Control: how to train it, how to teach it.

[Spartacus Maximus]

Many will agree that being able to control techniques is the essence of high skill. Being able to do any given technique correctly with any variation of speed or power. Most of the time this is an issue with “intermediate” level practitioners. These people understand the technique and the mechanics, but have trouble with control. How can one train this and how can it be taught effectively?

[singularity6]

We start sparring at yellow belt in our school. In-class sparring sessions are typically without pads or gloves. We spar only our instructors or black belts who've proven they can control themselves. If we spar other students who're lower ranked, pads are required.

The reason for this is purely safety. We need to learn control, and they do not want us hitting someone who hasn't been trained to take a hit, if one should accidentally land. Our instructors also don't want blue and red belts wailing on yellow and green belts, for obvious reasons.

Ultimately, I feel that control is something that's taught gradually, and mostly through practice.

[Spartacus Maximus]

There is a difference between the quality of self-control and learning physical control. The concern here is not about knowing how to avoid injuring a training partner, but more about what to do when, for a lack of better words, a technique seems to take on a mind of its own.

Most often this happens with lower dan grades(using karate as reference) who have acquired certain mechanisms and unintentionally, without realizing it put put too much power into everything. In some dojo, this is something that is checked for dan gradings.

[sensei8]

While contact might goes astray from time to time while learning the MA, it should be expected, however, it must be properly taught, and reinforced by the CI on a daily basis. Each practitioner of the MA has the responsibility of safety towards their fellow MAist. If a student disregards the safety protocol after being counseled, then that student must be expelled for the well being of the Student Body!!

Sun dome!! That's the desired goal of any technique for any MAist while training!! To arrest said technique by a hair's breath from said target on a consistently basis must be taught and drilled. However, focus must dwell within each and every technique, and if it's void of that, then there's no reason to ever execute any technique.

How to do that?? By properly drilling the technique with the varying properties being involved in its learning. For example...

One of my most favorite drills for teaching Sun dome is quite simple, yet effective because the student receives immediate feedback as to the regards of contact...

I'll hold a aluminum pie pan in my hand. Then, I'll have said student execute said technique a full speed, with focus, at the pie pan, with the explicit instructions to arrest said technique just by a hair's breath.

Two things will happen. Either the student will properly arrest their technique at the prescribed distance from said target.

OR

The student will crush...dent...tweak...or something to that poor pie pan!!

That pie pan doesn't lie!! It takes very, very little to change the shape of that innocent pie pan!! Truth is in the pudding, and in this little drill of control, truth lies in the pie pan.

I more thing. For those afraid to hold the pie pan in their hand, for being afraid that the student will smack your poor hand instead; just hang a string/rope from something, like the ceiling or off a WaveMaster or a Bo, and then attach the pie pan to that string, and commence on with the drill.

[bushido_man96]

I like the pie pan drill, Bob. I've not seen that one before.

I agree with what was mentioned above in that control is something learned over time, and proper training through the ranks should be tailored so that control comes more and more with higher ranks.

One of the primary ways we learn and teach control is through the practice of one-step sparring. It helps the students to learn target areas for techniques, which tools to use, and over time, they learn to get their techniques closer and closer to the target without actually striking it. It also helps the practitioners learn when their technique is going to strike, to stop it before it does so.

As this training advances through the ranks, more and more control shows up in sparring. The difficulty in sparring comes in the instructor keeping a close watch on the levels of contact that is made by the students, and determining what is acceptable and what is excessive, and then making sure to stay consistent.