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In this video, we have practitioner T (in the white shirt and blue shorts) and another example of my thought process in training design. Understanding the context of each practitioner is crucial for any training organizer. Due to distance, T can only attend one weekly training session. (Over 20 miles in LA traffic, that's dedication.) He's never done any sports or martial arts and came to us only wanting to learn martial arts in a care-informed environment with no preference in what kind of martial arts he'd be learning. He's shown no interest in competition. He's also one of our smallest practitioners, so he's almost always sparring with bigger partners. How should we approach training design for T?
The first thing to consider for T and all our other practitioners is that they are fully autonomous living adults. I don't own their training. Since T has no end goal or where he thinks he ought to be, neither do I. This is important to remember because he can only come in once a week and is developing as a martial artist through a weekly session and whatever he does on his own. Since he can only come in once a week, we must ensure he doesn't feel discouraged. His progress is unique to him, and the same is true for everyone else.
During our session, I can point out concepts and methods he can apply to continue developing his personal game, but pursuing that further on his own time is up to him. Developing his stamina to maximize his training is also up to him. It's the same with following the online LMA curriculum and practicing at home. If he doesn't, that's not a failure because these suggestions are optional. There is no failure because there is no state he was striving to reach. In fact, everything is optional because he doesn't have to train at all, either. He trains because he likes it and likes the people he trains with. Community is one of the most essential benefits of in-person training.
Since we train weekly, we mustn't go over too much, just what he can process in one session because it might be another week before he gets to practice these concepts against live opponents. If he came in three times a week, for instance, I could present a task objective and spend the rest of the week building around that objective. I can't do that with T. Instead, I have to build around his instincts. We have to allow his natural affinity and wayfinding to be our guide.
Though kicks are allowed during sparring, T likes to punch. Since we don't have the time or the training opportunities to rebuild his instincts, we go with it. The training meets him where he's at. Since he's not looking to compete or get to some advanced level quickly, he's allowed the room and grace to mess up and find his way. What's most important are the basics. Is he maintaining gaze? Yes. Is he maintaining stance? Yes. Is he keeping it simple? Yes. Is he keeping his hand position? Yes.
A natural consequence of being the shorter fighter is lifting your chin to look up at your opponent. Lifting the chin is most often a product of gaze. Correcting that is often staying disciplined in staring at the chest and assuming where the opponent's head is or looking from the top of the brow. Everything we build on top of the basics is a bonus.
Regarding defense, T relies on his eyes and head movement. I think the unconscious reason for this is that it frees up his hands to punch or block shots to the body. However, since we allow kicks, this can present dangers against head kicks. Furthermore, head movement takes a long time to develop, so in the meantime, he is taking a lot of shots. That's part of the learning process.
Relying on your eyes and movement is a good habit; it just doesn't pay off from day one. Trying to eliminate and replace that habit with double forearm defense would waste time and prevent something that needs to develop anyway. It's mortgaging the future for the sake of the present, except it wouldn't even help in the present because we would have to try and rewrite his instinct which itself is a long process. So you're mortgaging the present and future. He'll develop his head movement quicker than he can break that habit. Instead, it's about building his other movements to support his upper body movement. It's also about developing a sense of when to block and when to evade, which is mostly dictated by proximity. The priority is fostering his sense of distance because he has no instincts for that.
A smaller practitioner will get hit against taller opposition because the smaller practitioner doesn't have the luxury of sitting back and hitting their opponent from distance. They must get close enough to hit their opponent, weathering lots of offense along the way. Being unaware of this reality will only set discouraging expectations and the wrong training goals. You'll think this is not how it's supposed to look when how it looks is always how it's supposed to look. There is no right way for the learning process to look.
Imagine robbing someone of the learning process just because it doesn't look like the finished product. It's not supposed to look like the finished product because it's the learning process, and you will never get to the finished product if you keep robbing people of the learning experience. This speaks more to the training organizer's insecurities, lack of faith, and possessive-control streak than the practitioner's abilities. This translates to trainers using pad holding to control how the practitioner looks despite the practitioner never performing to how they look on the pads. Pad holding is all about control and the holder dictating the process. But why would overriding the learning process lead to learning or autonomous and quick decision-making?
To expand on the difficulty of defense for smaller fighters, it is simply not enough for them to block because that doesn't bring them closer to their target. The taller practitioner will spam shots if the smaller opponent only blocks while providing no offense. The smaller fighter has to dodge to get closer. They also have to redirect kicks and punches to close the gap without getting so close that the bigger practitioner can grab them. A smaller practitioner is always forced to be advanced when sparring bigger partners.
Since training is safe and controlled, T can explore his ideal zone of proximity. It'll take eating some shots along the way, but once T can find his ideal zone and keep the fight there, he can dictate more of the fight. Then it's about orbiting around his bigger opponent while maintaining his zone of proximity and never standing in front of them to be hit. Then, his natural hand speed, combination punching, and vision can shine.
I don't need to rebuild T; I only need to keep the training safe and supported and guide T to where he wants to go. He already has a defined style. It's not about forsaking that to build him to what I think is the perfect style, but instead, getting him closer and closer to the style that's most true to himself. Building him any other way will create hesitation, which has consequences.
Progress is about whether the practitioner is seeing more than they did last time and is more aware of their movement options than last time. Development for us is about the practitioner knowing their space and their capacity to move in that space. T consistently gets better at both. In some ways, by leaps and bounds, especially considering his training frequency. The top-down instruction/lecture model and overexplaining is the absolute worst way to train someone who comes in weekly. The LMA model is why T is thriving. He could not progress like this in any other system.
It wasn't that long ago when T first learned how to maintain a stance, move his feet without crossing his legs, kick, block, evade, and punch. It wasn't that many sessions ago T was sparring with no punches, only kicks, because he didn't know how to punch yet. Before that, we were playing tag and getting him acclimated to moving, evading, touching, and being touched. This is the LMA model.
Some practitioners initially started out coming in once a month, and even with that frequency there was progress. There's also so much you can do on your own, but that's up to you and not for me to dictate. Only you know the full context of your life, and I'm not here to judge either way.
Rather than setting a goal, play and explore. The training organizer ensures there is a space for that to happen. (Space also means emotional space.) They must know and consider each practitioner's context while constantly watching and adapting training.
It hasn't even been six months of in-person Liberation Martial Arts training. I can't wait to show everyone what a year looks like despite none of our practitioners training daily or coming in as young, already-developed athletes dedicating their lives to becoming pros.
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(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, upgrade your subscription. You can also support me on Patreon or make a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)
Radical Training Design: Practitioner T