Training in isolation...thoughts on sparring....

[bailewen]

Hi there.

This is an old topic that I sort of feel like revisiting after the last couple posts on the palm slapping thread.

...as you progress, and as you spend more time in training, this reliance on what your teacher says must be replaced as soon as possible with your own opinions/experiences...

...Well ok ....

No, I train by myself these days ...[snip]... So, no, other than direct contact with my teacher (who is in Shanghai and I'm in Florida), I have little experience using [xyz] ...

I edited the exchange slightly.

I'm also in a situation where, for the most part, my only experience these days is direct contact with my teacher. Fortunately, we both live in the same city so that experience is fairly frequent but...and this is a big BUT...he's actually kind of from that old school of thought that does not advocate much sparring and he absolutely does not allow me to go out and spar with whomever I may meet outside of class. I am definitely from the "new" school that says that you should spar at least once or twice a week and get as much time crossing hands with folks from other schools as possible. I also think competing before your ready can still be positive as long as you have the right attitude.

This has always created some tension for me in training. I asked Shifu one time if he didn't think that this was sort of training in an ivory tower or as they say in Chinese, bi men zao che (闭门造车). He said how could I think I was working in isolation when I have regular interaction and corrections from him? Good point I guess.

It's also not that there is no "live" training. Push hands with him can be downright scary and there is the occasional "one step" sparring with him too. No choreographed but not fully freestyle either. Intense examinations of the initial exchange. He's not opposed to eventual sanda type competition either but it's the sort of thing he feels is only appropriate after you have gotten, in his opinion, pretty fucking good. He tests your reactions and even the two man Baji is generally jumped into without him telling you either which side you are supposed to be playing or where in the form he's jumping in.

So how isolated is this?
How far can you trust your Shifu to gauge your progress?
What happens after a sparring session when you "win"? When you "lose"?
How does that affect your other areas of training?

I realized recently that part of his opposition to random sparring sessions is his firm belief in the absolute importance of cultivating an "empty" attitude. Wu Su De/无所得, you can only achieve something great by discarding any and all achievements. Sparring matches tend to disrupt this.

As a final note, it's not like I haven't done plenty of cross-training and sparring with friends anyways, just not in China. And also, the last time I came back from China, my gong fu friends were all startled by the progress I had made...so his plan seems to be working. When I did spar with people, I had was still better than before and my push hands had improved dramatically. It also probably helps thatＩhad a nice solid 7 or 8 years of Hung Gar before ever going to China but still...

On a side but related note, I was listening to this Aikido podcast recently where the guy talked about improvising withing Kata.He compared it to someone like John Coltrane taking what was originally one of the most insipid tunes none to man but playing it in a way that was just genius. This relates, I think, to how much of the highly structured training I do comes to life.

Kind of a long post. Almost thing I should have put it on a blog or something as I still have more to say on this.

[Juan]

Well, from my experience my skills really jumped once I joined the MT gym and started sparring at least 3x's per week with guys from my gym. What's more I was speaking to one of the trainer at the gym (not our main Kru) about gettng more ring experience before I make the jump to full amateur. I told him that me and other guy from the gym where going to get together to do some hard boxing. He said that was good but that he was going to organize meetings with another gym in order to get some hard sparring in because he felt that in order to get really good you need to spar with folks from from outside your own gym.

[bailewen]

Yes. That is certainly the mainstream view.

I'm just starting to see that there are some things that I can just not learn from sparring around. My Shifu has a very peculiar skill set and it's also a different thing to try to acquire a particular style and its essential nature as opposed to setting "just" fighting skill as your goal.

My own logic is trumped by the empirical evidence of my own Shifu. His own skill contradicts what the common wisdom (regarding how to train) would seem to prove.

[Mut]

Omar, there is a place for both schools of thought. From what you say it sounds like your teacher teaches in a very structured manner in terms of bringing the system into your fighting. I bet that your one step sparring is with commitment in terms of the attack coming in (i.e: you miss you hurt). This can really help to develop who to use your system against other things. While I advocate this method myself I also enjoy the free- sparring side of things. The problem I find with having too much free sparring to early on in your development is that you do just tend to revert to basic kicking and punching methods without really developing understanding of your systems strategies. There are a couple of guys that I train with who love their MMA. They have added in the wrestling and BJJ as well as lots of free sparring. What I have seen of this has lessened their understanding of the strategies that our system uses. Now they have peeled back a bit from the free sparring to work in a bit more of a controlled environment to develop understanding. As a result in free-sparring both have now learned better how to apply our systems strategies and also how this compliments their other training.

Essentially I think that while free-sparring is great it needs to be introduced slowly as the student begins to understand how to use the methods and strategies of the system they train. The difficulty is timing.... leave it too long and the person can get in trouble when things free up, do it to soon and the person may not understand what to do and revert to basic method of kick and punch.

[AllanF]

Interesting topic, my own teacher tries to get us to develop the taiji body and mind set to fighting but at the same time we do free push hands. Basically it doesn't matter if you win or loose as long as you are trying to do it the taiji way. In the beginning this is difficult as when you are caught in a vulnerable position there is a instinctive reaction to fight it but over time your understanding gets better and thus you improve. Even the idea of not caring about winning or loosing is difficult to comprehend at first. We also have people from other groups, Tanglang/Taiji/Yiquan etc come over to practice push hands (our PH is anything goes except striking the face, so throws/lock body strikes etc are fine). But we generally do go looking for others they come to us.

I and one of my training partners did go to another group once but in ended badly, the group we went to was mainly concerned with striking when you PH and first i pushed with a student who after i pushed his elbow up and off balanced him complained of having a very sore stomach (i never touched his stomach). As a result the teacher (apparently, i was told afterwards) was worried about loosing face. And came to push with me at first it was fine then after a couple of mins of him trying to off balance me and throw me unsuccessfully he punched me in the mouth and split my lip open. After that i figure 'ok it's on now' so i caught him with 'jin ji du li' but only lightly put my hand on his chin to let him understand what i could have done, unfortunately this didn't work and he tried to punch me again but missed. So i stopped and said if he wanted to fight all out then we will but don't use push hands as a way to get cheap shots in. Later he came and met my teacher and apologized so it is all ok now. Same thing happened when i 'famous' taiji teacher came to our group to do push hands with the Laowai and after i unbalanced him 3 times he started to get very aggressive and had to have his hand pulled from my arm, left a bruise there to.

So i think that as long as people understand and respect the rules then there is nothing wrong with sparring with others but i feel that perhaps in China with the risk of loosing face things can change quickly and then the productive practice is lost. It is perhaps this reason the traditional teachers say you should stay in house until you are ready.

[Teazer]

How far can you trust your Shifu to gauge your progress?

One thing to consider is the ability of other students he has taught before you. Do they have respectable fighting ability given however long they've been training? That would be some evidence in favour of his method.
I can appreciate not wanting students to jump straight in and end up kickboxing badly, but there is also value to well directed free practice and some kinds of sparring.

[DeusTrismegistus]

Hi there.

This is an old topic that I sort of feel like revisiting after the last couple posts on the palm slapping thread.

...as you progress, and as you spend more time in training, this reliance on what your teacher says must be replaced as soon as possible with your own opinions/experiences...

...Well ok ....

No, I train by myself these days ...[snip]... So, no, other than direct contact with my teacher (who is in Shanghai and I'm in Florida), I have little experience using [xyz] ...

I edited the exchange slightly.

I'm also in a situation where, for the most part, my only experience these days is direct contact with my teacher. Fortunately, we both live in the same city so that experience is fairly frequent but...and this is a big BUT...he's actually kind of from that old school of thought that does not advocate much sparring and he absolutely does not allow me to go out and spar with whomever I may meet outside of class. I am definitely from the "new" school that says that you should spar at least once or twice a week and get as much time crossing hands with folks from other schools as possible. I also think competing before your ready can still be positive as long as you have the right attitude.

This has always created some tension for me in training. I asked Shifu one time if he didn't think that this was sort of training in an ivory tower or as they say in Chinese, bi men zao che (闭门造车). He said how could I think I was working in isolation when I have regular interaction and corrections from him? Good point I guess.

It's also not that there is no "live" training. Push hands with him can be downright scary and there is the occasional "one step" sparring with him too. No choreographed but not fully freestyle either. Intense examinations of the initial exchange. He's not opposed to eventual sanda type competition either but it's the sort of thing he feels is only appropriate after you have gotten, in his opinion, pretty fucking good. He tests your reactions and even the two man Baji is generally jumped into without him telling you either which side you are supposed to be playing or where in the form he's jumping in.

So how isolated is this?
How far can you trust your Shifu to gauge your progress?
What happens after a sparring session when you "win"? When you "lose"?
How does that affect your other areas of training?

I realized recently that part of his opposition to random sparring sessions is his firm belief in the absolute importance of cultivating an "empty" attitude. Wu Su De/无所得, you can only achieve something great by discarding any and all achievements. Sparring matches tend to disrupt this.

As a final note, it's not like I haven't done plenty of cross-training and sparring with friends anyways, just not in China. And also, the last time I came back from China, my gong fu friends were all startled by the progress I had made...so his plan seems to be working. When I did spar with people, I had was still better than before and my push hands had improved dramatically. It also probably helps thatＩhad a nice solid 7 or 8 years of Hung Gar before ever going to China but still...

On a side but related note, I was listening to this Aikido podcast recently where the guy talked about improvising withing Kata.He compared it to someone like John Coltrane taking what was originally one of the most insipid tunes none to man but playing it in a way that was just genius. This relates, I think, to how much of the highly structured training I do comes to life.

Kind of a long post. Almost thing I should have put it on a blog or something as I still have more to say on this.

If you spar and are concerned about winning or losing then you will not develop to your full potential. That attitude will keep you from developing certain skills because quite frankly when you try something new it usually doesn't work. You have to keep trying it until you can do it on a regular basis.

I am going to guess that when you and your teacher push hands or do one step sparring you are isolating a particular thing, whether that be a movement, energy, or skill. That lets you build that into your body and make it part of you.

Take for example a specific movement like fair lady shuttles. In a normal sparring bout you may be able to use that movement once or twice in a few minutes. If you are not very good at the movement you may only be successful 50% of the time. So if you spar for 10 minutes 3 times a week you would get roughly 16 successful and 15 unsuccessful fair ladys a week. whereas if you work in a more limited environment with the intent on practicing the movement, not winning or hitting the opponent or whatever, then you can do at least 6 a minute at a decent pace, and with the same success rate you would get 75 successfula nd 75 unsuccessful attempts in the same amount of time. Since you can likely do this for longer and more frequently than free sparring also your quantity within the same time period will be higher also.

You can get very good sparring a lot without focus. But there are things that will greatly help your sparring that you cannot get without spending time on them specifically and without getting rid of the winner loser mindset.

[bailewen]

Just did one of those thing where you spend 10 minutes writing a response and then your browser crashes. . .

Mut:

Yes. Pretty much that's where it's at. I would be easier to deal with if I wasn't so isolated. That's why I think it's partly a trust issue...that or just plain insecurity on my part.

Teazer:

Following up on what I said to Mut, I train mostly just one on one with Shifu so it's hard to say how his other students are as fighters. Shifu is a hell of a fighter but he never competed. Xi'an was just a very violent place when he was in his 20's. His own Shifu was a military man who personally killed a lot of people so Shifu's attitude towards fighting is kind of "old school".

Allan:

You mentioned a lot of reasons he doesn't allow random push hands but in regards to winning and losing, the importance of not caring if you lose is good to think about but far more overlooked is that danger to your progress that "winning" can cause.

Deus,

Many good points but on a side note, I would barely use Fair Lady in even 100 rounds of sparring as I only really understand it as a grappling move. As a high block + palm strike, I think it sucks ass. Just look at the pic Juan posted of him getting kicked in the ribs when he tried it that way. It's more of a grappling move. It's an excellent counter to lead arm control. If your opponent tries to raise your elbow, let it raise, empty it out and shoot the palm out with the other arm. It's a grappling counter, not a striking move.

[Andy_S]

Omar:

Interesting topic, and some interesting points.

Do you think his attitude stems from:
(1) When he was coming up, he fought for real - strike, close, throw, finish - rather than sparring; or
(2) Sparring practice tends to develop "kickboxing" habits, hence his prioritizing the acquisition of style-specific gongfu well in advance of his students mixing it up; or
(3) He does not want any of his students to lose as it will be a face loss for him.

Do any of his lads get out and about and mix it up? If he insists they spend a couple of years learning the basics fine. If it is "never," I'd say that is problematic.

[bailewen]

He has sent students out into both competitive push hands and shuai jiao competitions, just not recently AFAIK. I have also been on hand when he was invited to help coach other folks push hands teams as they got ready for comps.

And I think that all 3 of the ideas you mentioned are absolutely relevant. There is one 4th one though which is that ultimately, he hopes to take his students "beyond" the fightiness of it all. He has deeply held spiritual beliefs which suggest that at the end of the day, there are more important things than fighting.

[qiphlow]

if you are trying to learn your shifu's complete system, then you may be better off doing it his way.

[jarvis]

When I studied Hung Gar it was traditional training, sparring was not covered in private classes & I only once sparred with one of my teachers best students for fun. All the same, what i was taught within a traditional or "old school" approach worked fine. There was a formula to the study & I didn't question it. FWIW i would trust your teacher, if you're getting the goods so to speak then you have nothing to worry about.

Phil

[CaliG]

I think when Chinese teachers discourage sparring with strangers we have to keep in mind that in Chinese culture your identity is based on what people think of you. So in their mind if we perform poorly it is seen as a reflection of our teachers to our teachers. I think they have a hard time understanding that westerners don't see things that way. This is also why push hands can turn ugly in China... In the end I think you have to do what you have to do to improve so you either try explaining to your teacher that no one cares, or you don't bring it up or you just follow along.

[D_Glenn]

My chinese teacher said basically "what I have to teach you is the bagua shenfa or bagua's way of fighting, if you want to simply learn how to fight there are plenty of other arts out there that specialize in just that. There's a saying "the new student is kept locked in the school for 3 years" meaning you shouldn't try to use these methods until the shenfa is ingrained, after you 'have it' it's not easily lost and you can do what ever you want with it." ... "but learning to then fight with these bagua methods won't come from sparring it will just all fall into place at some point during your practice and takes place over the period of a few weeks as it becomes hardwired and you can see it in your mind's eye and visualize all the possible changes. Usually the period where a person feels the need to really spar comes right before this 'realization' and is often just passed over. That need to spar is a sign that you don't quite understand 'change' and are still stuck either in the past (learning what the 'change' was) or in the future (trying to anticipate 'change'), but gradually narrowing them to be in the 'present'."

Baji's shenfa is a lot more complicated then ours, and probably has a longer learning curve.



.

[bailewen]

For all the support for my teachers way of doing things, it makes me wonder what to make of this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4255

Now granted, "Our methods are too deadly for sparring...." has never been presented to me as a rational but still, Tim's article makes a number of powerful arguments for the critical importance of plenty of sparring if you want to develop real fighting skills.