First Post

Right or Wrong

So in class regardless of what system/style i’m teaching theres something I see almost every session, its the brain fart, that moment someone and their training partner are running through a drill and BOOM one of them stops with a bewildered look and will mutter “oh thats wrong isn’t it”

they’ll have stepped left when it should have been right, they’ll have hit with the right hand when it should have been the left, they’ll have done something that they know isn’t the drill they watched me demonstrate and they stop n stall and start again.

Obviously if your drilling a technique you want it to be right and you want the technique/combination to be as picture perfect as possible BUT in reality nothing you do will look like a drill, it won’t look like a technique or a pad combination and it certainly won’t work out like it does with a complacent partner. When we drill things in class we’re going through a make believe scenario, theres far too many variables involved in a real situation to ever say “you’ll definitely be attacked like this” or “this technique will work no matter what” We set up these drills and scenarios so you have context in which to place the technique, the technique is just a rough blueprint, a operating procedure for you to follow to get to a end result, its not gospel, you should be able to adapt it to suit you and your ever changing position and you’ll only gain that skill and confidence by not stopping during the drill and thinking you got it wrong, keep going until the end of the technique or until you get to a position of safety. It might not be exactly how the drill was shown but you kept going, you kept fighting, you adapted, you reacted and you didn’t stop. If you stop mid drill/fight then your attacker will get the upper hand because your not doing anything to stop them, you need to continually be defensive, counter offensive or offensive, the moment you stop any of those you give opportunity for your partner/attacker to gain the upper hand.

Once the drill is over then you can stop and think “i think that bit was wrong” or “i could do that bit better” but make sure you stop after the technique. So you stepped the wrong way or you moved to the inside instead of the outside, the main thing is that you kept going and made yourself as safe as possible during the situation. In reality you won’t have time to stop and worry if the technique was picture perfect and in reality thats not what matters, what matters is your safety. given the variables of any physical altercation it’d be impossible to train for every single variation in every type of scenario, we take from the highest percentage and work from there, if you get a bit wrong deal with, adapt and over come.

Don’t think of things as right or wrong way, think of it as  “No Right Or Wrong Way Just A More Preferred Way”