Nice belt rank promotions!

Wow. Honestly, I think you guys have gone off in a harmful direction. The only skills I see being trained here are a willingness to endure getting kicked and punched while curling up in a ball out of fear. I don't see any actual skills being tested, trained or demonstrated here. All I see are students who came to learn how to defend themselves getting kicked, punched and slammed to the ground for no reason other than a worthless belt. I know you guys train real techniques, I've seen your other videos, but something has seriously gone wrong here. This isn't testing or training. Its nothing more than teaching students to accept brutal beatings. I don't see any value here.

@FreestyleFightingAcademy

10 жыл бұрын

It depends what your purpose is Mark. If your goal is to only learn techniques - then this sort of "shark tank" will serve no purpose. However, if your purpose is to be able to defend yourself or fight competitively - then it definitely serves a purpose. Fighting is part technique - but overwhelmingly mental. If you have never been put into deep waters, you will drown when the time comes to jump in there in a real situation. In their blue belt tests, they get their technique evaluated during the beginning and middle of the test - their determination and toughness gets tested at the end. Our instructors feel a responsibility when giving rank. Maybe at your gym the belt is worthless - but at our gym it is a very real symbol of how prepared the instructor feels you are. In this shark tank scenario, fresh partners are brought in versus a tired partner (the person being tested). If we were to have the person being tested stick to the same partner the entire round, there is a chance the person being tested may have more energy and outperform the partner (assuming they are more or less the same skill level) - and even if the partner is in better shape than the person being tested, there is a natural tendency to lower your pace to the pace of the person you are matched up with. The goal isn't to test how they would do versus someone of their equal match - we have done that hundreds of times in class leading up to this test - the goal is to see if they have the heart to keep on fighting and not give up past insurmountable odds. However, by the time they get selected for testing, although our students have never been put through this rigorous a challenge prior, the instructors know they most likely aren't going to quit. The students have already been put through all sorts of training exercises and psychological exercises to help them meet this challenge. In all the years we have been testing, through hundreds of color belts, we have never had someone quit. The biggest purpose this serves is as a rite of passage from one level to the next. Once they go through it, they realize a new limit (most people want to quit after the first two minutes - they already went through an entire test and multiple sparring rounds leading up to the shark tank) - and when they make it through, they realize they got a deeper gas tank and heart than they realized. For the blue belts especially, it means a lot because most of them remember quitting from exhaustion from their first 4 minute grappling match when they first started - for most people that join our gym, it is a massive change in their mind control and overall toughness. And yes, since they are tired and their opponents fresh, sometimes they are mostly on the receiving end rather than the giving end of the fight - but guess what, if you are fighting for your life, you don't have the option of tapping out, and you got to weather the storm and hope for the opportunity to come back. If the first time you ever find yourself in this type of situation is in a real fight - psychologically, you will most likely break down. Here, these guys have the option to quit and don't - that speaks a lot about their mental state. Even when their body's have given out - their minds haven't. A lot of BJJ and martial art schools have blue belts that would flinch if they had to fight - guys that have never been hit in the nose before, never had experienced the confusion of getting socked by a good stiff punch. At our gym, every single color belt knows how to fight. The unathletic stock broker color belt, although he may not be a competitive level fighter - he knows how to fight. A thug tries to attack him on the street - our guy will definitely surprise him. Sparring isn't a requirement at our place - but the vast majority of students choose to enjoy sparring, at least once a month. The fighters spar two to three times a week - but the average student probably spars once every two to three weeks. When I say "spar", I don't mean jiu-jitsu rolling, we don't consider that sparring, that is a sparring exercise that we do almost every class. When I say "spar", I mean MMA or kickboxing sparring - which is done at a very controlled pace and environment. What you see here is something that is done only at belt tests, which depending on the student, is once every two to three years - and testing in itself is optional.