Apologies if I'm missing the point here.... You may not do this in your style of Silat, but is two cats playing not sparring? Ok there is no contact but you are learning to react and use shapes you have learned against a moving opponent? Without two cats playing I don't think I'd have a proper understanding of how Buah or Kuching work against a live moving opponent.
I agree with you on this. It's all an abstraction of the real fighting. I totally agree. So we need to find ways of testing it more realistically. And yes sparring is a way to do that. What i'm trying to tell is that sparring has it's inherit weaknesses because the way of training can become too much geared to abilities which are important in competitive sparring, like, excellent stamina (to last for rounds and rounds), have plenty of strength (to overcome an opponent with strength mainly) Yes just application training has it's inherent weaknesses as well since you need to train it with a more alive opponent and against all sorts of attacks. Not just a single right punch that you just present to your opponent. And you need to make it work against any type of attack of a lot of different styles. For me the real strength in Silat lies in it's technical abilities and movement tactics. So thats where i train most in. Yes some pushups and abs exercises, but that's more of an extra. Because i'm no pro fighter, i need to divide my time the most efficiently. So stamina and strength probably comes last on the list (for now at least) The good thing of sparring is that you learn to take a hit, so it helps in the mentality. On the other hand taking a hit with a boxing glove to the chin is whole lot different than taking a hit with the bareknuckles to the chin (even lightly). Both give pain but the effect can be decidedly different. So we train mostly the basics and the buah of the jurus. That's where the gold is. Every application we work on is directly linked to a jurus. The goal is to have no prolonged fight, as with sparring is usually is the case. It should be finished in seconds so you train for those seconds.
Some good points there. But the question is have you ever been punched on the chin as hard with bare knuckles as you would with a boxing glove? It's worth sparring with boxing gloves, because you're getting a different experience. Yeah, the feeling is different, but so is the amount of intent and force you can employ in training. I'm guessing people who spar bare knuckle are tagging one another. Not genuinely attempting to knock one another down.
BAD sparring or sparring where the conditions don't meet the purpose do. As with a lot of people in this type of discussion,your understanding of resistance or "force on force" training is very narrow. It's a training tool, how you use it is up to you. For example here's live resistant training that does neither of those things (Warning, VERY bad language from the get go) [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoC059jsSPg"]Car Park Fight Training: Sim Day 6 Acclimatisation - YouTube[/ame] , right, so you DO do strength training then All my application work is directly linked to my forms. I don't understand how A) safety gear prevents this or B) why this can't be the case in sparring.
This is a common trope and one that is wrong. Sparring often goes on longer than a few seconds because skilled opponents counter each other's offense and extend the fight. Or because people are just hard to hurt enough to stop them from fighting. Sparring can also last seconds if someone is succesful with their first punch. Combat sports are criticised for having rounds and time limits when "da street" does not and yet there are many examples of combat sports ended with the first technique. Like this. Check the round timer. Looks to me like the fight ended in about 3 seconds. Just becuase something can go on for longer than a few seconds doesn't mean that it has to. When I spar in TKD I see each "exchange" in a round as a mini fight within a fight. So I might blitz in, trap an arm and reverse punch the face (with control). That "could be" a "fight" in and of itself aside from how long the round actually lasts. It just so happens I have to control the face punch, angle off and continue with the round "as if" the reverse punch didn't really do anything (where in reality it could achieve anything from a full KO to nothing at all). What happens when two people trained to "end a fight in seconds" have a fight? Does it look like this?
Don't get me wrong. Sparring isn't fighting and fighting isn't self defence and self defence isn't self protection. But they are all related and can be approached from multiple ways. Any one of which isn't perfect but can bolster the imperfections in the other ways to make a complete picture. I just don't buy that boxers or MMA guys use rounds in sparring and are therefore training to fight for multiple rounds. Multiple rounds are what happens when each attempt to end the fight quickly fails. Now for sure...some people do train to outlast and fight over multiple rounds. Maybe they lack one shot KO power or have great cardio. But they'd all take a 3 second KO win any day of the week.
Well this sounds like you train different techniques for when you spar then when you fight. WHY? You should find a way of sparring that lets you use the techniques you train. For instance when I did white crane we would wear sports goggles while sparing so we could use our crane wing and crane beak strikes to the eyes with out pulling the strikes at all. In what universe is that a weakness. Having stamina may be unessasary if the first exchange goes they way you hope but it's never going to hurt you or dictate how you fight. The same can be said of strength. A good technician may not need strength to win but he certainly has an advantage if he has it. Also you don't have to do sparring that is geared towards competition. But taking a padded hit is still worlds better than not getting hit if all you do is drill application. I's great to have that goal but the reality is it seldom works that way. Live opponants move and doge and block. They don't throw zombie attacks so you can finish them with your favorite technique. Even traditional styles teach endurance and strength training and segregate thier tranning because they know this to be true. you may have to just hold your own for a while and hold off your opponent until an opportunity presents itself to finish the fight. For me the biggest thing you get out of sparring is timing and learning to read your opponents body language and pick up on his patterns. You don't really get that from any drill and those are the skills that make you most likely to suceed in countering an opponent, whether it be with a simple boxing combo or the super secret finishing move of some little know style. No matter what your technique is or how good it is you always need certain skills to make it work.
Ok and where exactly is the silat in here? I thought this was a silat forum. Or am I missing something?
Yes. People will comment on any forum they wish. They will bring what they know form other arts into that discussion even if they don't do silat.
Ok. Now let me respond from a silat perspective. What I see is a training drill where the defender is attacked three times. Three times the defender keeps the distance between him and the attacker to small before the attack. A guaranteed tactic to get knocked out before even able to defend. Actually the guy right at the beginning standing at the side did it the proper way extending his arms. For silat the tactic should be: As soon as the guy comes at you like that, you hit him first when keeping distance doesn't work. I don't know the guy he might have a knife hidden. In silat there is a saying 'as soon as someone comes into your house you attack'. Might sound a bit crude but it might be the difference between being alive or being stabbed. So no I would not want to train a drill with such a solution to get me out alive.
You are, yes. The Sim Day link is to highlight a training method that can be applied to any style. Not a style itself. That includes silat. The very subject of this thread is the practicality of silat. Training methods like this help to 1) establish whether what you're practicing will do what it says on the tin under a different set of conditions than that of jurus, etc. and 2) what adjustments might need to be made in order to achieve that. I implore the members of this subforum not to fall into the practice that other subforums have already done: Rejecting input from outside because it challenges your assumptions about what you do. That can only be a good thing, even if you ultimately reject those suggestions.
What prevents you from running that drill with a training knife? Or training kerambit? Or whatever equipment is necessary?
Again you're looking at the finger. The drill is freeform, you can do what you want. Pre-empting is perfectly acceptable, but you need to ensure that you are complying with the law of the land. Concealed blades are frequently employed. It's the mode of training that's important, not what they're actually doing technique or strategy wise.
You mean me? Have you actually been exposed to a lot of violence in the real world? Most attacks start at very close range. Indeed there's whole books about managing that phase of the confrontation and recognising attempts to get close to attack you. Hasn't worked out too well for Oscar Pistorius has it?
Wait, are you saying you haven't seen "Enter the Dragon"? No judgment if not. It's just interesting to me. As a child of the 70s who got into martial arts, I just kind of assume that everyone of my peers has seen that movie. But I'm getting up there now. So I guess I shouldn't assume that everyone has anymore. So now I'm curious (and off topic): What's the iconic martial arts movie for you?
