"lol, the bold made me laugh" seems redundant. It's only slightly obvious you are laughing at the bold or you wouldn't have bolded it. So, just to be sure, you are saying that you would rather force yourself into the pocket no matter what the scenario is? Someone wailing around a knife versus someone who knows how to use one? And your reason for this is that, while you may be physically prepared to kill someone, you might not be mentally prepared to take verbal abuse? You DO have to attack, yes, but if I'm understanding your use of aggressive, then you'll likely get yourself killed. Don't make the same mistakes as most McDojos.
I'm not really sure what you mean with bold, but I'll answer: Being physically prepared and being psychologically prepared are synonymous. By saying that one has the physical ability to beat someone alone you're kind of distilling all the attributes and skillsets that are required to do so into an element of simple programming nature. Being able to fight an attacker is more to do with finding intelligent solutions to a problem. For the record I define skill as being able to do that in a fluid and unconscious way. To say you are physically prepared but not psychologically is like having a car with no fuel, is see it as a misnomer.
It's not just about verbal abuse, it's the paradigm of an offensive attacker. Pre and post fight anxiety are the killer's of most people, even if they are physically skilled. Different types of fight fear and the accompanying adrenal release can be over powering.
What do you exactly mean by aggressive? Do you mean being able to press the attack or do you mean taping into primal rage so that you can kill someone?
My apologies, I haven't
reeeeally fully explained what I meant by my use of aggression and violence in this context. I define this particular aggression as the will to do harm on another in a combatively intelligent and aggressive way. Intelligence being a key factor that differentiates it from mindless aggression. The concept of attacking the attacker, hitting first (in a pre-fight ritualistic scenario) and following through are the very combative principles that require aggression, at least in an subconscious way, that should be embedded in your training. This aggressive mindset also serves the purpose of being able to go from your everyday personality, to one that can deal with frightening and violent situation. Fear of injury, fear of death and fear of humiliation are the stop gaps to otherwise sound gameplan's against violence. This aggressive mindset allows you to temporarly mirror sociopathic and violent behaviour to get the job done.
This doesn't mean that you rip the person's face off and drink their blood, it's all about conviction and self confidence- which is what most people lack even if they have great, practical and relevant training, unfortunately. If you KNOW deep down, that know matter what happen's, you can get through this situation, no matter how scary it is, then that is a very powerful tool and skill.
By reaction time, I mean that some people tend to be more effective at certain ranges and methods of attack, that was a lack of clarity on my part. Some people feel more comfortable at certain ranges because of what they have learned and also the compositions of their bodies, thus they react better. I'm not a great grappler, there are times where I, for a lack of a better phrase, just don't know what exactly to do but start punching and kicking; waiting for my opponent to get distracted to choke him out.
Yeah, I see what you mean. The problem is that, the attacker dictates the fight. They dictate how they wanna fight, where and when. As you protect yourself, it's up to you to find intelligent solutions to each problem. It's not about your personal preference for how you wanna fight because, again, the attacker will how attack you how he pleases. Of course then it's up to you to make the opportunities for yourself and work it to your advantage.
You mentioned punching and kicking whilst stuck in grappling. It seem's like simple programming to me- you can't fit a round peg into a square hole. You just have to make sure you have a good foundation in all the required area's and skill sets.
They are not. I know from personal experience. Hence the slash. If you believe that sparring and "IRL" fighting have nothing to do with each other, then I'm afraid I can't speak further on the subject. Your mind is already made up. Even in a controlled setting where I know what to expect, if I get angry because I'm not winning, sure my attacks get stronger perhaps but I also become less effective technique wise, throwing wild punches and such.
No, I meant "sport sparring". Boxing and Muay Thai and other full contact sport combat sparring are great. I've been boxing for 2 years and it's fantastic. When I train my self protection, the skillsets and attributes we're training at the time it's always with another partner and it's always "alive". I'm always struggling against another intelligent human being when training. So in a sense, I am always sparring- we just keep the compliance and combative pressure on low heat for the development of skill. We remain calm and be intelligence.
There are different types of attacks and either using aggression or not seems like a false dichotomy. A fight at a college frat party is, most likely, not going to be as dangerous as a fight between a hyped up mugger on the street. Even THAT match won't be the same if there are three gangsters feeling hard. If I was fighting a drunk frat boy at a party, I would not pick up a knife, pen, keys, or anything of the such and jab him in the eye with it and slash his risks unless the situation called for it..
Yep, yep. But now we're moving onto different territory aren't we? See, this is where we need to concisely define what context's we are talking about. When I talk about this aggressive combative mindset, I'm assuming we're in a life or death situation where all options of escape and de-escalation have been exhausted. I do this to be generic, because at the root of all combatives training- is the fundamental ability to be able to fight out of a life or death situation. Of course, these kinds of scenarios are extremely rare for any individual citizen.
You have pre-fight ritualistic attacks, where there is some kind of build up (usually verbal, then aggressive etc. can come in many flavours and contexts though) then there are ambush attacks- where no matter how switched on you are or how aware you are, you couldn't see the attack coming and we fight a from an instinctive flinch response.
Then you have all the shades of grey as you mentioned- it's all about making judgements and evaluating a situation and deciding the level of force (or non-force) to use. If you train for the worst case scenario, ALL the skill's and confidence that you gain from that physically and psychologically, can transfer onto all other combative skills that will require you to deal with more everyday scenario's that most people are likely to get involved in.
This also includes social conflict such as bullying, toxic relationships etc. I'm definitely into helping people "protect" themselves in a holistic sense, not just beating the shit out of people.
But we weren't talking about all those shades of grey when I started introducing this concept of aggression were we? Which was unfair because we were only talking a specific context.
Have I ever broken a man's arm? No. I've practice arm bars and breaks in class and I've only hyper extended one in self defense. As in I was getting attacked in the bathroom by a football player after school. I don't see that attack as a process of my aggression, I was not raging at my opponent, I did not strike him after he conceded the match.
Well the effectiveness of breaks and such are dubious in my experience and research so I'm gonna hold my tongue on that one because that's a whole other argument all together.
Protip: Read all of my post. Not just part of it. A few of the assumptions you made were completely baseless. Sorry.
Assumptions about you, or the things I was talking about?
