For all "martial artists" who don't spar (Tai chi, Choi Kwang Do, Aikido etc.)

I think the contact of the sparring/drill is irrelevant to the realism/effectiveness of it.

I’m my eyes realistic sparring/drills should reflect the sort of stuff you would actually do on the street. Technique that is realistic and practical. The contact of the sparring/drill in my eyes won’t affect the effectiveness of the actual technique itself. Of course the more contact the more realism it has but full contact doesn’t mean its effective. You can still train very effective techniques at low, medium of even no contact.

 

The only thing I've got to say is this:

About sparring being the only alive training: Sparring is to Fighting what Paintball is to War. Other "military training" than Paintball could be laser tag. Some do Capture the Flag to train teamwork and do not bother with shooting one another.

About forms being useless: Why do military training facilities have shooting ranges? Painted targets don't shoot back, so it's useless!

 

bad analogy, forms are useless. try again.

 

No, it's right on. All the time "wasted" on shooting at immobile targets could be "better used" by shooting at people with paintballs or such. There's absolutely nothing making this a bad analogy, so either you explain or you shut up.

I guess I missed the memo about you being able to dismiss singlehandedly centuries of training methodology.

I don't need to.

 

But shooting ranges have a direct relation to real shooting/war such as target practice and with non-static shooting ranges, timing, distance, judgement etc. In many cases I don’t see a direct relation between forms and fighting.

That said I don't see sparring as the only way to test what your do, and in many cases not even the ideal/best method, but whatever the method/drill everything needs to related to your goal. For self defence everything should have some relation to defending yourself. Same as sport, although with rules. Form have no relation to fighting and don't teach you anything which can be applied in fighting/self defence. It's wasted training in my opinion (unless of course you enjoy them, but just be honest with there practicality).

 

In most styles, forms are "shadow fights" against one or multiple opponents.

The concept of forms reminds me of "joseki" in Go terminology. In the game of Go, josekis are a series of "ideal" moves for both players in a local situation. They are small parts of a game that have been observed thouroughly and have been found to be the optimal way to answer to the situation if nothing else is happening. Every serious Go player has to study joseki if he wants to be any good; it is not always obvious why a move is ideal, so one can not rely on always evaluating the situation completely by himself on each move.

Of course, in a real game, there are often factors that disturb the joseki or that change what was an "optimal" move into a terrible choice. One always has to see when continuing the joseki is better than breaking it at that point. With deep understanding of the why and the when of a joseki, a player adds considerable knowledge to his game; knowledge he could not have thought of alone. Josekis are rarely carried to their end; both players already aware of how it will end and who it will advantage.

It is the same with forms; they are rarely to be used as such (although if you can, it will almost invariably end in your favor; I mean, is there even any form that ends with the form user in a disadvantage?!?). They, however, contain concepts and ideas about what you train that can be used in real fights. There are things that are not obvious about your art that could be explained in a form. Perhaps there is a certain punch you often train that is used as a block in one of your forms. Perhaps you would not have thought of it.

That's how forms are useful to me. It is my opinion that forms could benefit everyone. Saying forms are useless to everyone, though, is not an opinion. It's a false statement that I've just disproven by showing how forms are useful to me. I don't think I'm the only one to have benefitted from form training.

 

There is no direct relationship between forms and fighting but I still find forms to be a useful training exercise. I find I can work on certain skills when no training partners are available for sparring.

 

If there is no relation between forms and fighting how are they a useful training exercise?

Guizzy,
I understand what your saying but if your want self defence forms are not directly useful and spending time training "imagenary fights" is taking away training time with a real opponent.

 

how are push ups a useful training exercise? Forms help me focus of footwork, speed, timing, practise explosiveness. By itself its nothing much. You need to spar. Forms are just an exercise.

 

37 pages and its still going, I'm impressed. Its cool that there is still a healthy debate going on, but some of the things you saying have already been argued in the last 36 pages, so if you have time go back and read them, I'm sure you will find them interesting (particularly mine and Ikkens).

 

Push ups build strength.

Forms are choreographed and therefore dont have any natural timing, energy, or motion which are probably the 3 most important elements in fighting/self defence.

How can you improve your footwork or speed when it's choreographed? Sure you rfootwork and speed in the forms might be great, but try and then translate it to a unchoreographed situation and it wont work.

 

its not wasted time because it directly affects a VITAL skill. AIMING.

It is a bad analogy, you compared something that has a direct corrilation to something that doesn't. Tell me. WHAT do forms directly affect that couldn't more easily be obtained by another meathod. if its timing, then drills. if its foot work, then do foot work. its certainly not speed/strength/strategy/conditioning/athleticisim
You missed the memo about MAs evolving and training methodology improving. maybe you should hit a gym and try sparring/swimming/lifting. try again.
when is it a good idea to do a set of moves someone ELSE thought was a good idea 2000 years ago in a set pattern with set timing with no resistance and no target?

 

Certainly they build strenth but BJJ and many martial arts stress using an opponents strenth against them and not going force against force. Certainly your time could be better spent than doing push ups. Of course I enjoy doing push ups and forms and sparring but I need someone else to spar. If I am training alone, I would do push ups and forms. Save sparring for class.

 

Just becuse many focus on taking advantage of the opponents strangth it dosnt mean they dont want to build strength, which it need for powerful strikes.

When i train on my own i work on various drills which provide useful skilles related self defence. As i said, forms dont provide useful skills for fighting therefore training in them is futile if you have fighting in mind.

 

Agreed. Just because you want to maximise power through body mechanics and physics doesn't mean that strength isn't still useful.

 

What forms give, from a self defense viewpoint, is not physical training. As I said; they are imaginary fights in which many important concepts of your art are used.

By practicing them with the right mindset ('imagining' the opponents; thinking about each move in the form and why you do it), you should better your understanding of how to use your art in a fighting situation.

Of course, the teacher could tell this knowledge to you, but people tend to remember much easier when they find out by themselves. Also, some of it cannot be explained by any other way than doing it.

If you simply do the forms without thinking about it, just because you were asked to, you won't learn a thing from them, though. You need to seek what's inside the form. "Why do I need to put my arm there?", "Why do I switch stance here?"...

Perhaps your school is different in that forms are taught as movements irrelevant to the style you train to develop, but I doubt it. If it does, then I guess it's weird. In White Crane, what we train in forms, we use (it also helps that most of our forms are reversible, and as such are practiced with speed and contact with a partner).

 

So....why not just have REAL fights with REAL people? oh, because imaginary ones don't hurt or require any phsicality.

 

So as part of your training you go out and pick "REAL" fights with "REAL" people, that must cost a lot in medical and legal fees.

 

So you think training techniques is useless?

Perhaps you need to understand sparring is not the only valuable part of MA training. If the only reason you do well in sparring is because of overwhelming strength and/or size and/or speed, you'll be completely defenseless on the day you'll have to fight someone stronger, bigger and faster. Good technique, however, can overcome any opponent.

Sparring is not the right place to develop good techniques, however. It's the place to learn how to apply the techniques you have developped outside of sparring.

And forms are tool to develop those techniques.

But you do MMA, so I don't expect you to understand what forms are and how they are useful. Perhaps you should just stop talking about a subject that you don't understand.

 

Just to keep things straight, "using the opponent's strength against him/her" does not mean that you will convince them to punch themselves until they are out. It doesn't even mean "strength" actually, more like "momentum". This means that you have to be pretty good in your art if you are facing a real opponent, and pretty godlike - and then some - if you are facing any sort of trained fighter.

Guizzy:

"Good technique can overcome any opponent" - False, although it sure does go a long way.

"Sparring is not the right place to develop good techniques" - Wrong, it is.

"...forms are tool to develop those techniques." - No, forms teach the basic form of the technique, sparring is where you actually learn to develop and use it.

"But you do MMA, so I don't expect you to understand what forms are and how they are useful." - Wrong, since MMA have forms for striking and grappling. They practice their techniques alone (where applicable) and slowly, before using them in full force.

"Perhaps you should just stop talking about a subject that you don't understand." - Word.

Edit: I am not picking on you personally, i just saw this post when browsing