If you use fingerless 4oz MMA gloves, is there really that much limitation on what you can do? I can agree with this to some degree. When I do groundfighting, for example, I'm supposed to try and submit the other guy, when my instinct is often to just try and stand up as quickly as possible - which would probably be a better idea on teh street.
It's a difficult one. For instance, last week we were working a drill to punch the attacking arm as it comes in. I demo'd it with bag gloves on, one of the guys was firing off punches at me and I was wacking his arms. We then tried it without the gloves - it took one bare knuckle hit and he stopped punching. I find gloves can be usefull for some things - in mass attack for instance they can reduce the risk of injury a bit. I guess there has to be a compromise for safety somewhere, whether it's in speed, power or protection if you aren't going to injure people every session. cheers
I didn't say anything about how hard the punches are. I said the speed of the punching. I doubt anyone who fights you will actually give you that much time to recover inbetween punches.
Quite right often you can be hit with a combination. Whilst in Russia we witnessed a miilitary boxer use a systema expert as a heavy bag. All he did was tire himself out and hurt his knuckles. Practicing these drills allowed him to do this. Paul Genge
Interesting. Did the systema expert just breath in-and-out very quickly or what? Another thing: Bruce Lee said to keep your teetch clenched when fighting because if your mouth is open and you get hit in your mouth, your jaw could be at risk of breaking. What do you have to say about that?
Yes that's correct, if your jaws open and you take a hit on it will more than likely break. Though I must add I don't think Bruce pioneered the "closing your jaw when fighting approach"
lol...but that was in his movies. I doubt he made all those monkey noises through his mouth when he fought for his life on the streets.
There's a short clip of some of that incident here http://www.systemauk.com/video/MOSC1.WMV cheers Rob
"If you want to learn to hit someone then you have to hit someone" My instructors response when I asked him if there were any bag drills in Systema when I first started!
The instructors can probably answer this better than I but I'm going to anyway I know couldn't take hits from Mikhail yet like the guy in the clip!! but in my training in class it didn't take too long a month or two maybe just to get the hang of the initial steps. Then your confidence grows from there. Once I learned to relax and let go then it came together pretty quickly. I've been smacked with sticks, chains, fist and foot and it's all been delt with....the cossack whip is another story though THAT still scares the hell out of me
I'm not done reading so some one may have brought this up. But this seems like a good starting point. This would be a good way to *start* learning how to take hits. Then you have to go to sparring. And I don't know about you, but we do hard sparring with only cups and mouthpieces. I think it's been about 3 years since we'be had anything that could be counted as a serious injury, and any time we do have one, it can always be traced back to some one doing something wrong (usually something that would have resulted in the same injury even with pads). If you train for it, contact sparring is not nearly as dangerous as everyone makes it out to be. You just have to adjust. Don't try to strike through the body, just a little into it. When I hit, I want them to definately feel it. I've bruised ribs, but I've never broken any. I think that the end point is the part that people miss. On the street I'm going to try to essentially punch through a guy (if I through a punch), whereas in class I stop it a little into the body. Change your target a little and you can still make pretty good contact. I hope that makes sense, I probably repeated myself, I always have trouble making this point in real life, much less here.
In some ways your approach is good because you are learning to react against full speed hits. However how can you say you are doing full contact sparring if you are pulling your punches? You are simply ingraining the habbit of holding back. Trust me I have been there. In real combat you will hold back out of habbit. Paul Genge
This ma sounds very intresting. I've always wanted to try Russian ma after playing Dead or Alive 2 . In all seriousness, I wonder if there is a school here in Aus.
There have been a couple of Ausies who have made the trip to Vlad's. It is worth checking out his site and seeing if any of them are near you. If not you are in the same boat as the rest of us and forced to do serious travel to get your training. Good luck with the search. Paul Genge
There is no way that guy hurt his hand in that demo becasue he was hitting hard. If he is trained in any Martial Art he wuld not hurt his hand that easily. My JuJuitsu teacher used to do that to us all the time. From behind. the legs and all. I doubt that he was hitting as hard as he could also.
hey c any of u du kung fu? If u got into a fight in the street would u attemp a high kick to the face like???
er I seem to recall watching a UFC match where the fighter won by KO but he came away with a broken hand!!!
