It seems that some didn’t see the value of the Sam Masich clip in my previous post. I think the utility of what was shown there deserves to be looked at from a different angle. In my previous post, I talked about their ability to stick and follow continuously despite the opponent “getting them” at certain times. But the clip shows other great things about such training.
Us fighting guys like to see knockouts and vicious throws, but we often forget (or don’t know) that such training is only ONE PART of the fighting paradigm. You don’t have to try to kill your partner every single time you practice together. Drills and cooperative play are also a big part of fighting training.
With that in mind, I offer two clips:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rAicu-IPjMw
This is a Chen style push hands clip that people like because Chen Bing slams his partner down, like a real man should. 
None of that sissie-boy stuff here. Take that, training partner! See what you get for working with me!
Now yes, I obviously agree that training MUST encompass what is shown here and you should have this ability. No argument there. But the idea that what is shown here is THE ONLY way to train, without the possibility of other training modalities, is deeply flawed.
Keep this in mind: if you know that your partner is going to slam the hell out of you every time you make a mistake, will you try moves that you aren’t good at already? How will you develop parts of your game that you’re weak on when the intensity is at that level?
You won’t.
Instead, you’ll learn very, very quickly that you must be as conservative as possible and not try anything that isn’t going to work right away. You’ll “turtle up” and only venture out when it’s totally to your advantage to do so. Imagine the range of motion that you’ll never develop this way or the hundreds of moves you won’t even try because you’ll get hammered if you even TRY them.
This is where the idea of play comes in. Consider the following clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NVgCO0lUO8Y
This isn’t play really, but it’s pretty close. This is Scott Sonnon doing what he calls softwork. The idea here is to be as relaxed as possible and try to go with the flow. In playing, you try your moves in an environment where there is much less pressure, so you can feel free to experiment.
Please notice that Scott makes mistakes in the clip! He moves one way sometimes when he should have moved another way. That’s okay. This is what training is for. Body flow happens in stages. You don’t just go from being Joe Schmo on the street to having great flow in a UFC-type environment. The pressure needs to be ratcheted up slowly in order to let you develop your skills. And when new skills are learned, play needs to be used.
Experimentation is a HUGE area that is often overlooked in fighting paradigms. Knocking people out and being able to fajing someone into next year every time you practice isn’t everything.
Either work this kind of play into your training or you’ll miss out on one of the major innovations that IMA brings to the table.
16 responses so far ↓
1 tomasz // Jun 23, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I like Scott Sonnon clip, i practice like that very often. this is great practice but what Sam Masich did is not. as i just wrote Sam Masich’s clip is like a bad version of tango, Scoot Sonnon’s clip is version of fighting.
2 Pepe // Jun 23, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Great post, I agree with you 100%. I spent (lost!) 5 years learning push hands the hard way to only get ’skilled’ in little tricks to win and keep my ego high… Was it CMC who said to ‘invest in losses’?
So far, all Yang san shou videos I’ve seen are as bad as or worse than Sam Masich’s… Never saw a real san shou practice (not a partner form, or a master beating a student) of Chen or Wu styles. Maybe you could write a post on this subject!
3 faik // Jun 23, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Well, with your “play” you and your partner can develope just “bad habits”. If you want to practice some “body movements” which have predetermined patterns of movements (means “cooperative play”,fixed way of training drills) you’ll ingrained them into your body. Everything we do in training, everything we do in our daily lives 24h a day, every day, will leave its mark into our subconsciousness. The longer and the more you have done it, the deeper the marks will be; and the harder they will be to change or get rid off. So, practicing those “drills” will later shape your subconsciousness mind in such way so that this “new pattern” of fixed movements will not be “erased” from your mind. That will eventually affect your combat skills.
All styles of fighting (I believe all martial art styles have that concept) stand for some combat principles, namely reducing the consumption of energy and increasing the combat efficiency. From Yiquan perspective, daily training efficiency lies in avoiding of “repetitions of fixed movements” just because of those dynamic patterns which are hard to get rid of. They will always be there, and they’ll “wait” until they, one day come up to the surface, and that will be when you least expected it.
4 faik // Jun 23, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Another thing I forgot to say: rolling in circles,and then wrestling/pushing with limitting rules is just wasted time. What you see in the first video is first “rolling” and then action of “pushing” The goal being, within certain limits, to throw the opponent down or push them away.
Maybe if this was a “structure training” with slowing things down to work on your structure and angular contact mechanics, without jumping out of your weak points, then I could agree with you, but still they “jump” from one point to another too much.
5 mo // Jun 23, 2007 at 8:37 pm
some UFC fighters have incorporated flow/slow sparring into their training, though what i’ve seen them do isn’t like this, they still try to keep their basic structure.
that being said, didn’t sonnon develop his skills from kadachnikov (sp?) systema?
6 tomasz // Jun 23, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Mo remember when me met last time i did really slowly tuishou with Gregory, without nay power, rush etc. important is we both kept structure
7 mo // Jun 23, 2007 at 10:40 pm
yep, that’s the way we train too when we do flow/slow sparring. even though we experiment with different things like different reactions or different types of footwork, we still try to maintain a basic structure for fighting.
sonnon seems to be doing a lot of things that i’ve seen vlad and mikhail ryabko do, where their motion is much more open and freestyle, they don’t stick to certain structural guidelines.
i’ve heard both good things and bad about this type of training, and since i don’t train this way i really can’t say anything about it.
8 tomasz // Jun 23, 2007 at 10:59 pm
mo i just compared sonnon and masich clips. you might missed masich clip. what i like about sonnon clip is that is way more fighting orientated, i don’t like structure breaks, not what i would do but their training is practical what i cant say about whta masich did. masich tuishou crossed sense of doing tuishou, its became art for art, without any real use. as i said before tuishou is just small part of fighting, its suppose to be clinch fighting. can you imagane this bs from the clip in clinch position….???
9 chessman71 // Jun 24, 2007 at 12:36 am
Tomasz, not everything is meant to be so obviously useful, nor is push hands always about fighting from a clinch position.
You mention imagination in your last comment. Freeing that imagination through a practice that isn’t so limited by *your* idea of structure can liberating — both personally and for your fighting practice.
Again, having a field where you can go to extremes and experiment without any fear of getting hurt can work wonders.
10 tomasz // Jun 24, 2007 at 11:11 am
chessman71 i think you still don’t wanna undesratnd what i’m telling here… i practice without feqar of being hurt everyday and this is not what i’m against!!!! i’m against stupidy what is how in masich clip which can only lead to bad habbit, nothing more…
11 chessman71 // Jun 24, 2007 at 11:23 am
Fine. We’re just discussing things. But perhaps I’m not talking about the fear that you think I am.
12 therma // Jun 26, 2007 at 4:07 am
sonnon also says that hardwork is required. he’s still a competitor (and recently won international sanshou championships). he says really plainly that too much softwork leads to superfluous movement. i like him for his honesty as well as for being a real fighter like tomasz writes above.
13 Roman // Jun 28, 2007 at 6:23 am
Scott Sonnon present classical Systema technics. Even Russian military outfit
Watch V.Vasiliev
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE_4bRXATLc
I saw their workshop dvd. They make an accent on “working live” meaning training all puches on person. It benefits both during the training.
14 chessman71 // Jun 28, 2007 at 9:07 am
Roman, Thanks for the clip. I’m behind on the whole Systema thing. Sonnon’s material was the first time I saw any of this.
15 Jack Rusher // Jun 28, 2007 at 11:39 am
I understand the purpose of Masich’s drill, and of slow-flow practice in general, but I don’t think all slow-flow practice is created equal. It seems to me that tui shou (which I do daily), for instance, is an abstraction of free fighting used to practice things (postures, skills, movements) that a player is not yet ready to use in san shou, which is great. But there’s a point after which tui shou can become (as it has done in much of the US) a goal unto itself, one in which the players are only building skill at the abstraction rather than using it as a tool to improve their fighting gongfu.
The Masich clip looked to me (and I could, of course, be wrong) like a nice demonstration of a carefully developed set of skills that would be hard-to-impossible to use outside of that abstraction.
Lastly, I chose that Chen Bing slam-down video, as I said in the previous comment thread, because it seemed like what Tomasz was looking for, not because I think it’s the only way to train.
16 therma // Jul 21, 2007 at 2:31 am
Roman, there are no “technics” in Russian martial art. Only drills. Vasiliev and Sonnon do completely different drills and different exercises. Both men say so. Vasiliev trained with Spetsnaz for survival training, and Sonnon trained with Spetsnaz for athletic conditioning and combat sport training. Vasiliev was a military special operator who runs camps on Russian Orthodox Christianity, and Sonnon is a martial art champion and the US national coach who now coaches MMA champions.
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