Self-defense/One-step sparring drills

[Mike Flanagan]

You have to learn to walk before you can run, and to crawl before you walk. One-steps have helped me with that.

Maybe so, and you'll note that I don't say they are completely and utterly without value. But having learn to crawl (ie. one-step) why do high grades continue to practice these drills. Should they not instead focus on walking and running, rather than revisiting crawling on a regular basis?

The effect of this sort of training can be seen in many people's bunkai - stilted and artificial, just like they doing formal one-step sparring.

Mike

[bushido_man96]

You have to learn to walk before you can run, and to crawl before you walk. One-steps have helped me with that.

Maybe so, and you'll note that I don't say they are completely and utterly without value. But having learn to crawl (ie. one-step) why do high grades continue to practice these drills. Should they not instead focus on walking and running, rather than revisiting crawling on a regular basis?

The effect of this sort of training can be seen in many people's bunkai - stilted and artificial, just like they doing formal one-step sparring.

Mike

Thank you for the information. Do you have any drills that you could give that would help out with these kinds of exercises, either one-steps or self-defense, or bunkai drills?

[Sohan]

You have to learn to walk before you can run, and to crawl before you walk. One-steps have helped me with that.

Maybe so, and you'll note that I don't say they are completely and utterly without value. But having learn to crawl (ie. one-step) why do high grades continue to practice these drills. Should they not instead focus on walking and running, rather than revisiting crawling on a regular basis?

The effect of this sort of training can be seen in many people's bunkai - stilted and artificial, just like they doing formal one-step sparring.

Mike

FWIW, I have always found spending some time on basics provides me with a fresh perspective on my advanced material, and it always helps in my performance of it. But certainly at a higher grade one should be spending a greater percentage of time putting these basics together into a complete package of strategic skills.

With respect,

Sohan

[Mike Flanagan]

FWIW, I have always found spending some time on basics provides me with a fresh perspective on my advanced material, and it always helps in my performance of it.

Fair point, but I think there's a confusion here between basics and fundamentals. To hark back to the earlier analogy of learning to crawl before you learn to walk before you learn to run....

If I want to get good at running I would prefer to focus on the fundamentals of running rather than go back to practising crawling. Crawling was just a stepping stone towards learning to run.

So I too continually revisit fundamentals, but to me that doesn't mean one-step sparring.

Mike

[Mike Flanagan]

Thank you for the information. Do you have any drills that you could give that would help out with these kinds of exercises, either one-steps or self-defense, or bunkai drills?

Sorry to take so long to reply, but this one deserved a relatively detailed answer.

I use a combination of a number of drills, some fixed some with varying degrees of spontaneity. These include:

1. Tactile/Sticking drills.

Begin with 'sticking hands', where one person simply leads the other, enabling them to practice the basics of sticking to an opponent: relaxation and sensitivity.

Next comes what we call 'pushing hands' - not the same as what other people may call pushing hands but no doubt having some similarities. One person throws very slow but strong punches whilst the other sticks to both limbs redirecting and/or avoiding the incoming blows.

This builds up into 'sticking sparring'. The exact rules can vary depending on the experience of the participants but it is essentially a free-form, spontaneous sparring exercise (not usually practiced at full speed) intended to hone the skills of sticking (muchimi), trapping and unbalancing (kuzushi). It can decay into grappling but that's OK to be honest.

2. Tegumi (McCarthy style flow drills) - the short ones not the long convuluted sequences.

Regardless of their origin I find these drills very useful. We do them, for straight, round, down, low & uppercut punches combined with a variety of arm-grabs. Having got the tegumi drill well practiced the next step is to break out of it with various techniques. These can vary depending on your focus. You could focus on bunkai for a particular kata or focus on particular joint-locks or whatever skill-set you're looking to train. The important thing is that you're starting from the 'non-thinking' starting point of the flow drill.

3. Spontaneous striking drills

Starting with a simple drill where the attacker starts out of range, then moves into range throws any hand technique, then moves out of range again. Repeat ad infinitum. All the defender has to do initially is block the attack. This sounds really simple but the beauty of it is that the attacker can use formal karate attacks (eg. oi-zuki) or much less formal & realistic attacks, or silly attacks (eg. totally telegraphed haymakers, spinning backfists or whatever). This way the defender gets used to dealing with all sorts of difficult attacks. The intensity is set so that the defender is slightly uncomfortable with the drill. Conversely the attacker can try attacks that they would never normally try in sparring, because there is no attachment to winning and less danger of injury (as the drill is only partly informal).

This of course can develop in many different ways. The defender might be required to counter (with the attacker staying in place initially, or doing their best to get in and out). You might have two consecutive attacks or might require the defender to simultaneously counter, etc. etc.

4. Bunkai

Straightforward. Simply practice bunkai against realistic attacks. That doesn't mean that the attacks have to be full force (at least to start with), but it does mean the attacks should not be artificial and stylised. Of course, one could be practising bunkai in any of the drills already mentioned above.

I could go on, but the principles are simple IMO:

1. Where appropriate make the attacks realistic

2. Start with a low intensity and build up to a point where the defender is uncomfortable (but not too uncomfortable)

3. Think of the drills as cooperative, not competitive (its not important to get one over on your partner, but it is important to help him/her learn)

4. Vary the rules. No drill is perfect in itself. Learn to take what is useful from any drill but don't become transfixed on it. The drill is simply a tool and not an end in itself.

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

Mike

[bushido_man96]

Thank you, Mike. Those are nice drills, and I especially like the 4 rules you stated at the end of the post. Those are very good points, and I will keep them in mind.

[Tokkan]

Personally I'm not really a fan of one-step sparring all - other than to learn a few basic principles. This sort of formalised partner work is so artificial it does little to prepare people for self-defence IMO.

There are all sorts of other drill you could do instead. I do a lot of stuff around the sort of tegumi flow drills popularised by Patrick McCarthy and find this quite effective.

Mike

You are correct. One step sparring does not prepare one for the reality of street self defense. Mainly because in real life the oponent is much closer, doesnt tell you how they will attack, they attack much faster than most do in a dojo and usually multi attack.

The best way to prepare is to put gloves and head gear on and mimic what actually happens over and over.

Practising with full contact is far better.

You dont see a race driver practising at 30mph

[wolfen]

In my dojo we do "one-steps".

these are single move thing, not one-step-at-a-time sparring.

there is a list of pre-made one-steps to learn (these give good ideas for application in actual fights). A good class drill is to have everyone line up into 2 linesl sensei names an attack, left side attacks, right side improvises a one-step counter (by one-step counter, I mean a continuous flow, eg - a simple counter punch; a lock->kick->sweep->punch combo; a punch->grab->throw->hop back->low-angle fighting stance). The idea is to have an immediate response to an attack that stuns or stops the opponent a litlle less than 1 second.

It is a little less complicated than a real fight, but it is very useful if the students already have a decent repertoire (sp?) of moves.

[Mike Flanagan]

The best way to prepare is to put gloves and head gear on and mimic what actually happens over and over.

Practising with full contact is far better.

I appreciate your point of view and agree that this sort of training obviously has value.

But putting gloves and head gear on doesn't mimic what actually happens. Such practice requires a multitude of rules if serious injury is to be avoided. It also changes the nature of the practice drill - gloves and head gear inevitably change the techniques that you're using.

In addition, I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to be receiving full contact blows to the head on a weekly basis. Headgear & gloves or not, this is a recipe for brain injury. If I was into that I'd just become a professional boxer and make money out of it.

Free-play has its uses.

Fixed drills have their place.

Varying levels of contact have value in different training drills.

But none of these is the whole answer in themselves.

You dont see a race driver practising at 30mph

Actually I'd guess that you probably do, when it comes to practising specific skills. But I'm sure that you don't see formula 1 drivers practising at full race speed day in day out.

Mike

[username8517]

In my experience step-sparring is not designed to teach self-defense directly. It is designed to teach speed, timing, and distance skills that then transfer into other aspects of instruction, i.e., self-defense techniques, sparring, etc.

We use one-step sparring with the students who we consider just entering the advanced stages. We use it for the above reason, but more importantly that in a fight karate is not going to be pretty. The idea is to get it out of the minds of the idea that a head block always has to be done the same way, with the feet the proper stance, etc etc. Rather it teaches them that sometimes they need to slip, parry, or simply side-step an attack rather than having a perfect form.

Granted in the beginning they all tend to look a bit robotic as their mind's try and process what's going on and how they should react. But it makes a nice transition from basic self defense drills to sparring