A new take on Aliveness...

Roper

Thought I'd share a story with y'all that you might find funny or tragic depending on your point of view.

Around a year ago when I was sort of sleepwalking in the matrix, without having fully woken up, I was talking to more or less anyone who'd listen about Aliveness and the benefits I was seeing in myself and my students from training in it. A friend of mine was impressed (or annoyed) enough to want to know more. So I sent him on a few articles of the type that have been posted here by Matt Thornton et al. Now this guy is an MA instructor himself, and a couple of weeks later we're talking and the conversation turns to training and I say, hey did you read those articles? Yeah yeah he says, good stuff. So did you put any theory into practise? I ask. Sure yeah he says, I can see what you mean alright. The other night we're all finished doing a pattern and I turned to everyone and said "now, don't you feel it? Don't you feel 'alive'"?

Horribly, cringingly, he was serious. I tried to explain that he'd missed the point completely. But it didn't make a lick of difference. And he still doesn't get it.

My point in posting this story is that formerly, he and I would have been of the same mind when it came to MA, give or take. Now what he trains seems almost pointless to me, such that he and I have nothing in common in MA terms anymore. Worse again is that maybe a year before that, if someone had come to me and tried to explain aliveness, I would have said "yeah yeah we do that".

The only thing that stinks about the journey is cringing at yourself when you look back.

Does anyone else have any similar experiences?

Ger Healy

Roper wrote:

Around a year ago when I was sort of sleepwalking in the matrix, without having fully woken up,

I remember the in my fathers time during the Great War............ wait a minute!!! wrong program

No seriously when I look back I too cringe at what you though was alive training then. But I much prefer to look forward since I was given the choice of the green or blue pill by JK and see how much I have progressed both in skill and knowledge. I ask myself this question every now and then.
Am I better in skill, knowledge & mind set etc than I was 6 month ago and since opening my eyes I have to say yes. :cool:

MaxBax

can't say i got a pill from jk about aliveness but the bjj guys did wake me up out of my "i can always turtle my way out of ne-waza" nightmare.

Tim_Murphy

Wouldn’t be the same as ye lads, but I do cringe at some of the ‘self defence’ stuff I used do. In fairness though, it was just 10 mins at the end of some training sessions, not really the aim of what we used to do. Somewhere along the line the self defence stuff got replaced with 10 minutes of grappling. After a while the grappling got more important, the standup started to look different and eventually I heard of this clinch craic. In other words, it’s all gone pearshaped!

Tim_Murphy

Remember this one lads?

'Aliveness' will not work as a word.

People as a whole are already aware that they are 'Alive.'

Laurie

Actually, I am alive.

I breathe, I'm capable of reproduction, I grow, I metabolize, and I can move; this proves that I am a living thing.

I conclude this to mean that I am alive.

Science has proofen that the above is just.

'Aliveness' in a MA is therefore silly

Roper

Classic Laurie!:D

Ger Healy

Roper wrote:

Classic Laurie!:D

That woman is way out there some where :eek:

mark.leonard

I remember that guy alright, I went a few rounds with him on the ITF forum to absolutely no avail, but then I knew I would get nowhere going in.

The journey to functional training is pretty enjoyable, though I definitley do have quite a few cringing stories of my own. I recently sparred a very nice guy, Ken Horan, down in the Black Dragon club. I hadn't sparred Kenny since I was doing Taekwondo alone. Back then I would have tried keeping him out with my sidekick and spun at the drop of a hat and guarded my belt while leaving my chin up in the air unprotected, but Ken at that time was too sound to put me down for my foolishness and would always carry me in the sparring and make sure to pull anything he hit me with. I was reminded of this when at the start of the spar he said - "this will be me watching out for the kicks and you watching out for the hands!" I cringed all over again because I knew that a champion of his stature never really had to watch out for a few semi contact kicks and he was just being sound again, probably because he figured I'd be back trying to sidekick my way out of trouble again!

Roper

When I trained with JK, I wasn't entirely convinced on the MMA front, so he offered to go a couple of rounds one afternoon. So we did and of course he dumped me on my backside a bunch of times. Then he started clinching, which I had no idea about of course, kneed me a bit (lightly) and generally tenderised me. At the end I said something like "I guess I'm not used to the knees". To which he replied "Yeah, I'm not used to taking knees either". He was being nice which makes it all the more humiliating... If he had said "quit being a pussy I hardly touched you", I might actually have felt better....:p

Colm_OReilly

I've erased all pre Aliveness thoughts from my mind to avoid embarassment, and to avoid myself kicking my own ass for being so foolish.

BUT I will say JK was very patient with me all the conversations we had about ma and training walking home from NCR. Matt Thornton just explained it in a way that made intellectual sense to me, and sometimes I really need to understand the why behind something before I'll embrace it.

Go functional, sports-like training!