Matt Thornton of Straight Blast Gym has been championing aliveness for years. Basically, you will have the best results if your training captures the pressure of the event you are training for in some way.
Watch this video (mainly the first six or so minutes), and comment. Do you have it? Can you learn without it?
Aliveness. Do you have it?
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I know your looking for responses on the aliveness, but there was something else in there that has been hitting home to me a lot more recently. The magical black belt and above techniques. I have been training with a teacher that will teach the same class to white belts and black belts. Same principles and everything – the difference, the black belts are better. In SKK we do not have a single leg hock in a combination until brown belt – thats a possible 2-3 yrs down the road – This no longer makes sense to me. Oh man what to do.
It’s funny – Professor Kimo teaches a leg hock at yellow belt…
In all seriousness, what I like about the video is that it dispels a few myths about aliveness. It’s not just senseless bashing or being a pain as a workout partner. I felt it was reassuring.
When coaching, we talk about cold, warm and hot defense. When we’re learning a skill, play, whatever, we will often start with a ‘cold’ defense that is little more than a body, and soon move to a ‘warm’ defense challenging at 50%. Once we are up on the basics of the skill, we train hard with it.
If we live in a land where there is no resistance, we will never know what to do when we encounter it. However, if we are doing the courtesy of not hitting as hard as we can, you don’t get to resist full on. Resistance must be proportionate to what the attacker is allowed.
Hummm?????
1) to Jesse: by “leg hock” I think u mean where you “throw” the opponent by taking out, say, his right leg from behind with your right leg. Taking out his plant leg, so he goes down. Am I correct?
If so, then that “throw”, or “nage” in Judo, is called “O-Soto Gari” (Big Outside Clip) (it is a foot technique “Ashi Waza”), and it is one of the “standards” of Judo. It is taught right off to beginners, along with the basic hip throw (“O-Goshi”), basic shoulder throws (“Seoi Nage”, either “Ippon Seoi Nage” (one arm under his arm/tricep) and/or “Morote Seoi Nage” (two hands, one on his sleeve & the other gripping his lapel)) being classified as a “hand techniques (“Te Waza”), and some foot/leg sweeps throws.
As for not having a leg hock takedown in a Combo until Brown Belt, I’d have to think about that, go over the Combos.
As for “what to do?”… I dunno… teach it to them!!! as well as other fundamental throws and takedowns. They should have at least 10-12 throws , including leg sweeps. Hip throws, Hand/Shoulder Throws, Foot/Sweep throws, and Sacrifice Throws. A good sneaky throw, or sweep or takedown can end a situation right off.
2) as for the video on “Aliveness”.. hummm???? I agree with some of it, some good points. But……there are a number of “realities” to be considered:
Which I decided not to post.. Sorry!!!
@Todd – A leg hock is similar to O-soto Gari, but the upper body commitment is not as high, and the leg doesn’t go as high as with a major outer reap, but it’s close.
Good Stuff. I like the comment starting cold with the dead techniques and then moving on to about 50% and then later on to harder hits. As with most other martial arts, We start with the deadness for beginners and on to the 50% for intermediate and hard hits at Advanced levels.
Of course if we taught all levels with this in mind, even our White Belts can be proficient in defending themselves just as well. I do a bit of this for my students but not as much as I would like to. Plus in this day and age with a greater population of our students being children it is hard to justify the constant hard hitting aliveness but I like the motion aspect and we work on that at least once a week with everyone.
Good Stuff.