Post by Bob Davis on Aug 15, 2016 19:58:16 GMT
and another share from FB
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Compliance or Non-compliance.
There is a big thing in the applied karate (and self protection world in general) about how effective will your "fancy" techniques be on "the street"
Part of that is the idea of having to be able to make it work against a totally non-compliant partner, makes sense doesn't it?
Let's look at the idea in more detail.
There has long been a problem in many martial arts where training partners will just fall over on cue, whether your technique was effective or not, because that's what is expected. The drill says your partner does this and you end up on the ground (or what ever other situation applies), this is a particular issue in those clubs that train "by the numbers", everyone knows what to do and when to do it. Coming up through the ranks I've trained with many partners who have fallen over BEFORE I've even done my technique because that's what they do when it's their turn This is compliance at the extreme end but is very common in traditional training.
The problem with this is that nobody ever really needs to learn an effective technique to get the desired result and consequently even a perfectly workable technique will likely fail IF you ever really need it, not because it's a bad technique but because you never really learned it in the first place. This leads to loss of faith in your art and opens up the art to (quite justifiable) criticism as being ineffective in the real world, despite the fact that it's not the art that's at fault but the way it's trained.
The obvious answer to this is to be able to make your technique work against a totally non co-operative non compliant partner, if you can do that it must be good right? However, this leads us to another fallacy and the discarding of a lot of tried and tested techniques because they "don't work under pressure" and are obviously part of the rubbish that clutters traditional arts (and that's not to say there isn't any clutter ).
What needs to be understood when being the non-compliant uke is that you are in the privileged position of knowing in advance exactly what's coming (which makes it much easier to resist) and you will not have been "softened up" by the preceding strikes because your partner is polite enough not to have caused you harm up to this point. It's easy to be a dick and staunchly resist all your partners attempts to apply their technique if you are prepared, well balanced and fully functioning which takes us full circle back to the idea that the art is ineffective (rather than the way it's being trained).
You need to be aware that ALL training drills are basically play fighting (no matter how "real" your art is) if they weren't then you are not training, you are fighting and it won't be long before you have no one to train with. Non-compliance still requires a good measure of play acting to be a useful tool for learning. This will still leave you open to the "it's not real (like what we do), you just pretend to fight" criticism.
I suspect that to a large extent this has helped with the rise in the popularity of grappling arts for self defence (despite their very obvious shortcomings in the outside world), you get to test your technique against a non-compliant partner within a very clearly defined rule set and it feels real (and it is, within those rules).
We get criticised for the ineffectiveness of our arts because it's far easier to train "live" as a grappler. I know it the old chestnut that "we can't train live because what we do is too dangerous" (despite the fact that a lot of people who use that excuse are about as dangerous as a kitten in a bag of marsh mallows) but it is true. Your take down, control technique or escape may be awkward or hard to apply against a resisting partner but ask yourself how resistant they would really be having been smashed across the back of the neck, struck in the head with an elbow, kneed in the groin or punched in the throat first.
So the upshot of this long ramble is that both compliance and non-compliance have their place in the scale of learning and all that is required is an understanding of what you are trying to achieve with any particular drill. Don't be overly compliant to the extent where no one is actually learning anything (other than choreography), on the other hand don't be a dick (just to prove how hard you are) and be non-compliant to the extent where once again no one is learning anything. Remember, drills are drills, just training tools, NOT fighting, so you don't need to win.
********************************************************************************************************************
Compliance or Non-compliance.
There is a big thing in the applied karate (and self protection world in general) about how effective will your "fancy" techniques be on "the street"
Part of that is the idea of having to be able to make it work against a totally non-compliant partner, makes sense doesn't it?
Let's look at the idea in more detail.
There has long been a problem in many martial arts where training partners will just fall over on cue, whether your technique was effective or not, because that's what is expected. The drill says your partner does this and you end up on the ground (or what ever other situation applies), this is a particular issue in those clubs that train "by the numbers", everyone knows what to do and when to do it. Coming up through the ranks I've trained with many partners who have fallen over BEFORE I've even done my technique because that's what they do when it's their turn This is compliance at the extreme end but is very common in traditional training.
The problem with this is that nobody ever really needs to learn an effective technique to get the desired result and consequently even a perfectly workable technique will likely fail IF you ever really need it, not because it's a bad technique but because you never really learned it in the first place. This leads to loss of faith in your art and opens up the art to (quite justifiable) criticism as being ineffective in the real world, despite the fact that it's not the art that's at fault but the way it's trained.
The obvious answer to this is to be able to make your technique work against a totally non co-operative non compliant partner, if you can do that it must be good right? However, this leads us to another fallacy and the discarding of a lot of tried and tested techniques because they "don't work under pressure" and are obviously part of the rubbish that clutters traditional arts (and that's not to say there isn't any clutter ).
What needs to be understood when being the non-compliant uke is that you are in the privileged position of knowing in advance exactly what's coming (which makes it much easier to resist) and you will not have been "softened up" by the preceding strikes because your partner is polite enough not to have caused you harm up to this point. It's easy to be a dick and staunchly resist all your partners attempts to apply their technique if you are prepared, well balanced and fully functioning which takes us full circle back to the idea that the art is ineffective (rather than the way it's being trained).
You need to be aware that ALL training drills are basically play fighting (no matter how "real" your art is) if they weren't then you are not training, you are fighting and it won't be long before you have no one to train with. Non-compliance still requires a good measure of play acting to be a useful tool for learning. This will still leave you open to the "it's not real (like what we do), you just pretend to fight" criticism.
I suspect that to a large extent this has helped with the rise in the popularity of grappling arts for self defence (despite their very obvious shortcomings in the outside world), you get to test your technique against a non-compliant partner within a very clearly defined rule set and it feels real (and it is, within those rules).
We get criticised for the ineffectiveness of our arts because it's far easier to train "live" as a grappler. I know it the old chestnut that "we can't train live because what we do is too dangerous" (despite the fact that a lot of people who use that excuse are about as dangerous as a kitten in a bag of marsh mallows) but it is true. Your take down, control technique or escape may be awkward or hard to apply against a resisting partner but ask yourself how resistant they would really be having been smashed across the back of the neck, struck in the head with an elbow, kneed in the groin or punched in the throat first.
So the upshot of this long ramble is that both compliance and non-compliance have their place in the scale of learning and all that is required is an understanding of what you are trying to achieve with any particular drill. Don't be overly compliant to the extent where no one is actually learning anything (other than choreography), on the other hand don't be a dick (just to prove how hard you are) and be non-compliant to the extent where once again no one is learning anything. Remember, drills are drills, just training tools, NOT fighting, so you don't need to win.