“The way to win in battle is to know the rhythms of particular opponents and use beats that your opponents do not expect, providing formless rhythms from rhythms of wisdom.” Miyamoto Musashi “As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.” Confucius “My opponent dictates how they get hit”
Nasser Butt
A
ny traditional martial art worth their salt have forms, solo ‘patterns’ or kata, and training methods, two person drills that we practice to test our form using the resistance of a second person. There are some in the martial arts world that say that forms are useless, and that all we need are training methods. After all you are only going to be fighting people, what's the use of a movement without a specific technique? If you can’t use it in a fight, then what's the use of the movement? With the increase in popularity of sport based martial arts, the traditional forms are seen to be more and more useless by the majority of modern practitioners, unless the technique can be adapted immediately. I remember when I thought the same during my early years of martial arts. Every sparring session and competition I went to was constantly fuelled by the need to have, ‘a tool for every situation,’ and in some respects it worked, as long as I was faster and or stronger. It was only after I came out of sport oriented, weight class-controlled matches that I realised that in the area of self-defence, I was more than likely to be outmatched in both strength and speed or at least one or the other. I felt the only way to even the odds would be to know more and more techniques to cover every eventuality. I would play out scenarios in my head always saying if this happened I would respond in this way. With this came fear, fear of trying to predict the opponents next move and when learning weapons, it was even worse. After all, even a foot and a half long piece of wood could cut your head open or kill you if well placed. Every class I went to left me trying to clear my body of the stress of controlled situations.
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