Mere repetition of rhythmic, calculated movements robs combat movement of its “aliveness” and “isness” – its reality.
- Bruce Lee

Anyone who has ever been in a fight, a real fight where both people are trying to hurt each other and their adrenaline is pumping, knows that it’s completely unpredictable. There is absolutely no way to know what your opponent is thinking much less anticipate his or her next move. The nature of a physical confrontation has countless variables, meaning that no two confrontations will happen the same way. Fighting is “alive”, free from patterns or restrictive techniques. In true or real fighting, anything goes. So, if fighting does not play according to rules, regulations, or a fixed way of acting, fighting sports aside, than why train in a martial arts systems that have a specific “way” or a set pattern of pretending to defend yourself.

In martial arts, or fighting, timing is everything. You cannot understand timing through a fixed series of punches, kicks and blocks, better known as forms or katas. You can practice fighting techniques for 15 years and show this technique to other people over and over again, but without a sense of timing and distance you can never hope to be able to execute these techniques. Take a baseball player for example. Imagine being shown how to swing a bat properly with all the right mechanics, but never having a pitch thrown to you to swing at. Do you think without the practice of swinging at real pitches that you would ever gain a sense of when to swing? Can this concept be truly understood without experimentation? I don’t think so. So the baseball player learns timing in his batting game by using a batting cage with real pitches. This is aliveness training for a baseball player. Doing the real thing versus pretending or imagining doing the real thing. A baseball player does not wait until the big game to swing at an actual ball pitched to him. The same is true for a martial artist wanting to develop a sense of timing and spacing between his or her opponent.

A martial artist must learn any techniques through the same process of experimentation. Techniques must be practiced against resisting opponents to gain a sense of how techniques work when it counts, and not waiting until the big game. Aliveness training is the only way to accomplish this. To be alive is to move. It is not fixed positions. It is not pretending to be in different scenarios. Without timing, energy, motion, contact and consequences, the martial artist will never truly understand how techniques will help him or her when it counts.

How do you discover what is a practical technique and what is a flowery technique rooted in tradition and style? The answer is – aliveness training. Aliveness training is movement. Aliveness training is not a static fixed or ‘dead’ pattern drill. Aliveness training is as simple as performing ‘Isolation’ drills where both “athletes” are working towards certain objective (attempting to pass the guard for example), or sparring with resistance and realism. Aliveness training is the only way to progress to a greater sense of timing. Aliveness training is accomplished by performing drills and sparring in all ranges of combat, in an isolated environment or where anything goes. Regardless of which range you isolate or if you train all ranges simultaneously you must do so through aliveness. Only through aliveness training can you ever hope to discover what you are capable of doing in a self-defence situation or in the ring.

Traditional martial arts training ‘will not’ prepare you for the reality of combat and self-defence.