Your skepticism seems warranted! I can’t tell how the rules of the sport affect the training system, and I haven’t studied MMA in depth so maybe it has more answers to problems which I just didn’t find.
the reality is you just can’t actually go for the eyes in a sparring match so you mostly focus on the other stuff.
Yeah, that’s the kind of reasonable-at-first-blush rules that come to mind. This is a tangent to the grayspaces post and if we get more than another back and forth into this I might just try to write this up as its own post. I don’t think what I’ve said above or what I’m saying in this comment should be convincing. Training to completion against a resisting opponent usually means training with moves that won’t put someone in the hospital. I don’t know that’s the wrong tradeoff, training against a resisting opponent is pretty useful.
The circumstances I needed martial arts for were mostly across a weight difference, with varying number of opponents, in an environment full of hard abrasive surfaces. There was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class that said it was pulling in some MMA techniques (yeah, I know calling MMA a style is a bit weird, pretty sure it was mostly Muay Thai) I tried to learn from, and it proved a trap. Later on I learned a bit more about MMA and the parts that felt like traps seemed to come from assumptions like the ground being okay to land on.
Circling back to the grayspaces-as-worrying-insulation-from-tests; if I imagine a bunch of skilled scientists and a bunch of skilled debaters talking about who has better discussion norms, I could see the scientists saying “look, we’re not going to spar with you by your rules, and we’re not going to let you come in and spar with us either unless you spend some time understanding what we think sucks about your rules.” Maybe the scientists have allowed themselves to become too insulated from someone asking the right questions or from outside perspectives. That does seem like it can happen! But also the debaters are focused on a different purpose and that could be an actual problem.
Your skepticism seems warranted! I can’t tell how the rules of the sport affect the training system, and I haven’t studied MMA in depth so maybe it has more answers to problems which I just didn’t find.
Yeah, that’s the kind of reasonable-at-first-blush rules that come to mind. This is a tangent to the grayspaces post and if we get more than another back and forth into this I might just try to write this up as its own post. I don’t think what I’ve said above or what I’m saying in this comment should be convincing. Training to completion against a resisting opponent usually means training with moves that won’t put someone in the hospital. I don’t know that’s the wrong tradeoff, training against a resisting opponent is pretty useful.
The circumstances I needed martial arts for were mostly across a weight difference, with varying number of opponents, in an environment full of hard abrasive surfaces. There was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class that said it was pulling in some MMA techniques (yeah, I know calling MMA a style is a bit weird, pretty sure it was mostly Muay Thai) I tried to learn from, and it proved a trap. Later on I learned a bit more about MMA and the parts that felt like traps seemed to come from assumptions like the ground being okay to land on.
Circling back to the grayspaces-as-worrying-insulation-from-tests; if I imagine a bunch of skilled scientists and a bunch of skilled debaters talking about who has better discussion norms, I could see the scientists saying “look, we’re not going to spar with you by your rules, and we’re not going to let you come in and spar with us either unless you spend some time understanding what we think sucks about your rules.” Maybe the scientists have allowed themselves to become too insulated from someone asking the right questions or from outside perspectives. That does seem like it can happen! But also the debaters are focused on a different purpose and that could be an actual problem.
Meh, the debate team and the scientists know they’re aiming at different things, that’s not a great example on my part.