Editor’s Note: Before you get into this video I thought I would share with you my personal opinion on the subject matter. I started officially teaching people back in 2003. Over the years I would teach people that wanted to bring their friends in to watch their class. Often times their friends wanted to see how good I was.
Jujitsu guys, Boxers, Thai boxers, Wrestlers, Karate guys… When someone decides they want to teach they need to be prepared to put their money where their mouth is. Fact is, it’s very hard to make a living as a martial arts instructor for many different reasons. One of those reasons is if you really can’t fight your not going to be a teacher for very long.
Just because a person doesn’t find glory in the ring or holds a black belt doesn’t mean they can’t fight. Real fighting has very little to do with ever stepping foot in a ring or cage.
Before getting to Sifu Phu’s answer I want to share with you this video of a US Army Special Forces Vs. Peruvian Special Forces. Friends it doesn’t really take much to stop an opponent…
-Sifu Larry Rivera
…Here’s How Sifu Phu and Sije Jamie answered this question
TRANSCRIPT
Ally says, what do you say to people who say are not real much artists If you have no fight track record. I know guys who are really good but aren’t competing well we can tell you what our thoughts are about competing. Well it’s about for what the street and if it, if someone attacks you and uses a vibe and that’s it.
No one knows until it’s, you know, you could spar all the time and then it comes relevance because if you find someone who’s really good, you’re going to think you stick. If I someone who’s not so good and you destroy them, then you can think you’re really good. So I saw him out perspective. you’ll always want to spar.
You want to do live spine, you want to do all that so you can doubt or train, you know, the military, they practice all the time going to rooms, always using live rounds, but they’re practicing getting the response, a reflex, getting there, their aim, their body position, knowing where everyone is and everything.
And they work as a team. You’re training for the same purpose. You’re training as a team in terms of what your legs and your arms move solve. Your practice are punching. You’re punching like this and you move away, then you’re not doing it. But you have to practice doing this. And when you hit it, it goes into it.
So you can develop, and again, I always talk about getting that power, getting the power, getting can’t do the damage. It really means nothing. You can process all the moves all the hand, the pairing. If you can’t do the damage in the end of the day, it’s no good. You gotta be able to do the damage. If it doesn’t, that’s like a nine millimeter. You know, a nine millimeter can’t stop someone who hits him in the chest, but it hit him right in the head.
You can end them right It’s not how to use what you got. yeah, 45 was stopped pretty much anybody, you know, but if you’re not a 45 and you’re just not met, then you have to use what you have and know how to hit it. Right. when you’re practicing, it’s saying you’ve got to practice through the damage practice doing the damage.
Practice don’t adapt. You can’t do the damage. I was do pressure tests. One of my students hit me, I said places on my face, I’m going to walk in. Can you hit me And they walked backwards or they moved backwards from that. As I walk forward, then that means I said love in reality, you would never stop me. I, I’m going to plow through and still hit you.
They have to have the effect. And what I mean by that is let’s say I’m walking in and she’s kinda cross punch on my face and I said, look, I’m going to come into hit. You move me away and I go like this and I could still move forward and come in. And then she didn’t do her job. She failed. That means that on impact, she didn’t get the truck cause she’s supposed to be, I’ll get that force into me. Not yet. Not yet. So when I come, even her, she has to now dry that into me.
No, she’s gone back with a little bit of shoulders. She’s got to base it more and then that’s it. And then I, I, I, I could tell where the going bad and then I fix it and, and then I’ll keep going forward and my job is go through a same thing. When I throw a punch I might throw towards the face, she has to intercept this. And I say, all right, I’m going to push through slowly. If you can’t stop me from going forward, you would’ve gotten killed.
So then as they get good, then I’ll go from up space. I said, okay, stop this and if I can get in that I broke through. She has to know how to handle that and stop the punch. she has to pop the energy in. And I was like, okay, you’re pushing away now I want you to get more base because you’re more top heavy kid a base. Now she’s, she’s how she’s pushing out to the side.
So she has to push underneath and go up. It’s always like push underneath Gullah and my my arm. If it moves up, then she’s doing the right job and she’s pushing me away. She’s not doing a good job so, and then as I do this, I’ll come at harder and I’ll push my body away and as I can drive through, you can see now she’s holding it.
She needs to pop it, so I was like, okay, I don’t feel you converting energy. I feel you’re holding it. So if I pause you to do this for more pressure, I put the wash, you feel go out and then right now she’s able to manipulate the anesthesia. We do a lot of pressure tests like that and then we’ll do sparring. I’ll hit and if I can break through then that means that obviously they failed and so we’ll go back to the routine and say, okay, I’m going to do it again.
I’ll mix three punches in and the fourth one will be the one that she failed. I won’t tell her when I do it. I’ll just do the other three and throw the fourth at any time. It could be the first if it’s not going to last or the third. But she has to learn how to stop the other and then still stopped the one that she fails and then every time she fails we break it down and say, do it again.
I’ll do that four or five times to get the muscles used to it. Then we’ll go POCs and then again, we keep doing it over and over until the body gets used to.
The idea is to train the muscle memory to write without thought, and then as it becomes more natural to you, then you do it without thinking. Then you kind of do it instinctively because of that. Yeah. So what do we think about like people not having a fight record with competitions. What competitions have rules and stuff like that.
This kid is, you don’t go and fight in a ring. Does that mean that you can’t survive on the streets so that really is irrelevant Well, or that you find that you can survive on the streets You know, it goes both ways. You see all the time and you see a lot of people who who like, and I’m not saying any school, but it’s a lot of times people go from when Sean and they spar a lot of wind Sean guys, you need to mix it with people from different style, different a training tech because you know we’re going to find a winch on guy.
Okay. And you think you’d do very well because you’ve learned how to counter the wind. Chung attacks. Boxers don’t punch like a winch on guy. So you have to go in and train against the boxer, movie tie guy and MMA guy, which is basically boxing, more tie anyways, but you have to learn how to train a handle.
Those different types of attacks. I had not trained just to fight, win, shot against when Sean, because you’re basically learning how to fight a win chance straight lie center. I’m sticking, staying close. Now you might be very good at that, but when a guy takes you out of that element, like say a grappler, it takes you to the ground.
You have to learn how to fight a crop. You have to learn how to fight that, that close in tight position him holding on you. And cause once you don’t know what to do, you’re going to go to panic and you’d go back to defensive.
You’re gonna try and get him off of you. So you can create like a reset to go back into the position where you’re comfortable and fighting. But once a guy like got the hold of you, he’s trained to stay on you. He’s trained to take you down, he’s trained to put you out. and so you have to know how to handle it. You have to train. I always trade.
It’s not about the defense, it’s about the counteroffensive tickets. Someone gets in on me, I got to find a way to get back in. I have to get away. But find a, use that advantage to get in. Put my arms in the right position, getting the right structure, getting the right technique to control points, not try to get them away from me. It’s defensive. So you gotta find count off as techniques. So if someone gets me in a like a mood high clients is a great example.
A lot of people try to grab the arms and try to get the clinch off. We don’t, we, we, we, we love the clench. Okay. If someone cleanses my head and they bring me down to a knee, allow people get like this and they try to get them off. The problem with that is is you’re not doing anything to stop them. Well, she clinches me here and I’ll use it.
Now I turn her energy. I, I, I took the clench and I took advantage of it to put it back on them. So now you can see she feels that combat, she doesn’t turn the knee because I’m putting the pressure on her. Whereas if I go like this and I try to get my head off or get away, I’m going against her so she’s able to put it instead. I’m going to take this pressure, I feel pulled me down.
I love feed it into her, so I’m going to put it into her so she can’t bring that back to me. I’m always going for the top of the counter. I am not trying to get the offensive. I’m trying to take advantage of what I’m given and use it to my advantage, not try to stop it or get away from it and reset. I want to take what I’m given and take the talk.
There’s always a tack somewhere or a CounterTack somewhere. You have to learn how to find it, you know Now there’s no way you find a way. If there’s no attack, you find the attack or the countertop there is always attack or contact one way or another. There’s always, you just can’t panic and go for the default more. I got to get away.
I don’t know what to do, and that’s, it’s natural for us to do that. But that’s why you have to train how to get used to doing that and handle that and staying in that pressure and learn how to stay and deal with that pressure and use it to your advantage. Absolutely. Absolutely.
larry braniff says
Maybe it’s just me but I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what was written above. It made no sense to me. Sorry, I’m sure it had a great point but I couldn’t follow it.
Sifu Larry Rivera says
I copied the Transcript from a piece of software and didn’t have time to edit it..
The transcript is just the written words of the video above. Watch the video and you’ll get it. Also side note as I sit here writing back to you. Sije Jamie is like “You didn’t edit that!?!!”
I am like edit? err oops!
larry b says
I did watch the video but I’m glad to read that you didn’t edit it because it appears to be written by someone who doesn’t speak English well. 🙂
Sifu Larry Rivera says
lols, sorry about that.
larry b says
Wing Sean?????? HAHAHAHA
Nicolas R says
Completely agreed with Shifu about Whin Chun. We need to fight against other styles to test our skills and become effective. By The way, is a swordman need to cut someone in half to know if he is good ? I don’t think so.
If had two greats teachers in my martial artist life. All the years i spend with them, they always need to prove to new student or teacher from others schools they could fight. And they won. Not an easy task to be a master.
Nicolas R says
But they shared the same qualities they teached to their student : humility, work, honesty and kindness.