Preface
The crowd murmured in anticipation as the instructor positioned his partners for the next demo. Suddenly, he exploded into motion, striking his prey with blinding speed. His hapless victims regained their composure as the instructor stared intensely at the crowd around him, basking in their adulation.
Rolling my eyes any harder would have flung them out of my head.
The instructor’s demo ingrained two things: ineffective striking and standing, unresponsive, when attacked suddenly. Seems dumb, right? But self-defense and martial arts (SD/MA) are rife with these suboptimal practices.
Scars and Flaws
Physical self-defense is practicing for a worst-case
scenario: being forced to protect yourself by breaking other people. Effective
training requires partners, posing at least two problems. First, broken people
can’t train which means we either purposefully injure training partners or
train not to hurt people. Second, half the time we’re practicing losing while
partners take their turns defending. These realities are the results of
training flaws and training scars. Training flaws are purposeful adjustments in
methodology designed to maintain safety. However, when an instructor is unaware
of the training flaws in an exercise, they become training scars: unintentionally
ingrained bad habits. Both training flaws and scars ingrain as deeply as the
skills the training’s designed to develop.
For example: your training partner
puts you in a headlock; you drive his chin back, “attack” his groin, and drop
him. Great job! But why’d you let him grab you? You spent just as many reps
allowing yourself to get grabbed as you did “defending.” Moreover, if you’d
counterattacked with commitment he’d be curled up on the floor; what did your
partner get out of that rep, acting practice? Training ingrains habits into all participants. If the “bad guy” practices
attacking weakly and then passively taking a beating, aside from giving you a
bad stimulus to which to tie a response, he’s ingraining his ineffectual actions
just as deeply as you’re ingraining yours. The solutions lie in making
conscious adjustments to make training both safe and effective.
-Go Slow- Improve
efficacy and safety by changing your speed. Slowing down is a great safety flaw
that promotes perfect mechanics, precise targeting, and full follow through
without injury. Moving slowly also limits training scars: predators don’t kill
slowly so, when partners attack, you’re not training yourself to ignore a
serious threat. In the headlock defense example: practice the initial attack
unthreateningly slowly and, once you both feel comfortable with how headlocks
work, start defending them. Still slowly, have your partner try to headlock and, as soon as you detect
a threatening motion, do something about it. Gradually, let your partner apply
the headlock more and more so you train counters at every stage of the attack.
-Use Equipment- Equipment
like pads and armor allows for striking with power and intent without doing
serious harm to your partner. This avoids frequently seen training scars like
pulled punches or purposeful inaccuracy. When practicing headlock counters with
your partner, have them position a pad or focus mitt near their groin so you
train to strike with power and follow through.
-Train from Surprise-
Practicing from surprise involves restricting visual or audio cues. With this
you can counter at every stage of an attack without the training scar of
ignoring assault indicators. Coming back to headlock counters, have your
partner set up close to you with a pad arranged to protect his groin. Close
your eyes and have your partner randomly head lock at full speed. React
immediately to the aggressive touch and counterattack the pad. Ideally, the
level of speed, combined with the surprise, should force you to react at
varying stages of the attack.
-Use Safety Officers-
During many drills; especially as intention, energy, and skill increase; it
becomes difficult to participate and be conscious of safety simultaneously. Many
adjust for this by unconsciously employing bad habits but safety officers can help
maintain safety protocols without training scars.
-Involve Resistance-
Attackers shouldn’t be practicing losing while defenders practice winning; you
should be retaliating or, at least, fending. Coming back to the headlock
example: when you’re the attacker applying the headlock, push your hips back to
avoid the groin attack and cover up to fend off follow up strikes. Even injured
attackers will respond in some way to a defender’s counteroffensive onslaught,
do the same in practice.
-Move with Intent-
This isn’t so much an adjustment as a principle. Whatever moves you’re doing
should do damage if not for your chosen safety flaw. You should strike with
full intent to do damage which is only limited by a pad, partner’s reaction, or
another intentional element. Training with intent enhances realism and helps
find potential holes in safety protocols. So, when you’re counterattacking after
the headlock, avoid a training scar; use full intent so your partner has to rely
on pads or armor, or even defend themselves.
Notice that these safety flaws counterbalance each other,
creating a robust training method without major holes and avoidant of training
scars. Conscious adjustments and safety flaws should always exist but
creativity can blend them to your advantage.
Be dangerous, train safely
-M
No comments:
Post a Comment