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ARMA Editorial"To Spar or Not to Spar?" that is the questionThe mimic fight, and sweat with spear and sword: By J. Clements Not
only do I disagree with these perspectives, our research within
Renaissance martial arts has revealed considerable evidence from
the 12th to 17th centuries for several forms of mock combat used
in But, what struck me was how it’s been argued by
some martial artists (and even a few historical fencing practitioners)
that bouts of mock combat play somehow would not properly prepare
an individual for the realities and necessities of lethal armed
combat; and further, that such training could only be achieved by
performing set patterns of movements and prearranged drills. I’ve
always disagreed with this claim and have always maintained the
value of loose play (a view which, as I indicated, we’ve discovered
is born out by a wide range of historical European sources). Here
we essentially have an argument which follows a line of reasoning
that says: In order to prepare for the exigency of actual combat,
you above all need to learn and practice formal exercises in a set
pattern. In other words, two students, the first saying to the second,
“When you are ready I will make this specific attack and you will
counter with that specific defense” and the second student responding,
“Yes, you make that specific attack and I will defend with this
specific counter.” Where
as, by contrast, in free-play each of the students essentially says
one to another: “I’m not going to let you know exactly when or where
or how, or even if, I’m going to attack or defend, so get yourself
ready.” Now I ask, in all honestly, which one of the above
scenarios most resembles the actualities of real fighting? Which is going to be better for teaching a fighter
to spontaneously respond reflexively to any tactical possibility? If a student only follows the first method and
another student combines both methods, who is going to be the better
prepared for the unknowns of violent combat? Additionally,
some martial artists may object to free-play on the grounds that
to conduct it with enough intensity, too much protective equipment
must be employed, which invariably modifies the activity too much.
The more body protection one adopts in mock combat for safety, the
less concern one might have for the risks of being injured by blows,
which would then affect motivations of how the combatants perform.
However, this is a factor even in real combat, where protective
armor does indeed give one more confidence for facing particular
conditions. So, the argument that free-play is distorting because
it's “not real” runs counter to the very nature of the exercise
as a tool for learning in the first place. It would be hard to imagine
learning to wrestle without actually wrestling, or learning to box
without actually boxing. And each of these activities, even when
conducted as sport, can have a corresponding real-world lethal self-defense
application. So it was with historical fencing. The learning of fighting arts in Medieval and
Renaissance Europe involved practice fighting. It would seem such an incredibly natural thing to do, for two people practicing fencing, to say to one another, "Ok, we've done a lot of drilling in basic actions and exercising in delivering techniques and counter-techniques, let's try our hand a little at putting it all together and test ourselves." How else do you possibly prepare yourself to actually fight unless you first gauge in this way your own speed, strength, caution, and courage? What better way for students to test one another than to say, "Try to hit me" or "Defend yourself from my blows"? No
one is suggesting that a student should not first learn proper fundamental
form and basic core movements before engaging in mock-combat as a training tool. Just that,
armed free-play is, by its function, self-instructing. For the beginning student it is more a matter
of learning how to do it safely with freedom of action more than
how to do it “properly” according to a proscribed “style.” If
it’s intended as a tool for martial training, then free-play should
never be just a mere game of speed tag or a sport of scoring points.
[In fact, we feel so strongly about avoiding this that we work actively
to warn practitioners to avoid these problems.] Granted there are some movements which reasonably must be suitably modified for safety (such as breaking joints or striking to the eyes and throat), but if something does not work in free-play how can we argue it would then work in real fighting? Now understandably, the more any martial art is made into a game or sport revolving around artificial rules and restrictive conditions, the less concern there is for the brutality and earnest application of lethal technique. The gulf between edged-weapon theory and practical reality is never wider than when historical fighting skills of life and death are transformed into rule-enshrined competitive sports surrounded by formal protocols and contrived etiquettes. Only "play-fighting" can certainly engender bad habits and a lack of appreciation for the inherent violence of real fighting. Of course, the very same flaw can be said of ritualistic
exercises and the inflexible pre-programmed approach to training.
But, unlike the latter, the more realistically free-play is conducted,
the more it sharpens reflexes, develops perception, teaches adversarial
counter-timing, explores spontaneous tactics, conveys the skill
of deceiving without being deceived, and lets the student try things
that end up with them either getting whacked or not, but in the
process not being maimed or killed. That sounds like quite a benefit from such a
simple and obvious activity. |
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