Why I don't give a crap about how "hardcore" your school is anymore

[Wounded Ronin]

Less "hardcore" training could be a gateway to more "hardcore" training. I started out doing JJJ (generally considered less "hardcore", more RBSD style) as a teenager who didn't do well in sports and lacked physical confidence. For a time, I probably had many of the traits ("too deadly" excuses, etc) that people rail on this forum. However, several years of JJJ was my gateway into judo, with regular randori. It was a good introduction to judo because JJJ and judo techniques have many similarities. At the same time I was practicing judo, I did many TMAs, but eventually I basically ended up focusing more exclusively on judo as I got used to sparring.

After I'd done judo for 4 years, I decided to revisit standup with sparring, just like I'd progressed into grappling with sparring, so I ended up doing kickboxing for about a year.

My point is that less "hardcore" training, while valid on some level in and of itself, can progress into more "hardcore" training with sparring, "aliveness", etc.

Contrary to the spirit of Eyebeams' rant, perhaps sticking with less "hardcore" training if you're really interested in martial arts is a form of stagnation? Of not upping the level of your training even when you know you can. Just a thought for discussion.

Lastly, Eyebeams: since you write RPGs, you really should become an ultra martial arts badass. That way, when people make disparaging RPG nerd remarks, you can savagely kick all their asses and totally upset their expectations. As they lie broken and bleeding on the ground, you can sneer, "I read Stephen Kenson's Shadowrun novels, I *liked* Talon, *AND* I ripped you all to shreds. What does that make you!?"

Doing something like that would be worth at least 5,000 EXP.

[Wounded Ronin]

The only people hard core training is truly relevant to are:

Professions fighters (or those who training to be)
People in the Military
People in Law enforcement
and People in security (bouncers and that sort)

That's not to say people shouldn't train hard core if they want to, just stop being dicks about it, because then you're doing it for an ego boost and it's sad.

Hmmp, I disagree. The more exercise you do, the more HDLs (high density lipoprotiens) your body creates. HDLs reduce your risk of death by athlosclerosis, which is the most common cause of death in the US.

Therefore, I would argue that if a 30 year old dad wants to go all out and put himself through the most rigorous exercise he possibly can (a MMA club workout would be much more intense than a typical McTKD workout), he's taking steps to safeguard is cardiovascular health.

In other words, "hardcore" training is not irrelevant to most people, if only because the harder you exercise, the more likely you are to stave off a very common cause of death. I would argue that pushing yourself physically to be the very best you can possibly be is never irrelevant to anyone.

[eyebeams]

Less "hardcore" training could be a gateway to more "hardcore" training. I started out doing JJJ (generally considered less "hardcore", more RBSD style) as a teenager who didn't do well in sports and lacked physical confidence. For a time, I probably had many of the traits ("too deadly" excuses, etc) that people rail on this forum. However, several years of JJJ was my gateway into judo, with regular randori. It was a good introduction to judo because JJJ and judo techniques have many similarities. At the same time I was practicing judo, I did many TMAs, but eventually I basically ended up focusing more exclusively on judo as I got used to sparring.

After I'd done judo for 4 years, I decided to revisit standup with sparring, just like I'd progressed into grappling with sparring, so I ended up doing kickboxing for about a year.


My point is that less "hardcore" training, while valid on some level in and of itself, can progress into more "hardcore" training with sparring, "aliveness", etc.

I think a good method would be to not have to jump from school to school as you get acclimatized.

Contrary to the spirit of Eyebeams' rant, perhaps sticking with less "hardcore" training if you're really interested in martial arts is a form of stagnation? Of not upping the level of your training even when you know you can. Just a thought for discussion.

That sounds true enough, and developing more ways to help people stuck on such a threshold is one thing that I think would keep them from falling back on excuses.

Lastly, Eyebeams: since you write RPGs, you really should become an ultra martial arts badass. That way, when people make disparaging RPG nerd remarks, you can savagely kick all their asses and totally upset their expectations. As they lie broken and bleeding on the ground, you can sneer, "I read Stephen Kenson's Shadowrun novels, I *liked* Talon, *AND* I ripped you all to shreds. What does that make you!?"

Doing something like that would be worth at least 5,000 EXP.

One of White Wolf's VPs is a sanda guy, actually. He destroyed a counterpart from WotC in a charity boxing match three years ago. Then again, I think the WW guys took it more seriously than anybody else.

[SammyKing]

As some of you may note, I have "kenpo," listed in my style. It isn't EPAK. It's something of dubious provenance (Okinawan, apparently) that I trained in actively for eight years or so.

Going by Bullshido standards, the training holds up well for standup (there was some grappling, but the techniques were taught in isolation, with no set ground skills). There was hard contact sparring in virtually every class -- we just tried to take it easy on the face. The instructor was ripped and gave us weight training regimens two years into training. He knew the traditional conditioning exercises but didn't care for them. We almost never did "one-steps" of any sort.

It was grueling stuff, especially for me. I started out barely being able to get out 10 sloppy-ass pushups. I've never been particularly athletic and I was more timid that other folks I know about the degree of contact. But my friends (and some people who I couldn't let my 15 year old self show weakness around) were in, and I was in, so I stuck it out. It worked. I pretty much stopped losing fights after three years, the only exception being some judoka who pwned us in a friendly challenge and one Wolfgang Droege, a white supremacist who tried to kill me with a steel flashlight in 1993.

All in all, five of us stuck the class out for longer than two years. We either trained outdoors or in a church gym, and had to occasionally explain ourselves when we had to see somebody about injuries that stretched the gamut from a simple sprained ankle to a broken hand, a lumbar compression fracture and a stab wound from a "safety" knife.

Eventually the class fell apart for various reasons, I left Toronto and moved to my current town, and fell out of training. Getting back into it became more and more difficult because I suppose I was thinking from two different directions. Part of me couldn't respect some of the schools and wanted what I was used to, but when I got it . . . I came to realize that I'm not one of those guys who gets seriously into improvement through pain. I'm a wimp, in other words. But somehow, I stuck it out before -- so how the hell did that happen? What was the special quality that got me to the point of very rigorous practice, and what was the missing link I needed from a school to feel inspired again? Less rigorous training wasn't it, because I didn't respect it, but jumping right back in wasn't working either. This was exacerbated when I developed some pretty severe health problems that weren't treated until about two years ago.

That answer is something I think is relevant to the kind of talk we do here (well, during them times when shitflinging doesn't blow it apart, that it). I think I'm a pretty average guy. I am not someone who is "hardcore" by nature and I think that goes for a lot of people, including more folks on this board that would really care to admit it. It's natural for us to respect and emulate that drive and athelticism. It's healthy and useful to have these role models.

But it looks to me that this technique for self improvement (finding the best and using them as a guide) has taken over the whole concept of how to train and what art to choose. It's this kind of warped thinking that's made nutriding (including "counter"nutriding) a barrier to serious discussion. And it's why I no longer give a **** about how hardcore your school is.

I'll use "hardcore" to describe a whole bunch of factors, like the emphasis on alive training, heavy contact and conditioning as a prerequisite for success. We know that the arts that have these factors but out the most respectable fighters. What we are perhaps less willing to admit to ourselves is that the average person is not with the program for two reasons. First of all, they don't have the inclination for this kind of rough training, and secondly, they have a combination of myth and truth that tells them there's another way that won't let them beat a Gracie, but will give them the direction they need to deal with violence. Bullshido hates the myth, but when a true account of self-defense that doesn't involve a board "darling" comes up, nobody has anything useful to say. The analysis leaves hardcore, nutriding territory, and gets promptly polaxed, because Bullshido doesn't seem to have the intellectual tools to look at the kind of situations where average people and martial arts successfully get something done.

Related to this is the conflation between method and style. The CMA/anti-CMA threads are full of stupid noise relating to this. Everybody agrees that conditioning, live training and contact are key -- but this has nothing to do with techniques. How the **** can anybody actually figure this **** out if we're not even talking about the technical base any more? Then again, maybe that's the problem. There's some truth to the idea that people who like the aesthetics of martial arts don't like the fact and a big ************ who can take a punch can use that as 90% of his game. And really, if the best you can say about your art is that you tend to have more shaved gorillas, and the best defense you can come up with is, "Contrary to popular belief, we also stuff large primates into rashguards!" well, you're losing. You're arguing about how *un*necessary your training is.

The other problem is that we are no longer having any sort of conversation about how the average person can acquire effective self-protection skills and something of real value along with the sense of community and cultural practice. Yeah, I'm sure we can feel elite about how hard a regimen is or feel good that the fat guys wash out and the hippies cry, but this attitude not only keeps martial arts in a sorry-ass shape, but is the hallmark of assholes everywhere. I can only think of one period in history where everybody *did* adopt hardcore training as the basic way to do martial arts, but somehow, something tells me that emulating the sports culture of fascist Japan would be a fucking stupid idea.

I know it sems like I'm drifting, but it all comes together. What I've come to realize is that I stuck with the kenpo because it was smart about *progressively* applying intensity in a *personalized* fashion. And what I realize in my CMA now is the same thing taking place. Like I said, I'm an average guy. In the gap between kenpo and CMA, there were weak-ass schools that would not challenge me, and strong schools that I could stay with, but at the expense of so much initial discomfort that I was better off doing something else.

What I've noticed with this approach is that it also seems to actually fulfil the promise you hear so much in martial arts, about transforming a meek person into someone wioth increased confidence and solid self-protection skills. Contrast this with the typical McDojo attendee (who's too weak or has untested techniques under the hood) or athletic martial artist (many of them are, in my experience, already fit and aggressive *before* training). I appreciate this transformative effect and at this point, I'm interested in how to get it to work. My reasons are both personal (I have two kids *and* I'm trying to get back into shape without over training) and theoretical. It's definitely much more interesting than how terribly fucking important it is to be hardcore, since, as far as I gather, everybody already agrees with that.

Just some thoughts. I don't mean for this to have simple answers. It's just been something I've been thinking about.

Support.

Very good points. Yet, a lot of people are so full of themselves around here, they will not understand.

You have truely experienced martial arts. Thanks for sharing.

[Roidie McDouchebag]

I think Sakruba doesn't have "Great" endurance

Then I think you either haven't watched many of his fights, or don't understand physical exertion in relation to grappling, or we just disagree so fundamentally on what endurance means that there's no point in us discussing the topic further.

The point is that they didn't go from frail to badass because of genes.

Yes, yes, that IS the point.

Regardless of you genetic potential you aren't going to bring out its potential without training.

This is true.

And in the case of frail to badass you think the traing was light or hard?

I think that the hardness of the training is not necessarily relevant. In some cases it is, in some it isn't, but I can tell you from my experience, and from observation that the difference in conditioning produced by going 50% vs 100% is negligible. The difference in ability is noticeable, because if you are not ready for 100%, it'll catch you off guard, but that's a mental thing, not a physical issue.

[Goju - Joe]

Hmmp, I disagree. The more exercise you do, the more HDLs (high density lipoprotiens) your body creates. HDLs reduce your risk of death by athlosclerosis, which is the most common cause of death in the US.

Therefore, I would argue that if a 30 year old dad wants to go all out and put himself through the most rigorous exercise he possibly can (a MMA club workout would be much more intense than a typical McTKD workout), he's taking steps to safeguard is cardiovascular health.

In other words, "hardcore" training is not irrelevant to most people, if only because the harder you exercise, the more likely you are to stave off a very common cause of death. I would argue that pushing yourself physically to be the very best you can possibly be is never irrelevant to anyone.

Let me just clarify by hardcore training I mean things like doing full contact Rock'em Sock'em Sparring. Not rigourous training or atheltic training. Just whacking each other for the sake of whacking each other. Nothing wrong with it just that it's not the end all be all of training.

One of the most physically demanding classes I ever had was just skipping rope for an hour.

Physically greuling but not hard core.

[SuperGuido]

Last night I sparred for the first time in over 4 years. We aren't talking tappy tappy ****...we put on boxing gloves and basically went at it. During a bout with an instructor I got cracked in the nose, kicked in the groin, and kicked in the throat (that was fun).

Did I mention that I've been with my current system for about a month, and that I haven't sparred in over 4 years?

Luckily, I'm a stubborn asshole with a willingness to swallow my pride and return to get my ass kicked more...but can you imagine how much of a following martial arts in general would have if every school practiced like that right off the bat?

I agree that progressively more intense training is ideal, and that throwing students to the flames typically creates a nasty washout rate...which isn't necessary for civilian martial arts.

The only reason NOT to progressively increase intensity with new students would inevitably stem from sources of ego gratification...and that is simply pathetic.

[Yamabushi]

Hey dumbass.... Lungs are part of the cardiovascular system.

Only in the sense that blood passes through them. In normal health all blood that passes through the lungs comes out fully saturated with oxygen. The size of your lungs doesn't really effect that: what matters is the amount of blood you can put through the lungs each minute.

[Cullion]

Ah, so one of the things which changes as you get 'better cardio' is that you grow a more extensive network of blood vessels in the lungs ?

[Yamabushi]

No, your lungs are already extremely vascular. What happens when you train for endurance is that your respiratory muscles get fitter. As a result you can inhale more deeply and maintain a better breathing pattern for longer before becoming fatigued.