http://itdl.org/Journal/Jul_04/invited01.htm applies quiet nicely to martial arts Could even use it as a argument against traditional styles
Excellent stuff! That would depend on what you see as "traditional." If you go back beyond what is widely considered as "traditional" in martial arts you will find small groups taught informally and coached as individuals
In my experience a traditional martial art isn't taught anything like the swimming class scenario in the article. Neither is it taught like a university lecture. It's true the class will go through katas and drills as a group. However there will be times when the class peels off into smaller groups. In these smaller groups the more experienced students will tutor and help the lesser experienced students. This gives some students valuable teaching experience which reinforces the principles, ideas and techniques in their minds. It also allows other students to receive the more personal attention they may require. Even one-on-one. The teacher is also free to attend to those students who need his help the most. Working together as a class drilling through katas etc does have advantages. Besides helping students develop a sense of timing, rythm and spacial awareness, the teacher can see at a glance who is progressing and who isn't since anybody out of step, facing the wrong direction or in the wrong stance sticks out like a sore thumb. Yes this can make the student feel awkward and unconfortable and they may feel the urge to panic. However by virtue of the fact that something is classed as a martial art, most people expect to develop some degree of self defence capability. If a student can't handle being embarased or the threat of the teacher raising their voice it is unlikely the student will be able to use their skills for anything beyond the dojo. Both large and small classes have their merits and I wouldn't argue against either one. Personaly I'd look for a class that has elements of both where you can work together as a class, mix with many different practitioners but also get to work in smaller groups.
Good article. Makes me wonder whether my first step in introducing people to sparring is simply to have them gear up and get sparred on for a bit. Not worry about offense or really even defense. Just cover up and get used to the idea. Light contact to begin with, then more contact. Sort of the sparring equivalent to getting used to the water.
Yeah, I'm going to need to try that. Strikes me that the biggest obstacle to working technique in sparring is the constant anxiety over getting hit, getting hurt, hurting someone else, blah, blah, blah. If people just felt more at easy in that "environment" it'd free us up to play with technique more.
I love the article. Though I do find one "contradiction" or perhaps speed bump that I was wondering what other people thought about: Competition and sparring One of the main thrusts of the article is that, beyond using strict group methods, the emmination of competition and relative ranking helps ease teaching pressure. And I can buy into that for most aspects of a class. However, when we get to the area of sparring, I think things change a bit. In swimming, you can run a lesson without racing. Or as in his final example set a class goal that everyone can achieve. But what he didn't do was place students into direct competition (ie. who can tred water the longest). Sparring is direct competition. Even in the most cooperative sparring situation, there is still competition. So how do you ensure that the competition doesn't derail the learning process? - Matt
I am in agreement with you Matt, and has some relevance to a link I posted earlier. Because sparring in inherent to studying martial arts, so too is competition, for the simple sake of ego. If you could go into a situation, not worried about offending the other person, then you could potentially learn about techniques you use, timing, etc. But as sparring goes, you get hit, a button of annoyance is pressed, and either you become scared and just cover up, or you try and 'hit' the other person back. The more experienced you become, the less times the button is pressed - and you do start to experiment with your own techniques untill sparring becomes what it should be, and exercise to try out different techniques. The second problem is that when you spar, you are trying to beat someone, and so someone has to 'lose', in whatever way you look at it. Its learning to take the positive from that experience, and build on a weaker area, rather than become disheartened by losing. and this takes realising that when you beat someone, its not beating them perse but improving yourself; then losing also becomes an opportunity to learn about yourself. However, this unfortunately again takes experience; perhaps the word sparring needs to be 'rebranded.' As a learning exercise, and not a competition for your own ego. Sorry for going on, just my two pennies...
I'm not really big on analogies. But here goes: The way I was thinking about this, sparring wasn't analogous to competition between two swimmers. It was analogous to the relationship between swimmer and pool. I was thinking about sparring as an environment. So when he advocated letting each swimmer come to terms with that environment in their own way, I was picturing sparrers doing likewise. Gearing them up and getting them used to the feel of having someone come directly after them. Keeping their head under pressure. That sort of thing. And then encouraging them along whatever lines become apparent as they get used to that environment. That's too vague to be useful in and of itself, I realize. Stuart
I unfortunately don't understand where you guys are coming from - I can't agree with the swimmer-environment thing, because from what I understand, (and I'm probably wrong!) in the way the gentleman explained his situation with the swimmers, the biggest obstacle they had to overcome was their own fear and how to deal with that. When you spar, the biggest problem I see to date is your (being the general masses) ego, which isn't a problem when you are learning to improve yourself in an indiviually motivated learning environment, (ie if you don't put your head down, then you only dissapoint yourself, and no one has overcome you, whilst if you lose in a sparring situation, you have been overcome by someone, or that is the general interpretation.)
I don't believe that really. For one thing, competitive or not, ego is still going to enter into it. If you're the kid who stops treading water first, you're still going to be keenly aware of that as you climb out of the pool. And of the fact that you're being watched by not only classmates but parents and teachers. I don't really believe that fear of the environment could ever be the only concern in a social setting. Competitive or otherwise. I'm also surprised to hear you say that ego is the issue rather than fear in sparring. It seems to me that fear about getting hurt, hurting someone else, etc. are intimately tied to sparring performance. And to ego actually. Without putting your fear in check first, you're not really free to try things out. I think that fear has to be resolved to some degree before you even get the chance to expose your ego to the beating. Stuart
So, at the risk of overintellectualizing this, do you have a progression you follow in getting sparrers "used to the water"?
