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Old 04-23-2010, 12:41 PM   #1
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Training/sparring versus who can kick butt

In a lot of years in the martial-arts, I've often watched the discussion about training methodologies get diverted to the *implication* that often comes out as meaning, "Well, I know my method is best because I can kick your butt". I always think about why Mohammed Ali bothered to keep Angelo Dundee as a coach when it was obvious that Ali could kick Dundee's butt. In other words, people too often mix the subject of training with "I'm bad".

But what I remember most is a sort of funny story that happened a few years back when someone asked me if I wanted to push hands. I'd seen what the guy did when he "pushed hands" and basically it was just some kind of grab'em and try to wrassle sort of stuff, so I didn't pay much attention to him and declined. He always remembered the slight and one time on the internet he publicly challenged me to come to NYC and he'd show me that his "internal strength" was better than mine. In other words, he wanted to prove that he had internal strength and he figured the way to do it would be to somehow defeat me with his mongrel version of "push hands".

Well, I had no particular interest in going to New York from Colorado just to see what I already knew to be true, but in the interests of showing how ludicrous the reasoning of "I know I have good internal strength 'cause I can whip your butt" is, I got in touch with a guy I knew (via the internet and rec.martial-arts) in New York City named John Carlo. Now some of you may know about John Carlo's fight record and martial arts.... it's pretty extensive and IIRC, John could bench 500 pounds at the time.

So I suggested to the guy who was challenging me that he simply take on John (John agreed to do it) and then we'd have an interesting situation. According to the idea that if someone kicked my butt it was because of "internal strength" or "Tai Chi" or whatever, then if John kicked my challenger's butt then John must have superior I.S., Tai Chi, or whatever. Yet John would be the first to say that he would never make a silly claim like that. Naturally, in the interests of not getting pounded into the ground, my challenger backed off of the idea of having a contest to prove whose I.S., etc., is best. In other words, as long as he thought he could win, a challenge seemed like a good idea; when he could see that he'd definitely get his butt handed to him, he backed off. Hmmmmmm.... what kind of person does that?

Anyway, I've always thought it was a funny story that highlighted why discussions of internal strength, Tai Chi, Aikido, etc., etc., shouldn't be mixed in with who can kick whose butt. They're two different topics.

FWIW

Mike Sigman
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