“James, you recently wrote an article about getting a boxer to relaxing in sparring. How would this apply to a self-defense student—to a karate practitioner in particular?”

-Mary Pat

Okay, everybody, cops, karate people, boxers, UFC fighters, all have to cultivate the relaxed combative state if they are to maximize their effectiveness.

Among competitive fighters, it is a hurdle of the ego, made doubly hard by the fact that these are extra-competitive people. They want to hit the other guy more often and harder than they get hit, even in practice. So learning relaxation through various drills and especially viewing sparring as “work” and as “training,” is difficult at first, as you, the coach, seem now to be standing between them and their desire—and you are, but to facilitate their dream.

For people with a karate background it is even more difficult to bridge that relaxation gap, and progressively more difficult the longer you have been practicing. With the boxer, we have the ego problem.

With the karate person we have the following problems:

1. Ego is there as well, just not as whackjobish as with the aspiring prizefighter

2. Fear of failure is strong among self-defense practitioners. Where your typical boxer came to the gym because he was already beating people up, the self-defense student came to the gym because he was getting beat up or was afraid he would be beat up.

3. Sparring is a decades old competition format among competing martial arts schools and is internalized as competition within the school and often acts as a retarding factor.

4. One-hit sparring conditions the martial artist to stop and disengage when he has scored his first effective blow, which to a competitive fighter is when relaxation begins, when the fight begins. Unless you are an elite combat athlete, it is unrealistic to expect even everyday aggressors to stop after one hit. Hence, this one-hit, one-kill martial arts philosophy is what I constantly battle with training martial artists. They tend to be so conditioned to the disastrous consequence of a blow that they are tight from the outset.

So, the difference between the two is when to achieve relaxation. I want the boxer to become relaxed at the outset so he does not get tired and he can learn rhythm and timing, where typically he does not begin relaxing until he gets hit.

The martial artist is just going to be tight from the outset. You cannot get around that. It is how they are inclined and this inclination is reinforced by rigid training structures that emphasis the start and stop more than the aggression. Since the martial artists is concerned with self-defense, I really want him to get relaxed at the point of contact. These people are still being trained to deal with square-off situations, when the reality is that they are going to be sucker-punched, sneaked, jumped from behind, hit while seated, etc.

Both the boxer and the karate guy come to the first blow with the same dread. Then, when the boxer gets hit, he’s in the zone, and it’s over for the karate guy and the tension ratchets up again and he never gets relaxed. It is not the pain that gets to the karate people—not even the fear of getting hit or of screwing up. What gets to karate people is pressure, of having a guy coming at them continuously, probing, edging, pushing, crowding, pecking. This shit drives them crazy.

Now, the problem with the boxer is he wants to practice at full speed and pull his punches. He’s thinking in terms of not hurting his partner instead of relaxing. So you have to slow him down. I address the boxer’s tightness up front and address the karate man’s tightness at the point of contact.

When you are dealing with both types at the same time, remember that the boxer’s fight begins when and where the karate man’s fight ends, at clean contact, so having them work together is a matter of negotiating that disconnect.