Re: Sport vs Street—tired old debate, but..

[Damian (Instructor)]

FEAR
In this argument, we focus on the external factors which are all true. But the one point we miss is the internal factor…fear which produces:
Urgency and Adrenaline.

Anyone who has stepped in the cage, int the ring or on the mat will tell you that the adrenaline rush is incredible, but after the first 30 sec to 1:30 sec the rush is gone and you’re working on strategy, your game plan or…losing.

Training live with training partners in the studio is helpful, it’s good conditioning and develops your spirit. It can also teach you about distance and position. But it also creates some problems. You get mentally lazy. You can coast when you want to. Even if you create an environment that steps up the action (we have a series of drills that put external factors into play that will do that) at the end of the day you KNOW your partner isn’t trying to kill you.

Sports teach you to wait and find an opening, set the pace and work with in the time limit.

A Fight requires you end it by what ever means necessary and as fast as possible.

ITS LIKE NASCAR and DRAG RACING.

Both are cars with specific purposes. Both will technically perform in each other’s arena, but will get crushed. There is no way a NASCAR will hang with a Drag Car on the street and there is no way a dragster can run on the NASCAR circuit.

Same goes for sports and combat. Against a good street fighter, a combat sport or MMA guy will lose. If you reverse the situation and put that street fighter in the ring, he’ll get spanked like a newborn baby. They both have a “puncher’s chance” but the their respective arenas, they have the odds on advantage over the other one.

The problem exists that there is no real TEST other than combat, for real SD skills. This poses a huge problem. SD methods fall victim to the old game of “Telephone”. The farther away you get from the source, the more convoluted the message. Techniques taught today are either misapplied or lost their relevance. Instructors continue to extrapolate, and imagine what will happen without reflecting it against the real world.

The result is something that is neither effective or useful. Instead they put their own SPIN on it and off they go. You must stay true to the nature of things. Technology and environment aside, hand to hand is as technically evolved as mush as it can. The only changes are in training methods and instruction. NEW styles don’t exists, I’m sorry. There’s only what has a high percentage of success an a low percentage of success.