Y'all have enjoyed and responded well to my last couple of quickie questions, so here's another for you. Actually two questions - or perhaps a two-part question...
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What portion of the knowledge in your system is transmitted by structured form/kata/drills as opposed to free sparring/randori/pushhands - and how much structured form practice do you think must come before free sparring/randori for optimal training?
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Plese jump in and leave a comment with your opinion...
This is a hard question to assign a "how much" measure to. Briefly put, instruction on forms/technique and randori have been essential and indispensable to what little Judo ability I possess.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do notice is when too much time is spent on one as opposed to another. On nights that we do nothing but technique, I don't really feel like I've proven to myself that this stuff can actually be made to work. A technique is worthless to me if I haven't actually been able to do it "live".
Conversely, when I spend too much time on randori, I start to feel 'adrift'. No sense of whether I'm doing things right or wrong or if there's a better way. Not to mention, I can quickly get frustrated if my practice is foiled again and again without corrective from a more knowledgeable practitioner.
When I was younger it was sparring,sparring,sparring.
ReplyDeleteNow it's drill,drill,drill.
That includes push hands patterns. I now feel that you can spar and spar and not improve that much. The secrets in the arts are in the drills, and I think in the past, they were indeed kept secret from other schools or clans.
An example is our lock-flow drills, re: Small-Circle Jujitsu, which translates into every other type of grappling we do.
D.R.
I believe you have to understand the basic movements/foot positions and basic stikes/knife patterns/locks. Then I would go straight to flow drill be it locking drills as dojorat mentioned or modular knife( bram frank). Then if you follow my beliefs and what my instructors have taught me; you baiscally go into a free form of those drills. If that form get to far away from those drills and you try to stick to one system then I think it is useless training. If I break out of Karls chains or Brams Modular, then I would rather pad up and go no holds barred.
ReplyDelete