Circular drills

I was watching a documentary yester night (The Bladed Hand). While the opinions in the doc have some strong pitfalls, it's a worthy one, interesting. Would NOT train under some of these people if they paid me for it, but the rest...? Man, they're good.

Now, I think the teaching value of survival is mostly forgotten, and might help explain why the previous generations is so damn good. And I still think that the teaching proficiency itself of many (some of them legendary) teachers needs some work, but there's one thing FMA have that other arts don't emphasize as much.

The doc, at one point, basically says "FMA training has taken over cinema; if you've seen a fight, it's 90% sure it's FMA". Then it sort of extrapolates from there to MA training. I disagree. If anything's taken over MA it's boxing. But...

But the fact is that FMA have some interesting things in them. People get really attached to FMA drills, for example. You'll find people in every corner doing hubud or sombrada. Sometimes with no sense at all, no matter how you measure it. I think that's often a mistake.

The idea of drills isn't. In fact, a lot of arts have them. I can only speak for Japanese arts, but there are such drills there. Unending, partnered, fluid drills... that most instructors forget as soon as they grab the plane back to the West.

And I've been wondering, of late (since before this particular video), how to use the idea of circular, neverending drills in Kaju. Call it sombrada on techniques or hubud on our own "blocks", the idea is there, and it's really accessible. Why isn't it used? Why is most dynamic training I'm seeing a toeing into Boxing waters or some weird ideas on barroom brawls instead of a way to dynamize what you are already training.

Take care.