I believe the striking art can be trained this way too. - 1st, you punch at your opponent's head, your opponent doesn't block it, your punch hits on his face and knock him down (this will be a bit harder to train than the throwing art). After you have knocked your opponent down 10,000 times, you have developed your "straight punch" skill. - 2nd, when you punch, your opponent will block it (resisting). You then re-block his blocking, and still hit on his face and knock him down. After you have knocked your opponent down 10,000 times, you have developed your "single switch hand - straight punch, re-block your opponent's block, and punch again" skill. - 3rd, when you punch, your opponent will block it (resisting). You then re-block his blocking and punch again, but he will block your 2nd punch (resisting again). You then re-block his 2nd block and still hit on his face and knock him down. After you have knocked your opponent down 10,000 times, you have developed your "double switch hands - straight punch, re-block your opponent's block, punch again, re-block your opponent's block again, and punch again" skill. - ... Now you start to grow a tree with the straight punch as your root. How big will this tree grow? It may grow as deep as 7 or 8 levels (I have not heard any system that has ever developed past the 8th level yet. 9 moves combo is the maximum that I have seen).
Or you and your opponent can put on gloves and spar after learning the mechanics of the punch and practicing it on a heavy bag.
To me, what you are talking about is the "testing" stage. What I have described is the "developing" stage. Some system may mix the "developing" and "testing" as one stage. It may just use different definition. The end result will be the same. In the - striking art, you may be able to develop your jab and cross just from sparring. - throwing art, it's very difficult to develop your hip throw from wrestling only without using your hip throw to throw your opponent 10,000 times through the developing stage.
I think you're mixing up sparring with fighting in competition or full contact sparring. Sparring is primarily a training tool that helps you maintain the context around a technique so you 1-know how to use it 2-know when to use it 3-know how and when to use it on an opponent who isn't letting you use it.
Throws do need to be trained first without resistance to understand. I don't know about 10,000 times without resistance because that's when you develop bad habits resulting from a compliant uke but you can't start out by wrestling for sure.
Here we may have different definition for "sparring". To me, it's "competition" that you try to knock/take your opponent down, and your opponent also tries to knock/take you down.
If you use your hip throw to throw your opponent 200 times daily, it only take you 2 months (200 x 60 = 12,000) to reach to that 10,000 reps. IMO, a hip throw will take 6 months to develop it.
Sparring ranges from light contact to full contact and in he definition used by most striking arts is generally not competitive
10,000 reps without resistance is just a little much. The dynamics of a throw can change significantly with resistance added. I wish I had a partner that would let me throw them 200 times a day for 6 months, but my holo deck broke
:topic: To me, if you try to win and your opponent also tries to win, that's competition. You will spar with your training partner the same way as you will spar in tournament. Will you call wrestling as "competition"?
The traditional training methods used in the ryu contained in the bujinkan have various progressive levels. Each ryu seems to have developed their own route if you like However, they all start with simple drills (compliant partner). Then progress to variations from those drills when your partner responds differently (or the situation is different in some way), then counters are explored, then drills to amend the technique in response to the counter, then juppo sessho (which is similar in principle to the "chess match" or negotiation of sparring), then coping with free form attacks, then randori or free form training and so on At each step resistance should be explored and scenario training is very much a part of the system (but different from a 1-1 sparring match with equal objectives) I know many buj classes don't explore this progression much, I think largely because people train in mixed ability so this progression is down to you rather than being dictated or structured in some way The issue of course is that human nature is such that many people avoid the challenge or pressure and get comfortable. This doesn't mean that the system is devoid of these methods
It's only competition if you keep score or if anyone "wins". Nobody wins a sparring match, it's just live training for practice. If you start point sparring or keeping score then it changes, but just because you have an opponent doesn't mean it's a Competition.
It's not quite as simple as if a technique will or wont work. Often we know a technique can work in theory, but testing it will show us if we can execute it with a high rate of success. As an example: I know if I was to kick someone in the eyeball with my big toe it would hurt them, but I need to find out if I can do it against a opponent who is mobile and resisting. I have my opponent wear some safety goggles and I try to execute the move while they attack me. It doesn't work. After trying it against a few more opponents I realise that the instinctive response to protect your eye is too strong for me to overcome at my level of ability, and failure carries too much risk of damaging my toe. Even though I am fully aware that a toe strike to someone's eye would be effective, I now know it is not a high-percentage technique that I should be wasting my time on. No, if you test it you have checked whether you can execute it under pressure. Correct, nothing does work all the time. Testing allows you to focus on moves with a higher percentage of success. Testing also allows you to practice dealing with the fact that your technique has failed, and helps in learning to flow to the next technique if your first is countered.
Oh, I am not going to get into the old tired argument. Count me in on the pro-sparring side though. That wasn't my point. My point was at times you do sound like you are advocating against sparring in your style. I would say your posts are not coming across as consistently saying the same thing on this subject. I most certainly have not been the only person speaking up that that is the perception you are leaving. And people do seem to let that go more than when others in other styles do the same thing. One of my pet peeves is hypocrisy or the same rules not being applied to everyone. So I mentioned it. However, as I already said, Kave explained this. My Sifu says that no one situation perfectly replicates an actual fight, so it is important to do as many different types of practice to get as close as you can and cover all angles as much as possible. I would agree with this. Edit - quote I was responding to from PR didn't show up. I will dig it up later, when not at work.
Just want to toss/discard/menacingly chuck this out there. Are people in this thread coming at this from a few years training, zero, or many years of proper training? With? Or without (in their eyes) good teaching? I always find personally that people who "dabble" in the Takamatsuden arts think they have a great idea of what goes on, but absolutely no idea, in the eyes of...us How could we describe the taste of water to you? Or would you have to taste it yourself?
In all honesty I don't see why anyone would want to taste the water for themselves. Given the horrid demonstrations on video, the outrageous claims, and the complete lack of agreement of what "good" or "skilled" is for the art. By the admission of the practitioners only a handful of the people practicing have any real skill at all the rest are just LARPing.
As for your first question, I have a shodan in shorin ryu shidokan karate from two sensei's (a fifth degree and a fourth degree) who each used to train regularly with seikichi iha (the head of the style) but ended up stopping for political reasons. I'm sure I don't have to explain how political martial arts can unfortunately be. Now I train in kajukenbo and mma, but I still practice my karate. As for the taste of water thing, let's stay away from poetic metaphor when speaking about physical movements and techniques.
You have video? Show us? As for agreement on skilled/unskilled, you have to taste that water to know for sure. Yes only a handful have "it". But do you, in your opinion? (in you own art even). If so, do you think anyone (absolutely anyone) in the same org may feel otherwise? There's a thought...
