An Observation that I would appreciate input on?

[londoner2001]

I have been looking through a few threads here in the JKD section of martial arts planet and something quite worrying has come to my attention.

I have read the Tao of JKD a couple of times and a few other of bruce lee's books. Personally I believe the overiding lesson that he is trying to get across is how to suceed in combat.

The one thing that always sticks in my mind that Bruce Lee would of loved us to take hom about JKD is that you must train and teach yourself to be able to respond without thinking and without planning or telegraphing. He said that when someone throw a punch at you or you are in a stand off you musn't wander what you will do, will I block and throw this or will I go in with a step in sidekick, you must respond and have the training done to be automatic if you see what I mean.

I have not seen any talk on here about training to become like this in your martial arts practise and also nothing talking about preparation for a real world encounter. I was shocked out of my life when I saw a discussion as to whether sparring is needed in training, what a load of rubbish. Not sparring is like doing your lessons and homework but doing away with exams, I think anything less than full on freefighting with safety protective equipment of course is a waste of time, controlled freesparring with no equipment can be incorporated as well but overwhemingly full out padded sparring as to occur and be sprung up say without warning to expose people to adrenal dump(placing them near that point) and also being warned about it say two weeks ahead so people learn how to cope with adrenalin and recognise it and accept it and use it positively in a crisis situation.

I have seen much talk of discussing various techniques and writing sylabusses and teaching muay thai and jeet kune d, I think what is more important personally is discussing dealing with situations how you position yourself for altercations and what you find works best at different ranges etc and whether you feel that your training methods result in the ability to free fight or be in a street encounter and fight without thinking about what you will do, personally I think there is no substitute for very intensive disciplined extremely focused training and getting mind muscle memory sorted but that's me.

I have seen a couple of posters, particularly Yoda who really don't talk rubbish and tell it how it is, if it's bollocks and doesn't work for you why waste time working on it, best piece of advice I've seen here.

This is just my opinion, would love to hear others opinions on here and get a little discussion going.

Many thanks for your time.

[Andy Murray]

This forum is a bit like the Tao.

It's all there if you know where to look for it. ;)

[sercuerdasfight]

i think the problem is when most of the focus is put on sparring, and it is a hard way to progress. the drills give you the tools to become better.

[londoner2001]

Andy I would have to disagree I don't think it's all in the tao even, nothing has the complete answer to everything and I certainly don't think it's all here but there is some good info here.

Sercue, nobody mentioned sparring being most of the training, there are many sectors in a complete amrtial arts programme that must be adhered to.

What do you do drills for, you do drills to be effective in a fight, you pressure test those drills by sparring, proper sparring, I'm not talking bout this crap like you tap me and I tap you back and when we collide we break, I'm talking about all ranges allowing the session to go to ground if neccessary and finishing by submission or TKO. You learn to hit forehands and backhands in tennis, you then play a match to learn how to do them.

How do you suppose your drills will work in a fight scenario if you think somebody will throw the punch as it's thrown in the drill then I hope you don't ever come into a real conflict for your own sake.

Forgot one other thing, personally I believe that the internal must compliment the external and the two go hand in hand, what are your opinions as JKD practitioners on practise of chi kung and possibly tai chi as well as the external element of your jkd(personally like some forms of chi kung but not so keen on tai chi!).

[Andy Murray]

Originally posted by londoner2001
Andy I would have to disagree I don't think it's all in the tao even, nothing has the complete answer to everything and I certainly don't think it's all here but there is some good info here.



That's what I mean. It's all about your interpretation mate. ;)

[sercuerdasfight]

thru alive reactionary drills you can become a comprtent fighter without the full out sparring that some people invest most of there training time in. free sparrring has some inherent flaws in it. the protection sets the parameters of what techs will be useful. the difference in skill level between the two usually hurts the lesser in progressing. it all depends on your mentality while training. for some free sparring is best, but i don't find i learn as much from it.

[AndyD]

Originally posted by londoner2001
[B
How do you suppose your drills will work in a fight scenario if you think somebody will throw the punch as it's thrown in the drill then I hope you don't ever come into a real conflict for your own sake.
[/B]

Well the fact is that I know many people who only drill and never spar - and the fact is these people are awesome fighters. By awesome fighters I do not mean that they go to the gym, get padded up and 'win' most of their sparring sessions. These people are regularly involved in real, hard life threatening combat and deliver the goods. Sparring or not sparring is not an indication of how well you will do in combat - how you do in combat is the only real indication of how you will do in combat. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't mistake the picture for the real thing.

If you're drills won't translate to combat then you need to create some drills that will.

[Tireces]

But as bruce said, anything but sparring is simply "dry land swimming". You can craft your drills to be closer and closer to sparring, but neglecting pure sparring will simply keep you from being as proficient as you can. As for this forum, yeah it seems to have a good deal of garbage in it, but theres a smart thing here or there. I just got out of the habit of starting threads here, because the last one I did, I got a bunch of people yelling at me about how JKD is just training in everything, or something along those lines, when that wasnt even what the thread was about. So I dont think I'll be starting any more. I debated starting one on how useful interception is, but again, I dont want a bunch of the sharks jumping on and taking bites at me.

[londoner2001]

Andy, I think it depends on what you classify as an awesome fighter as there are so many different ways that fights can occur and in what way they proceed. Example, you can't compare being a doorman to being jumped in the street(when fighting a group without warning is I believe the truest form of self preservation and where you really see what people are made of, mental strenght is key here).

I personally believe that to be the best you can be you must spar, for example I have sparred once in the past 18 months yet I can still take care of the majority of situations I would find myself in, I do drills on focus pads and the free standing bag and the sand bag and work on the makiwara but I am nothing compared to what I am when regularly sparring and as I have said I am not talking about the normal sport sparring such as you get in muay thai, modern day san shou and tkd etc, that is sport and is unrealistic.

You can say that sparring in your opinion is a mistake for the real thing, yet what is the real thing, to someone living in a lot of parts of the UK it is a drunken punch up in the pub with the usual swinging of joke punches that you get and maybe a couple of people glassed or bottled, then you have areas where most people are tooled up and you are gonna be facing crackheads(admittedly self awareness plays a large part in avoiding or being ready for conflicts with these types and in most altercations) and people pulling blades, we had someone shot dead one road away and a few horrific crimes in our road and they shock you when it weren't like this 5 years ago but that's London's edges for you. Now it is a case of learning how to deal with things like armed carjackings that you never used to have to think of.

Back to the point though, I think drills will work a lot fo the time but there is nothing like throwing your pre emptive strikes etc on a real person as opposed to focus pads or bags etc tor eally fine tune the mechanics of your tools. One thing I would say is, we are all comfortable with different things, controlling fear is 90% of surviving altercations and for some people they don't need sparring for that, some do it helps to learn to control it, if you are confident with what you do then that's excellent.

I'll support proper sparring and you can be anti, hopefully we all get what we want out fo our training, that's the omst important thing!

Tireces, carry on posting you might start an interesting discussion. I agree with your first comment as well. JKD training in everything, train in everything and you'll forget what works for you!

[AndyD]

Originally posted by londoner2001
Andy, I think it depends on what you classify as an awesome fighter as there are so many different ways that fights can occur and in what way they proceed. Example, you can't compare being a doorman to being jumped in the street(when fighting a group without warning is I believe the truest form of self preservation and where you really see what people are made of, mental strenght is key here).


I've been in enough situations and trained for long enough to know the difference between several doorman taking out a couple of drunken teenagers and someone who is in a life or death fight. When I say awesome I don't use the word lightly.

You also say "Back to the point though, I think drills will work a lot fo the time but there is nothing like throwing your pre emptive strikes etc on a real person as opposed to focus pads or bags etc tor eally fine tune the mechanics of your tools. One thing I would say is, we are all comfortable with different things, controlling fear is 90% of surviving altercations and for some people they don't need sparring for that, some do it helps to learn to control it, if you are confident with what you do then that's excellent."

This is where I realise that your definition of drills is different to mine. A simple drill would have a guy stand in front of you - he's going to throw a punch as fast as he can at you (and keep throwing them) until you trap him up or reach some sort of stalemate. The drill ends at that point. Obviously the progression is to then go to starting from the guy pushing you are whatever. When I say drill I'm not talking jab, cross, hook on a set of target mitts.

[londoner2001]

Hehe, Andy we had our wires crossed!

What I was trying to emphasize before is that there has to be contact to put into practise what you are taught, I agree very much with your training ways, when I said about realistic sparrng I was talking about acting real life scenarios for example where you are 18 inches face to face etc, I am a big fan of Geoff Thompson and his take on reality training.

I thought you meant you hit a few pads and bags and that was it! For me the mitt and head guard and gum shield comes in because getting hit properly in that range will do damage!