Sparring and Radical Training Design

• LMA Table of Contents

Understanding LMA theory and praxis requires radical open-mindedness. Otherwise, you will reduce our pedagogy to what you already know and are used to, and you will gain nothing new or transformative.

What's new isn't necessarily the movements but how we get to these movements. For the in-person Liberation Martial Arts practices, we use training design to improve sparring and sparring to improve training design.

I am not the coach. I am not even necessarily better than the other practitioners. I merely organize and design the training so we can all get better safely, including myself. That way, I can help improve practitioners who are better than me, and many LMA practitioners are far better than me at striking sparring. In fact, I've spent much of the past 20 years only grappling. I only picked up striking again during the COVID lockdown, which was at first solo training. All my progress in striking has come from doing the curriculum with the other practitioners. (Note: LMA will eventually include grappling as well.)

If you are applying LMA with others, as an organizer, you don't have to be the best; you just have to be the one who knows how to organize and design the training for everyone. Often, people hesitate to organize training because they don't think they are good enough, but that's if they see that role as having to be the best martial artist. If you only see it as being an organizer, then anyone can do it so long as they are earnest and hardworking.

To clarify what "training design to improve sparring and sparring to improve training design" means and what exactly my role as a training designer is, we'll be looking at some sparring footage and my thoughts as I watch this footage.