Sparring is a playful and explorative interaction.
Sparring is an exercise, a drill. The Japanese use the word KUMITE – which basically means “grouped hands” or “pair hands”, “joined hands”, “hands together” (the Wikipedia article suggests “grappling hands”).
Sparring is a two-person free-form exercise wherein you get to examine scenarios involving combinations, footwork, distancing, rhythm, controlled power, and focus to improve yourself and your partner.
In the dojo where I spent my formative years as a martial artist, there is a school creed. A quick search online has revealed that many schools have a similar creed. Every class says it as we begin, after bowing in, before calisthenics. I hear it and/or say it about three times per dojo night.
It’s a simple creed, and clearly not unique. Here’s what it says:
I intend to develop myself in a positive manner
and avoid anything that would reduce my mental
growth or physical health.
I intend to develop self-discipline, in order to
bring out the best in myself and others.
I intend to use what I learn in class
constructively and defensively, to help myself
and others and never be abusive or offensive.
Kids and adults alike learn this creed and repeat it, together. All are taught to pronounce it powerfully, in the manner of an assertion. In that way, it is very similar to the few sentences American children have to repeat in their schools at the beginning of each day, and which sickened me for how similar it was to unadulterated brainwashing. Speaking of which, this is a very interesting and potentially disturbing read on the reading materials in school, but I digress.
Why do we make people repeat these words? We sometimes ask kids if they know what some words in there mean, like self-discipline. But certainly we’re not teaching vocabulary to adults. So what’s the point?
Well, the point is practice. These sentences are to be pronounced not only as assertions, but mindfully, pronouncing your desire to grow in that direction. They are simple precepts:
This is intentionally left a little vague. Find your own questions. I’ll answer.
A recent set of conversations have led me to examine the major difference in martial training. I’m going to start by separating training in two categories, making an imperfect black-and-white model of the martial world:
Now, let’s start to talk about the PURPOSE of each, in a fairly roundabout way.
Let’s talk about the traditional drill which has become sort of a standard: “Grab my wrist”. The joint lock. Many people have images of rows of people in white uniforms with colored belts, all standing there, grabbing one of their partner’s wrists, and waiting. Then the partner tries to do some kind of fancy something-or-other and ideally, the person grabbing the wrist is now very sorry for themselves.
Well, there’s a clear problem with that drill, isn’t there? In fact, there’s a LOT of problems. Let’s talk about them.
Okay, good point. You win. It’s a silly drill. No, but seriously – superficially, that’s dumb, unless maybe you were trying to take some weaker person away with you – and in that case, you’d also want to make sure they weren’t making sound. So, why grab someone’s wrist?
Let’s look at it a little differently. People use their hands often, every day, for a number of fairly varied tasks. They use their hands with purpose, like grabbing a mug, drinking from it, driving, texting, typing on a keyboard, opening a door… People are used to relating to the world through their hands. It is more natural than, say, lying down on the ground and trying to get a knee or ankle lock on someone with both of your feet, so it is an easier starting point. So there’s the grabbing part.
Why the wrist? Well, actually, use the exact same argument as the last paragraph. People relate better to what they feel near their hands, they already have a relatively solid mind-body connection there, so new movements can be put together with fewer mental leaps. You can feel the resistance, in any direction, more easily. You can ‘listen’ more easily with your hands than, as a beginner, you can with other, bigger, less-trained muscles.
Yeah, I mean, why? They’re gonna start moving your hand, arm, wrist, elbow, shoulder, body, this way and that, and you’re just gonna let it happen? What kind of an idiot are you?
Well, for starters, as the person portraying the ‘attacker’, it is not currently your role to beat up the other person. See, they are the receiver, so it is their turn to practice, with comfortable slowness and smoothness, a potentially complex move which may require subtle manipulation (moving the body in just the right way to get the desired result). So you should let them experiment until they are comfortable with the move. That’s the whole point. Maybe now is a good time to explain why people need to get comfortable – the stuff that you’re practicing actually can hurt you. I know, kind of a shocker, right? Performed improperly, on an opponent that is trying to resist, forcing to try and get the desired result, one can truly do long-lasting damage to a partner. The point of a partner is to train with them for a long time, so this defeats the purpose a bit.
I hear this all the time: if you’re grabbing someone, you’re probably pulling them into a punch with the other hand – or worse (knife, whatever). Yes. Great. Not for beginner practice. The previous point applies – people need to get comfortable with what they’re doing FIRST. Follow-up moves start to play with intermediate-to-advanced concepts which should only be brought in later, when both people have an understanding of when one has failed to apply the technique, so no useless forcing happens. Some of these concepts are stepping, angles, combinations, directional shifts
This fourth point is a little subtle: locks are dynamic things. If someone puts you in a lock and they stop applying force in some direction, then you can move out of the lock. And again,
Okay, so I waxed lyrical about the fact that the wrist grab is a beginner’s move. Oh wait, no, I didn’t. Hang on a sec.. What I said was that the most basic way of practicing the wrist grab, the safest way, the way that leads to growth, BASED ON THE TRADITIONAL TRAINING SYSTEM, is a static exercise, removing most of the variables of combat.
Yeah… And then what? Well, once you’re comfortable with static, you begin to add energy to it, and that’s when it truly comes alive. Pull, push, add a strike, add a step.. All those things get practiced until the student is comfortable. And then what? Are you gonna start sparring and suddenly grab someone’s wrist? Well… Probably not. You’d probably end up getting punched in the face, and you’d deserve it, too.
The neat thing about this practice is that it teaches you to feel how someone else applies their force in a direction (for which I will use the word ‘energy’ from now on). The tricky thing about this practice is that it only works by surprise. And the hard thing about it is that you can really mess up someone’s body if you do it suddenly enough.
Yeah.. But wait! I just said you weren’t gonna do it when sparring! Well, no, you’re not. But if you are going to do it, someone will have grabbed you — or sent energy in some shape in your direction (e.g. a punch), and that will be your answer. It will be swift, it will be sudden, and with the correct precision, it will send the poor sod on the floor. And what if it fails? Well, you can run, you can try to hit the guy a lot, or you could go for the subtler option, which requires more years of training – switch to another lock on the next available joint.
Okay, now I bet you’re saying that I’m just giving you the runaround. I talked about purpose, somewhere way above, and I haven’t mentioned anything about it since! That’s true. But I was also setting up the stage. What is the purpose of the traditional training? The purpose of traditional training is NOT to make you an efficient fighter QUICKLY. Traditional training should be making you look inward and discover the connection between your mind and body, helping you discover who you really are and what your illusions are. As the training progresses, it gets increasingly hard and subtle, therefore refining you and your understanding of your place in society through the study of conflict.
Gosh, so many big words. How much what I just said is true? Eh… Nowadays, it depends on the student.
Someone I was talking to recently compared “grab the wrist” to “we can both throw jabs and our only defense is slipping”.
Well, let’s apply the same concepts – though I won’t make as big a deal of them since you saw them above.
1) Why would you just jab? Well, why not. Maybe you can knock the guy out, or explode his nose, or just jab four times before he realizes you’re taking the initiative / preempting. It’s a strike and it’s got chances to be effective. Besides, throwing multiple jabs is a good drill to build up your shoulder muscles and practice targeted striking!
2) Why jab and let them do whatever they want? Well.. Alright, in this drill, we’re not. We jab and they only get to slip. This is a strict drill, working hips, legs, maybe stepping, maybe parrying with the hands. This is all good stuff.
3) Why jab and not have a follow-up move? Well, because it’s a drill, duh! We’re just doing this over and over, working on very specific skills that directly and obviously relate to what I call a level one confrontation: strikes. Hell, it’s worked for boxers. Nah.. This analogy is flawed. Boxers don’t use their legs for anything but power generation. No kicks, no trips.
4) Why not counter when you slip? Well.. That would end the drill, and it’s not the point. You’d have a drill for counters. These drills are, of course, just as artificial as “grab my wrist”. The thing is, some people like them better. They need to move.
In general, I’ve found the camp to be split between people who prefer the “grab my wrist” context and people who prefer “jab and slip”. Both drills get practiced by both people, colored by the environment, but one side matches their personality better. “Grab my wrist” is not realistic! They say. “Jab and slip” doesn’t develop your sensitivity! They say.
Here’s what one guy had to say about it.. You may have heard of him, his name is Bruce Lee, and he wrote that book called “Tao of Jeet Kune Do”:
“Instead of facing combat in its suchness, then, most systems of martial art accumulate a “fancy mess” that distorts and cramps their practitioners and distracts them from the actual reality of combat, which is simple and direct. Instead of going immediately to the heart of things, flowery forms (organized despair) and artificial techniques are ritualistically practiced to simulate actual combat. Thus, instead of ‘being’ in combat these practitioners are ‘doing’ something ‘about’ combat.
“Worse still, super mental power and spiritual this and spiritual that are desperately incorporated until these practitioners drift further and further into mystery and abstraction. All such things are futile attempts to arrest and fix the ever-changing movements in combat and to dissect and analyze them like a corpse.” (p. 14)
“Forms are vain repetitions which offer an orderly and beautiful escape from self-knowledge with an alive opponent.” (p. 16)
While I agree with some of it, I think there is a fundamental flaw in trying to reject such static training: it develops a fundamental and critical awareness and sensitivity which becomes reflexive over time. I’ve watched a 70+ year-old man move another guy around like a volley ball with impressive speed and precision, and his training had been extremely traditional (though, granted, over a period of fifty years or more).
I think that when people criticize a drill, they’re really criticizing instructors who have no understanding of the depth of the drill – or, reflexively, criticizing themselves for not having a deep enough understanding of the drill, an unwillingness to practice. No think. No talk. Train.
On that note, I stop my tongue-fu.
The Master had been clear on this point – the room was treated so the five physical senses would be useless. When Scott asked how, the Master laughed and told him it was magic. Scott had chuckled and shaken his head. Clearly, no point in arguing – not today’s knowledge.
Scott blinked and the test began. He relaxed and extended his consciousness into the ground below him and around him. He knew his limit well: no more than a five-foot radius around him. This meant that by the time he felt the opponent, it would be almost too late. Almost. The Master was sometimes annoyingly cl-
Scott flinched and his hips spun him around, hands flying up in an open, receptive guard position. An intrusion into the five-foot radius. It was almost like a physical blow to his solar plexus. He had felt the opponent. His mind started to rush through all the things he knew to do, and yet within an imperceptible lapse of time, his trained body took over with a quick, soft breath out.
The wind suddenly started to blow, and Scott mentally took notice of it. Wind in a room that had been magically sealed of the physical senses? He wasn’t supposed to feel that. The blow he took under the floating ribs on the left side actually lifted him off the ground and sent him flying a few feet before landing hard on his pelvis. His mind had stopped and time hadn’t. Fuck. Everything to start again. Actually… Scott realized he was still connected to Earth and could feel the opponent coming in. He stood up with a quick, hot breath that helped him expand Water and Air towards the other, feeling for the intent to strike, feeling for the movement, for the breath, for life.
Gotcha.
Connected, the movement became absolutely unimportant. For approximately half of one long, endless and yet very short second, everything in the room became one. When Scott’s breath ended, the opponent was on the ground, stuck in a joint lock.
“What’s with the wind,” Scott asked.
“Oh, just making sure your mind was in the right place.”
“Hardy har-har, Master.”
Funny how, when I’m busy, I stop updating this blog, isn’t it.
I’m learning a good amount on HTTP, Perl (specifically CGI) and working on using TDD with Ruby/Rails: it’s a mindset.
Regarding martial arts, sensei helped me figure out that my punches are all wrong, and the issue has been traced to lower back muscles. Thankfully, I’ve got tons of subway time now, so I can practice standing. For those of you who don’t study martial arts… That last sentence is not a joke.
On an unrelated note: I always enjoy the fact that ‘martial arts’ is commonly mistyped as ‘marital arts’. I knew the two were similar (*grin*), but some sentences are downright hilarious.
I am watching Rocky III and IV (the only ones I really like), and the driving theme is the power of the human spirit. Rewatching it now, I see a lot of other ideas. They’re not particularly hidden, but I never really noticed them before. This started to make me think about my choices.
Continue reading »
It was surprisingly good. I didn’t feel very good tonight – slight headache, slight tingle in the throat. I wasn’t going to stay for my class, just help teach and then go home, get tea, get sleep.. But Continue reading »
I had a good time in the dojo tonight. Managed to bring a kid back from the verge of tears to feeling good and performing kata with solid focus and intent.. And then good sparring. Kid’s 6, by the way.
My class wasn’t that good, though I got a compliment on my push-ups from sensei. Went through my kicks.. Then sparred..
I fleetingly get a grasp of efficient body movement, and then it disappears, and then I have to train a lot more to make it happen again, and then more again, etc etc, until I can make it happen effortlessly.
I really, really love teaching martial arts. There’s something about the student-teacher relationship, in the study of something which involves both body and mind – and you can’t lie or fake your way through that. It’s all about the truth, and being naked and exposed. It forces you to examine yourself and your relationship with others.
A friend of mine wrote about shoulder relaxation.. Apparently we both had the same mental block, but he solved it first – shoulder relaxation (and by extension, all relaxation) can be done up/down and … forward/back!
At first I didn’t think I had that issue, my western mind automatically went “Nah, I don’t have that issue, my shoulders are nice and straight!” .. And then training kicked in and the answer came : “Well, maybe they’re not supposed to be straight!”
So, I let my shoulders round forward a little, which required some spinal and pelvic adjustments.. But the result is that I suddenly ‘stopped feeling’ my shoulders and upper back.
For my friend, who is more advanced than I am, the effect was more drastic, and he became aware quickly of more changes, like his arms being properly connected to the body, and feeling better rooted in spite of not having his legs bent as much.
I’m still playing with the feeling, the muscles around my spine don’t know what to do with this weight, I think.. I’ve got to work on this some more 
Still, this is a good discovery.
This week two more students tested. We have a new green belt and a new blue belt. They did pretty well, but I am completely amazed at how many excuses adults have. Their heads are full of them. Can’t they just listen and say ‘yes’ like they were taught when they were kids? Talking back is a privilege, not a right.
Ooh.. That’s good.. I’ll reuse that.