Aliveness - Alive training methods

Dead also refers to a lack of direct crossover from isolation to integration ie your drills are unrealistic and don't represent what you will do in an actual fight but are justified by those doing them by saying they build qualities useful I'm the end process, said people are usually the ones who look like totally different t from their drills when they actually hit each other in unscripted sparring

 

That all makes perfect sense.

The thing is, that will include instances of revisiting rehearsal without timing, energy and/or movement.

Also, Knee Rider was saying you only need 10 minutes of dead drilling and then you add those elements. I took that as meaning that you never have to remove those elements again.

Which is why I said that Matt Thornton's video in the OP, and subsequent explanations in the thread, seemed somewhat contradictory.

 

They still have timing energy and motion ie I break balance and then enter for the throw I'm using motion a d timing to break balance and enter at the right time, as I said above dead also refers to a lack of direct application to the final act, or when you look totally different in the drilling stage to the final unscripted stage, when doing o goshi my timing of the balance break and fitting to the throw are the same as when doing randori as when doing the drill, I look the same as well i just have other factors such as more resistance and even more motion to deal with.

It's actually the isolation stage that is the most important and often overlooked even in combat sports ie here is how to do a hip throw you drill it then try to do in full sparring you will never pull it off because you haven't had the chance to focus solely on that skill so you will fall.back to what you are good at, isolated sparring ie both of you going just for the skill you have been working at allows you to develop your game,

 

I absolutely agree

I must have misunderstood - I was taking it as meaning that your partner must use energy and movement in order for you to have to apply timing (and obviously energy and movement) to a drill.

What you say in your last paragraph was exactly what I said earlier that dead_pool took exception to. I guess I didn't explain myself well.

 

The introduction phase is literally just so you know where you are putting your body parts and why. It's the smallest part of the coaching session and leads immediately to isolation work after which the technique will be integrated into sparring when appropriate.

It's not dead drilling really as much as it is orientation. The drilling is the isolation.

It takes 5mins to show the armbar and get people putting their bodies in that position and then 55 and longer to actually drill it. The intent and focus of each stage is the critical difference.


Take a jab for example:

Show jab 4secs

Get them to hit air and get the raw shape 1min

Start padwork using footwork and distancing, target/opening recognition 10mins

Progressively spar with the jab rest of jab session.

Constantly coaching on form like 'hands up', 'turn punch over', 'hips under you' etc throughout.

 

Im still not sure you understand DH

The last paragraph talks about isolated sparring, not introduction drilling which seems to be what your takking about

.

 

I guess where my confusion lay was in conflating "dead" with compliance and "alive" with non-compliance or resistance.

Whereas you are talking about a spectrum of compliance, where the vast majority of drilling is in a semi-compliant mode.

Like I said, I'm in agreement with the principles (except, unlike dead-pool I won't write-off slow solo practice), I just don't think that the video in the OP was a very good explanation.

 

No, I think it is just the terms that we are using. I expect drilling to include resistance, sparring to me is about fully trying to thwart your opponent, and while you might isolate limbs or families of techniques in sparring, I would call the kind of isolation sparring you are talking about a drill. Tomatoes tomaytoes.

 

If you take its original context (80's martial arts) the video was talking about what he does thats diffetent and why.

as such its a good primer.

Your definitions arnt that wrong either, you just seem to lack relevent experience in training methods.

DH, How do you bridge the gap from complete complience to 100% noncomplience in your class?

 

Spectrum of resistance.

Seems nitpicky but it's the critical difference.

The training is more resistant than complient in isolation. I'm always going to be moving and trying to stop you...just over a variety of different aggression/enthusiasm/intent levels. I'm never just stood there or sat there.

 

.... or just lie there.....

insert drilling joke......

sorry.....

 

In the same way.

Compliant rehearsal to a mixture of non-compliant rehearsal, drilling and sparring.

Except compliant and solo rehearsal are never dropped, mainly because there are almost always beginners who need partners, or to have techniques demonstrated and explained. Also, I don't discount the worth of mindful solo practice to build neuromuscular connections.

For me, the difference between a drill and sparring is that you know what is coming in a drill, and in sparring you don't. So when you talk of isolation sparring I would call that drilling. What I would call isolation sparring would be attempting a technique in amongst free sparring, or isolating particular limbs or families of techniques.

 

Resistance is just the other end of the spectrum to compliance, so to my mind they are the two ends of the same spectrum.

 

Complient IS dead as there is no timing energy or motion.

The drilling in isolation stage isn't best viewed on a spectrum of compliance because there is always active resistance in the drills and they always include timing energy and motion. The introduction phase is totally dead, totally complient but it is not the drilling phase. It's there so people know what they are about to drill.

I can't help but feel that saying scale of compliance just services an attempt on your behalf to highlight the role of compliance in purportedly alive training for the purposes of rhetoric alone and to substantiate your take on things.. But it's erroneous to do so, as the characterising feature of the training is resistance not compliance.

Maybe it's not clear and maybe my attempt at conveying the nuance fell flat. If so then never mind.

Anyway, I'm tired and a bit drunk and I have to put my missus to bed... Else I'll be dead... In the very literal unambiguous sense of the word

 

No, not at all.

It's as simple as, to me, saying "partly compliant" has the exact same meaning as "partly resistant".

It's a scale that goes from arm-hanging zombies doing suicide dives (which is never good) to trying to murder each other (not so great either).

Allowing yourself to be manipulated in any way by your partner is a level of compliance, even if there is some resistance involved.

That's how I see it anyway. I don't actually think the words we use are as important as the way we train, and I'm certainly not trying to make some kind of semantic dig for the sake of sophistry.

 

Again it's good to go to the highest level of resistance which can be safely done with a type of training. You have to scaffold to the point where people are ready for unscripted training because you have to give them options and to effectively give them options and get them competent at those options to have to limit the number of avenues their partner will take. Initially you do that limiting both the type (avenues) and level of resistance until you can increase the level of resistance and eventually the type by taking it into unscripted training.

 

The problem with your definition is you always know what's coming in sparring so in your way of thinking it's all drilling ie its only boxing so I know hands are coming, it's only mma so I know he's not going to wip a chair out and hit me with it.
Isolation can be anything from just going for guard passes and reseting ie allowing everything under the sun that is guard passing, standing passes, over under passes, fotcing the guard open, baiting it open, to just isolating arm bars from the top in sparring so from mount side control etc.

All the above is isolated because you are isolating a particular skill set or technique, it's not compliant just the level of resistance is dialed down and up depending on level of understanding compliant is here I'm giving you the arm arm bar me, dialing down resistance is I'm going slow enough for you to get my arm if you do the right things and light enough for you to finish if you have good technique

 

So, I mean it doesn't matter, but I meant that you know which technique is coming next. Let's go back to the hip throw: if you know that your next technique has to be a hip throw in the rules of the exercise, then I would call that a drill. I have no idea where you got the WWE chair swinging stuff from.

 

Actually No, Not in the Hip throw example provided, there are 4 pressures, each pressure has a corresponding different throw, so in Isolation sparring, your choosing between those 4 different options, and the feedback mechanism is the success of the throws.

Obviously you can use isolation for less then four options, but its never really less then 2, as there is no real timing involved then, I find 2 to 3 is the best for anything new, otherwise its hard to keep track of all the fine details.

 

Yeah, scaffolding is hugely important, and to borrow more educational terminology, the big difference between how I teach and what icefield and Knee Rider are describing is that my students go through far more frontloading before applying heuristics. Also that I value mindful, reflective exercises for building proprioception.