Aliveness in Martial Arts

In our constant search for better, improved, evolving – best practices, our consistent goal is to have our ideas about the world, align to the actuality of the world itself, as closely as possible. When it comes to martial arts, self-defense, fighting, and violence in general, it is very important we always remember that our preferences do not determine what is true (some moves look cool or effective in the movies but that doesn't mean they work in a real fight with a resisting opponent).

When it comes to fighting, just as with every other empirical, testable, human endeavor, truth is a measurement that is likely to admit to ever increasing levels of complexity, and the discovery of process that leads to those deeper levels of understanding, requires self-correcting mechanism, an epistemology, a ‘truth seeking method’. This is called Aliveness.

When your martial arts school incorporates Aliveness in its training methodology, it automatically creates better attitude amongst students and a better vibe overall. Nobody wants to hurt eachother and everbody takes care for one another. All the techniques you will learn will be functional and you will progress in your performance. Your students will not be collecting certificates or striving for stripes on their belts. You will know what works and what doesn't. You gain true confidence that you can stand your ground in a self-defense situation, including knowing when to walk (or run) away! This is because everything you do during training is "alive".

What does Aliveness mean?

There is no-one better than Matt Thornton to explain you what this means and why it is so important. Matt Thornton is the founder of Straight Blast Gym International or SBG and is a 4th-degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt.

For something to be alive, it has to have 3 components: motion, energy and timing. Three sides of the same object, three perspectives of the same phenomena, but each part, essential to the whole.

Motion – is just that, human movement. Since we are talking about fighting, this movement must be fluid, spontaneous, reactive, and realistic – and it must always be present in training because it will always be present in a fight.

Energy – is resistance, force, pressure. That force, that energy, that resistance, must also mimic what you would see in a fight. That doesn’t mean it has to be full force (in fact, training that hard is often counter-productive), but it does mean it can’t be contrived. Locking your punch, tackle, or swing of a weapon out, in a robotic manner that no attacker would ever use, isn’t helpful.

Timing – is the critical ingredient, the secret sauce that makes Aliveness work. Without timing there is no Aliveness. Timing cannot be gained from dead reps. Timing requires energy and motion. Robotically practicing a backhand with your tennis racket in the air (kata) isn’t alive. Hitting back a ball that is lobbed at you over a net is.

That ball doesn’t always need to come at you fast. In fact, it could be counter-productive if it was; starting slow and working your way up isn’t just okay, it’s smart. Aliveness never needs to be rough. Progressive resistance is crucial.

Another way to grasp more fully the epistemology of Aliveness is to understand the process SBG uses to teach and drill. One of the major training methods SBGs use (there are many), is known as the I-Method.

The I-Method is a three stage training sequence SBG uses for most skills and drills. In practice it looks like this:

The first stage is Introduction.

Introduction is just that, the first time the movement is introduced to the students within that class. The motion, technique, or skill, is taught, and then repeated, absent any resistance.

This is done until the students can repeat the motion mechanically correct, when no resistance is present.

This is not drilling. This is simply introducing of a new move. And this stage tends to last no more than 5-15 minutes, maximum. A good rule of thumb is that if it takes longer than about ten minutes for everyone in the room to learn, and be able to repeat, mechanically correct – than it was probably too complicated for that group.

The second stage is Isolation.

Isolation is the drilling stage. Once the move can be repeated mechanically correct absent resistance, Introduction, then it is time to add Aliveness, and that means adding Timing, Energy and Motion – in other words, it is time to add progressive resistance.

In many martial arts schools the typical class would involve the introduction of a few techniques or moves, lots of repetitions of those moves, and then sparring. In that type of environment the students never really gain timing at the new movement itself, because repetitions without resistance don’t involve timing. The crucial step of Alive drilling – is skipped. As a consequence, everyone grows at a much slower rate.

By contrast, when you incorporate Aliveness everything is introduced, repeated until it can be done mechanically correct, and then, slowly, safely, and with the appropriate level of progressive resistance, the movements are drilled Alive. This produces higher levels of performance, and it is a lot more fun.

The third and final stage is Integration.

This is where we put the part back into the whole. This is the sparring stage.

For example, let’s use a headlock escape. A student learns the appropriate movement, repeats it without resistance until it is shown they can do it, and then begins drilling. One side holds the headlock, one side escapes. With each success, resistance can be added. With each failure, resistance can be lowered. The Introduction stage, the part without resistance, may have taken 10 minutes. The Isolation stage, the Alive drilling segment, may have involved three, 5-minute rounds, for each side, for a total of 30 minutes. For the remaining ten minutes, the students use the headlock as a starting point, but then wrestle, spar, fight, from there, until submission is reached. That is the Integration stage. We’ve now trained for a total of 50-55 minutes, and the last few minutes of class time is used for questions or a mat chat.

We’ve taken a piece of the game, isolated it, played from there with timing, then placed it back into the whole of whatever venue we were working, BJJ, no-gi, MMA, self-defense, etc.

That’s the I-Method.

The more I study the philosophy of Matt Thornton, the more I appreciate his approach and try to incorporate this in our teachings at Fundamentals Jiu-Jitsu. If you truly understand "Aliveness", then you understand why I don't teach certain things anymore or why I teach things in a different way. You will also understand the heavy emphasis on standing clinch and ground work if you understand how real fights go. Especially the importance of sparring, both gi and no gi, is very obvious. Although there is no sparring in the Women Self-Defense classes, even there the concept of Aliveness is incorporated in the Fight Simulation Drills.

A lot of the people that train at Fundamentals Jiu-Jitsu automatically begin to test techniques under progressive resistance. Does this really work if I do this or that? The advanced students will often skip the Introduction phase and go right into drilling with resistance (Isolation phase). Sometimes they apologize to me for skipping the Introduction but I often say "no, no ... go on ... pressure test ... but be progressive and not too aggressive right away. Build up and try to discover where or when the technique fails ... and why". If both training partners or OK with this, there can be learned a lot! As an instructor, I can also learn a lot from the rest of the group in this fashion. Only in this way jiu-jitsu can evolve. There must be critical thinking. There must be this search for truth. And this is the healthy route to take. This is the right path in my honest opinion ... at least if you want your martial art to be functional.

I highly recommend reading through the complete philosophy of SBG, about delivery systems, about what "fundamentals" are, and much more: https://www.straightblastgym.com/philosophy/

In this link you can also read about the other principles like "Truth" and "Adaptability". We can learn a lot from this!