202 - Fighting mirrors of ourselves
Hock Hochheim on teaching new people and system/ non system responses
Useful repost article from Hock about teaching and the things that can be sometimes forgotten in the process.
Jeth
Hock:
“This is often very true when invading in, in stand-up and ground grappling. People…systems...fight mirror “images” of themselves. This inadvertently creates a level of staging even when trying to be free-flow. Staged system responses. In the so-called” real world most people you struggle with will be untrained. What?...like 95%? You can imagine your own percentage, but don't forget it will be high.
It has been amusing and surprising through the decades of attending and teaching, how NEW people respond to many moves, you might say, non-systematically, un-systemically, accidental and often surprising successful.
In some seminars through the years, I have had to demo on untrained “stuntmen.” They just…just sort of freaked out with every little touch. It is hard to teach-demo the principles of a move when the stuntman is a virgin.
One time I was teaching a SWAT team in Ohio. I chose a guy my size and he was in very good "SWAT" shape. For 7 hours I practically had to fight this guy. A few times I actually had to do things so real, I was hurting the guy, which is the last thing I wanted to do. Sometimes I would stop the demo in an awkward position and say “okay, don’t make me do this for real.”
That night at the hotel I felt like I’d played a pro-football game. I decided that the next morning, I was going to explain-show him first each thing beforehand - what I was trying to show and do, just before officially presenting. We met at the academy early and I told him and said, “Yeah, whew. Good idea. I was wiped out last night.” (Ahhh...me too!) This worked out much better and might work for you too in this situation. You know things work better after you stun or knock the snot out of someone, but you can’t do that in a teaching demo.
We can predict, worry about, and work on, some natural responses to some moves. Trained people refer to their system’s counters. Don’t forget the seemingly stupid counters. The untrained ones.”
Source
Reader comments :
Email to J from SG: “Very thought-provoking, and ties in with some of the discussions over "realism" that have come up in other threads. I remember you saying as well about how dangerous newbies can be, partly just due to chaotic inaccuracy and partly because having overcome the inhibitions around touching/striking strangers, they can go too far. Or also, women in particular can just not believe they are capable of hurting a big male.
But it's a very interesting idea that your partner could respond in such an unexpected way because they haven't had the same explanatory information you have had, or that something you tried would not work because they didn't respond in the way they were "meant' to. Again, I think you mentioned in another thread about deliberately changing your response if you detect that your partner is latching onto something that appeared to work well in a previous encounter. Not getting into too predictable a pattern must be a big part of what makes someone a good training partner. “