Bruce lee said a famous statement “boards don’t hit back”. Demonstration of breaking boards don’t impressed him, they show good demonstration of generation of power but fights are much more complex, involve moving targets, targets that will strike first, attacks blocked, attacks dodged, etc. I see video of masters doing forms and demonstrations against non-resistant students, how their breath are perfect, their stances solid, and they either do not impress me; a perfect respiration after 12 rounds of boxe against a heavy weight champion, this would impress me; a solid stance against a heavy weight judoka doing kuzushi (disequilibrium) after a throw attempt would impress me.
Just because you cannot train properly don’t mean you can’t train well. If you have a board, ask for the person holding it to move the board in a non predictable pattern and not hold it statically, ask for him to take the board out of the way in the moment you strike the board, tian, ask your partner to throw the board on your face, but this is not an excuse for poor demonstration of abilities. If you are doing forms, you have all the time of the world to throw an attack, but act as if you are fighting the fastest dodger in the word; you can do it in the order you want, in a order you are used to it, but act like the opponent would not make the moves in the order you want, or while doing a move you have to stop and do another move; you don’t need power in doing forms, but block as if you are receiving the strongest attack of all; attack as if the wind that you hit was made of iron; no one will throw you off balance in forms, you can have the most perfect instance in the world, but will be this true against a grappler? While you are doing forms, if needed, throw yourself out off balance and try to recover from it; punch yourself if needed, but that is not excuse.
Now, I’m talking about bad methods of training that are not excuse for bad demonstrations of abilities. If you have an human, a partner, the most important machine of war of the universe(yes, you heard well), capable of incredible problem solving, breaking paradigms, creating where there is nothing, and you impose limitations as a judge to start the fight, or in a demonstration, make him attack only when you tell him, when he could fake an attack, attack with a left punch instead of a right, if the demonstration is to show a move to counter a punch, if you are expecting a certain kind of attack and your partner attack in this fashion this will be not useful, Sun Tzu said “attack where you are not expected”, impose rules limiting and modifying the rules of war, don’t attack here, don’t push there, don’t go somewhere, don’t flank me, don’t ambush me… I can only say: what a waste of potential.
chinayinyang 