
We do not help our training partners by not putting them at risk
HEY GUYS,
Watching Sam and Saleh rough-housing the other day reminded me that training with someone of a much lower level should be embraced by the more senior student for what we can learn about ourselves, and not just considerd to be a teaching or mentoring situation.
Apart from being fun for all involved, it allows the senior to get an IDEA of how easily things could work against an ordinary, potentially lesser-skilled person {which would describe the average Bad Guy that is likely to attack a complete stranger} to get almost real-world results without all of the shit that comes with violence.
For the Junior training partner, as long as they do not have a loss of confidence it can allow them to see where continued training can take them, that progress stems from a better understanding of objectives that leads to better outcomes and not just trying harder, and that power comes from the correctness of application.
Seniors students do the same things but the results are poles apart.
However, progress is easier to attain if we are on a level playing field that offers no easy excuses.

As difficult as it is to imagine it, there must have been a time and place when the first violent exchange between humans took place.
So the first question that arises is, ‘what style did these two guys use’?
And then the thought of who taught them?
Obviously, no one taught them, after all this is the first-ever fight.
Whatever they did was instinctive, and innate.
The rules of natural selection would lead us to think that the Victor of this first-ever fight was whichever person was bigger, faster, stronger because when all else is equal these are the advantages that make a difference.
As is usually the case payback was hoped for but the loser, let’s call him Man #1 now had to find a way to overcome the advantages that his opponent had, let’s call him Man #2.
For instance, as a means to negate the superior reach of his opponent Man #1 chose to use his leg to reach in under the incoming punch.
Or perhaps Man #1 chooses to use better movement choices before engagement so as to be behind Man #2 and be able to attack from a safer position.
In short, the first fighting style was formulated,
Martial Arts had begun and the goal was to negate the advantages that Man #2 had over Man #1.
This is of course the goal of every organised fighting system.
To overcome any of our opponent’s advantages.
Somehow this gets lost, and it becomes about overcoming our own perceived disadvantages, and how we can improve our perceived disability.
We lose sight of it being how we can avoid things being done to us.
But somewhere inside we know that everything is about dealing with the other person’s advantages.
So as we improve somehow the threat we think we will face escalates.
Mysteriously Man #2 has also been training, the unknown threat becomes greater so that Man #2 is always better than us.
As long as we are thinking about our own lack of ability we are not working with a reference that has relevance in any potential reality.
A question we should ponder is ‘If we do not know the ability of Man #1 how can we avoid it’?
Without some level of understanding of this conundrum, it is quite possible that we are about to spend 20 years becoming the best in the world at the wrong thing.
We could be the world’s best grappler and get knocked out by the first punch.
We could be the world’s best striker and be immediately taken to the floor and choked out.
We could be the world’s best grappler and striker only to be hit in the back of the head with a stick.
When we become our own frame of reference, focusing on only our own ability all we do is feed our fear.
After all, if we have no IDEA of what Man #2 will do we are always stepping into the unknown.
That is the one thing everyone fears.
No matter why we began training in Martial Arts, or why we continue to train in Martial Arts the Martial Arts themselves have just one purpose, one desired outcome.
This ‘OUTCOME’, is the IDEA we are trying to understand through our training.
But we can get lost and begin to think that training is all about the method of achieving that ‘OUTCOME’.
This approach to training becomes a trap.
Can we avoid this in training?
For one thing, we could change how we describe to ourselves what we are planning to do and learn to avoid, not defend, the most common attack that we think there is.
Even when I do use a technique to defend myself If I engage Man #2s incoming strike I am avoiding being hit.
We will all have our own thought about what this attack may be, but there is always one that we worry about, one that tests our confidence.
Here is the hard bit.
Then we must give our training partners permission to do it to us, a complete free pass, at first within comfortable speed and force parameters but it must be done in a way that if we do not avoid it will making contact we will be hit.
When we play the agonist, the attacker, we do the same thing for our partner.
This is BEING A GOOD BAD GUY.
If both partners are of similar skill levels, and both commit to BEING A GOOD BAD GUY, the action/reaction of attack/defence will be the same from both sides.
The training objective and what we are trying to observe and understand in this exercise is how difficult it is, even when we try our best, to land a blow on someone with our type of training, even at our current level of training.
As I said at the beginning, seniors and juniors do the same thing, seniors just do it better, so our current level is always good enough.
This is inside-out training in many ways.
Here we are, the Bad Guy, trying our best to succeed but all the same failing miserably.
This is the aim of this exercise.
The harder we try, the more we fail, the better the proof that what we do has merit.
Think about it, if I try to land a true strike on my partner and he can prevent it then it stands as proof positive that the training works.
To be of value we cannot go easy on each other, it must always be as real as it can safely be, there should be a little uneasiness, a level of doubt.
A proper punch, even at half speed and half force, will have the correct shape and correct alignment, and more importantly, the correct intention and only the correct defence will stop it.
We must abandon any idea of going easy on our partners as they will with us.
What all training is really about is navigating risk.
We do not help our training partners by not putting them at risk, and in return they do not help us.
This next IDEA may sound contradictory, but once we are capable of dealing with these training attacks, situations that we can deal with, we need to deliberately pick it up to a point where we cannot deal with the attack.
In this instance BEING A GOOD BAD GUY translates to working faster, but still within acceptable force parameters than our partner can cope with.
Yes, squeaky bum time.
In this aspect of the exercise, as defenders we let our emotions run the show.
No false bravado.
Not standing our ground against our better judgement because we know it is only training and we know our partner does not want to hurt us.
If our partner is BEING A GOOD BAD GUY and going all in this will be the easiest part of that evening’s training.
We may flinch, we may duck or even try to get away under the onslaught but if we are both still in the same moment what we feel happening to ourselves under the attack will also happen to our partner when we attack them when it is our turn.
The training objective and what we are trying to observe and understand in this exercise is how our training method affects someone that is not ready for it.
Which will be everybody, think about it, no one chooses to attack someone else expecting to be battered.
At first, we will not be able to observe how our body and nervous system are usurping control, as we react without thinking, but once we review what just happened can pay attention to how we feel, we can get a first-hand experience of how a human being, any human being, all human beings respond to violent shock.
Underneath all of our training we are just ordinary people, and ordinary people are driven more by results than by methods.
Too many students spend their limited training time focusing on producing a movement via a prescribed method, instead of focusing on what that movement produces.
The most valuable use of training time comes from learning to improve something we already know.
The least valuable use of training time comes from trying to learn something new.
The ‘D’ MAN.