SCA and MMA?

[freiman the minstrel]

Guys,

I have a pretty good work out space. I have a barn that gives room for multiple pells and multiple rings at the same time. In the past, we have used a carpet square (about 30 by 20, or so) as a "ring" (for SCA fighting) and it has worked just fine. I have two heavy bags in and two pells in the barn. I have a sauna that seats five (the plans were sold as a fifteen person sauna, but if it holds fifteen, they are both thin and really friendly).

For the past couple of years, I have been working out with some guys that are a lot harder than I am. They have forced me to learn new things, and to push myself. Two of them are from another club that does rattan fighting, but the rest are just GI's that want "something extra". It's a good crew. They're good guys, but they wont tolerate any B*llSh*t. I have been getting better fast.

But lately, there has been a lot of a push to do unarmed combat in my barn. I have a 1940's USNavy manual on how to set up a wrestling "salle". It's pretty dang old school. The manual involves using (no kidding) corn husks to pad a wrestling mat.

And now, the guys are pushing to include unarmed and unarmored fighting in my barn.

I am not sure I want to do this.

Technically, I am qualified to teach karate (I am a JKA Shotokan Nidan) and I wrestled in both high school and college, but I am worried that this is a dominance play. I wipe the floor with everybody but James and Eric, the two guys from another club. The newer guys are learning fast, and I am confident that they can beat virtually everybody below the knight level in my kingdom. Some of the knights (but not by any measure all, or even most) would be toasted cheese. I am a good trainer.

And I have been learning really fast by trusting James. At first, I had to cut loose and accept that I would be taking a beating. Since then, I have learned a lot.

And trusting has paid off.

But I am not sure that I want to do joint locks and (essentially) boxing in my own workout space.

I am insecure about this. I have profited quite a bit by bringing in outsiders, but this feels wrong. I worry that if I say "no", I will end up losing all of my guys. I worry that I will have to find new training partners.

But I am pushing 50, and rolling around on a mat with 18 year old airborne rangers who are trying to dislocate my shoulders just seems stupid.

I have had really bad luck trusting people with my barn, and with dominance in my own salle.

At the same time, I have had really GOOD luck trusting my training buddies this time around.

I was hoping that this sort of thing wouldn't happen this time around.

And I am stressed out.

f

[freiman the minstrel]

Oh, yeah, and tonight, I am in a lot of pain.

[Marco-borromei]

First, I have some related actual experience with this, having spun a WMA group off parallel to an SCA group.

Second, MMA "competition" is WAY harder contact than most WMA/EMA "study." So I just rethought/rewrote the remainder of my post.




Divorce ALL thought of the SCA's traditions and ranks from any decision about a separate art... stop calling anyone a knight. There ARE NO KNIGHTS in MMA.

Divorce all rattan, armed, and/or armored combat experience from any decsion about MMA. The SCA's combat systems are designed so that the GEAR protects you from your oponents mistakes. Unarmed/unarmored combat COMPETITIONS require you to [a] actively protect yourself from your opponents mistakes and rely on you OPPONENT's skill to protect you from his mistakes.

This makes judging someone's competance, safety, and ability very different from SCA combat.





Get insurance that coveres what you're doing.



Dominance isn't ALWAYS a physical thing. SOME trainers/sensi/masters/etc. can control SOME students through sheer force of will, even if they never engage in direct physical competition. I'm not one of those guys; they're rare. You already know if you are one or not.

Finally, I can tell you that you can TRAIN/DRILL with anyone, but only you can decide if you're comfortable COMPETING against them. I'd say your gut isn't:

But I am pushing 50, and rolling around on a mat with 18 year old airborne rangers who are trying to dislocate my shoulders just seems stupid.

Good luck, and keep your joints intact for playing music.

[losthelm]

Be strait forward about what's going on.
It's your space and it sounds like they want a little more than your comfortable teaching..

When you where active in karate did you travel to turnaments, DoJos or have guest instructors from out side shotokan?

It may be educatuinal to go with them and do few weeks as a group at the local dojo/MMA gym.
Spend the time to sit down and find out exactly what your friends are looking for and then talk with the local instructors/trainers.

[maxntropy]

Why would you necessarily need to participate in any wrestling or other activity that may or may not be going on?

As long as you have sufficient and appropriate liability insurance on your property (in case anybody else gets hurts and wants to sue you), why would offering folks the space to do whatever wrestling or kickboxing or whatever that they might want to do to each other necessitate your involvement?

When I was much younger, we used to have SCA practices at Siegfried's and then some of us young punks would spontaneously break out into wrestling. One time Albrecht put Tristan through a wall (requiring a large wall-repair party to show up that Saturday to fix Wanda's wall). Most of the "older" guys (old back then being around 30) wouldn't participate in such reindeer games...

So why can't you provide the space, and let them beat the crap out've each other as they would... while you focus on your armoured combat?

Max VH

[Ken Mondschein]

It sounds like you need to formalize the structure of what is becoming a WMA school. What makes you in charge of your class is not that you can beat everyone else up, or even that you own the space. What makes you in charge is that you bring insight, training, and knowledge of technique to those things you're expert in, so that the people who train with you get something valuable when they come to train. There are plenty of fencing masters who can't beat their top students; in fact, I would hope that their students could beat a 50-something guy who hasn't competed in years! Some of my HEMA students are getting hard for me to beat, but that doesn't mean that they're not still learning and improving from studying with me. Some of my sport fencing students are way better than me in that discipline because of youth, speed, and athleticism, but I can still help them improve because I can focus in on their deficiencies and give them what they need to become better fencers. (Of course, I'm also working from a well-established body of knowledge.)

It's also important to have the humility to know your limits. You can be the coach for some stuff and the overall business owner, but you will need to delegate authority if other people have more expertise in other things, like grappling. There are things my students want to learn, but which I can't teach them because I haven't studied them myself. In such cases, I will refer them to someplace they can learn it, or we can explore it in a collegial way.

Of course, if other people are more expert in general, there's no shame in you being the business owner but not the primary instructor. Plenty of gyms and salles are like that.

Also be sure to establish regular class times, fees, and chains of command. The quality you need to show is not so much dominance, but leadership.

Realize also that you can't do everything equally well: At 50 you are not going to be healthy if you grapple full-on every time you train, and both you and anyone you train with will need to accommodate that.

[Duke Owain]

If you are providing the space and paying for it you get to decide what you study. If you are personally interested in MMA and want to use your space to train for it go ahead. It sounds to me like you are not.

If I was a twenty year old airborne ranger Id be into MMA because I might have a shot at getting paid to fight. Im not those days ore over.

I have taught Karate (early belt levels to kids, nothing special) I am not qualified to teach MMA. A current karate blackbelt let alone a twenty year old one will not set you up to teach or compete in MMA.

Perhaps you could remind everyone that your goal is to study Medieval martial arts. Maybe you could compromise and spend some time on unarmoured grappling from Fiore. I am by no means a Fiore scholar, I have spent one weekend with Bob Charron but, we used to have a Fiore study group in my living room where we would go throught the plates slowly. It was fun and not too hard. Fiore is one of the easier systems for lay people to grasp.

If yu are not using your Salle every night perhaps you could offer it to your MMA enthusiasts if they secure qualified instruction and provide insurance and whateer else you need to protect yourself from liability.

[freiman the minstrel]

I talked to James tonight on the phone. I also went to visit Skip (not MY sensei, but a really good instructor, and a true genius with kids' instruction, and I don't say that lightly) and I heard a lot of pretty good words. They all agreed that I am right to have some trust issues at this point, because I have truly been f*cked by folks that called me their buddy in the past. I know that that sounds really panzy and wimpy and whatever, but it's true.

Remember, these guys are essentially kind people, and they all know me well enough to know that I am insecure.

The basic decision that I came up with, with their help, is this. I am qualified to teach a basic shotokan class. Given a few years back in the dojo, I might be able to really teach. Given my wrestling experience, I might get lucky and be rated by the guys in the gym as "that sneaky, old M*therF*ucker" (direct quote). It's possible that I might be somebody that is good to have in a gym, if only to keep the hot young fighter warmed up, and to keep him thinking, and being careful about his opponent being sneaky.

But there will be no study of unarmed combat in my barn. The idea that somehow, I could teach that style in a meaningful way is just stupid.

There is no chance that it will end up happening.

There is also a really solid MMA training session twenty minutes from my house, where (literally) anybody with a military ID can come and train for free, and every month or so, a guy who's last name is "Gracie" shows up. Going through all that trouble to set up the barn for MMA, when there is much better instruction than I can give for free, and close, is stupid.

However, I did get invited to a private shotokan work out session that is run by "some of the old guys" and some guys from the bundespolizei from around this area.

So, yeah, I wasn't being insecure, or being a wussie. It's just a bad idea.

Sometimes, you just have to decline the challenge.

f

[Tally]

I was going to say the same thing: No way. There are plenty of places to do MMA. Let them do that there. Good luck.