Are you satisfied regarding your strategies and tactics?

[Alan Armstrong]

Are you satisfied regarding your strategies and tactics from your chosen style?

Very satisfied?

Satisfied?

Not very satisfied?

Or strategies and tactics are not very important in my chosen style?

How important is strategy and tactics to you?

[singularity6]

I'm only a green belt (just shy of 5th geup) but I've been paying attention to what's going on around me in my school. One of our students tested for his black belt today. Topics inluded:

All forms (palgwe il jang - koryo, and his weapons form)

6 board combination break, and breaking of boards taped together with a side kick

The following list took well over an hour, and he had very little time for recovery (maybe 5 minutes total during the duration of all topics.) Nothing was scripted here

Demonstrate all falls and rolls

Demonstrate all arm bars, joint locks and take-downs

Demonstrate Napa (redirecting the opponent as opposed to stopping an attack)

Demonstrate gun, knife and bat defense

Applications of all the above (this lasted a while... 1-3 attackers. Some armed, some unarmed)

2-on-1 sparring

At any rate, once we got through the forms, breaking and demonstration, the student testing had to react, relying on his training and wit alone. Our master instructor is a retired cop/detective, and he's had to use this stuff many times on the streets (including 3 knife fights.) Teaching strategy and tactics are hugely important in our style, and I really appreciate that.

[sensei8]

I'm never ever satisfied!! Why? For me to be satisfied, that means that I've nothing else to learn and/or discover; an ill weathered acceptance of limited abilities that's only an illusion.

Besides, I'm the furthest thing from perfect!!

[singularity6]

I'm never ever satisfied!! Why? For me to be satisfied, that means that I've nothing else to learn and/or discover; an ill weathered acceptance of limited abilities that's only an illusion.

Besides, I'm the furthest thing from perfect!!

Good point. I suspect my satisfaction comes from being so "green." There's a whole world for me to explore. It'll probably be 4-5 years before I'm eligible to test for my black belt. I'm still young and impressionable!

That being said, I am planning to get some 1-on-1 lessons for boxing soon. I'd also like to take up fencing (a friend of mine used to teach,) iaido and maybe uechi ryu karate. Just to keep learning!

[tallgeese]

Very satisfied. In almost every case. We often overlook, particularly if we're new, how important these concepts are. Strategy being the overall grand scheme of events as you'd like them to go, the driving principles of a system and tactics being the application of tools to achieve those goals. Often, tools get misconstrued as tactics and tactics for strategy. It's important at advanced levels to understand the difference.

For me in some of the primary arts I've studied I've been exposed to some great strategy based off the strengths of a given art. For example in BJJ we strive for the following in my lineage:

Close the distance

Get the fight to the ground

Establish dominance

Finish the fight

So, a tactic for closing the distance might be a cover and level chance. This means tools for this tactic would be proper level adjustment, coverage of the face, proper penetration.

To take the fight to the ground, the tactic might be a single leg. So now we're looking at grips, proper placement of the head and chest, etc. But if he's countering with a blocking forearm, then the tactic may be a duck under so I can finish the application of the tools of a single leg.

Etc...

This play out to the conclusion of the fight.

When I did kemp exclusively our strategy was thus:

Evade

Stun

Unbalance

Control

So we avoid the damage from the strike, struck the individual back, used some form of balance control to often get him off his feet, and then utilized some form of follow up control to the attacker to prevent further attack.

There were various tactics for this. Evasion could consist of footwork, redirection, blocking, etc.

Not confusing this macro and micro elements helps one set up a good progression of learning and fighting.

Now, that said, Over the years I've come to learn that no one strategy will be adequate at all times. If this were true I would have never experimented with other arts and some systems have edges in specific venues.

For example, I had some fundamentally good ideas about knives and knife defense from Kempo but is wasn't until I added tools and tactics from Kali that I really began to move past a basic level of understanding and response.

BJJ is superior on the ground to either, but has no answer for weapons and FAR less strike defense or actual fight mindset than Kempo.

It's why we use different tactics in the police world for different situations. The same is true in MA. Now, to make this work you need more than a simple, first glance understanding of whatever you're going to use. That takes time and a certain level of commitment. There is a reason that single system artists are common. But it will depend on your goals for the arts if you need to pursue multiple strategies and all that come with it.