I showed him this since he wanted to see my hooks.
He never wrote back.
The psychological war is definitely half the battle.
Not what I asked.
Who exactly is this boxer you had the aforementioned conversation with?
I began TMA back in the 80s. After a year of judo and TKD at the local gym the instructor/owner changed and we shifted to very traditional karate. We did endless hours of conditioning, single drills, 1-2 double man drills, bag and makiwara work, but very limited and stiff sparring and point-competitions. One day I went to fight at an event outside of normal organization ones. I warmed up, did some stiking on a free heavy bag to get the adrenaline up and then had my first fight.
I got horribly bloodied up.
The guy I fought was lower ranked than I was, but was in a school where they sparred freely almost from the first classes. He later told me he went at me realy hard from the start because he had seen me hitting the bag and I looked scary doing it, because I had great power and technique and I looked like serious business and whatnot.
BUt you know, the ol’ boards don’t hit back" and all that. I had absolutely awful fight footwork and reflexes and I generally sucked in every sense as a fighter, no matter how well I could air-strike or hit things that don’t evade or hit back.
I think this had something to do with the OP but I may be rambling.
Also, in my later experiences, I came to suspect that learning book-perfect techniques in non-alive fashion often meant that when trying to use them in alive scenarios, they nearly had be relearned again because of the differences in contextual dynamics.
I still believe in the importance of fundamentals work and limited/isolation drills but they are there to build upon and ramping up aliveness is crucial, I think, and I believe is something of a local ethos, too.
Getting all single-minded trying to judge progress or skill level ON the basic isolation work can be very self-deceiving. My being hardcore at hitting the bag only meant I got a bigger beating. But hey, that was me, that was the 80s, and it was TMA competition. So take with a truckload of salt.
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Absolutely. OP doesn’t realise many of us made the same mistakes he is making right now. Most of us drank the TMA cool aid at some point in our lives, only to come short in a real test. That’s why we know he is full of shit.
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This is the hardest kick I have ever thrown and it’s ugly as shit.
Insane power.
You mean facing someone who can box? Yeah did not go too well first time around. but I adapted and got the better of him towards the end.
I am not doing TMA.
Hint: there’s a heavy bag.
Who are these boxers you say are afraid of your skills and/or that you got the better of in sparring?
Crossfit?
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That’s fair because you aren’t really doing anything of substance. Kyokushin is a TMA and they can actually fight. Your bag work looks like garbage. That’s not a personal attack on you, that’s a criticism you need to take to heart. You need to be treating the bag like it’s going to hit back at you. And someone hitting back at you is not going to let you do your cool pose after you throw a spinning back side kick.
My base is TMA and we have used heavy bags since back in 1981 when I started. Yeah, they were already in use back then. Who would have thought?
If that is all that you got from what I wrote then I obviously just wasted everyone’s time. Sorry for the noise folks.
I know. They used it in the 70s in the original TaeKwonDo style.
However, I don’t consider it TMA. It’s usually side activity.
I am just recently getting into heavy bags. We only used shields.
Getting some nice cracks now when I switched to Nike shoes that I can pivot on.
Even though it’s padded, I can go harder this way. The impact isn’t contrained. Better on the knees .
The one kick that’s really bad on the knees is this instep round kick. So I’m sticking to high kicks since it’s softer up there on the bag.
Still waiting on the names of those boxers…
Those cracks are your microphone.
No, it’s the chain jumping
Based on my observations, and, practical experience with similar mindset in Judo I ran across from time to time over 35 years in:
He is commenting on the “perfection” of isolated technique, and trying to justify it by some very limited anecdotes about himself in sparring situations.
I think ksennin’s post was spot on, and I’m kind of riffing on that.
We had similar issues in Judo, and do to this day, especially outside of professional judo coaches.
The practical application in judo competition of kihon (basics). Is it better to “spar” from the very beginning, or should one build up competency in the basics first?
As a Judo coach, and one who was even a professional coach, for a while, I say “Why not both”.
Because splitting the kihon from practical application is a false dichotomy.
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We did spar day one in my school, hard enough that you better keep moving.
The downside for me was that I got stuck with a brawling light heavyweight who was also a white belt, which meant that I couldn’t develop any sparring technique beyond neccesities.
I also never trained with someone my speed. So once I did face a smaller fast guy, I had problem engaging. I was still fighting as if I was the lighter guy.
Speed being equalized with the smaller dude was very difficult to adjust to. I had to try something else now. But I had no training in anything else…