Hi,
This is a clip about aliveness training in martial arts:
http://www.graugart.dk/temp/sbg.wmv
what do you think of this?
is your wing chun training “alive”?
or do u think that u do have to learn co-operative training first and then later do the alive training i.e learn to walk before you learn to run etc?
regards,
Faze.
Heh heh heh.
If you didn’t hate me before, you just might now.
Most WIng CHun training…I wuld say a good oh..90 % of it or so, is trained ‘dead’. Few train it alive. All the drills are dead.
This doesnt mean you cannot make it alivce,…it’s just seldom if ever taught that way. However, when I release my vieo tapes, you too shall learn how to become a devastating fighter using Wing Chun in an alive format.
lol. Sorta kidding, sorta not.
I trained with Matt. He is correct. This should get interesting…we can call this “the sparring thread part II”. 
i agree i think… couldnt load the link too slow.
most drills are ‘dead’.
i believe my chi sau is alive, or rather awake - for the sleepers are only half alive,
and yet not simply awake, rather aware.
and yet not simply aware.
chi sau is the silent talk, not sleep talking, but beyond conscious movement.
Wow!!!
That is a wonderful clip! Matt is right on the money.
I understand the idea that the video is trying to express.
With that being said, I believe that both dead and alive exercises have their place in training. When to use dead and when to use alive is really what is important. I also think that dead exercises are much more important than alive.
The purpose of dead exercise is to try and execute the ‘technique’ as perfect as possible in repetition in order to commit it to memory and make it an ingrained response/reflex instead of a thought.
The purpose of alive exercise is to evaluate the combat effectiveness of the learned responses in order to find the weak areas that need more work.
The problem that I find with alive exercises is that if done with a martial art brother/sister in the same style/school you are not truly able to analyze the effectiveness.
In a real fight the truth of the matter is that neither you nor your opponent have any idea what the other can do or is going to do. When practicing the alive exercise with a brother/sister they DO have a good idea of what you can do or what you will do to a given situation. This can cause the brother/sister to react differently than someone on the street since they know how the energy works.
To seriously utilize alive exercise you would need a partner who has no working knowledge of your art.
Alive exercises are closer to real than dead exercises, but they still are not the real thing.
Just my spare change.
Kevin
Fortunately, my sound card isn’t working, so I didn’t hear anything. But certainly what I saw was worthless.
Spectre…I agree with most of your post except the part where you say dead training is more important than alive training. it’s the other way around.
was that wing chun?
was that wing chun?
I think it was JKD based on how he said unfortunately 90% of JKD schools train dead.
the sparring thread part II".
Dead on.
!
KenWingJitsu wrote:
If you didn’t hate me before, you just might now. KWJ
IMO part of success is being hated by the right people. 
TN
Most WIng CHun training…I wuld say a good oh..90 % of it or so, is trained ‘dead’. Few train it alive. All the drills are dead. KWJ
Agreed. All pattern drills are dead. You can never develop real fighting skill with dead drills. TN
This doesnt mean you cannot make it alivce,…it’s just seldom if ever taught that way. KWJ
IMO most mistake the basic drills as the end-all of training and not merely the beginning. What is important is understanding the concept of “aliveness” in training – once you “get it” you’ll be able to use it to move beyond the basic level; if you don’t, you’ll never develop. TN
However, when I release my vieo tapes, you too shall learn how to become a devastating fighter using Wing Chun in an alive format. KWJ
LOL! “Aliveness” isn’t that difficult a concept. TN
Terence
hey,terrybaby,forget being a lawyer,with lines
like “part of success is being hated by the right people”,
i see a big future for you in writing greetings cards!!!
RUSSELL.
captain wrote:
hey,terrybaby,forget being a lawyer,with lines
like “part of success is being hated by the right people”,
i see a big future for you in writing greetings cards!!! C
I was paraphrasing what I thought was a fairly well-known quotation (by singer-songwriter Johnny Cash). I guess I shouldn’t overestimate the education of my “fanclub.” TN
Terence
Originally posted by KenWingJitsu
Spectre…I agree with most of your post except the part where you say dead training is more important than alive training. it’s the other way around.
I suppose it depends on what is being focused on in your training. Neither dead nor alive exercises by themselves will be the key to training. It takes a combination of both and a constant reexamination during each type to make either of them useful.
The reason I believe that dead exercises are more important is that they are teaching the movement and technique to the mind and body in order to ingrain them as a reflex/reaction instead of having to think of what you want to do in a fight. If they are not reflexes and you have to stop and think about it, all of the alive exercises in the world will not help you.
The second reason is that basically it is hard to find an individual who wants to participate in alive exercises who knows absolutely nothing about the functionaity of your art. Because of this the dead exercises will take a larger percentage of your training time than the alive.
Again, just my spare change.
Kevin
Originally posted by t_niehoff
[B]captain wrote:
hey,terrybaby,forget being a lawyer,with lines
like “part of success is being hated by the right people”,
i see a big future for you in writing greetings cards!!! C
I was paraphrasing what I thought was a fairly well-known quotation (by singer-songwriter Johnny Cash). I guess I shouldn’t overestimate the education of my “fanclub.” TN
Terence [/B]
What does education have to do with musical tastes?
Terence,
‘this is to all the people in the Nashville music industry who’ve helped me along the way’ (paraphrased). I think the sentiment behind the image with this quote is relevant here.
Patterns- do you mean A then B, or A or B then B or C. Making the jump from one to the other is the foundation of making something live (as later problems become differing forms of resistance).
Spectre,
even ‘programming’ reflexes can and should be done ‘live’- with the timing and energy of a real attack, as well as variability to prevent falling into pattern. This is what even soft poon sao should do, though it often becomes mindless choreography. Choreography, ‘dead’ training, should be performed just long enough to get the pattern, and even then, I prefer to teach ‘patterns’ by shaping them from appropriate mechanics animated by appropriate energy receiving appropriate impulses to create the right shapes. Just making shapes is, IMO, useless.
Resistance and sparring are just part of something being done ‘live’. Thai boxers (in thailand, in the Netherlands, not at the local meatgrinder) train very gently, quickly, and with good timing, but are quite conservative with their bodies, working on specific things to play and learn. Constant unfocused brawling is, at a certain point, counter-productive.
All this being said- Thornton is dead on. Most people don’t like to play live 'cos of either ego issues or fear of pain. That’s part of the reason most people aren’t very good.
Andrew
Andrew S,
You sum it up rather neatly :“All this being said- Thornton is dead on. Most people don’t like to play live 'cos of either ego issues or fear of pain. That’s part of the reason most people aren’t very good.” It always is a humbling experience for me when I put on the gloves and see so little from so much that I can actually do. My feeling is skills comes from being coached from the one who know. What is a genius? One who knows what others do not know and see what others do not see.
Regards,
AndrewS,
What are your opinions on alive exercises with a partner who is ‘in style’ as oppossed to someone who has no knowledge of your art?
For even alive exercises to be useful, your opponent/partner would have to be different every time to be true to the randomness of reality.
If the same handful of partners are used each time than an educated knowledge of the offense and defense of the partner can skew the effectiveness of the technique when used on an unknown on the street engaging you.
Once again, alive exercises ARE closer to reality than dead, but they are still far from reality. Can the alive exercises actually give you a false sense of security when faced with reality?
What are your thoughts?
Kevin
Kevin,
there are plusses and minuses. My main training partner and I both do escrima, and we box rounds for fun every so often, working on basic boxing skills and timing. Over the last two years we’ve played boxer against WT, each of us putting on the gloves and making things fairly real (while being careful of each other’s safety). Over that time we’ve both learned each other’s timing and holes, closed holes, found new ones, tried new tricks, etc.
End result- we hit each other about as much as when we started. End result with other people- we are both way better at dealing with boxing attack from others (and I train with a number of people with significant semi-pro ring time).
I think because we know each other so well, we are more effective at boxing each other than most people with more experience- we make tougher opponents for each other.
As to the knowlege of offense and defense- yeah, that could be limiting if you didn’t have creative partners with a rich depth of martial experience, or work with people outside of your group to pick up new tricks, or cross-train. That’s not my situation.
False sense of security? I’ve dealt with ‘reality’, as have many of my peers. We don’t encourage that sort of delusion in our juniors.
Later,
Andrew
Just a quick question to those who have done sparring “aliveness” training.
I haven’t done this sort of training before but it always seemed to me from what I saw on videos that Wing Chun sparring disintegrated into a boxing match.
For one, the use of gloves means that a hit that would normally knock someone out or at least make them “brain blink” doesn’t make them react as badly and a normal follow-up Wing Chun strike or technique couldn’t be used.
I would also have thought that gloves would prevent half the strikes, locks and manoeuvres that I have learnt.
Just wondering what the experienced guys have found. Can you really do Wing Chun with gloves on?
“I haven’t done this sort of training before but it always seemed to me from what I saw on videos that Wing Chun sparring disintegrated into a boxing match.”
There’s nothing inferior about good technical boxing. It’s not a low art.
Wing Chun “disintegrating” into flailing about says nothing about boxing but everything about the quality of the practitioners concerned.
“For one, the use of gloves means that a hit that would normally knock someone out or at least make them “brain blink” doesn’t make them react as badly and a normal follow-up Wing Chun strike or technique couldn’t be used.”
Have you even been hit by a competent gloved puncher? It is hardly like getting hit with a pillow, as you are implying. Go to a decent boxing gym and find out for yourself.
You’re not telling me you spar full contact bare knuckle with shots to the head allowed are you?
“I would also have thought that gloves would prevent half the strikes, locks and manoeuvres that I have learnt.”
Perhaps, but the half (IMO it’s more like 80%) that you can are your bread and butter anyway. If you can’t do those with gloves on, you probably won’t be able to do them barehanded either.
“Just wondering what the experienced guys have found. Can you really do Wing Chun with gloves on?”
Yes, you can. Not everything, but most of it.