Re: Is Studying Martial Arts A Waste Of Time?

[Damian (Instructor)]

Good points Omer.

The one thing I have come to terms with is sparring and it’s lack of value in the street.

I have a lot of sparring trophies and have done point fighting, Olympic TKD and kick boxing. I enjoyed it and thought that “getting hit” and learning how to take a shot was important.

It’s not.

In fact, allowing yourself to get hit is a problem.

Because now you need to depend on the other guy to give you an opening for attack. He has to miss (a lot) or not be able to hit with any real power. as you know in a real fight against a tough SOB (why bother training for anything else) he’s going to hit you with a barrage of attacks.

Because of adrenaline you’re either not going to feel the attack or you’re going to be knocked out.

In sparring, you can “take a good shot” and still fight through it if the guy backs off. This is when either the action stops (point fighting and Olympic TKD) or you get knocked out. Further more, sparring teaches you to score and not obliterate your opponent.

This fact completely changes the tempo of your training. There is no hit, hit, wait. There’s only HIT AND KEEP ATTACKING!

That’s why you train in massive bursts of power in the SDTS and try to keep pushing it longer and harder with shorter recovery time.

Systems that teach you to wait for an attack, use a “flinch mechanism” as their primary defense are setting you up to get killed. Personally all I need is one shot and it’s over – because one leads to two, two lead to four and four leads to the floor – you should feel the same way too.