Sparring and Taijutsu:

Discussion in 'Ninjutsu' started by zenpokaiten, Feb 21, 2006.

  1. Yama Tombo

    Yama Tombo Valued Member

    Right! Aim for the head! I repeat aim for the head! It will go down! Shoot it right between the eyes!
     
  2. bencole

    bencole Valued Member

    Sonshu's back!

    That's precisely the problem for people such as yourself. It doesn't fit into "what you expect" and so you take it upon yourself to tell its practitioners what they need.

    Would you honestly go into a Tai Chi Chuan dojo and insist that the practitioners spar? How about a Systema dojo? One would hope not. The reason is that your mental model of what these people are doing is fundamentally different than what you are doing, and WHAT'S MORE, you actually RECOGNIZE this and realize that it is not in your best interest to tell these practitioners what to do.

    Despite your limited time in our art, Sonshu, you really didn't "get it" while you were here. Your mental model of what we were doing is simply not what we are doing. As I've said before, "you lacked the eyes." You naturally do not think this is the case, but experienced people within our art will agree with me.

    The mental models are simply different.

    Again, a brilliant post!

    Anyone, who is not a practitioner of our art, really has no reason to be telling people in our art how to train. I don't care if you can last ten minutes in a ring with Shamrock.

    I actually do not mind if people outside our art don't like the way we train or feel that there is no way we could possibly hold our own in a real fight because we don't spar. It's to my advantage for my attacker to think he is better than me and to believe that he could never be harmed by me. :rolleyes:

    -ben
     
  3. xen

    xen insanity by design

    this 'sparring doesn't work line' misses the whole damn point of the exercise...

    THE FACT IT IS AN EXERCISE :rolleyes:

    i don't think anyone who uses 'sparring', 'randori', 'kumite', etc actually believes they are involved in a street fight, unless their instructor is a moron who tells them this is what 'real fighting' is like OR they train at the real-hard edge of the line and leave each training session with broken bones, missing teeth and the like.

    just like practicing how to apply techniques to a compliant opponent is AN EXERCISE which allows people to develop muscle memory, learn about the dynamics of the human body, learn about balance, space and flow etc etc...then so too is making practice more free, introducing a some daken-type sparring, some nage-type randori or some ground fighting and grappling becomes AN EXERCISE which allows you to learn about these same factors but from a different perspective.

    If you want to make your sparring realistic, go to a rough arsed boozer in your nearest cities police no-go area, walk in, find the guy in his early forties with scars on his face and throw a beer at him, then you'll soon find out if the training methods you use are effective or not.

    instead of jumping up and down and saying this or that is the 'right' way to learn, why not spend some time listening to people who do use sparring as part of their training toolkit and asking them what benefits they get from it?

    and if you have done sparring in your martial arts pasts, then could you explain just what makes this past experience so useless? it really confuses me, becasue my own past experiences of judo comps in my mid-teens provide me with some real benefits to my training today...

    probably not in the ways people would think, but in terms of providing me with an understanding of the dynamics of conflict which i can't imagine i would learnt anywhere else.
     
  4. Peaceful Tiger

    Peaceful Tiger Happy Member

    Yeah and besides it's our art, not theirs, so who cares what they think?, they can think what they like.
     
  5. bencole

    bencole Valued Member

    Because we chose to listen to people who are FAR more skilled in our art than them. :eek:

    -ben
     
  6. KlaussyZ

    KlaussyZ Valued Member

    Xen, Thank you for salvaging what was almost a locked thread!

    I personally have found sparring done in the past to be both a benefit and a hindrance to my current taijutsu studies.

    GOOD SIDE: It's taught me how to take a punch, ingrained in me the response of either bailing or punching my way out when I FUBAR royally, and, at least when I was starting out, gave me a better grasp on what the Uke was doing and why.

    BAD SIDE: When I see a punch coming at me, I have a tendancy to move too fast and miss the subtleties of what I'm doing, so I have to constantly remind myself to slow down and work on quality of movement. Those same ingrained movements from back when I used to spar also have a tendancy to lead me into positions where I may have an upper hand, but my Uke still has an opportunity to attack or counter, turning it into a contest of speed or strength, which is not what I want.

    Now, could those good qualities have been developed through methods other than sparring? Sure, but it may have taken longer.

    Can I train myself out of the bad movement qualities? Working on it, but it's taking longer than if I hadn't formed those habits in the first place :D
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2006
  7. Sonshu

    Sonshu Buzz me on facebook

    Sounds like school - its my ball and I am going home.

    Come on people no one is getting upset about this apart from the people who do Ninjitsu. Ben says I did not get it which is the stock answer for anyone who did Ninjitsu and did not buy into it of feel it was right for them.

    It does not mean they did not get it just that it did not feel right for me. If I am honest I did it and found other simpler, less political and more IMHO effective ways of dealing with common agression.

    Saying I did not get it is not really fair because what did I not get then?
     
  8. Sonshu

    Sonshu Buzz me on facebook

    Examples of the bad side please??? as when people say Ninjtitsu is abour survival then any one you can walk away from is a bonus right?

    Can you please elaborate on what you mean with specifics of the bad side?
     
  9. KlaussyZ

    KlaussyZ Valued Member


    I didn't elaborate because I'm having difficulty putting the situations I'm referring to into words.

    suffice to say that I prefer to train with people in my dojo who don't let me "get away with" not doing s technique right.If Im trining with you, if I give you an opportunity to puch me, I hope you do, so I can see where I'm making my mistakes.

    I've just noticed that when I'm moving in a way that feels "right", there are no unnecessary "gaps"for my uke to exploit on his way to the ground. :D

    when I move like I used to (Hapkido, Muay Thai, and BJJ background)I end up in different relative positions with the Uke and often the techniques don't flow right and seem very impractical. (until an Instructor comes by, shows me what I'm doing, and suddenly a technique that seems impractical becomes very effective)

    Anyway, I'm having trouble putting some specific examples adequately into words, but this pattern has repeated itself over and over in my training.
     
  10. KlaussyZ

    KlaussyZ Valued Member

    Trying...to...save...thread...
     
  11. KlaussyZ

    KlaussyZ Valued Member

    Please...help...
     
  12. KlaussyZ

    KlaussyZ Valued Member

    Gaaaaahhhhhh..... :bang: :bang:
     
  13. Sonshu

    Sonshu Buzz me on facebook

    If that is your bad side of sparring then you either did weird sparring with people not hitting you...................... as anyone I know unless it has been predefined would not miss on a golden opportunity to get a free shot in.

    You listed that as a bad experience from sparring and people should give you a nudge to let you know your left your guard open.

    I think impractical techniques all arts have them to a point as not everyone is the same build, speed etc and they do come more naturally with experience like any art.

    But without specifics we cant really use it as a negative as we have almost nowt to go on. :D
     
  14. Sonshu

    Sonshu Buzz me on facebook

    KlaussyZ

    Glad your trying to be serious but this often happend on the Ninjitsu section when someone outside the click posts something then people get all defensive and then the thread is locked.

    Happy to converse with people who want to keep it sensible - good work man!
     
  15. Banpen Fugyo

    Banpen Fugyo 10000 Changes No Surprise

    for clarification, I dont see Ikken doing anything wrong...

    --------------

    As far as training goes, I'm not the best person to ask, but I've trained a lot over the last year, I've training in many sparring styles over the past 10 years, and I've read most of the 'grandmasters" teachings. The only thing I notice is that in Taijutsu we train how to fight using taijutsu/ninpo/ninjutsu/whatever philosophies. In the other arts they train using their philosophies. This quote:

    Should be... They train how THEY fight, and us xkans train how WE fight

    We dont want to fight like you.
     
  16. bencole

    bencole Valued Member

    Great! Then go do them and help people who are interested what you call "simpler, less political and more effective ways." Maybe some people want things other than what you want.

    That's pretty simple, eh?

    -ben
     
  17. Bouk Teef

    Bouk Teef Valued Member

    To be fair Ben, I think what Sonshu (and others from different styles who visit the forum) are looking for is an answer to their question that isn't based on "because Soke says so". Although it may be a perfectly acceptable answer for some, it would be useful to expand on the reasons why Hatsumi feels sparring type exercises have no place in the Art.

    If that is not possible then perhaps presenting your interpretation would be useful. I am not having a go but it would be interesting to advance the debate past, "because that is the way it is done", "because Soke says so" or "you would not understand because of your mindset" type answers.

    The question should be: why do sparring exercises harm the practitioner's Taijutsu?

    :Angel:
     
  18. xen

    xen insanity by design

    and another point that sprung to mind...

    people seem to enter these debates with some idea that every agressive encounter you meet in 'teh doh soo d34dly str33t' is going to leave you facing some drug-aneathetised psychotic who is going to stamp on your balls, gouge your eyes out, slash you to pieces and then pistol whip you unconcious before putting 9mm in your skull just to make sure they've done the job properly.

    for your average brawl, with you average random, in your average town, the person you enocounter will most likely have their own 'internal decency' filters which aren't that far removed from your own...

    they are going to want to hit you, drop you and subdue you...

    but they are unlikely to want to cut bits off you for trophies or get medieval on your ass...

    with that in mind, the ability to meet such agressors on their terms is not that far removed from you average dojo sparring exercise (that don't rely on pads or unneccesary rules which prevent you feeling what knuckles are like when they hit you or prevent you feeling how much it trashes your wrist if you have bad technique etc)

    and ben;

    while people such as Nagato, may decide after x number of years kick-boxing and x number of years with Hatsumi, that they can leave such methods behind, there aren't that many of us on here who have that level of experience.

    To suggest that someone without some degree of simulated fighting experience is going to have it all come good for them on the day leaves me more that a little skeptical.

    While the business of sparring may not be the most appropriate way develop artistry in Hatsumi's budo, it does do the following;

    1. wakes you up to the fact that unless you do get the opponent subdued inside of the first one or two strikes/attacks, you are going to need some energy reseves to draw on and have been under similar physical conditions prior to the encounter if you want to have the best chance of 'survival'

    2. makes you aware just how difficult translating 'dojo movement' into 'str33t movement' can actually be (for those of us who are still mortal)

    3. gets you used to not having it all your own way, and helps you develop internal stratergies which allow you to find solutions to the physical questions your opponent asks you for

    4. increases your awareness of the psychology of conflict

    5. most important of all... sparring and getting 'into it' in the dojo is... FUN :D
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2006
  19. Brad Ellin

    Brad Ellin Baba

    And of course, when things aren't going Sonshu's way, he claims I'll lock the thread. Dude, lay off it. If I want, I can just delete your posts as inflammatory and non-contributory.

    You go on a length about your experiences and how you decided because of them that Taijutsu isn't effective. That it needs to be supplemented with other things and that sparring is one of them. Why is that your experiences are more valid than, say, Dale's? Or Ben's? Or mine? We don't feel the need to spar. Our past experiences confirm that and our present experiences show us that the Taijutsu we are learning and training is effective. So, why are your experiences more valid than our's?

    If you're just here to "stir the pot", then go away. This thread is about why we don't spar. Not why you say we should.
     
  20. Banpen Fugyo

    Banpen Fugyo 10000 Changes No Surprise

    I think the dueling mindset is the biggest downfall of sparring. Although I like doing randori, i think the "Are you ready? Are you ready? Ok, fight!" is EXTREMELY descrutive to someone practicing an art like taijutsu. That'll never happen in real life, to me at least. I've relayed this story a few times, but once more. My friend wanted to spar me. I said no, he said he wanted to try out his new ninpo moves to see if they work. I said that I didnt believe it worked that way. But he insisted so I agreed. He came in like any other person would do, and I threw the change in my pocket into his eyes. His head jerked back, and then a few seconds later I got him on the ground in full control. He was so caught up with the sparring mindset from his kickboxing days that he completely forgot about the environment, weapons, everything else. He felt safe with his technique. I knew if I had to spar him, I would lose, so I cheated. Thats just how it works. No real physical technique. Hence, why sparring teaches bad habits.

    Like my sig says, if you are practicing an art that relies highly on suprise, then it defeats the purpose to let the other person know whats up. There are plenty of other ways to maintain my techniques, while pressure testing with randori and drills, without the negatives of subconsciously thinking of a duel and winning and losing.

    When you rely so much on mats and rules and being nice to your opponent, what happens when the crap really hits the fan? I want to rip someones flesh off their neck, throw them by the skin of their armpit and stomach and not let go. Someone has me in a choke and I want to rip off their tinker toy. When someone punches at me, I want to strike their arm so hard it goes limp (how can i do that in a ring? )

    I get my skin ripped and bruised, my face punched, my nuts kicked, my arm numbed and in pain all the time. And I dont spar. Obviously we cant train to the full extent, but it IS possible to train. Unless you can go all out for something, to protect someone, or yourself, I dont see the reason to fight, or pretend to fight. Why not rely on the drills and techniques that can help you understand these things, rather than watering them down?

    I guess what I'm saying is there is no training on breaking someones finger and its effects without actually doing it, and I dont know of any systems that do that. But some/most sparring styles dig themselves into a hole further away from these techniques and relying on different techniques like throws locks and holds instead. So while a pure sparring art is at -10 feet taijutsu is still at 0. (away from unorthodox techniques, NOT SKILL LEVEL) I've been in a fight recently where I didnt use any technique at all. I moved out of the way, grabbed someones hair, and threw their head into the concrete. If i was stuck into a sparring mindset, like I was a few years ago, I might have done things completly different, jabbing, kicking, and clinching. I've done it all before, things are just different now.

    I dont think my way of training is any better than yours. People who train and practice alot I have no chance of beating, at sparring or dueling at least. Which is kind of my point. If you want to get really good at ground fighting, or clinchwork or whatever, then the only thing you can do is practice ground fighting or clinchwork or whatever. I on the other hand, want to take a different approach. I dont want to be the best at those. So while you're way of training is best for you, my way of training is best for me.
     

Share This Page