A couple years ago a Muay Thai player came to visit the school.
He hadn’t competed or trained in several years but he still had some very powerful kicks and his movement was deceptively light and agile.
He was quite friendly and we got to play and compare notes on Muay Thai and Kuntao
When he felt the power that Sigung Clear can produce his first reaction was:
“Man, You should go compete!”
This wasn’t the first or the last time we’ve heard this.
…and not just from sport martial artists.
Many Internal Martial Artist, who have felt what these arts can do, are waiting for the day when an internal artist will start cleaning up in MMA type competition.
I hate to disappoint them but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Competition is just not what Tai Chi, Silat, Bagua & Xing Yi are designed for.
These arts are reality based self defense arts.
…and it’s very important to understand the difference between Competition & Competitive, when sparring with these arts.
Your sparring SHOULD be competitive. In that you are comparing your self to your training partners. and you are using these comparisons that come about in sparring to find holes in your skill and to fix those holes.
However, it should NOT become a competition.
When sparring becomes competition it becomes about winning the game.
…anything that doesn’t help you win the game is now a waste of valuable training time. So the more you try to win the further your training gets from what you need for self defense.
In reality based arts your sparring should always be about building skill.
You are not trying to beat your opponents. You are using them to help you find errors in yourself and you are helping them find their own errors.
Each sparring game focuses on a specific skill or group of skills.
Keep in mind which skills you are working on each time you spar.
Our new DVD: The Art of Sparring teaches you the games drills and sparring methods to build self defense skill with reality based marital arts for self defense.
You can save $103 on this 2 disc set if you order by Monday Feb 23
Details are here:
http://www.clearsilat.com/self-defense/the-art-of-sparring-how-to-pressure-test-your-art-12067.html
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