely her problem.
Midnight mass is not Rick and Morty or nihilistic horror movie that drips with hopelessness, filled with every religious person being evil or two faced, or everything that seems good is profane.
The show has many scenes, like a Muslim character refusing to drink, but the narrative pointing out alcohol can be used for both good and evil. Booze being the stand in for religion. Many times you see how people have suffered deeply and greatly, and belief in GOd and even the Church brings them great comfort, even wisdom. You see how many of these people, even the villains have improved lives by religion, even if the show points out that it’s largely false and can lead to bad things. It even points out God is much more than what we think God could be, constantly musing on the nature of God. It implies perhaps life begins at conception when an otherwise secular character mourns the loss of a fetus, saying the pregnancy saved her life, brought her happiness. She makes a speech of how heaven is not just harps and clouds but love, and she hopes the baby she lost exists in that place of love, which probably bothered many ardent pro-choice people. The ending is a clear indication of people basically hoping for forgiveness and facing death with the concept of God as a comfort. It’s a very sombre ending.
And yet despite showing positive traits of religion and Catholicism, the show ultimately shows the ‘atheist’ characters were right. One of the last monologues can be either interpreted as vaguely pantheistic, but mostly a version of well known Atheist Carl Sagans take on metaphysics, his famous ‘we are all star stuff’ or ‘star dust’ take. This one relates it to God, that we’re all energy, God is all the energy of impulses in our brain, our memories all going into a pool of the universe, which is God. It essentially is a materialists views on metaphysics that is the closing monologue, the optimistic view of the otherwise sombre end. This speech was done by the same woman who wished her lost baby was in a heaven full of love.
I mean the villain was a priest using catholic ritual to turn people into vampires. How exactly is that pro-religion? Because not everyone was a monster who followed it?
Bad critique of religion: The Chilling adventures of Sabrina
So CW and WB shows don’t just do a bad job making critiques of Religion. They do a bad job simply making T.V. shows. But unlike PREACHER which is cartoony but fun and enjoyable, Sabrina at least initially tried to take itself seriously. Yes it was campy, but it really thought it made profound social statements. That’s why EW, WB, CW shows have such bad reputations. Because they are simultaneously campy yet take themselves seriously.
The religious critique in the show comes from the Church of Satan, which is basically a reverse catholic Church, with similar structures, right down to a Dark Pope. Yeah it’s campy, but the show tries to make such deep statements about it.
For instance, it’s largely male led, and when woman get married, they have to be willing to offer themselves sexually to Satan himself. It constantly alludes the church and organized religion is sexist, which is not an inaccurate critique, lots of religions including so called hippie ones like Buddhism and Hinduism are sexist even if someone does not identify as a modern feminist.
The thing is though, the show doesn’t create Satanic equivalents to the complex laws and commandments that Church life has to tackle the issues of sexism. Never once talks about old laws where witches were hunted, old realities of a by gone time where strict gender roles may have once been a utility, but clearly now just used to keep woman down.
Infact, it doesn’t even do a good job of that, as it touches on the actual Catholic Church and protestant christianity being intolerant, but if the Church of Satan is the opposite of everything the Catholic Church and Protestant christianity teaches, why isn’t the sexism of the Satanic church much different?
It’s possible for the Church of Satan to oppress woman, but using the opposite methods of the Church. Such as giving them leadership where the church would not, but the way to get that leadership ultimately serves a male idea of a liberated female, not a womans. Woman are not expected to be virginal in the church of satan, but perhaps the counter to a churches view of it, is that woman are not allowed to be virginal. Like the Church, autonomy is removed.
(The show is written by a man, so liberation is essentially coached in these terms. But not in the church of Satan, but against it)
And once again, Scale is a problem. The show never ends up portraying God, though it’s indicated he exists, as his followers show up and fight. But it does show Satan, and wow, Satan is a big disappointment.
We at first see Satan is practically like God, he can grant wishes and the like, even bend reality. But when we actually get to see him, he kind of just sucks. Satan looks like some pretty guy with wings. That’s not bad, but his other form is basically a horned man with goat legs. They don’t play with his multiple roles, they don’t show Satan as crafty and subtle. He gets taken down by a bunch of kids, during the time the show still showed promise of being good.
Once again, a problem with scale.
Then the show stopped caring and it sucked in general.
Last statement: Asura’s wrath
Honestly, just watch the cutscenes of that game or play it. The best portrayal of a dude killing gods and God ever.
You can see why humans in that game worship the gods and GOd. Because they actually do GOdlike things.
And unlike Supernatural, they don’t just look like random actors but have cool Character designs.
God can blow up galaxies, and he still gets punched in the face! Unlike preacher he doesn’t get shot by some inbred redneck. This fucker would dodge the bullet and cast the redneck back in hell.
When talking about feints, the sport combat crew views it mostly as half completed strikes or movements at best, little twitches and movements at most.
The RBSD crew often doesn’t see much use for feints.
Both of them though, don’t seem to put much thought into what a feint is. Both of them just see them as something fake, an illusion to create an opening or to draw out an attack. Nothing more.
And yes. In the end what makes a feint different from a punch or a movement is that it causes a reaction rather than just hit or move.
Yet if you look at people that are actually GOOD at feinting, it’s never false. It is not an illusion. Someone truly good at feinting with the feet for instance will improve their position if the opponent does not attack or react to a feint. It’s both a movement and a feint.
Dominick Cruz does foot feints, often to draw punches out from his opponents.
Notice how he uses the step to draw the punch? But he doesn’t just slip, the same step he used to fake the range, took him offline. It’s not empty, it improves his position even if his opponent doesn’t throw the punch, block or move back. The feint itself is like a juncture for where he can move next.
These two little GIFS are of Mike Tyson and Floyd Patterson, but trained by the late Cus D Amato or however you spell his name.
Notice both do a duck to get an offensive or defensive reaction from their opponent, before jumping out and throwing a lead hook.
The great thing about that little duck, is they don’t even have to bite on the feint or fake to make it work, that duck alone charges the body like a spring to explode in any direction. BJJ scout notes Dominick Cruz does much of the same thing as well.
The duck is not an empty feint/fake. It serves a deeper purpose than to present a front, it mechanically primes the body for movement.
And if I am to sum up what truly good fakers and feinters do, it’s that their illusions all have substance, they all help them move, attack or retreat no matter what the opponent does.
The phenomenon I am going to write about happens to both Autistic people and those with ADHD. But since my diagnosis more heavily leans into ADHD than Autism, I am going to focus on it from an ADHD perspective.
I like hanging out with people. I really do. I’m fairly social. Anyone who knows me is aware I have a heavy social media addiction, and largely that is because I’m addicted to constant human interaction. I am in conversations with people over things I am interested in, and unlike real life I can focus on just what I’m interested in. But like real life interactions what is driving it largely comes from the same place:
I want to talk to people who are like minded. Now most extroverts want to talk to anyone no matter what, not me. I want human interaction but it can’t be ‘frivelous’ conversation. We have to talk about things we are passionate about, focussed on, things I love or things of dire importance.
But it’s still a hunger for human interaction.
Yet…I don’t like going out and interacting with people. I do it online, and even online I tend sometimes get exhausted from it. And in real life it’s even more exhausting, though thankfully less dramatic.
Why is that? I used to think it’s just a personality quirk. It’s common with ENFPs like me for instance, that love social interaction but need to take breaks from it. But the question is WHY am I an ENFP? And that is because I have ADHD.
Why is that a factor?
Because I constantly have to moniter my symptoms, my behaviours related to my condition. I have to keep from talking too much, focus on topics of conversation I am not engaged in, I have to keep eye contact and I have to keep still. I have to not pace around and I have to watch my tone of voice. I have to make sure I don’t overshare, and anything percieved as negative I need to keep from triggering RSD(Rejection sensitive dysphoria) I have to watch ticks. I have to stop self-stimming. I have to watch how I eat food. I have to force things like eye contact to seem normal. I have to keep from being clumsy.
All of that together, constantly holding it all back is frankly exhausting. SO even if I meet someone I really like with engaging conversation, by the end of it I can get tired and need time away from it all. And as rewarding it can potentially be, more often then not it’s painful.
So despite craving human interaction, I can often look for reasons not to socialize constantly.
I know the same applies for Autistics as well. Perhaps if someone wants to leave comments they can elaborate?
Unless it’s kyokushin, most karate styles are point sparring. They don’t throw kicks below the belt.
Now if someone is scoring a point, what’s the harm in scoring with a low kick?
Jesse Enkamp suspects that it’s because Savate was practiced in a ruleset similar to old school point sparring, which meant stopping the fight and scoring a point when a blow hits hard enough to stagger, beyond a touch. But no strikes below the belt because of fencing.
But why would they model off of a French striking system? I think there is more to it.
Frankly I think it’s because Karate styles originally leaned the knee into the kick, whether it’s a round kick or an oblique kick. It’s safety for both competitors, though I believe safety for the kicker is the main reason why low kicks were not allowed in the kumite matches in Japan. If one studies the Kata(The library) of most karate styles, both those with long stances like shotokan, or narrower ones like in Okinawa all sink into the knees into the direction of the kick. I first learned to lean my knee in the direction of a kick in Kyokushin, but I realize now my Uechi-Ryu teacher was also teaching this to me, albeit indirectly. It’s not perfect, if kicks are mostly aimed at the thigh, even leaning the knee into it can’t stop accumulating damage. Yet as Robert Whittaker and Stephen Thompson have shown, it can certainly raise the threshold of what damage an upper leg can take before footwork starts to slow down. This is why karate based fighters in MMA never seem to check kicks, yet often seem like they arn’t really stopped by low kicks. It’s not because their opponents can’t generate power, it’s because this is the karate version of a check.
Yet if this is true, why were karateka and early 1980s style kickboxers so open to the low kick?
The weakness of Karate based striking and kickboxing to low kicks was revealed when Rick Rufus fought a Nak Muay. If you have been following this blog post, you probably can suspect how Rick Rufus lost.
Rick Rufus had better footwork. He put more pressure on. Landed more shots. Yet he lost, because he got kicked in the leg so much that he could not stand.
If karate dealt with low kicks by leaning into them, why didn’t it work?
The simple answer is this: If your constantly doing point sparring or hard kickboxing without low kicks, why would someone even learn about a defense to them? At least one that is effective, as there wasn’t any consistent use of a solid low kick in those circles. It wasn’t a priority.
Rick Rufus despite being so good, had never trained under a circumstance where this would be used against him, because it was assumed it wouldn’t work nearly as well because of the lean. So no one really preacticed sitting in stance and moving the knee into the round kick.
Now Rufus could have still easily lost if he knew how to do that. The Muay Thai round kicks that go from top down can lower the cost against the kicker, and thus still requires the karateka learning to check instead of leaning the knee. Yet I do believe Rufus at the very least would have fought longer if he knew this. As I said above, it increase the threshold of how many kicks a leg can take before it gives out.
There has been a rivival of this technique thanks to modern MMA. The use of calf kicks to counter the punishment of a kick check meant that fighters had to figure out other ways to defend the kick, which is for fighters never exposed to karate use a karate based defense against low kicks.
Justin Gaethje started off with wrestling, then some kickboxing. He himself delivers amazing leg kicks, both to the thigh and the calf. But he also talks about how he himself defends them. Look at what he does. And of course the same defense is shown by Machida, a karateka. Others do leg take aways or modified checks. But the integration of the knee lean is obvious by many coaches in this video.
Simply put, you see lots of martial artists discover that hitting angles and flanking makes for good fighitng. They watch boxing and see boxers constantly hitting angles or changing positions with their hands, lots of movement.
Then they watch Muay Thai or Kyokushin or kickboxing and remark how stiff everyone is, how they move with either little steps or move linearly.
And then those same martial artists puff out their chests and pontificate how these fighters are one dimensional, and if they just hit angles they could probably defeat their opponent. As if no one had ever brought this up to them ever before.
Why don’t they try to move offline!
Where are the angles!
Let me be clear, angles are good and WHEN AVAILABLE a person should take an angle to attack or move anytime they can.
The problem is, angles and flanks are not always available. From the outside in it may SEEM like someone can hit an angle. But often it can be shut down by some really simple shit.
Leg kicking can greatly reduce flanking and foot feinting.
On a personal level I learned that when I was teaching, I taught my student to hit angles and constantly shift and never face the opponent forward. When we drilled with more dynamic work and sparred, he would try this, and it would work.
But then I would low kick him…and then that shit stopped. He still tried to flank and get position when available but not nearly as often, he moved around less. I had for all accounts made him hit angles much less by threatening his legs.
When in motion, it’s hard to check the kick or lean the knee into it (Like Uriah Hall did to Chris Weidman) without having to stop or hunker in. Certainly you CAN practice checking while circling out, but the check is not nearly as powerful, and you still have to generally stop to keep the kick from knocking you off balance. You will move, but move much less.
As a result hitting angles more so happens when attacking or countering more than a constant thing. In close quarters the angles are created by head movement and hand position, outside it has more footwork. But the opening to hit angles becomes far less, and far more like combinations and counter strikes than a constant thing.
Dominick Cruz is a fighter that uses heavy movement supplemented by great slipping, bobbing, weaving. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. Many people have tried to use low kicks to stop him from moving, but he keeps his hands low to scoop legs and utilize strong wrestling to kill all incentive to low kick him. Thus Dominick Cruz is free to move around freely.
Henry Cejudo however is an Olympic Gold medalist in wrestling, more than happy to risk a wrestling match with Dominick Cruz.
So Henry Cejudo leg kicked the shit out of Cruz. Cruz sometimes slowed down and stopped his rhythm, other times he would eat the kicks and get hurt but keep moving. Either way, the leg kicking turned Cruz’s angle heavy footwork against him.
Which ultimately resulted in this:
Cejudo noticed Cruz ducking down to sleep the punch, and then instead of low kicking that one time, he turned it into a knee.
But it was the low kicks that essentially setup that knee to the head, and a strong wrestling base that made him unafraid of getting his leg hooked. The best footwork in MMA was shut down by a simple game plan.
It doesn’t even take low kicks to stop foot work, Low kicks just work the best. Often times round kicks and spinning hook kicks can be used to cut off angles. Connor McGreggor threw a wheel kick not to knock his opponents out, but to force them to sit still.
Every time he kicks he curves it to control the movement, every time there is an attempt to circle or flank, Connor throws a round kick, hook or spinning hook/wheel kick. And every time they have to move backwards rather than in a circle.
But now I want to talk about Uriah Hall.
Everytime Uriah Hall fights the commentators say he’s flat footed “Muay thai style” which yes might be true, but is informed by Uriah’s kyokushin background. And kyokushin loves lots of low kicks. Kicks in general.
Notice the guys jdon’t particularly circle before the big KO? That’s because in Kyokushin low kicks and kicks in general are a primary weapon. Many of them do actually look for angles of attack, but it’s subtle because they could always run into a kick as they move. Often when they hit angles it’s a sudden footwork for a big head kick as seen above. But otherwise they don’t circle left and right as often seen in boxing.
And in some ways this can be weaponized against the person throwing a kick. Uriah knows this, and he has used it before. Most of us watching MMA don’t realize this, and even after he broke Chris Wiedman’s shin did people miss what he was doing by using small heavy steps.
If Uriah was bouncing to his left for the angle, he would have eaten that kick. Instead he played it cool and based out, especially since his opponent was a wrestler that could take him down.
And while he did not mean to wreck Chris’s shin, he used an old kyokushin trick to defend against calf and low kicks.
Sometimes it’s the smarter thing to do by moving less. That doesn’t mean you don’t move, that doesn’t mean you don’t circle. But don’t over do it, especially when your fighting someone that can kick very well.
Today I worked with a friend and occasional student on some Kit Dale clinch stuff he had purchased.
After doing some of that and helping out with working through the material, we ended up doing some striking drills with an energy very similar to sparring, focusing mostly on mid range as seen often in classic Muay Thai.
It was fun, I was frustrated on how hard I had to work to land shit, and I got hit more often than I wanted. He expressed his own frustration with the drill, the pressure. It was a range we worked that isn’t generally ‘safe’ for anyone.
Afterwards we went off to drink some Tea and eat some Soba like the Asian culture loving brown weebs we were, dreaming of our waifus in a Japanese restaurant.
Thing is we got into a conversation about fighting style. Drills I was talking to him about using, particularly flow drills.
He said “You say Uechi-Ryu is fast and fluid. But you don’t do that in your fighting. Your slow and do small explosions.
Now I’ll admit, I don’t manifest the ‘fast hands’ Uechi-ryu is famous for, but the flow I do use. But it doesn’t manifest all pretty like the drill above in sparring. It certainly can at points, but usually people are moving forward and back manipulating distance both intentionally and unintentionally. They strike and try to grab you, sometimes locking up their structure. When using something like a flow drill in aliveness and resistance, one has to know it and then feel it to recognize it’s application, or have a very careful eye. Otherwise people miss out on what is happening, because it happens in instances. What my karate teacher calls micro-moments in a fight.
For instance, in close quarters boxing drills I’ll roll hook punches over with my elbows or redirect hands of people trying to hit me in that close range even with boxing gloves using sticky hands and some body flow stuff that resembles Systema I learned in my non-MMA martial arts background.
But it looks nothing like sticking hands. I look like I’m turning away and kind of patting the hands clumsily, while the other guy seems like they can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Either way I either land my counter shots or at the very least I am safe.
No one watching would know I’m doing sticking and adhering, the typical MMA guy would see it and think it’s sloppy hand fighting for boxing, and think ‘sticking sucks’ or something. But I have used it with people who have a decent background in striking.
Why I can use it while others don’t is an understanding of range and an ability to use the appropriate skillset in range.
Thanks to Wise Warrior Gym’s head coach Calen Paine and some wrestlers I train with, I know how to clinch and do some wrestling fundamentals when we get really close to keep someone from simply grabbing me to stop a flow, I can break grips or initiate them myself. I can stick, hit a position in clinch and do dirty boxing. I also know how to do Kickboxing from a Kyokushin teacher that taught Kickboxing in a previous MMA gym and my current gym Wise Warrior.
Most wing chun, kung-fu and Systema people lose fighting kickboxers and wrestlers, and then they often either think their entire training with flow was useless, or they make excuses for their failure and change nothing.
In reality they simply never get a chance to apply the sticking or body flow due to the fact they often ONLY have those skills, no sense of distance, positioning or dealing with take downs under pressure.
GIve them a sense of distance management and a dynamic understanding of grappling, and they can be decent and unorthodox people to fight.
Shit I am slow and fat, but I can frusterate people because they don’t know what I’m doing.
These kung-fu guys often are fast and explosive. Give them some kickboxing and grappling skill on top of trapping and kung-fu drilling, and they would be really hard to deal with. While not all Sanda uses traditional training, many of them do. And many of them surprise and throw off Thai boxers in kickboxing competitions. Dave Leduc the famous Lethwei fighter came from a kung-fu background. Kevin Holland may have been figured out, but for a long time people struggled with his kung-fu, his unorthodox striking.
And of course there is Zabit, the youtube channel “Mixed Molleywhopper” showed clips of Zabits kung-fu and Sanda teacher training. He does forms and Push hands from Taiji, sticking and other traditional drills. And the documentary showed techniques taught in the school used by Zabit.
Now of all examples, Zabit most directly used his style in his fights, but his school trained range in how it taught fighting, and therefore his form manifests more clearly in his fights.
RIGHT THERE, for a split second he does KAKIE from Okinawan karate, a flow drill. But the manifestation is dirty.
But I digress. My main point is that just because you can’t see someone use drills they learn in training doesn’t mean they aren’t. Sometimes the movement and use is subtle, sometimes the energy is different, and it’s just hard or even invisible to the eye. Often it can only be felt.
I was lucky enough to be born in an era where ADHD was diagnosed, but unlucky enough to be born in an era where the true depth of it’s symptoms and what it entails was not understood. Before it was seen as “he doesn’t pay attention and he’s hyper. But AHA! He can focus on the TV for hours! It’s fake or will power can defeat it!” and other such statements because hyper-focus and rejection sensitive dysphoria were never a commonly taught thing about the condition. As a result the condition wasn’t taken seriously and there were expectations of me that I truly could not handle.
For people with Autism, especially if they are not diagnosed, people expect them all to act like the rain man or that weird kid with a football helmet on his head screaming and slamming his head into the wall. When Autism isn’t particularly apparent, people don’t know they have issues, and again expect them to do things normally.
For me it’s the fact I can fail at highly mundane and simple tasks with fine motor skill but excel at large projects and skills that are difficult to learn, granted I could be creative.
But because I failed at mundane things, boring things, I tried hard to do things as fast or faster than neuro typical people. I did math courses I had no business doing in highschool because of pressure from my parents and from my own desire to keep up with my high achieving desi family. In university it was taking more coarses than I should have.
Through tutors and help I managed to pass highschool. In university I never got tutors but the skillsets I was working on I could do myself, but I was overwhelmed with work and I burned out and dropped out for years, going off and on in school.
The advice I would give myself and others would be to slow down. Do things at your own pace, no matter what your family, friends or even advisors say.
A boxing coach once taught me in striking to ‘move only as fast as you can move’ well this advice applies to our focus and our workload.
Occupations and employment often force us to do things we can’t handle. We can’t control that. But the things we can control, we should always take our time.
And when we take our time, we may get to the goals slower than ‘normal’ people, but we do it in a way unique to us, sometimes in a way most of the world could not achieve.
A martial artist should rarely injure or cause repeated harm to their training partners. But they should go fast. Landing a blow without injuring a partner as fast and as many times as possible. I am not against going fast in training, and if anything drills should always speed up.
But you should start slow, and even if you are very skilled, sometimes slowing things down helps a great deal even then. Any time a new skill is integrated into a martial artist’s toolbox, they should slow down drilling and sparring to feel the action, to see it, to observe princples applied. That is difficult to do at high speed or maximum speed.
And when you’re older, can’t work out or train like a professional athlete, it’s even more important to be able to see something. Because you can’t trust your reflexes like you want to, because the only way to keep up with the youthful and the athletic is to just have that much more perfect timeing. Timing is seeing, seein oppurtunities. Slow and smooth training allows for maximum observation, allows for failure without kicking in a survival response, allows experimentation.
Of course I’ve seen the dark side of this. Aging and highly creative martial artists never going past the slow motion training. They may even know the flaws of such a training methodology, and still be trapped doing it again and again, never speeding up. People can get away with training in this manner because it works. If they aren’t working with someone particularly athletic or strong willed, they can pull it off even at high speeds. The problem is when they do finally meet someone extraordinarily explosive with a sense of distancing, a sense of scrambling and good cardio, the ability to get overwhelmed becomes a real thing. In combat sports you see it with BJJ players going into MMA struggling to deal with wrestlers constantly scrambling, exploding and grinding in ways that BJJ culture does not accommodate, at least not anymore. It’s seen when Combat sports people challenge Taiji Masters. I believe Taiji is a very useful martial art for reasons often overlooked by most combat sports types, but they are used to training smooth and slow, which results in video after video of these challenge matches showing the internal martial artists not ready for the shock and awe, the angles of attack and the way movement changes at high speeds.
As a result, it’s always important to train for that ‘x’ factor. That shock.
And most importantly, broken and sudden changes in timing, far easier to do with speed than going slow. Going slow initiatlly teaches one to read, but it’s the sudden shifts where speed is to be integrated.
Yet as I critique slow motion training, the opposite is often the problem.
Whether someone practices Muay Thai, wrestling, and even old school BJJ, you see them practice some techniques. Then do drills as fast and hard as possible and then sparring. There is no inoculation between technique practice and reading a fight in a live situation, there is only learning and then testing.
But in truth even live drilling and sparring should have an element of learning in them, or at the very least incrementally making the nervous system accustomed to speed and shock. But too often students of combatives are taught to splash around in the kiddy pool, then suddenly thrown into the deep end.
There are many successful schools that go from technique training to throwing someone into the fire, but usually they are successful because only those already naturally or environmentally inclined to high pressure violence stay, only those already tough. Those that can’t take it or learn little from it leave.
The thing is though, many of such schools end up stagnating. They will have a reputation for tough guys, and if they are competitive reach success at a certain level of competition. But the best of the best always have strong people that excel because they have controlled training instead of constant hard sparring. When one trains in a way to perceive threats, they are less afraid to experiment and expand their fighting style and approach rather than constantly fear for their safety and revert to only what they are comfortable with.
It’s not just old and injured people that benefit from slow and deliberate training, it’s the best in the world as well. Once upon a time the best MMA gyms banged all day, until they were defeated by gyms that spent more time training softly even slowly.
The pool of talent in combat sports is bigger than ever, primarily because we are seeing the talented of people who didn’t stay in gyms because they are tough, but because the innoculation to pressure made them tougher, and they were able to show the world what they were capable of.
Slow Training is not static.
This blog post can easily be mistaken as advocating for practices within many schools that seem slow and deliberate but really teach nothing. These are not pre-arranged drills. Pre-arranged drills should exist just to teach a sense of coordination and to memorize systems, not to actually try and instill fight IQ. Such practices are often presented as teaching people how to fight.
Slow training still means a sense of unpredictability. You’re not reading attacks you already know, it’s attacks you don’t know. If your striking you must use the appropriate distance, footwork and position to deal with something you don’t know is coming. You’re learning to pick it up. If you are grappling you must have the sensitivity to react, move and adhere in the best manner. But regardless of what you are practicing there has to be a sense of chaos and unpredictability. Slow does not mean predictable. You truly do not know a feint, bait or redirection if you cannot do it in slow motion. Yes I said some stuff can’t be done slow. Fine. Maybe it can’t. But if you have to go fast, make it smooth. And everything worth doing is smooth.
Some wrestlers and martial artists would disagree with me. But look at the best of them. At the elite levels they are all tough, they can all grind, they often are explosive. But the guy that is never trapped, the guy that can’t be ground out but does the grinding are legendary.
The only way to be technical is to see. The only way to be tough is inoculation to the fire of violence, not being thrown headlong into it.
I don’t have definitive list of countries, but I’ve talked to people online from various nations, some were excluded from joining the military because of their diagnosis.
Now I’m sure there is data backing up why they don’t want people with an ADHD diagnosis in the army. Perhaps stats and trends seen by analysts that led to the conclusion that people with ADHD shouldn’t be in the military.
Yet I want to cite my friend who was diagnosed later in life, having served in hot spots. He mentions how he would pick up danger before anyone else and take initiative. In the head of conflict he was calm headed while others were stressed, he was alive, focussed better than anyone else at the task at hand.
This story is very common among those with attention deficient hyperactive disorder (A badly named condition) with being perhaps the most efficient people in an emergency.
I strongly suspect the reason ADHD people could have been seen as liabilities for the army largely during mundane tasks that need to be done. Ask anyone who has served in the military and even in warzones, and they all say the same thing, so much doing day to day tasks. A great deal of waiting. And anyone with ADHD really hates waiting around doing nothing, boredom is almost like torture for us. Many wars are won on the mundane, delivering supplies, or having well tuned machines, well fed soldiers, help at military hospitals.
(This is assuming the exclusion is based on data and not a blanket prejudice against neuro divergent people.)
Perhaps exclusion from the military for ADHDs would not be wise, but rather educate them what roles and tasks they would be most useful for in the military machine. Ironically the place where you need the most attention is where the people who can’t control it do the best. We are anything if not calm and deliberate during high stress situations.
Thankfully, it seems the U.S. military is revisiting their policies regarding ADHD.
I’m curious if anyone has any research related to people diagnosed with ADHD and their performance in the military.
We often associate will power with an impeccable discipline. The ability to focus without distraction even through discomfort on what they do and what they want.
By this definition, many people who need to Stim or get over stimulated often have low will power, because their threshold of self control and toleration is a great deal lower.
There is an actual neurological reason for a lack of stability or focus. They are literally wired to have less will power in our the brains are designed. Willpower as defined by most people that is.
With Autism it seems like they are unreasonable when they demand structure or break down without it. With ADHD there is a sense that the person is lazy, doesn’t care. The saying that “He likes the idea of a skill/task but doesn’t really love it because he doesn’t want to do the work.”
When in truth often these people are struggling just to just function, when they really want to stay in bed, sit in a corner rocking, or run around and scream, any such temptation.
Personally I used to jump on my bed and slap my thighs between tasks before I was properly medicated. I still have some neck ticks to stim.
But what if will power is over rated, and what if we’re looking at it all wrong?
I’m going to use martial arts as an example of pressure, but I want to explore willpower holistically for life to everyone, regardless of whether they like fighting or not.
USE AND LIMITS OF WILLPOWER
Willpower is a pool. And because it’s a pool it’s valuable, it is not limitless.
If you’ve done Self-defense, traditional martial arts for self defense, historical european medieval combat with a simulation of danger back in the day, or even full contact combat sports, there is a concept of toughness. Duh. Everyone knows what toughness is.
Toughness is often associated with willpower.
In combat sports it’s a person like Nick Diaz getting his cheek bone broken fighting Gomi, ignoring it, weathering the punches and then winning due to overwhelming pressure and perseverance.
Diaz broke his orbital bone and got the shit kicked out of him. He kept going and going until Gomi got tired, and slowly lost enthusiasm
In self defense it’s those true stories of war you hear, of a guy with his legs blown off military crawling on his belly for miles to get help.
Or a Rugby player dislocating his knee cap, then hammering it back in place to keep playing.
I wouldn’t fuck with a Rugby player.
Now much of this can be learned. You can learn to be tough, IE you do something enough times and it’s no longer scary, or your so aware of the consequences of a dislocated knee that your not surprised. Maybe the first time it happens you freak out, but you took so many bumps and bruises you go ‘meh’.
At the same time, some people are tougher than others. Sometimes you can only learn to be tough so far or certain situations.
To use myself as an example, there are some days I can walk through pain like nothing. Some times focus on things without fail if I get hyper focus from ADHD or I have excellent control.
But certain activities or things or a lack of sleep and my mental strength fluctuates. I can’t maintain it.
And you know what? I bet that happens to Nick Diaz too. I’m sure he has off days, or didn’t get enough sleep and just isn’t as tough that day.
At some point if the soldier had crawled long enough, the pain would be too much or the futility of it would have made him give up. Lucky for him that never came as fast as it would a normal person, so he survived and his badassery was legendary. But we are not gods, there are limits.
The Rugby player perhaps would have had a bad break up or a slew of bad luck that may sap his willpower. Perhaps even having to relocate his knee sapped some of his confidence to play.
Whether some people have it or not, Willpower is a pool. It is not infinite, and it fluctuates. Willpower is a very good thing and must be cultivated. But it’s not a secret power. It must be built, maintained, and is situational. It’s like a ‘life bar’ in a video game, but one we can’t see or measure precisely.
I want to emphasize that having willpower is very admirable and something that everyone should aspire to have.
ARE MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE WEAK WILLED?CAN PERSERVERENCE EXIST UNDER A LACK OF DISCIPLINE?
It certainly can seem like that. Especially ADHD and autism. We do tasks but we constantly get distracted. We get hungry and can’t tolerate it as much. We’re sensitive and easily moved/affected. It’s easy to see us as weak willed. And by many peoples definitions we are. Outwardly it seems like we don’t care and give up.
Yet if we do an art or skill that we seemingly waffle on or don’t care about, we still show up to the classes. Still trying to do it years later. Still pursuing it. People will mock us, accuse us, shame us for our our behaviour manifests, tell us we’re wasting our time. Yet we keep going and going and going. And sometimes even though it took us longer to get to a point a normal person is at, we do it unique, we sometimes even do it better and no one understands why. They all called us weak willed. But we are persistent, and we are often adept in learning how to adapt, to figure out our own way to do things since the regular way doesn’t suit us. Perhaps that is a form of willpower we excel in, but we’re unpredictable in it we’re not the typical strong willed stubborn bastard. We’re unique, hard to read.
Autistics especially are incredible at picking up patterns, noticing small things. And often if they keep at a task or love it enough to tolerate the shaming, the attacks, the hurt feelings, they can have a focus and a discipline that is almost superhuman. Within a structure they find things no one else does, understand it better than anyone else, and do so persistently.
ADHD people have hyper focus. We focus very well on things we’re interested in, no matter what is happening, no matter the resistence. WE may get frusterated but we will do it. We may not have the same attention to detail as austistics do, but since we don’t like structure we are incredibly out of the box in our conclusions and methods. Autistics are unpredictable in depth, but we are unpredictable in our methodology, we ADHDs.
I hate to bring up combat again, but some low functioning Autistic people can be hell to fight. They are relentless and hard to control. My parents know of workers who have been sent to retirement to collect disability because a large and aggressive autistic client attacked them viscously. I know people who work in hospitals saying dealing with out of control autistic or schizophrenic’ patients is scary, it’s like facing a wild animal.
Despite some militaries screening out potential soldiers with ADHD, I know some people that were diagnosed later in life that served, and served well and successfully. Two of them mention how they were more Intune with their instincts, able to to know when they are attacked before it happens, a sixth sense that picked up danger before anyone else was clued into it.
ADHD folks are known to stay calm under pressure and their neuro chemicals balanced under danger, able to act with a more clear head than neuro typical people and fight more effenciently. The single minded focus gives them ‘willpower’ in a high stress context, while in civilian life their willpower is weak, their self esteem shot. And if they cave under pressure, it’s because of a life where no one encouraged them and constantly told them they are weak and lazy, when in truth such a context(Given the right preperation) they thrive.
The limits of willpower.
Okay lets say you lived a badass life style and you got some good genetics with gave you a brain with incredible control of focus. Good. Awesome. Your a fighter or scientist, whatever occupatation you choose.
Thing is though, unless Green Lanterns are real, willpower cannot change fundamental realities.
A person with brain damage can have an Iron Will, could be impeccable in work ethics and focus. Yet asking them to solve complex math equations through sheer stubboness would probably not result in much. A more meek, less disciplined mathematician or physicist could probably figure it out if they are good enough at the equation and theory. Someone with a strong will but an inability to comprehend could not.
That Rugby player gloriously slamming his knee cap into place would not be able to play if his knee stopped functioning. No matter how strong his willpower is. The ”Secret” has been proven wrong by physics and realities of existence constantly.
To relate it to martial arts, Nick Diaz has lost fights to people, not because they could take more damage than him, but because they simply were better fighters, more skilled, more technical.
George St. Pierre for instance is a tough guy, but few would say he has a grittiness that Nick Diaz has.
Yet George St. Pierre beat Nick Diaz. Now many would say he won by decision, and if the fight had gone on and on and on that maybe Nick would overcome. Nick Diaz also has a loss by submission on his record. No willpower or toughness could stop that. Nick has a loss to TKO, his granite chin and Iron will could not stop his brain from sloshing around so much that he fell and got finished with punches.
Will power and ‘mindset’ are treated like the ultimate holy grail of life and violence. But they are just one tool among many. A very useful tool when it’s reliable, but it’s not the whole picture.
WILL POWER OFTEN LEADS TO PATTERNS:
This is entirely anecdotal, this is just my observation, thus my entire thesis can fall apart. But people with incredible willpower tend to be very stubborn, very single minded, and often very temperamental. Many are humble but single minded, but others can even be arrogant. They think they are right or want to do an action, and it’s because they know better because they always succeed. Usually because of a single minded focus.
A very obvious example of that is in science. Good men who are scientists will hold views that have been proven wrong. But they don’t accept their old theories and work is proven wrong, they will work hours and hours trying to prove it’s real, or interpret the data in a way that validates their previous hypothesis or theory. They fail to evolve or even consider the possibility they were wrong. They don’t see change, because they are too fixated on their old work and beliefs, and then are either remembered for being wrong or just forgotten. Most of those men are probably good men, but they certainly were stubborn.
There was a family friend, a very good man. A very kind man. But he was stubborn, and he hardly ever changed his mind about anything, he did what he wanted. He had a very strong will, but he had a personality type.
I’m going to generalize now, I am not talking specific people, and I know even within large group there is variation. But I’m going to talk about stereotypes within occupations and groups, and why they exist as they are.
Combat sports are filled with tough guys. What is the stereotype of how they act? How they behave? Often they are brash, arrogant, cocky. When they lose, often they won’t even admit they lost or the other guy was better. Sometimes it’s a ‘bad day’ or ‘I just missed a punch’ or in rematches they do the same thing again more aggressively then lose. I’m not talking about the best of the best, I’m talking about a stereotype and the number of fighters that behave like this to create the stereotype. It’s something that can be quantified enough to discuss isn’t it?
Military men and police. People who don’t like police will often say cops are assholes for political reasons. People who like police will praise them. Regardless of your views, both will comment on a personality type. A tough man, staying cool and persistent in hard situations, an assertive person, who greatly respects structure and law. I myself knew people before and after they became law enforcement officers, many had a distinct shift in their personality, or always did have the ‘cop personality’ that is often joked about or feared. A google search on police voting patterns shows they tend to be conservative politically, both in the colloquial term and original meaning. As for the military, I heard from Americans that veterans either become super patriotic and love establishments or survivalist/socialist/anarchist types. But either way, the army either changes you or your attracted to it due to who you are. The stereotype is similar to a cops, clean cut, orderly, tough. A pattern of behaviour.
So why do I bring up a personality type here?
Because these people tend ot have patterns. And patterns make people predictable, especailly if their instinct is to try and try again until they succeed at a task or the person is defeated. Many strong willed people are intelligent and versatile, but they still have a personality, they still have patterns.
One of those patterns is stubbornness.
DEFEATING THE STRONG WILLED OPPONENT/BEING MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THE WILLFUL
To relate this to self defense, Maija Soderholm talks about how in self defense circles, what is taught is an unbeatable mind, sharply focused moving forward, pushing through pain and punishment. That wins. It works until either they run into someone who can’t be surprised with shock and awe with an equal or greater pool of willpower. She points out how tough guys often are very predictable when she works with them and when her own badass teacher would beat them. They often did not have flexible minds.
A man with strong willpower could have a glass jaw or a fragile body. His can’t will his body to withstand impact. He can’t just have a single minded focus, the mind must be supple, it must be adaptive, it must be tricky. If something is not working he must be willing to abandon it. And if he is losing, he must know when to retreat, give up one goal and replace it with another.
What makes a person predictable is attachment, one has to keep calm under pressure(Which should happen if your training inoculates your nervous system) and to not be attached to a through process, a method and most especially a technique or action.
The training certainly shouldn’t teach you to give up, as I said above, persistence is a very good thing and so is willpower. But it should teach you to change. Shifting from fighting to running away is not giving up, it’s still proactive, it’s an action, it’s active. You are not displaying weak will by being dynamic, by changing.
But if your facing someone with a better will, you can still overcome them if your mind and methodology is more open to change and unpredictability.
In the context of martial arts, it’s learning the fundamentals and sticking with them. But not in the way you think is bet, but the way you need, in anyway you need. You may even have to use the fundementals of fighting in a way that violates your principles if you have to. Good principles probably would not get violating, but you should be willing to abandon it if need be.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” was told to me by a BJJ professor Chris Hauter. But I heard it’s attributed to Picasso.
Either way it’s a good motto for combat and martial arts. If your principles are good, you can openly flaunt them, and they will still be there to save you.
BEWARE A STRONG WILL THAT IS ADAPTIVE AND CREATIVE: THE GREATEST IN CIVILIZATION AND BARBARITY
So most of this blog seems like me talking shit about willpower, strong willed people being predictable and depicted as dumb and predictable.
But guess what? I’m talking general personality quirks and trends. Humans are individuals. Even tendencies among groups still has variations.
The fact is, there are willful people who are open minded, fluid and unattached. You could argue that was Buddha, a man with impeccable discipline but also able to free himself of attachment, a mind that is unencumbered.
We are individuals. Our personalities are not just ‘stubborn’ or ‘open’ we are a mix of both, and at times we are completely different people in different times of our lives, even during different times of the same day, in different countries or locations. Our psychology is never the same.
Thus sometimes if we work at it, we can be the best of both worlds.
Perhaps a strong will with an adaptable mind is what we truly want, it’s the ideal personality trait for anyone.
Of course I don’t think it means your enlightened, mindset and psychology shifts based on context and tasks. I’m sure many of the people I will cite below are not exactly worthy of enlightenment, but in the pursuits of their lives they were both stubborn and dynamic.
First we will look at a non-combative example.
Albert Einstein:
Look at that tongue. Bet he used it in all sorts of dirty places. In all those 1940 woman. Dude was a huge horn dog.
He had a single minded focus and pursuit of physics. He was an eccentric child growing up. But he read and read and read. But he did not memorize and regurgitate the same facts or formulas. No, this horny as fuck bastard did his own thing with it. Came up with new ideas, changed how we thought about physics.
Of course he didn’t pioneer this stuff alone, his knowledge and theories were already being bandied about, he popularized them and generally is credited. But either way, he is the most popular example of a person that was persistent, but was utterly unpredictable and successful.
He was stubborn. But he wasn’t predictable, he was adaptive and innovative.
Now let’s talk about a combative examples: Musashi Miyomoto.
What Einstien did with his tongue,I bet Musashi did with his mustache.
Now there are many misconceptions about Musashi Miyomoto. The biggest one is that he had no formal training and just made up his fighting style. That’s not true, Musashi was formally trained, if I remember correctly, he had multiple teachers. He had a structure of tradition he adhered to before he created the Nito-Ichen-Ryu school. Musashi was a man that was remembered in history, but he stood on the shoulders of many other people, he is just the most readily remembered.
He did not have an easy life, but he studied hard. He was devoted.
The dude could have taken his life so easy. He wasn’t a ronin because his master died and no one wanted to take him. Some of his students/adopted children had retainers. But Musashi spent his life without a retainer, because I speculate he wanted someone worthy to follow. But even if I am wrong about his motivations, it’s clear he could have easily served under anyone.
When one reads about how he won his duels, his most notable victories are stories of cunning, creativity and guile.
His most famous duel involved him countering an opponent with a long sword by carving up an oar and basically bonking the bastard on the head.
Another duel he hid in a palanquin, and then when it was opened up, he jumped out and cut the dude down.
He would show up very early or very late for a duel to throw his opponents off. He never did the same trick three times, only twice. The first time in one duel he came late, his opponent was impatient and exhausted from being adrenalized waiting for Musashi to come. Needless to say Musashi won that duel.
In the third duel with that family, he showed up early, found men were gathering to jump him, the teenage heir of the family waiting for him, pissed off at killing his predecessor.
So Musashi jumped out, cut the teenager down. Then allowed the other members of the school to chase him down, where he used the space created from running to seperate them, and used the trees as barriers to keep them from flanking him. Musashi did most of the killing and won.
Now maybe he was a bit of an asshole. Certainly in his old age there was a humility to him, a gravity based on my very light readings of the historical figure.
But the fact is he worked very hard for his skill, he was very focused, her was persistent. But he was also very very unpredictable, very much in tune to seeing patterns in his opponents both in technique but also psychology.
Even his tactic of getting people to chase him. That’s an attachment, the act of giving chase. He lured them in, he played them.
This was an extraordinary man who combined being tough and being dynamic. There is a reason he’s the most popular samurai in history, one of the most well known, his works and life studied by businessmen, generals and martial artists alike.
WE CAN CHANGE. WE ARE NOT WEAK WILLED. WE ARE NOT STRONG WILLED. WE ARE NOT PREDICTABLE. WE ARE NOT UNPREDICTABLE. WE ARE ALWAYS CHANGING, MOMENT TO MOMENT.
This advice will touch both how mentally ill people in everyday life and martial artists. I am going to use an combative example to prove my point, but the ultimate lesson can be applied to self help for those with mental health issues.
There is a police officer(Not typical social views for the occupation) blogger and martial artist I respect in my city. I don’t always agree with him, but I value his advice and judgement. He said something I really loved, about how over rated mindset it. The context of his critique of mindset is that an officer or fighter will get in a real world situation. He would fail or get hurt. And the advice other coaches or officers would give is “You must have had the wrong mindset bro” as if Mindset was some mysterious powerful force. Of course their context of mindset is comfort under violent pressure and a toughness and relentlessness. But the thing that bothered this friend of mine is that no one articulates it beyond that. What do they mean by being tougher? What do they mean by mindset? Is it possible they had a perfect mindset, were comfortable under pressure but still failed because the training failed?
HIs argument is that we should focus on what we can control, and we can control training/skill building/scenario work, inoculation and all that. Because that is what we can control. But our mindset? We can’t often control it, many factors can subtly affect our psychology to ‘deplete our ego’ or sap our pool of willpower.
But I realize that, while talking about mindset very often gets into almost magical talking about mental toughness, it also shows that mindset is fluid.
That means while your pool of willpower is depleted, you can fill it back up instantly, or you can even change your very psychology in an instant.
From a martial arts point of view, you’re changing your psychology through training. If your training is good, your simulating what you will face under violence and pressure. You will gain a comfort, maybe even an aggression.
If the training is realistic and simulates danger, pressure, shock, you can get creative with your mind. You can pretend to be someone else(Rory Miller calls this his neuroplasticity drill) you can change the way you move to influence your mental state, as there is a relationship between movement and psychology.
If your default state is to be stubborn and single minded, great. You can always be open minded in specific situations, let that strong will be tempered with an openness.
There are people who are strict religious fanatics or other political/life ideologies they will never question, challenge or think deeply about, but for some reason when doing art, sports, combat, science they have a very open mind just in that situation.
In other words, people are stubborn or strong willed in one aspect of life, easy going and fluid in another. Sometimes they can be both iron willed and creative doing one task, while lazy and predictable in another.
We are always different people, constantly.
And that is a strength. That means you are not trapped by genetics or circumstance. You always have something you can control.
I am going to talk about forms again, and I’ve changed my mind a bit since the last time I began writing about this topic.
But before I do that, I have to set the stage of what my point is.
I’ve been busy dipping my foot into the Constraint based approach for teaching and learning, Ecological dynamics, active inference and embodied learning. Currently reading Dr. Robert Gray’s book, going to read a book on embodied learning and active inference. But most of what I have done is being mentored by a friend who uses these modern approaches to training for his own school.
Now I really think Ecological dynamics for instance, is pretty much where any good martial arts is going to go, this is the future with 10 years of science backing it up in sport science and martial arts. Thing is, I noticed Ecological dynamics people can be dogmatic. They say once you go into ecological dynamics, it’s all or nothing. You can’t mix traditional teaching methods with it.
Generally I think they are right, in some ways you would be wasting your time. But from what little I know about active inference, there is some room for mixing and matching teaching styles, albiet to a limited.
My point is, these guys have science behind them, but they think Ecological dynamics is the only way, they don’t realize science and learning is complex, and sometimes the information processing model of traditional learning may have come into existence for a reason, or that there are other concepts (Like active inference) that are based on similar science, but lead to different conclusions or have more freedom in how it’s applied. Back when I followed Steve Morris, he once got upset some people he worked with would mix traditional teaching models with his methods(Which was basically ecological dynamics) because that’s what the science said. Maybe Steve knows this now, but newer research on constraint based training and similar sciences are showing, maybe, just maybe you can mix it up.
There is alot more I can say about Ecological dynamics/Active inference/Embodied trianing, such as striving for goals instead of ideal outcomes. But this isn’t entirely about this science.
Ecological dynamics and constraint based learning there are concepts and terms to know. I’ll run them down before talking about Kata/forms.
Constraints: In sports they are rules, and then whatever works under those constraints/rules is how a style or sport will look like. In traditional martial arts it may be the nature of drills(like sticky hands) and what is allowed or not allowed in the drill, which thus makes a style like Wing chun looks the way it does or expresses itself. Even “Street” styles have constraints, such as safety for drills or the culture or partners. Constraints can also be applied to people personally, a guy with no flexibility and short legs may be constrained in how he plays guard or kicks. Etc etc.
Invariants: You could call them the bare bones of what makes a technique work, which is often how it’s used in martial arts, but it also is basically things that always happen in a fight, or have to happen for an outcome to occur, ideal or not. Some people who do ecological teaching don’t even talk about invariants or even teach them, they think everything is self-organized, no direction, but really you can guide the practice, you can show invariants. It’s even in Robert Gray’s book.
Emergence/Self-organization: A fancy way of saying, basically once you have an idea of something, or no idea but put in a fighting or sport context(the environment, the ecology) you basically will figure shit out. It’s a fancy way of figuring things out without going through your memory for a piece of information or a technique to apply in a context, an ‘environment’ of a fight or sport. Emergence is how you get the outcomes you want, you self-organize into that, or self-organize into invariants, or you use invariants and organize around it.
Attractors: Movement patterns that are a result of your previous movement history or natural movements a person does that emerge in an environment(Context in a fight, etc) which can be good and encouraged by a coach through constraints added into training or weeded out if negative by constraints. Ecological dynamics say attractors are purely based on movement history and nature, while active inference says your sense of identity and personhood can also be a reason for attractors.
There is more but I’ll set the stage with that.
Now lets talk about forms and Kata:
Most people who love aliveness, ecological dynamics absolutely hate Kata. My own karate teacher broke away from other karate people because they loved choreographed pre-arranged work. Memorized new kata and repeated kata for no reason, and generally only did resistence with some stupid touch sparring bullshit than anything combative or dynamics beyond that.
He grossly parsed down how much Kata we did.
Thing is, I don’t blame him for considering that, because of how forms in Kung-fu and Kata in Karate are talked about. People say applications of the forms should be the focus, to explore the forms and find ways to do techniques. But honestly it’s such an ineffecient use of time. One thing Constraint based training and eco/inference/embodiment all show is that by putting yourself into an envornment or combat context and then giving yourself constraints, you will have techniques become emergent.
Why waste time parsing through the movements of a form when you can just constantly fight and learn though applying constraints and learning invariants? The only motive to parse through forms is historical preservation, that’s it. Even if you like memorizing techniques, there are books and video today, you don’t need forms. Your teacher says forms is how to preserve the style, but we dont need that today, and ecological dynamics would say styles shouldn’t exist, they don’t exist, only outcomes from constraints.
(Though active inference would say: Yes styles can exist if you want them to, or do because of agency)
We are told Kata contain techniques, everyone says it. Whether chinese or japanese martial arts. But if that’s true, then forms just such and shouldn’t be a thing, because it’s absolutely the worst way to learn techniques and outcomes.
So why do I still practice them? Why do I advocate for them to exist?
Because whether it was intentional or not, forms, especially the fluid forms of Kung-fu and Chinese influence Okinawan karate styles are very very good at developing attractors and showcasing movement invarients.
I don’t think this applies to the stiff, segmented forms of Japanese karate or some variations of Okinawan karate, but that’s not how I do my forms, so I will focus on what I am familiar with.
I’m going to talk about some forms in my style to demonstrate my entire point.
Sanchin: Teaches ‘perfect’ balance and how to step with balance. How to connect the feed, and having every part of your body working like a gear to the hand. Again this is my Sanchin, not the stuff most Uechi-ryu schools do where the arms are only moving and everything else is still. This is the base. You can get the invarients of a few techniques and tactics with it, but it’s mostly a base more than a fighting form. This is an attractor, if you do this form and apply it to not only all your fighting but everyday life, you will always move into sanchin and it’s structures when doing something.
Kanshiwa: How to take the structure of Sanchin and how to pounce, rip and slam with it. This provides the attractors for that expression. What techniques will you use? Go rip, tear and slam with Kanshiwa in mind, and see what is embodied, how do you self-organize? This is the tiger. Embody yourself as the tiger, see what happens. That is where the techniques of the kata will come. Don’t try to figure it out movement by movement.
Seisan: Taking Sanchin and being sharp, flapping and whipping with it. Where are the techniques? Take the embodied sensations of Seisan and put yourself into different alive constraints, and see how you react with this intention in mind. This is the crane, you embodying that intention of Sanchin. See what comes out of the fight, don’t parse through the form to figure it out.
Seichin: This takes sanchin structure and general movement to rolling and undulating. This is the dragon. Again, fight with the intention of rolling and undulating, be the dragon. See what happens in the context with this embodied movement in mind rather than parse through every damn piece to see what techniques come out.
Sanseiryu:
This form plays with exploding and closing distance with some very circular patterns. You know what I said above, get the intention and embodiment of sanchin with this in mind, and go see what happens.
The queston is, if forms are there to create good attractors for transitons and movement, alignment that show up in a combat environment, why don’t people who do lots of forms perform well compared to people who don’t do them?
Well usually someone that does Karate or kung-fu just sits around memorizing forms. Out of one hour and a half of training time, 40 minutes goes toward forms, maybe another half an hour to stupid choreographed pre-arranged kumite or similar drills, or an isoteric skill drill that doesn’t exist in combat. And then finally they do fighting drills or spar.
Vs.
The Muay Thai or Folkstyle wrestler who is always in a combat environment, from the start to end of class.
One reason I had success with forms as a martial artist is because I know only 5 very short forms and Yilu from tai chi. And i’ve done only those for fifteen years, I don’t just practice them but integrate them into fighting. When I learned these forms, it was just five to ten minutes at the beginning or end of class, and the rest of it was a fighting drill or skill drill, some form of a real combat environment. Then I did the forms at home as a form of meditation or just feeling transitions.
I would fight or do a constraint drill of some kind, and suddenly I’ll get an outcome without thinking, and when I look at what I did, it was some part of the form. I never picked the movement out and applied it, my body just self-organized that way due to the forms creating attractors in me. I don’t do the movements perfectly like the form, but the invarients are there.
That’s mostly how I see the training manifesting for me. I spend my time in the combat environment and learn invarients of techniques or contexts/environments, and then when i do the invarients, the forms are my attractors.
I ran this by a friend of mine who teaches Northern Praying Mantis and Shiao Jiao(chinese wrestling) and he said something like this (I’m paraphrasing)
“Your karate style is essentially Hakka kung-fu, and the way they move and do things lends to your theories of attractors and invarients. But my lineage is Northern Chinese martial arts, and they have a different history. But I do find your theory interesting”
I then asked him, “I heard Taoist and chinese cultural views on Taoism and Chinese medicine is a big influnce on forms”
And he basically cited some chinese history translated into russian and said, “The Taoist and Chinese medical philosophy was not an original part of most kung-fu. It’s a 18th/19th century thing to appeal to chinese nationalism and the college educated chinese folks who want their kung-fu to feel deep, and so the kung-fu teacher can market his stuff”
Me and him had many conversations, and he largely talks about how many Kung-fu systems didn’t have many forms for most of their history until recently when kung-fu schools had to market and compete for students, they needed to fill curriculums up so they either collected or made up forms. Chinese communism made it worse.
So even some of the hisory supports my theories, your attractors and embodiment training from Kata largely can only happen if you only know a few forms(Because likely that’s all you’ll have time to do) and spend lots of time in your fighting environment your trying to use.
Love the click bait title? Good, because I actually kind of mean it.
So this blog post is about martial arts, but it started from a political discussion regarding the current conflict with Israel and Palestine. A kung fu teacher I follow said something slightly offensive after October 7th toward Palestinians, and I ended up having a friendly discussion with an Israeli Praying Mantis/Shiao jiao guy about Netanyahu’s bragging about funding Hamas.
We ended up chatting about both politics, and most especially martial arts. And after many discussions about traditional martial arts, western martial arts and kung-fu, we ended up having a talk about forms due to a quote I posted about how many kata are really just one or two forms done in different ways.
My Israeli friend mentioned that in learning Praying Mantis, he researched the history of many praying mantis styles, and he pointed out that the oldest and most respected form of praying Mantis had no forms or kata, just some parter drills and some solo drills, and at that time it was considered one of the best systems around. Then the style developed one form, which was really just some solo exercises stringed together to teach movement. Then the style ended up creating forms to document techniques, and it had more and more forms. Then from there other mantis styles branched off and collected more forms. And it was noted that the more forms these mantis styles had, the less steller the reputation of the schools and styles were, compared to the schools with less forms and more partner training.
The discussion then went toward the purpose of forms. And once again my Israeli friend pointed out that before he did kung-fu, he was a boxer, and he beat up a bunch of kung-fu guys across Israel,the ones that didn’t lose fought in a way that looked nothing like the syles they taught. Until he found his kung-fu teacher (his mantis teacher) that beat him up in a method that was clearly kung-fu. He surmised that forms often were useful if they taught a concept or a way of moving more than techniques. In the karate world, we know there is Bunkai, applications of the forms. But these applications end up turning into a collection of techniques, your collecting tricks, but in fighitng, it’s a gross motor concept and strategy that saves you, and techniques are incidental. If you have many forms and you spend time looking at 30 forms and collecting technique out of them, your not spending time drilling those techniques in an alive manner or in a context that is ecological to fighting. Your just collecting moves.
I don’t know kung-fu history as well as Karate, so I will talk about Karate.
Motobe was considered the greatest Okinawan karate fighter, most famous for beating up some boxers and wrestlers from the west that were performing for a carnival in japan, and embarassing the founder of Shotokan, Gichin Funokoshi.
His style of Karate is from the same region as Shotokan, and has the same base, Naihanchi.
Thing is, Motobe only practiced Naihanchi, that’s it. The rest were fighting techniques, some drills and lots of Kakie and fighting.
Funakoshi’s shotokan on the other hand, had a huge emphasis on memorizing forms and bunkai, the kumite was incidental, and it was point sparring, not close quarters combat like Motobe.
Well Motobe was the guy that won fights, and Funakoshi was the guy impressing Japanese royalty and making karate look pretty and professional.
Sounds a little familiar with the Mantis story right?
Today Uechi-ryu has a good reputation in Okinawa, but outside of it’s not well respected like alot of Okinawan karate.
But once upon a time, Uechi-ryu had a reputation of being very street oriented, very brutal, very simple and direct. I heard stories from my teachers how they used to deal with TKD kicking in tournaments due to how they block, and the saying went ‘glare in the eyes, fast hands’ for Uechi-ryu practitioners.
Thing is, Uechi-ryu has only three kata, and they’re all really short.
Sanchin, Siesan, and Sanseiryu.
Most uechi-ryu practioners would admit Sanchin is more a base than a form that teaches techniques, it teaches structure and the general over arching principle of uechi-ryu. THe other kata they try to find techniques in, but I personally see the movements less as techniques and more as common frames and general concepts than specific techniques, like in seisan the Siesan elbow now only is an elbow to delever, but a cover and guarding method as well. The Wauke in Siesan and Sanseiryu are ways to clear guards and ‘hand fight’ more than specific moves, general movement that shows up or is useful in fighting. That may not be how it’s seen by Uechi-ryu practioners, but it’s how I see it, and that’s generally how alot of Southern Chinese styles have seen their forms, particularly those based in Sanchin/SanZan or Zhanchin or whatever they call it.
Now today Uechi-ryu has many more kata, and on top of kata, pre-arranged kumites that are completely choreographed. And lo and behold, Uechi-ryu’s reputation went in the shitter as well, and it became far less well known for fighitng.
There is an MMA fighter in the UFC I chatted with online said to me “Uechi-ryu used to be a hard contact, bare bones hard fighting style. But look at it today, today it sucks.”
Okay so maybe I’ll talk about kung-fu.
Baji Quan to this day is one of the most well respected kung-fu styles. Along with Choi li fut, it’s one of those kung-fu systems that Thai boxers and combat sports people that talk shit about kung-fu will respect (if they did research)
Thing is, while modern day Baji has alot of forms, people really practice and focus on two:
Big Baji
Small Baji.
(Love the names)
They are pretty straight forward, you can get techniques from the forms, but really it teaches the concept of exploding with power when folding and unfolding, sinking, shifting and general explosive power. If you watch Baji guys applying their forms, they hit alot of pads, do alot of partner work, and the form interpretations basically are funky looking pad work.
Is it any wonder these guys are known to be good fighters?
This is why you should practice forms. Don’t do too many, learn forms that will teach you mechanics, ways of moving and principles. Don’t think forms will give you techniques, don’t collect forms, don’t try to focus on and endless line of applications in forms, unless your making dynamic ecological/alive drills that simulate fighitng from the forms, and learn the techniques like that.
Forms are useless to learn techniques, but absolutely useful to learn movement and concepts.
And the thing is, forms are only good if they directly translate to some form of constraint sparring/drilling.
Before I go into it: The casting is not the problem. Halle Bailey is not the problem. She’s fine.
Hell, I loved seeing her on screen, she’s good! She’s very cute.
The problem is that when I saw the original little mermaid, the audio, the sounds, the visions hit you like a punch. The theme song ‘part of Your World’ is instrumentally played to set the tone, it feels epic as hell.
This was a movie made forty years ago.
Meanwhile, the colours of the live action aren’t bright, the music isn’t epic. There are video games that have animal faces with human expression that seem more lifelike than whatever Little Mermaid did with the creepy crab and fish faces.
This is a movie made this year.
It feels like I’m watching the first episode of a bad Marvel TV show.
People keep blaming it on the writing and casting, when so much else kind of falls apart with it. Hailey does the best she can with what she has, and the actual concept of Ariel being more in love with humanity and the human world than just chasing after Eric like in the original is a good concept, Eric represents the world she had always dreamed of.
But audio, the lack of colour, the lack of background activity and a bigger undersea world makes it a far inferior film when it could have been better with modern technology.
Also if your father is the supreme ruler of the seas, why don’t you get him to fuck up that shark that attacked you? You suck Ariel. I would love to see Triton hunt down that great white shark, and stick his trident up its ass.
Is that shark stupid? Why would you fuck with the King’s daughter and friend? It’s a Shark, it doesn’t have magical powers like Triton or Ursula, or have an army. And we know all fish have human like intelligence, so what’s the Shark’s excuse?
My wife and I binge-watched the ONE-PIECE LIVE ACTION together. She grew up as a little girl watching it every morning, and I read it in junior high and high school, occasionally jumping into it when in the mood.
Needless to say, it was very good as we both enjoyed it. Not just us, but everyone, my social media is covered with praise for the new live action show.
Much of the commentary talks about how faithful it is to the anime, and it’s true it very much is. People talk about the cinematography and special effects, how well the actors portrayed the characters. All of that is great and all, relevant.
But I want to talk about the differences between the two adaptations of the manga. I don’t have too much to say about it, but I want to highlight some things.
What the show did better:
-It’s faithful to the anime, so if you love this franchise, you won’t be disappointed. But if you’ve never heard of one piece or watched it, you’ll also enjoy it. It doesn’t explain certain things, because the original source material doesn’t. The show goes right into the characters and story, and it lets the world building and exposition happen naturally. The characters all are recognizable, and I also found I liked some of the actors better than the anime versions, they were cartoony enough to be accurate to one piece, but grounded enough that I took the characters more seriously. -The pacing is great, very good. The anime for as good as it is, often is action packed, but some of it is fluff, there is a lot of extra stuff going on, and while it serves a purpose, the story would be just as good or better if it’s cut out. The live action doesn’t have this issue, the characterization and plot moves faster, and as a result it’s far easier to pay attention without forcing yourself to. You don’t worry about missing much because you’ll naturally pay attention, while in the anime, sometimes I found myself doing something while it’s on in the background, keeping an ear out in case something important happened.
What the anime did better:
-While the anime often has a bunch of interesting but unimportant stuff happen while the main plot moves along slowly, when something did happen, it happened with a bang. For all the time filled up with random gags and weird side quests, it constantly builds up consistency with the characters until the story reaches a big climax, as well as character arcs. The music, the voice acting, the art, the animation all creates a number of scenes and moments that are much more memorable than the Live action show. The live action version does decent copies of core moments in the anime, and they are still good, but on rewatching it in the anime is always better. The words of speeches in these moments are better, the movement. All of it.
The big moments are just better done, leave a bigger impact.
-Action scenes in the anime are by far much better. That isn’t to say the action in the live-action version is bad, they choreography is good and all that, apparently the budget for this show was huge, they had alot of funding.
However, most of the important battles in the anime are very strategic. A small change of tactics or approach by the characters changed the battles greatly back and forth. The way Luffy and Zoro defeat characters often reveals a great deal about their psychology and intelligence.
Meanwhile, in the live action show, they mostly just fight until someone loses. I won’t spoil it, but the final fight of the first season of the live action show has Luffy defeat the villain in a way that’s far less satisfactory than what he did in the manga and anime, and far more in character.
Poirier in his first fight with McGregor had the defence of the typical MMA fighter against boxing or striking in general, which is to attack, then get out moving backward, and he would bring an arm up to cover. Connor snuck his left hand past the guard and knocked out Poirier.
But after that fight, Poirier developed a game where he shoulders rolled or rolled with punches that hit him, on top of using a dynamic guard to punish his opponents every time he blocked. To quote max Holloway between rounds, “He’s blocking funny”
This gave Poirier the ability to literally advance and ‘stand and bang’ without getting hurt badly, and start to push the tempo of the fights in striking exchanges.
McGregor in the second fight looked like he was landing more shots on Poirier, not surprising considering how lanky he is.
But Poirier wasn’t put out. His chin did not get better, rather he wasn’t taking the full impact of the punches, and more than the calf kicks, he was able to basically put pressure on Connor.
And if Connor could do the same, it would have been more competitive, but Connor isn’t a fighter used to being bullied in the stand-up.
Remember in his fight with Nate Diaz? He was out striking Nate, but Nate weathered it and pushed forward, Connor got lit up, and he was so uncomfortable he basically did a panic shot, which then got him choked.
So many Muay thai or even boxing gyms just have guys hit pads all the time, and the defence is just covering or moving out of the pocket in trouble, or stand and bang.
But I noticed the best boxers/strikers often have really well-developed defence.
Alot of fighters will understand distance, have good timing for counters. But if they can’t put the pressure on, or can’t counter right away, they will fall apart.
But the guys with solid defence push pressure easier because they are less fearful, and when they are being attacked, often can hand in there and survive, look for openings and take over far easier.
I used to describe the way I learned Uechi-Ryu as ‘Tai Chi with rolling and sparring’ or rather ‘internal martial arts with aliveness’ or other such desccriptions.
But I’ve come to realize using ‘internal martial arts with resistence’ is a pretty bad description. Not because it’s entirely inaccurate, as Tai Chi is hugely influential in how Rick taught me karate, and Uechi-Ryu itself is called a ‘half-hard/half-soft’ style.
The problem is, internal martial arts is only accurate to describe having a bacckground in something like Aikido, Tai Chi, Pa Kua and Hsing i, but it does not actually describe what about these arts sets it apart from every other style on earth.
When you ask people who do internal martial arts what makes them different from say…Okinawan karate or Hung Gar, boxing or some such styles, they will say they are loose and use their whole body for power while other styles are tight and use muscle. They will say they redirect or flow with force instead of meeting it half way. They will say their styles are circular while others are linear.
The problem is, all of the things that make internal arts unique are often found in so called external arts. Brazillian Jui jitsu is hardly ever called an internal martial art, yet BJJ is so loose, so indirect in meeting force, so obsessed with never using strength that it has even been attacked by other grapplers for those traits, yet no one would call it an internal style.
Okinawan Karate, even a system like Goju-Ryu with dynamic tension, will often have the best guys in Okinawa using loose power punching, generating power from the ground, flanking and circular movement. Depending on the teacher, it isn’t even a black belt thing.
Many people have commented that Jack Dempsey’s book “Championship Boxing” reads like a Hsing I manuel. Are we now going to call boxing an internal martial art?
I think you all see what my point is. However…there is something about the way people do ‘internal’ arts and other arts done in the same manner. Something different from what is typically seen in low level martial artists or the common gym or school.
This is where I think Rickson Gracie has properly coined what arts like Tai Chi do that other arts don’t. It’s not that Tai chi or Pa Kua are circular, relaxed and generate power from the ground uniquely. It’s rather how subtle it all is. How high level Muay Thai or karate looks the same as an athletic or talented guy doing it for only a year. Yet somehow the ‘masters’ or veteran coaches of the styles can do it all better or with less effort than the inexperienced athletic types.
Rickson Gracie has something he calls ‘invisible jui jitsu’
An example of this would be bridge and roll in Jui jitsu. It’s the first and easiest escape to learn when someone has you in a mounted position. And becacuse it so easy, it’s also something people quickly learn how to shut down when they are on top of you. If anything, ‘elbow knee’ or ‘hip escapes’ are much more reliable. Bridging becomes more of a setup fo the other escapes.
And yet Rickson will have videos where he will literally tell guys mounting him, “I am goign to do Upa/Bridge and roll. Try and stop me” and then he will bridge, with little setup, and reverse position. You will see him do this again and again to people.
Rickson’s instructionals don’t teach new techniques or big athletic movements. He will describe changing how one moves, so subtle that you can’t even see some of it. It’s something to be felt, hence the term invisible Jui Jitsu.
And different ways to move, without learning new technique that is difficult to see with the eye is NOT unique to Jui jitsu. It’s seen across martial arts. Jui jitsu is the only one that actually named it.
Taira Musaji is probably my favriote karate guy I never met. He first came to my attention when my Sensei Rick showed me a video of him with some other martial artists hitting a palm tree. One of them was a big strapping man, using big blows to shake the tree. But Taira would hit it from small distances and shake the whole thing.
There are videos of him throwing punches. Others cannot land them. But he will. Why?
The answer is subtle things he is doing.
Now in Chinese martial arts they seem to see subtle as you barely move to win. There is some truth to this, as movement must become effecient. But in a real fight, you probably have to throw someone on the floor or punch them in the head, and it’s going to be very diret and obvious.
But….what is making that punch or throw work is not as direct as the result.
High level Muay Thai and boxing is full of this.
Lerdzilla or Mohammad Ali have very direct tactices, which is literally just moving out of the way of a strike. But what people fail to realize is that what they are doing isn’t just good reflexes, for Lerdzilla in particular isn’t a young man anymore, and while he does not have a perfect record, it’s incredible for him to basically look like Neo from the matrix as people throw punches and kicks. Remember, as people age, reflexes and ‘speed’ are the first things to go.
But Lerdzilla keeps looking like he’s a hero from the Matrix when he fights. Maybe not as much as when he was younger, but still damn impressive. And that largely is because he’s not relying purely on good reflexes for his evasion, he’s gotten so good at reading and flowing with his body that he’s essentially reading ahead of time. I was taught in the IUPA drills very similar on how to read, Anderson Silva talks about doing the same, he would have people throw punches slowly at him at first so he could read them. Then slowly upping the speed and adding counters.
Let’s look at Mike Tyson once again for the hundredth time since the blog started. As an old man he looks smoother, more explosive and powerful than many younger professional boxers, even guys that once beat him like Holifield, who seems to be a shadow of himself.
It’s not just Peek-A-Boo style, I’ve seen other people imitate Tyson and what he does. What they do is they do the footwork, they move their head side to side…yet so few explode like he did, like he still can do in his fifties.
And frankly, it comes back to ‘invisible’ things he is doing.
I remember an audio clip of Mike Tyson talking about how Cus D Amato studied Karate movement to help teach Mike how to explode better. Obviously Tyson is naturally athletic and explosive, a freak of nature. But Tyson himself says that much of it was things Cus picked up that he had Tyson drill again and again, especailly how to spring and explode off the feet.
Now I lost this audio clip, but you don’t have to take my word for it, for even if I am wrong, the mechanics Tyson is using are the same.
The human body can only move in certain ways, there are only so many unique methods to do the same things. At some point people will discover the same methods for movement.
Either way, whether Karate influenced or not, Tyson is doing something subtle to be able to explode as he does even at such a ripe age, to do something others could not.
And then there is Judo. And I don’t think there is anyone else more worthy to embody invisible Judo than Mifune.
There are clips of him just tossing men twice his size. Many people think the men are fully resisteing, other people don’t think the men were resisting much at all.
Eitherway, when Mifune was young, he would clear out entire bar rooms throwing people around. He was often sent out to fight bigger opponents to demonstrate judo, and he would embarass them.
Now some of the ways he does this very obvious, lots of sacrifice throws. When the bigger men try to swing him around, he would jump and float, often right into another sacrifice throw, using the principle of Empty-Space Rick Wilson wrote in his book.
Thing is, Mifune has lots of imitators, yet none of them could do what he could. It wasn’t just his timing, but very much his mastery of the mechanics and base of judo. Posture, alignment, movement and sensitivity.
Yet would you ever hear a Pa Kua guy call judo an internal style?
Who cares. I would rather say what Mifune did was a lot of subtle stuff. Especially if you take into account the way he snuck in hooks and attachments, often from awkward angles to pull off throws and sweeps.
Anyway I don’t like to use the terms external or internal martial arts. I like the terms ‘visible’ mechanics and invisible mechanics. Visible techniques and invisible techniques.
I plan on this post being short, but I write stream of consciousness, and so it could go long.
There are many genuinely good martial arts teachers who not only don’t spar, but don’t encourage it. The logic is either it’s too risky, or that sparring is too much like a duel and not an assault, and therefore creates bad habits.
Now I would argue “What is your definition of sparring” and I would also argue “Do the bad habits outweigh the good?” or other such questions. But I won’t really cover that topic today, other than saying my definition of sparring is any kind of practice that involves someone trying to impose their will upon you and you imposing your will upon them. The drill/spar should have a goal, whether it’s controlling someone, landing clean and decisive blows(This can be done without concussions) or escaping. Either one of you or both of you are trying to reach that goal, and the other guy is trying to stop you.
That is the definition I will go by.
The reason sparring/rolling with someone trying as hard as possible to keep you from achieving your goal in a fight/assault is important comes down to this:
What is happening to Connor right now that is a learning experience? It’s failure. It’s trying to do something your very good at, maybe even perform perfectly, and then having it fail. If it works good for you, but sometimes you can have the best principles, the best timing, and yet your ability to apply it screws up with just that one partner, that one person.
You can for instance have your partners resist only 30% or even 50% and make something work well, but put it into 90% resistence(without trying to get brain damage) and suddenly the timing is different. That 260 pound guy you can easily throw around suddenly feels like he’s 400 pounds. Why? He was giving realistic resisence before, why is i in sparring or rolling you can’t move him anymore? You’re thinking about the principles, thinking of not going to force on force, trying not to focus on the point of grip or impact. All sorts of things that make good technique.
Yet it’s not working with this guy. Is that bad?
No, it’s good. It’s a very good reminder there is no such thing as a perfect technique, of something always working no matter how sound.
Sometimes you can do everything right, you can do nothing wrong. And it STILL FAILS!!!!
The only way you can accept you or your students did everything right, but things can still fail is some form of sparring or rolling.
One can argue “I sparred/Rolled in my youth. I’m well aware that sometimes, just sometimes you can’t get the right timing, you can’t escape etc”
Yes but people tend to forget, maybe not consciously, but unconsciously they grow accustomed to fighting people only resisting fifty percent. Our instincts grow dull, and sometimes we don’t have the expectation of failure in the back of our minds in a fight, and then when you do your concepts and techniques, and they fall apart, often it can be overwhelming, especially with the intensity of the fight.
People forget, martial arts is a perishable skill. If you don’t keep it sharp, it degrades.
It gets more complicated when you think about how many diverse skills exist in martial arts, you can technically continue to still practice martial arts, but other skills in other areas will degrade if you don’t go back to them.
Sometimes we get myopic and have a focus we’re concentrating on, and that focus can last for years. Only for someone to walk through the door, and use a skillset on you that you’re out of practice on, and the oppurtunity of your focus does not come up.
Principle based training helps with being able to fight when forced to use a skill you’re unfamiliar with or are rusty at, especially if you already have a general base in martial arts and mechanics, but even if you think in terms of principles instead of skillsets, you still have to actually spend time practicing whatever your doing. Alot of Internal martial artists are VERY principle based, they focus heavily on mechanics and principles of movement/fighting. Yet there are more than enough stories of them going against boxers, wrestlers, BJJ players and the like, and they get smashed. Stories of them being ambushed as well(though very few people fare well in that situation) When the internal martial artists perform well against someone that actually fights, often we find out their school does some form of actual fighting, rolling like shiao jiao or sparring like Sanda. There are Okinawan karate practitioners that talk deeply in terms of principles, who get taken to the ground and just can’t defend themselves. NOt because the principles are wrong, but because they simply don’t take the time to fight on the ground.
Positional rolling/sparring or sparring/rolling from a deficiet or bad position often remedies this. It’s okay to start with only 40% resistence than raise it to 50% then to the point you start in a bad place/situation and they are dead set in not letting you succeed.
Many people don’t call that sparring or rolling, but in BJJ they call that positional sparring. Wrestlers do it too.
Starting off locked up or in close range, and not allowing people to make distance is a very good way to train.
Or even starting with everything ideal is very good to spar with, because again, I want to re-iterate, FAILURE is the best thing about sparring/rolling.
You will learn the most when YOU DO EVERYTHING RIGHT, YOU’RE IMAGINING THE RIGHT PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS, YOUR MIND IS NOT ATTACHED OR ENTANGLED.
But the bastard infront of you, just doesn’t want you to succeed. And sometimes you just can’t do what you want.
I’ve had moments where I would have someone watch me spar, and they would be like “Adam why arn’t you trying to hit angles?” when I was constantly trying to hit angles, the guy I was fighting had better footwork, so everytime I moved to get an angle or readjust to get an angle, i never got it, because they were one step ahead. They were just better than me at that one skill.
I still ‘won’ the spar(You shouldn’t be thinking about winning in sparring, you should be working on a skill) but I didnt’ hit angles like the guy watching wanted me to. Because simply put, my opponent was dead set on not giving that to me, because that is what sparring and rolling is about.
I am not talking about a losing or defensive mindset.
You’re obviously still trying to win. Even if you fail, you still are trying to win.
But failure allows you to go back home, think about what happened, then try again.
Sometimes the solution is messy, sometimes the problem isn’t technique or failing to use principles, but you’re just too weak.
Nothing wrong with being a femboy, if you want to dress up like a woman, hell if you’re born biologically male but you look more beautiful than most woman at times, power to you.
But one of the biggest consequences of doing your best and always succeeding is that often we tend to assume other people failed because they ‘did x wrong’ or ‘they didn’t do x’ or ‘He failed because he was thinking about the wrong x’ and what not.
I had a 270 pound former professional Rugby player with a year of BJJ sitting in my guard, and no matter how much I tried to move into space, he had me pinned, and when I had space, he moved to take it away.
He isn’t even that technical, he’s just freakishly strong and big(and damn fast for a big guy)
His strength made it hard to break down his base and his structure compared to other big guys, where I can get under their base, or break them down to sweep or submit. His speed made it so that when I moved into empty space, he just exploded to take it back. His size made it all the more uncomfortable to simply have him on top of me, it is a constantly reminder of not trying to lift or move him, but the prensense alone is difficult.
I can hit pretty hard from the bottom, so I hit him a few times. SO then he hit me back, and with gravity on his side, with pressure on his side.
Thing is, I walked away from those sessions thinking “Man I wasn’t using X Principle” or “I didn’t do X” or blah blah blah.
But my coach basically said “Welcome to reality. This is why there are weight classes, this is why strength matters, and this is why professional athletes who do martial arts will do better than those who are not professional athletes.”
Thing is this big athletic guy will often ask my advice on martial arts, I actually teach him sometimes.
I’ve noticed I perform much better against him since I started lifting weight semi regularly, as in I’ve gotten stronger and therefore I can start to manipulate his structure and get things done. You realize, holy shit, I need to develop strength. Because sometimes strength makes technique all the more better.
Because, I want to reiterate, sparring/rolling teaches you that you can start off in a better place, with a better pace, with everything going your way, do everything right and still fail…and then you have to deal with it and figure it out. It’s about plans falling apart.
That’s maybe a better way to put it, you make plans, you try to execute a plan, but it’s sparring/rolling so it falls apart. And then you have to plan on the fly.
Okay Adeel, you’ve made the same point. Anything else you want to add?
Well the point comes down to the fact that sparring and rolling is uncomfortable, it can even feel redundant.
But worst of all, it’s hard.
I’m going to use myself as an example again.
My gym has very good instruction, we used to produce fighters…but now we don’t cater to young athletic men or young men seeking to be athletic and fight.
If I truly want to be a better martial artist, I’ll stop sparring and rolling at a gym full of soccer moms and old men, and join my students to spar and roll with other people at more competitive gyms, simply to deal with that same athleticism and to deal with different skillsets, different people.
But I’m almost forty now, and I have injuries, and I have a daughter and wife that expects things from me. I can’t give up teaching and focus on my own self-improvement, or sacrifice time and responsibilities with my family.
Going to the toughest guys in the city just isn’t a priority for me, but it is for my students and so I will never discourage them, hell I’m the one that help set that shit up for them to drop into another gym.
Thing is though, while that feeling is understandable, I won’t let it dictate my opinions. I could easily say “Oh sparring sucks I don’t need it, i’ve done enough,” or “Sparring sucks” which I have seen happen to aging martial artists, dismissing the entire practice rather than admitting they are just getting old and careful, and there is nothing wrong with that.
I remember one very skilled and talented martial arts training partner say “I don’t teach that sparring crap” when I talked about it.
Well last time I worked with him doing some dynamic drills, I suplexed him a few times, and I took him down pretty consistently, to the point he made excuses like saying I would have been stabbed if he had a knife, not knowing I’ve done grappling rounds with someone holding a knife. Who says sparring/grappling doesn’t involved drawn or sheathed weapons?
He knew how to grapple from an upright posture, his teacher is a very good teacher, one of the best in Canada, maybe even the world for counter assault. But the thing is though, I’m constantly striking or grappling people who really don’t want me doing it, with no intention of seeing me succeed. It creates a different level of problem solving, with so much more going on.
And the beautiful thing about sparring/rolling is it can be done slow or fast. If you maul your opponent or they maul you a few times, and you have no idea how it happened, you can just slow things down to the point you can ‘see’ things and problem solve like that.
Notice the speed? Slow enough for them to see where to move, fast enough to keep a good pace. They can turn it up, make it a full wrestling match, take all the space away so the escapes and scrambles are grinding. Or they can keep it loose and flow.
Either Way, sparring and rolling needs to have a purpose, each man should be trying to work on something, and each man shouldn’t just let the partner have their way with them. They can have agreements to feed an energy, but the timing must be broken, and whatever happen afterwards should not be agreed upon.
Notice they are not letting anyone get anything in that clip above? But at the same time, they arn’t just blitzing each other to get a KO.
They are both clearly working on mid range, or just at the edge of mid range. If they were point karate or TKD guys they would be really really far away, but these guys are not settling for that. If you’re more a street person, it would look like Boxing or muay thai milling drills. Or someone attacks from the side and then they go.
The reason I even bring any of this up is that it’s very much possible to spar and roll at an old age, especially with modern day training methodology. Ironically a karate or kung-fu school that is full contact is more likely to have unsafe sparring and grappling protocol than a western influenced full-contact school. It’s very much fallen out of fashion in boxing, muay thai and sometimes even Kyokushin to give concussions to your training partners and inuring them, not just rules for competition but general safety in training. Sport science has evolved greatly afterall, and more and more full contact schools do slow rolling, slow sparring and flow work. If the grappling is a grind, and if the striking is quick without a chance to flow, it still will likely be at a pace where injury is not prevalent.
The biggest thing I noticed though, is that when people first begin doing martial arts, they are very much open to being smashed. As in they can get ragdolled or peppered with strikes, and then eagerly go right back into it the next day.
What happens though, is as they get better, they get mauled much less often…so when it DOES happen, they are not very happy with it like when they were a fresh martial artist. Either they keep sparring/rolling only in places where they are the top dog or in control, or they don’t do it at all.
I noticed this with myself, my willingness to get mauled, I wasn’t as comfortable with it as I was ten year ago. Again, part of that is age and maturity, but another part of it also is just that well…i’m not used to it. Still, while I don’t drop into other schools to fight guys anymore like I used to, I still make it a point to try and fight and roll at the places I teach at, so I don’t grow complacent, so I can constantly get out of my comfort zone, without the time commitment and travel to go fight at different places like a professional fighter.
I especially noticed this from guys who run their own martial arts schools, including guys that come from styles/systems known for being badass and tough. One guy would never roll with one of his students who teaches grappling classes, because that student would maul him. Which is sad, because his other skills were good, and if he picked up grappling, he would have been a monster, it would have been momentary discomfort for long term gain.
Sometimes there is an expectation of things going smoother than they should be when training goes alive, and when it isn’t smooth, sparring/rolling gets blamed for it. When maybe the person just is going out of his way so you can’t flow, or he has your number. When you’re an older, very skilled martial artist, it can almost feel counter intuitive, because whether boxing, muay thai, karate, kung-fu/Taiji, the progression of skill is to be more efficient, more smooth, less exchanges, less back and forth.
But then when that young super-muscular former athlete makes your entire sparring/rolling experience rough, lots of back and forth, lots of exchanges, suddenly you may even start to think sparring itself if bad and teaches bad habits, when in reality…you got hit by reality, because you’re not young, because there are physical freaks alive that walk through the door of your gym. Sometimes when you visit another gym to spar, the guy is just more focussed on fighting than you, while you are also focussed on teaching.
Many experienced martial artists love to experiment with mechanics, concepts, etc, while young fighters are conservative, they just want to train and fight, and get good at it. They will maul you because that’s all they are focused on, while you my aged martial arts master, want to play with something you worked on with your friends or students, and you want to teach it, kicking ass is secondary.
So to go back to the original point of this blogpost:
The best part about sparring and rolling is getting smashed. You need to get smashed, it kills your ego, and it forces you to problem solve like you never have before. Getting smashed gives you perspective. It also is a reminder to get to the fucking gym and squat/deadlift. Because you quickly learn when there is full resistance how powerful strongmen and power lifters truly are.
Another thing sparring/rolling actually does is it teaches you the value of using equipment in your training, a bare knuckle teaches you one thing, a boxing glove another, an mma glove another. Just like how my Karate teacher Rick uses different types of training knives for different qualities.
But that could be another blog post on it’s own.
No go out there, whether beginner martial artist or older and fatter like me, and get mauled, and learn to enjoy it.
I was watching Lawrence of Kenshin make a video about Kyokushin karate, and he basically said the reason Kyokushin wins against Muay Thai (Sometimes) and he heavily implied that it’s because Kyokushin and other Full contact karate styles basically integrated Muay Thai, and that’s why they start to win or perform well.
And there is some truth to this statement, Kyokushin became a vastly more powerful style after borrowing from Muay Thai.
The problem is that Lawrence and others imply that the only good things about Kyokushin are the the pieces from Muay Thai.
But the fact is there are things unique to Karate that Muay Thai does not have, things Kyokushin guys do with kicks and punches they do not.
Hell, the flow positive influence doesn’t go one way. Traditional martial arts have positively influenced western combat arts as well, and for the better.
Traditional martial arts influence punching, kicking, footwork and mechanics. I’ll try to cover as much as I can. But:
First we will look at kicking.
See that round kick Cyril Gane landed on Tai Tuivasa that folded him? That is not a Muay thai round kick, it was the ball of foot kick most often found in TKD and Karate styles.
Where the muay thai round kick is like an axe or baseball bat, the ball of foot kick is like a stab, a penetrative kick. By itself it can’t be spammed, but when mixed with Muay Thai style kicks, you can end up landing the ball of foot (or if you do Uechi-Ryu Toe kicks) to really get an exellent effect.
It’s especially good when mixing things up with front kicks or push kicks as well.
If you look at old Muay thai footage, not even from fifty years ago but even thirty years ago, they hardly ever throw kicks like that. It’s mostly teep, round, teep, round. Clinch.
Now as you can see from this gif, they are very very good at using that classic style of Muay thai round kick and teep. Classic old school muay thai is proof you don’t need twenty different kicks and punches to win, just a few tools you get very very good at using.
However that doesn’t mean it’s bad to learn more. Dutch Muay Thai is influenced by multiple striking styles including Kyokushin and Savate, and thus you see this showing up in Kickboxers across Europe. They often throw less elbows that traditional Muay Thai and clinch less, but they throw better hands and have more versatile kicks.
Not exactly the best street fighting technique, but here a thai boxer uses the signature Kyokushin Rolling thunder, using a TKD style tornado kick to set it up.
Another thing that has influenced Muay Thai even in Thai land is throwing back kicks, something you did not see in kickboxing or Muay Thai until full contact Karate strikers became popular again.
Another thing that Traditional arts influenced Muay thai and MMA with is spinning back and hook kick.
Gabriel Varga points out (Yes that Gabriel Varga) that you actually see more spinning back kicks and hook kicks/heel kicks than simple techniques like side kicks in Muay thai because you can throw spinning attacks from a square stance, while a side kick is more easily thrown from a side ways stance, as a side kick from a square stance is telegraphic.
Either way, it’s a big influence from the traditional styles.
But speaking of the side kick, it does not show up in Muay thai as much as it does in MMA.
Sure side kicks to the body show up lots like with Stephen Thompson and Michelle Waterson, but they are explicitly influenced by Karate.
The low side kick however shows up in guys that are not karateka.
Yes Muay thai technically has a low side kick as well, but it’s not emphasized in the system as much as a low round kick. This is more a TMA thing.
This has a more traditional muay thai feel.
Jon Jones did not have any previous martial arts experience other than wrestling. Yes his striking utilizes lots of low side kicks. His original coaches Winklejon and Jackson both have traditional arts backgrounds.
Maybe it will one day get banned for how it can mess up knees. But it’s not exactly something that showed up in combat sports until the post Machida era.
You look at forms in kung-fu and Kata in karate, you see the everyday practice in Okinawa and China, and that low side kick is very present in those systems.
Now let’s look at traditional punching influencing Combat sports.
Steve Morris points out Karate combat guys are boxing and doing Muay thai, that’s why they can fight.
But it would be unfair not to notice…that punch there,is very very karate.
The way the fist leads non-telegraphically, the big emphasis on closing the distance is classic point karate, only this punch can hurt instead of playing tag which is most karate striking.
Muay thai punching doesn’t emphasize closing the distance. They sometimes do it with kicking, but most of it is focussed on pocket striking. Tae Kwon Do and karate use punches and kicks to close distance, especially karate or a kung-fu style like Baji.
You especially see this in MMA with shifting punches, something not often seen in Muay Thai or even boxing as much as there is less rewards to close distance and clinch for he take down.
It is however showing up in GLORY with kickboxers with karate backgrounds doing blitzs, shifting stance and footwork to overwhelm with a flurry. And it’s used in boxing, always has been. But karate does it more, and lately you see it influence MMA and kickboxing.
Of course punching is punching, and many striking systems and martial arts will use the same techniques.
But to close distance is an emphasis of many traditional arts, more than boxing, muay thai and kickboxing.
Footwork.
The bounce, the side ways stance. The in and out motions of these guys darting constantly is a game played by point fighting, common among traditional arts.
Granted, alot of kung-fu doesn’t do this(I’ll address Kung-fu more in detail at the end of this blog post) but most other traditional styles whether Pencak Silat, Japanese and Okinawan karate, Tae Kwon do. Kung-fu guys that do point sparring all essentially use the same kind of light foot work.
Yes boxing is bouncy too, but not with the deep stance, not bladed, and only very specific boxing styles use that whole in/out intercepting striking system.
I often will browse BJJ facebook groups, and they always rag on TKD and Karate, often rightfully so.
However when I post full contact karate and TKD, Sanda for the chinese or clips of a traditional stylist beating a western practitioners, they will often say “If this works why don’t we see it in the UFC” which is astounding ignorance coming from Combat Sport fans, especially not only with countless fighters explicitly trained and applying Karate and TKD, Sanda, but also non-traditional fighters using the tactics now integrated in overall MMA.
The worst comment I got was one guy saying “So what if GSP, Bas Rutten and others credit Karate and TKD. Tony Ferguson says he does Kung-fu and he clearly doesn’t” which is shockingly stupid, since these guys have far more corroboration than Tony Ferguson.
I realize then that they often are only literate in Buttscooting BJJ things, and often have no idea how to recognize stylistic or technical nuances in striking or even standing grappling.
What about Kung-Fu and Filipino martial arts?
I’m not going to bring up Tony Ferguson for Kung-fu.
As for Sanda and San Shou, many people treat it as if it’s not a kung-fu style.
The problem with Kung-fu is that it’s uniqueness is very subtle, it’s hard to actually point to examples of it helping practitioners because most of Kung-Fu’s strengths are very subtle, almost invisible mechanics.
Footwork in kung-fu for instance isn’t emphasized as movement, but rooting. People like Zhang Weili and others have done Chinese wrestling and martial arts, and often are stable, but it’s hard to point out how their sprawling and clinching is different than a wrestler without feeling it.
My karate does not manifest as most peoples does in combat sports. Like Machida and Thomspon I have been told my striking is non-telegraphic and I feint a lot like them. But I am not bouncy like they are, my stance is not side ways. I like to be very rooted, I like my stuff to be more like Kung-fu.
And it works for me, but people only realize I’m using my tai chi background when I slow things adown and explain it to them, or I sprawl or steal balance when punching. It’s not something I can show in a tape.
Also Kung-fu in a traditional format in combat sports doesn’t have much exposure yet. Lots of strikers cross train in TKD for specific focus on Kicking, thus it has exposure in Kickboxing and MMA. Lyoto Machida opened the door for “Karate boxers” as Jack Slack would put it, opened the door for Robert Whittaker and Stephen Thompson, with MMA gyms now bringing in olympic karate coaches to teach that in and out intercepting style.
Sanda and Shuio Jiao has brought Chinese martial artists into Kickboxing promotions and MMA, but traditional Kung-fu is on the decline, young Chinese are not interested in it compared to weird hippie foreigners who sniff disdainfully at Boxing, Kickboxing and MMA as barbaric and not ‘real martial arts’ as many Westerners interested in Kung-fu are wont to do.
TL;DR it’s not a failure of kung-fu that we don’t see it in the ring or cage, it’s because kung-fu/Chinese martial arts are subtle and under exposed.
Muslim Sailkov is the king of kung-fu
Of course we have Zabit who’s last name I am not even going to try and spell. He’s a kung-fu practitioner, did forms and all.
He’s an excellent striker and grappler, and you see his flow of movement heavily influenced by Kung-fu.
The influence of Karate, TKD and Kung-fu in Kickboxing and especially MMA isn’t something that can be disputed.
Most hardcore fans of MMA respect karate in combat sports now, and TKD as well. Many are aware of Sanda and Shiuoi Jiao.
But I noticed this is mostly among hardcore MMA fans who follow the sport religiously.
Strangely I’ve met more ‘fans’ of the sport than actual fighters aware of the stuff I am writing about, many fighters are like ‘this is cool, I want to do MMA’ and don’t do further research than this, and spend their time training. While some hardcore fans don’t worry about training and want to study al the different nuances of fighting, so they learn the stylistic differences.
But the best MMA coaches and fighters I met are very devoted to the subtle differences and similarities of punching, kicking, grappling and especially movement. They want to know everything that is working at the highest levels, they want to see new ideas.
Unfortunately I noticed especially in the BJJ community, these guys want to think that MMA is still just learning some BJJ, some wrestling, some Muay thai and then you got the modern sport.
When in truth modern Kickboxing and MMA IS greatly inluenced by Western arts, Muay Thai and BJJ. But what sets it apart from Muay thai and pure BJJ is that it’s evolved past that, and now in the new evolution traditional arts are starting to give fighters an edge.
This is not controversial, nearly every popular MMA analyst essentially points out what I am, just in a more general manner, especially Weasle, Jack Slack, and George St. Pierre’s coach Firas Zahabi.
Yet somehow even among good martial artists is this perception everything good in MMA and striking all comes from only a handful of styles.
And it’s worth ending this blogpost off with saying: Only so many ways to punch, only so many ways to kick, off-balance, break limbs or choke.
The essential skills will be in any system that trains with resistance and devotion, the differences are often the emphasis of arts.
I’ve been thinking about why crashing is so commonly taught even to very skilled and in-depth martial artists, why is it a tactic? Sure it’s easy, but there are things that provide a better end result.
So why?
Then I realised it’s a timing thing, why crashing exists in most systems, even ‘soft’ ones.
What is the answer?
The question is, do I have my opponents timing down.
Yes?
Then do any action other than crashing, for any other action is better. You have no need to crash the attack, because you have the timing, you can be neat and clean, efficient. Hell you should be.
No? You don’t have their timing?
Then crashing is appropriate, because that’s literally what crashing is made for. It’s a popular tool because your timing does not need to be perfect to use it, you have a broad range to time a crash despite being dragged into a dirty fight when you do it.
That’s why when doing counter assault training, crashes are taught more than redirects, since most self-defense schools don’t have students who are die hard martial artists, they won’t spend time developing good timing. So a cross makes more sense to teach vs something cleaner and more rewarding. Hell even skilled people will struggle to pick up timing when surprised.
Now I can’t give you an answer what to do as a conditioned response when your surprised, that really depends on your training timeline.
But if you already know your in a bad situation, the decision to do something clean vs do something smashy really comes down to “Can I read this?”
Because either you can control the fight, or you can’t. When you can control it, be a ninja. When you can’t, get dirty.
Of course there are other contexts to flow or crash as well. I had a conversation with my Karate teacher Rick, and he pointed out crashing makes sense if you see someone just about to draw a knife or weapon. In that case you have the timing down, but crashing is appropriate then.
Or a redirect as a conditioned response for a knife attack. Notice most Filipino martial arts very quickly encourage redirection and flow over crashes when getting stabbed? Sure they start out like that so people know where to put the hands, but quickly often constantly try to flow the knife attack rather than jam it. Not saying this is universal to them, just something I noticed they do compared to Krav Maga or typical RBSD stuff.
The reason for this is that against a knife strike or stab, a jam provides energy for them to keep going, and Filipino martial arts guys that do it all the time no doubt notice this. I’ve played with FMA guys who yes jam, but even more than will try to make contact and try to guide the hand rather than jam it, even when the timing is very difficult to read, which is the context crashing was designed for, they will still try to redirect.
Here it is, Steve Morris’s favorite knifing clip.
They are not doing this because they are mistaken, it’s because against a knife, a crash can lead to a pistoning flurry of stabs.
So of course, even my argument of “Got timing? Be smooth. Don’t got timing? Crash.” has contextual caveats that changes things.
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