It is difficult to worry about our day-to-day problems when someone is trying to choke us unconscious or punch us in the face. Aside from simply learning how to fight or defend ourselves, there are many psychological, physical, and emotional benefits to be found in sparring based martial arts, martial arts wherein practitioners regularly pressure … Continue reading The Martial-Mystical Experience (Rolling Into Transcendence)
Failure is an essential component to rapid learning and growth. It is often said that martial arts which incorporate live, resistance-based, freestyle sparring (randori) create more effective martial artists more quickly than those that do not. Why is that? Simply put, people who regularly spar with each other fail more often than people who do … Continue reading Randori: Failure as a Path to Rapid Learning & Growth
In competitive grappling, such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), judo, et al, there are essentially three different ways that one can approach randori (free sparring), depending upon our personality, training goals, or partner. We can train defensively, offensively, or educationally. That is, we can approach randori like the tortoise, the hare, and the scientist. The tortoise … Continue reading Three Archetypes for Better Randori
