What many call ‘aliveness’ in their training is nothing more than trying to simulate the ferocity of a street attack in the dojo. That’s a pretty tall order cosidering all the variables. Just the same, training against a resisting partner has great value. But I’m still unconvinced it the only … or should be the primary … way to train for self-defense.

Here’s why: John Gagliardi of tiny St. John’s College in Collegeville, MN is the winningest football coach in history. He’s in the college football hall of fame. He has won championship after championship with the oddest practice philosophy ever to grace the gridiron; Coach Gagliardi does not allow players to call him coach, rather preferring to be called simply “John”. He has never cut a player for non-performance in 55 years. The “Johnnies” do not do calisthenics and never hit in practice (my emphasis added) under the theory that they hit enough in games and calisthenics cause muscle strains. Sounds daft, doesn’t he? Yet the Johnnies win, and win and win … in real football games! With real hitting! … Really!

This flies in the face of commonly accepted practices for impact sports. In order to be properly prepared everyone ‘knows’ you need to train with full contact. Or do you? John Gagliardi’s example says there is another way. He teaches his players positioning, proper technique, reading the play, reading the field, reading the other players; really it’s decision making that he teaches. The lack of hitting in practice has absolutely nothing to do with the teams level of performance in a real game situation.

Hmmm. I wonder if there are any paralells to martial arts training? What do you think?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 10th, 2006 at 4:24 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.