Training with a Partner

[Damian (Instructor)]

Instructor Jason Lincoln wrote:

Damian,

Hi Ross Sensei! It has been a while since I talked with you, I just wanted to check and and see how you were doing.
I have been doing alright. Chipping away at some classes, majoring in criminal justice. Also have been taking courses in Bujinkan Ninjutsu, it is a pretty fun Martial Art. Six are Samurai traditions and three are Ninjutsu. I’m sure you heard of it before.
Anyway, while I’m on, had a quick question…..You know how training some people are, some do not have a lot of motivations for hard practice. How do you usually deal with that? I was thinking about just having them do the moves very slow on me and replicating the effects, like when they kick me in the balls I would kneel over in acting, sort of like how Tim Larkin from Target Focus Training does. I know it isn’t like we do it, hitting full bore on a bag, but some people I have found don’t motivate the way we do! What do you recommend? Is the TFT style the way to go with these types, of course I will be using techniques from our system, not TFT……
I hope you have a Good Thanksgiving, later…..

Thanks @Jason Lincoln, it’s great to hear from you and good luck with Ninjutsu.

To answer your question it’s NO PROBLEM having your students visualize the effects with some dramatic reenactment, but I would severely limit this to the instructional portion of the class.

For example, you demo the technique on a person. Then you have the student’s walk through the technique slowly on a training partner.

Finally you go to the drill on the pads and targets where they can hit 100%.

What you don’t want to do is have them train on their partner the majority of the time.

It doesn’t develop any power and creates a false sense of success. This is the downfall of self defense systems and martial arts that train to pull their technique.

When someone thinks that every time they strike or stab it will take out their attacker that is a HUGE mistake. As we all know the majority of the time you will miss or have to dig in and go harder and faster.

That’s the secret to our training and why it works. You must train with urgency and distress.

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