 For those of you out there who have studied the martial arts or is actively currently studying an art, you know that working with a partner is a very large and crucial aspect of training. And it really shouldn't matter which art you're doing, whether it's a grappling art, striking, throwing, or even weapon-based. You will be working with another person at some point in time, actually preferably hopefully for a significant amount of your training. When it comes to work with partners, however, there's a lot more to take into consideration than just stand there and let me do this to you. There's a mental discipline that comes into play, as well as the physical, and in today's episode we're going to explore some of these considerations when working with partners. Also, please visit our Patreon page. By joining, you are helping us produce this channel and branch out to more arts, topics, and interviews. Members also get access to exclusive content for signing up, so please check it out if you haven't already. And I would like to issue a great big thank you to those of you who have joined us so far. Bluntly speaking, if you do not practice the martial arts and you don't work with another person, you are missing a giant part of your training. It's easy to do stuff in the air. It's easy to practice by yourself, free from a book, watch from a video, even in class, watch and imitate. Working with a person is a crucial part, and if you are not embarking on that, if you are not working with another physical human being, you are missing a great big part of your training. And also what's unfortunate too is a lot of schools that don't practice even active sparring or don't practice partner work, it presents a sense of false security for the students. You're talking about overall an industry or overall concept of martial arts is to protect yourself. And if somebody practices, no matter how much time they spend practicing, if they never work or train with another person, they're going to feel like they've got the skill they might not be able to apply it. It could give them a false sense of security because if they have not actually applied it, they don't know if it works. And this also touches on online training. We did an episode recently about training online martial arts using like online programs. They're good. They've got their benefits and their advantages for sure. But one downfall is you can only train in your living room for so long or get to a certain point. I always recommend that if you're going to do an online program, try to find, try to either do it with a friend or try to find someone else or our school that you can maybe partner up with to work with a person because again, you need that live feedback. Otherwise, you're only getting this much of the art when there's a broader spectrum to approach. You hear this criticism a lot that if you want art to be effective, you need to have resistance training. And I do agree with that. That's the only way you're going to make things work or at least understand them to their full potential. Now there are four levels of resistance training that I take a look at that I take in consideration. The first one is solo. You're practicing solo. So when you first for the very first time learn a martial art and you're like, okay, I need to do the motion. It's a block and it's a punch. Okay, it's fine to do that by yourself. Do it in the air. Learn the motions, learn the steps and kind of commit that part to memory. So just get used to it and understand it and learn it. The next step of the resistance is compliant. Now you're working with your partner for the first time and they're going to be fully compliant. You know, they're going to throw an attack and they're going to completely let you do the block and they're going to counter punch. They're going to go with you. They're going to react the way they're supposed to react. So that way you understand how it is applied on a person. So you first get your solo training so you learn the steps. Now you're seeing how the steps apply on a person. Once you're good with that, you move on to semi compliant where now you're like, okay, now your partner's going to give you a little bit of resistance. They're going to try to, oh, maybe they're going to try to move out of the way or if you don't move fast enough, they're going to try to do a counter attack. Something to keep you on your toes and push you a little bit further. So you're actually going from, I'm just learning the steps, memorization to application, now to a little bit of resistance, up to non-compliant, the fourth phase of resistance. And this is usually freestyle sparring or a partner that's not going to let you at all. So you see this a lot in grappling. So if you learn to take down, and this is the part where your partner's like, no, you're not going to take me down unless you actually earn it. So that's, you know, randorian sparring. That is where you know the technique is good. So you can work on these phases and I do believe that all four of these phases are important. And this is where a lot of arts fall, especially I hear this criticism a lot in Kempo. Oh, persons that were going to stand there and let you do that to them. No, of course not going to. But that, what you're watching is a compliant stage. It's not going to work. No technique is going to work. Or you really shouldn't depend on it until you have made it work on someone who is trying to stop you from doing it. And I believe this to all arts. I don't think it matters what art is, whether it be Kempo, boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a screamer. First you learn your technique, then you learn how it works on a person, then you apply a little bit of the pressure, and then you have to make it work against a full resisting opponent. And you have to do that with every single technique. A lot of schools are like, okay, here's the step. You practice it, you memorize it. Good, you got it. Okay, next one. You do that for a month, you get your next belt. It's more to memorization. You have to make it work in a situation that's trying to not let you make it work. That, to me, is when you've completed that technique. And when you've made it work, then you move on to the next one. So a lot of times, in a lot of arts, especially the Japanese arts, you'll hear the term ukei. Ukei simply means someone who receives. And in the case of a self-defense technique when you're doing drills, the ukei is usually the bad guy or the guy who's going to do the attack, and the torii is the one who's doing the defense. Now, torii kind of translates to, you know, someone who takes or chooses, and ukei is someone who receives. So it doesn't really mean good guy, bad guy. It really refers to somebody who is applying a technique and the other person who's receiving the technique. So technically speaking, torii and ukei is based on the success of the technique, not necessarily who initiated the attack. If a bad guy comes up and attacks me, and I successfully pull off a self-defense technique, well, he is the ukei because he received it. But if he comes up and attacks me, he starts to fight, and I say, I throw the punch and defend myself, and he grabs me, he throws me. Now I'm the ukei because he successfully completed the technique, and I took it and received it. So that's just kind of a little bit of a breakdown, just so you understand, you'll hear those terms. If you're unfamiliar with the Japanese arts, you have torii and you have ukei. Okay, so now let's talk about control. In my opinion, control is one of the most important things you can have when working with a partner. And when I say control, I mean you're controlling your actions and you're controlling their reactions. And I'm not talking about holding back. I'm talking about controlling and regulating your intention. As a black belt or as an advanced student, you should be able to put as much force behind a strike and be able to stop it, or give it a half effort or a full contact at your will. You need to be in charge of your actions. You are accountable for your own strikes and your own actions. And when I'm talking about controlling reactions, I mean controlling how that person is going to move. And that's part of why we do the compliant steps first. So when you throw a strike, when you're working with a partner, you can see how the body might react. So that when a real situation occurs, you're not only controlling your power and your technique, but you're also controlling the way their body reacts, the best that you can to set you up for your next technique, your next combo, or maybe an escape. You know, as an example, I need a white belt. Are there any white belts around? Hi, white belt Zach, everybody. So what I mean with control, if we know we're working together, Zach needs to have full trust that I have control. So like if he's grabbing me, and I want to come through and technique, you know, breaks the elbow and try to set the first strike or the partner, I'm not going to go hit him as hard as I can with the elbow, but I'm not going to go. So there's, there's a given take here. I'm going to put my effort in. I'm going to put my speed and the power, but I'm going to control it. So when he grabs, I'm going to actually kind of hit and put that stop. I don't want to hurt him. And for the next motion, so you do your power, you do your strike. So he should take full, I should be able to aim right at him. And he knows I'm not going to hit him. I'm going to throw full power and stop just raising him. Okay. So it's full effort. I'm not pulling a punch. You know, pulling punches, you actually actively go and you hold back. You don't want to hold back. And also what you see a lot is you don't want to do this. You're doing technique. And I'm going to go pretend I hit your face. If you train like this, you're going to practice like that. You're going to react like that. You don't want it. So you don't want to pull your punches and you don't want to miss intentionally. And this is where again, that control comes in. So I should be able to throw a strike at this board full power and stop. I should be able to control. I'm not holding back. I'm relaxed. I'm relaxed. And I tend to stop only breaking it when I fully intend to. It's about your intention and your control. You need that level of control. When, when you're working with a partner, it benefits both people to make some contact. Now, if you're starting off, of course, you want to start off light and you were working your way up. Before we're going to technique, we're exactly as a punch. I'm going to do a block and do a counter punch. That, okay, right there is step one, step two. This is the full compliant phase. We're practicing. But if you're going to apply it later, you know, we're going to do it again. He's going to throw the punch. I'm going to go, you know, I didn't really hit him. I didn't make any contact. Once you learn to step, start making shots. Actually, make contact with the body. And as you go, go a little bit harder. And as people condition and work, you can go harder and a little bit harder and a little bit harder. And that's one thing with Kemplitude is we like to do those drills on each other, especially body shots. The body, when conditioned, can take quite a shot. Now, if I compare against there, when it comes to things like the face, you want to be more careful, of course, we're not going to come in, you know, we might come in, just draw a heavy body shot and drill our partner, you know, toughness, because we, you know, we can tense our muscles, all that faces a little bit different. Now, when you're doing the face, like I said before, as you don't want to go or pretending you want to miss them intentionally, but we make contact and we do two different things like what we do in our school or in our classes is when we get to a face strike, we'll control it and maybe we'll do like a push to kind of simulate that we're actually getting the reaction we want, but we're making contact. So at least our placement is correct. Or sometimes we'll do like an open hand strike of its light, or even my one of my instructors personal favorites was like, if it was like a palm heel or a hammering strike to the face, sometimes we'd go to the chest instead. So at least we made contact, get used to striking your opponent. There's other body parts you guys take into consideration. So that's the face is one thing, groin shots. All right, no big deal. First of all, guys, you should be wearing a cup in class, even girls, you should be wearing a cup too, getting hit their hurts. But we don't, you know, especially in Kempo, in our classes too, we will hit to the groin, you know, we'll do hammer shots, whatever a groin shot is called for, we make contact. So we make our students wear groin cups. Now, especially we work with kids or even beginners. So one way you can do them contact without necessarily hitting the groin or if the person forgot to cut that day, and you feel like showing a little bit of mercy, sometimes you get a little bit of a tap to the inner side, just to kind of as a warning, say, Hey, I'm tagging you, I'm getting you, but, you know, the technique is there. Knees. Knees you got to be careful with because they can be strong, but a strike to the knee in the wrong direction can cause lifelong injuries. So when you're working with your partner and you have any knee shots whatsoever, just be cautious, like get the reaction up, but maybe go a little bit slower on that. Because the last thing you're going to do is blow out your partner's knee, you've just destroyed the training, you might have given them a life long injury or crippled them, or at least at the very least, give them a long recovery time before coming back. Take great care when working with someone's knees. Same thing with the neck. The neck can be pretty meaty, you can get some good solid shots to the neck, but watch the trachea that that it takes very little force to injure it. And again, you don't want to go, your goal is not to hurt your partner. And part of it also comes to being a good Uke. If you're working, if you're being the bad guy and you're in the compliant phase, don't just stand there. You know, the person hits you, don't just stand there, at least mimic the action. Part of being a good Uke is playing along at the beginning. Let the person learn technique, how the body's supposed to react. And then little by little, you can start saying, okay, well, if they waited too long, well, I'm going to throw another strike now. Kind of up the ante a little bit, make them work a little bit more. And then later, when you guys go into randori or sparring or whatever, you've got the full resistance. So part of working with partners is not only being good at applying your technique on your partner, but also being good at receiving it. When you're working with the opposite gender, you may or may not, depends on their experience level, if you want to take it easy or not. If you're working with a woman, first of all, there's a lot of tough women out there. Don't treat them like glass. Show them respect. Help them condition. You know, help them work to their level. So make sure the person is comfortable. Like even talk ahead of time, what kind of strikes you want. The women that's been in our classes, they get mad if you don't hit them. If you take any of these in them, they get pissed. So it's disrespectful. So if you're working with the opposite gender, just kind of find what level that they're at and work to that. Same thing with size. Sizeplates is a very, very, very big part in working with a partner. You get a person who's giant, who's two feet taller than you, is going to be very different than working with someone who's a foot smaller than you. Techniques will change. Techniques have to be altered. And I saw this when I started taking Judo and Jiu Jitsu. I'm a little bit bigger than some of the people there. I'm definitely heavier. And the funny thing is some of the comments were that some of the guys liked being their partner because it gave them a new challenge because they weren't used to working with somebody my size. And to me, it made me work harder too because if they were smaller than me, I had to work differently than the person who was taller than me. So like to do a joint throw, I had to find myself dipping down more to get under certain body rotational points versus someone who's larger. I had to use a different tactic. So when you work with partners, size plays a big difference. Size does matter. And you have to adjust what you're doing based on the size of the person. If you're in a self-defense situation, more likely than not, the person's probably going to be bigger than you. But even if they're smaller, you have to know how to adjust according to each one. And now let's just go over a couple of dos and don'ts. First, don't try to hurt your partner. Don't be that person where you're going to try to show them that you're better than they are, or you want to intimidate them or just dominate them. That doesn't help anyone. And in talking about hurting the people, when you work with a partner for the first time, ask them if they have any injuries that you need to be aware of. You know, they might have a bad knee that day, or maybe they have an old, you know, car accident with a back injury. Ask them if there's any restrictions that you need to know ahead of time because the last thing you want to do is slip somebody onto a limb that might have been broken, you know, a year ago or anything like that. Just so make sure your partner gives you full disclosure on any physical conditions that you're working with. Also, be clean. Now, I understand these are gyms. It's what's going to happen. You're going to get dirty. But, you know, at least, you know, you're working with other humans. So, you know, brush your teeth, shower. Just make sure you've got general hygiene going, especially if you're grappling. You know, you want to win a grappling match because you got the technique down and you actually beat them fairly, not because they gave up because they could smell the same sandwich you had for lunch. So, just be clean and be considerate with your classmates. Also, tap when it hurts. When they've got you fair and square, tap. Don't be a tough guy and try to ride it out. If they have you in a legitimate lock or submission technique, you know, you can go from no pain, no pain to a broken elbow like that. So, if they have you, if they earned it, okay, you know, respect, you got me tapped out. Now, if you really do have room to fight and you feel you can get out of it, that's fine. Keep going. But, when you're at a point where you're going to panic or you feel like, oh no, I can tough it out, just tap, start over, learn what you did wrong, or learn how to get out of it and go again. Again, you don't want to get hurt with training. This is all about learning to protect yourself. Don't get hurt in the process. So, basically, you know, just to recap, you want to take in resistance training and the consideration, as well as the control and power that you use with your partner. And it's all about getting better and working with a partner and getting used to working with a partner, effectively, to better your training. Also, I recommend switching up partners. You know, work with different people. That way, you get used to working with different builds and different sizes and different weights and you're not stuck doing the same thing over and over and prevent some habit building. So, hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time. Thank you guys so much for watching. As I mentioned, I do heavily recommend the Rebreakable Boards. They're great for training. They're a lot of fun to use. And also, as we just released a recent video, the holiday seasons are coming up. So, we did the video on gifts for martial artists. So, please go check that out. We just kind of go over a few fun options. And also, all of those links from that video, we were putting up below in the description, so you have access to everything. So, happy holidays coming up. And also, be sure to like, subscribe, join our Patreon. And we'll see you next time. Thank you.