One example to illustrate the point-the show Top Gun. Competition with shooters of various backgrounds. Nationally rated shooters taken out of their sport environment who suddenly can't hit the target. Why- taken out of their normal enviroment adds stress and they fall apart mentally because they haven't trained for that environment. Does it happen to all of them-no. But to quite a few.
Not sure what isn't true......mental shift, change in enviroment, and it's been documented time and time again. Perhaps not your reality.
Have you read "Meditations on Violence"? I invite you to it might give you something to think about.



Duane

Prizewriter,
Under stress there is a shift in brain activity once the heart rate starts to climb over 170 bpm. Brain activity shifts from the fore brain-rational thought to the mid-brain-survival reaction. If the concepts have not been trained under stress those ideas, tactic, principles are left behind.
You might want to read the book , "Sharpening the Warriors Edge" by Bruce Siddle.
That shift then leave open the Fight,Flight or Freeze response. The fight may result in ineffectual/inappropriate responses, etc.

Duane

yeah, but take a deer hunter onto a skeet shoot, and give him a shotgun, and he will not excell in the sporting environment either.

Application of skill in a given environment is an adaptive process.

If you look at fighting, for sport or for defence, there are more parallels than differences in the environments one adapts to.

In a ring, your oponent is looking to dominate you through physical action. His motivation is to overpower you, and gain 'victory' as judged by an outside party.

In a personal attack, your oponent is looking to dominate you through physical action. His motivation is to overpower you, and either take property from you, or to harm you for the sake of it.

In either case, you are dealing with someone who's goal is physical domination, and, if we are talking in terms of a fist-fight, the mechanics are pretty much the same. There are only a finite number of ways to use your limbs, head and teeth to inflict injury, and just because biting and butting are not permitted in most fight sport, doesnt mean they dont happen, and doesnt mean that the delivery systems trained in those sports cannot deal with them as they arise.

Its not that TMA cannot, or uniformly do not, deal with these concepts, its just that a lot of schools have lost the 'martial' in the art, while in sport-fighting clubs/schools, they have narrowed and focused the 'art' and have the 'martial' as defined priority.

Send a 10 year old kid to an average karate class, and in 6 months he has a different coloured belt, earned through good conduct, and the learning of a pattern of movements done in isolation, not applied against another person.

Send the same kid to his local boxing club, and in 6 months, he has hit, been hit, and will be just about ready to fight against someone who wants to knock his head off his shoulders.

Win or lose, the lad who takes that boxing class will be better prepared for an attack in his playground.

A fight is a fight. Win by KO, or win by surviving to walk away, the mechanics of a physical unarmed encounter dont vary much IME.

Suppose it depends on how you define stress. I could define someone trying to take your head off in a boxing ring as a "stressed" situation. I could define a 100 kg Judo player trying to slam you in to the ground as a stress situation. These are forms of stress testing IMO, although they are not the only stress tests that could be applied in training.

Thanks for the book recommendation BTW, I'm always on the look out for something new to read!

Yup, and if you train judo or boxing you get used to it. It's called stress inoculation. Change creates stress-good and bad-and each person is effected or affected-can never remember which is which-by it individually based on prior experiences, good and bad, psychological make up, etc.

Duane

Duane, I will try to check the book out, I have not read it yet. I still disagree with you if you are trying to say that only "sport" martial artists are likely to fail outside of their training environments. TMA are just as likely, if not moreso (due to frequent lack of resistance) to have that problem. Nothing can replicate a real fight. Period.

I agree Matt. It is entirely possible to use SMA outside of a sport enviornment. Look at the videos I posted. You had someone who clearly has been trained in boxing taking out two opponents very quickly, even though they don't implicitly train multiple opponent drills in boxing.

Look at the clip of the Judo player taking down an armed robber. I bet they don't teach weapon disarming at his Judo class, but he was able to apply his Judo skill in that situation.

I take Zach's point though that a martial arts class shouldn't advertize that you are learning "Street self defense". I don't think any class should advertize itself that way because I've yet to see any RBSD or MA that offers that sort of training properly. Of course you CAN use things learnt in training, be it it MMA, SMA or TMA, to defend yourself outside of class. The videos I linked show that.

The problem with your argument is that it is only based on found successes, and not anything else. Can you imagine what could happen if a Judoka starting turtling in real life?

For sure it's a habit you develop along with everything else, and it's a terrible one outside of Judo! Do you believe these things just disappear in real life, or is it more likely that the videos involve alot of stuff that isn't measurable in terms of what art was trained?

To be honest Zach I don't imagine it. All I have to go on is the reality of what happened and evidence to hand. The evidence in the example I found demonstrated a Judoka using his skill to subdue an armed robber. I don't worry about the could'ves and maybes, I looked at what actually happened. There are endless possiblities that can be debated, but all I have is what actually happened. For sure Judo doesn't have all the answers and has a lot of gaps, but it's also true that a Judo player used his skill to overpower an armed robber. Asking what would happen if he did XYZ instead is IMO irrelevant. He used his training to prevent a crime. End of story as far as I'm concerned.

We had a similar debate on another thread about the uses of Judo Zach, where you made the point that Judo is a sport and it is almost entirely trained as a sport where a Judo player tries to overcome another Judo player. This is quite true. However, my position is that just because Judo doesn't implicitly teach a student about how to restrain a criminal or tackle someone trying to punch you doesn't mean a Judo player can't figure it out for themselves and use their training in a variety of ways. Indeed, the very nature of Judo and arts like is that you don't know what's going to happen next, so you have to adapt to what's going on in front of you and find an answer for yourself.

As in the other thread though, I guess we shall agree to disagree, although again the debate raises some good points on both sides.

Look, seeing as how we are talking judo at the moment, 2 guys I used to work doors with were both serious level competetive judoka (2nd and 4th dan respectively), and let me tell you, 'turtling' was not on the agenda. When you watch martial sport fights, be it boxing, K1, Judo, MMA etc, you are watching 2 trained fighters, who are familiar with one another's skilsets, and so the match becomes even.

Put 2 boxers in a ring, and it becomes a long winded fight, as they try and 'unlock' the doors in eachothers defences. Put a good boxer against 'Mr Angry' outside a pub, and Mr Angry is more than likely going to sleep.

Same with judo. Messy as hell when its a fair fight, but when in a judoka dealing with someone with no skill or ability to read what is being done to them? I have seen squaddies turned into chew toys and rag-dolls in seconds.

A fair example of what happens when Mr Angry enters range of a good judoka can be found below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INUfcK_aF2c&feature=related