Cool Moves
Please note that we are NOT the original writers of this blog post. All credit goes to the original writers. Find the original post as published at this link: http://www.functionalselfdefense.org/blog/cool-moves/
Then it was time for the second round, where we can add kicks, knees, elbows, and clinch. His boxing skills seemed to instantly disappear. In the second round, he couldn’t touch me, and I could hit him at will.
When he tried to include kicking and kicking defense, he was too busy thinking to respond in real time. When I tried to add his evasive movements and particular covers, I had been too slow to make them work.
We both happened to have a rest at exactly the same time, and he complimented me on what I was doing. There was a boxing ring next to us, and I told him, “Well, I wouldn’t want to get in the ring with you! ” He replied, “I wouldn’t need to get in the ring with you! ” We talked a bit more, and figured the best thing for us would be to get in the ring for a little sparring, and to share our knowledge.
The difficulty here, especially for a beginner, is knowing which techniques are high percent and which are not. If my partner and I coached this elusive movement more, I’m convinced we’d be able to make it work. Looking at a favorable result though, understanding how it would work and where it would place a practitioner if it did work, I think there are better choices in most self defense situations. There are likely exceptions. However, with limited training time I lean towards focusing most on techniques and training methods that we know are high percent for self defense. What techniques are these? My website and books are full of them.
The next time I met with my training partner for practice, we began drilling these new boxing moves. After drilling them for more than one hour, it was time to test them in light sparring. A couple of the techniques worked well, but the one which I thought was the coolest, an evasive technique that combined footwork, body/head motion, and switching leads, didn’t work at all for us. We had been too slow, and hadn’t trained it enough. Additionally, in contrast to our standard high proportion substance, even the new methods that worked didn’t work as well as what we normally used.
With all the coaching and teaching I’ve completed in functional self defense, I found myself viewing cool moves and temporarily switching my focus to them. But we will need to understand when to continue and when to switch course, otherwise we might get stuck going down a path that isn’t ideal for us.
In the first round we limited our light sparring to boxing just. I felt like a 6 year old sparring with an adult competitive boxer. He managed to evade, parry, or pay every punch I threw, and to counter my attacks with awesome counterpunching skill. He gave me a few pointers, and showed me the mechanics of some of his footwork and evasive motion.
However, if we would rather train a mixture of techniques that are as effective and efficient as possible for self defense, then it probably doesn’t. Could these new methods work in self defense? Definitely. But are there higher percentage techniques/movements? I believe so.
High Percentage Techniques
I showed him how he could easily add a few kicks to his toolbox, how he could use knees and elbows in the clinch, how he could defend against kicks and clinch entrances, and so on. With his ability in footwork and movement, I guessed it would be easy for him to immediately apply that stuff. And I’m sure he figured it would be easy for me to apply his footwork and evasive motion.
If you’re training toward a target (a boxing fight, a karate kata competition, self defense proficiency, etc.), the techniques you should train most are the techniques which have the highest percent likelihood of achieving your goal. There’s an important difference between what is possible and what is probable. Many moves from other systems might seem and feel cool to do, but unless your goal is to look cool, your time will be better spent on your own high percentage moves.
Cool Moves
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Recently I was exercising at a gym, hitting a heavy bag. A bit into my workout another man started hitting the heavy bag next to me. He was obviously a very skilled fighter, and his technique was wonderful. Standard boxing is the first thing I teach from the MMA Base, to get practitioners accustomed to space, position, timing, throwing punches, getting punched at, and so on. But I’m no professional fighter. So this guy next to me was moving and hitting the bag in a manner that I’m not able to. He’d very cool moves.