Warrior School Practice Systems

This sheet is about how to learn Warrior skills fast. It can help avoid
the mistakes beginners make when learning a Martial system.

People who understand what is written below and employ
this knowledge will learn any Martial system much, much

faster than those that don’t.

There are three results of Martial practice, they occur in the
following order 1 = most common, 3 = least common.

1. Practice leads to no improvement and you get hurt
2. Practice leads to a worsening in your technique
3. Practice improves your technique

Practicing too little leads to 2.
Practicing too fast leads to 1.
Concentrating on the wrong priorities (See below)
leads to 2 and 1.

Improvement comes from knowing what is good and bad practice,
practicing as fast as you can go without getting it wrong, constantly
checking for mistakes and always, immediately correcting them.
We will teach you to monitor your performance, what is good and
bad technique and improve your skills.
As you train, check the following in the following order
(they are written in order of priority)

Performance Priorities

Stance and Balance
It is crucial to understand that these are the most important factors in
combat and should therefore be checked and corrected first and most
often. If your feet are close together you have a high stance
(Fast movements, weak techniques) If your feet are far apart you have
a low stance (Slow movements, powerful techniques) Low stances
are generally better, but beginners usually ignore them – this slows
improvement drastically. Some students of Martial systems can spend
years not improving their actual combat ability – though they can do
fantastically impressive techniques. They have to suffer the indignity and
further loss of time by going right back to the beginning of their training
and starting again – this time putting stance and not fancy techniques first.
I know I’ve seen dozens go through this – including me…

Relevance
Is your strike/ block the best, simplest, most powerful? Does it set you up
well for the next technique?
Note simplest here – don’t waste time and energy, you only need to drop
your opponent, this is not ballet or a film studio. Now comes a rule that
most people really regret ignoring…

A Master is someone who can effectively employ the basics.

A Master is someone who understands how to win and that means
employing simple, effective and appropriate moves.
Most beginners want to learn the fancy techniques because they look
the most impressive. This path leads to becoming a Performer
(And losing combat matches) not a Master.

Accuracy
There’s no point in having speed or power if you can’t actually hit your
opponent, though more people will attend to speed and power and
therefore slow their improvement. There are fewer targets on a
Human body than beginners realise.

Power and Speed
Both are important but a technique that gets there first is not necessarily
the winning one. Some techniques take longer to set up
(Getting your body in the right position) but deliver 4-5 times as much
energy. These are called Slow Strikes and an experienced Warrior may
prefer to take one (Or even two) light taps that do no significant damage
whilst preparing a devastating blow from which their combatant cannot
recover. Speed is also crucial when blocking, remember blocking too
fast means you get hit.

Part two

Types of solo practice

Without an opponent.
You need to remember the techniques and forms you have developed
with your instructor.

You need to run through those movements very slowly at first trying to
remember them and checking against the priorities. It is very hard to think
of all of the priorities at once so start with balance and stance and when
you are reasonably happy with them move on to the next periodically
checking balance and stance anyway! As you move down the priorities
check the others occasionally – higher priorities like stance tend to go to
pieces whilst concentrating on something else - especially speed.

After you have run through the form(s), you need to employ them against
an imagined combatant (Or combatants) This Spirit or Ghost, as they are
called, is going to be a superb trainer, the more realistic you make it, the
better you will get. Your Spirit, will surprise you as you get good at
imagining it: It is better than you, faster than you, and does moves you are
not expecting. It is also forgiving and will let you kill it as often as you
provide it with a reasonable technique. It only takes a nanosecond to
recover though…

Learning to work with your Fighting Spirit, or Ghost is second only in
importance to working with the priorities

Most people only work with their spirit in private at first, if you instructor
asks you to demonstrate this and there are other people watching feel
free to say no.

Three systems of spirit/ghost practice

Hard Practice (to develop speed)
Imagine your Ghost using a specific attack on you very slowly.
Block or dodge that attack, respond with a Stop attack
(A quick strike to stun your opponen) Then apply a Drop attack to
render your opponent incapable of further combat (In real combat)
or to win the combat (In competitive bouts)

Block-stop-drop, or occasionally, Block-drop (Unarmed)

Block-drop, or occasionally, Block-stop-drop (Armed)

Do this six times from very slow (Perfect) technique to as fast/powerful
as you can go and still maintain an acceptable stance and accuracy level.
Swap weapons to the other hands and do the same mirrored
(same attack, opposite side)
(If you don’t have to swap weapons as in quarter-staff or unarmed, swap
from side to side with each technique and just let the speed build up – but
do 12 moves)

Start really slow (Get it perfect) and get faster through the 6 – 12 moves.

Always check stance and balance. Don’t worry that this is something only
beginners do – people who have been doing it for 50 years still frequently

check their stance and balance!

When you get good at it you will find hard practice exhausting
(it’s the full-power bit at the end), one three-movement form
(Block>stop>drop) done 12 times = 36 techniques. 3000 techniques will
cause any but the very fittest people to find moving limbs very painful the
following day. Build up from 36 ~ 100 techniques a day. Most experts
stick to 100 techniques hard practice to improve technique and use soft
practice to develop random movement (Flow) and stamina.

Soft, or Flow practice (To develop movement in reaction to random attacks)

Don’t let the ‘soft’ bit fool you here… The only reason this is not crippling
is that it’s done at about 60-80% power, but still at full speed.

Full speed means as fast as you can go without losing quality of
stance/balance/relevance etc.

An expert will achieve 2 to 2.3 techniques per second unarmed – slower
with some weapons. This is great fun, superb exercise – like gymnastics
or ballet it’s your whole body working at optimum and, like them, or any
Martial practice, takes a lot of concentration.
Occasionally throw in some full power techniques, never go so fast that
your practice is compromised, always put mistakes right.

Your Ghost is there all the time constantly attacking. When ‘dropped’ it
appears again randomly (Including behind you) using random weapons,
sometimes it brings its friends too.

If you want to do this as a fitness/aerobic activity just pace yourself for
30 minutes. You don’t need a sports hall or garden, a largish room will
do. Learning to avoid damaging ceilings, furniture, elderly relatives, cats
etc. is all part of the fun. In Fact, with your shield slung on your back, an

Assegai makes a superb two-handed weapon in stairways, doorways

and thickets.

Learning and using these practice systems is the third most important
aspect of combat

Part three

Practicing with someone else
(Without an Instructor present)

Should never be done until your instructor says you are ready, and then
only with the form(s) and techniques in which you are competent.
The reasons for this are:

1. If you have not learned Slow Practice someone will get hurt
2. If you have not learned ‘Detachment’ you technique cannot get better
    and can get worse
3. If you practice outwith your area of competence your practice will
    suffer and you risk injury.

1. Slow Practice
Includes two elements, the first is that your movements must never go faster
than your ability to produce good technique. The second is that you are able
to match your technique to the speed of the person with whom you are
practicing.

The more skilled person never exceeds the competent speed of the less
skilled.

In this way both of you are roughly at the same level of competence and both
of you can learn. Any deviation and skill levels suffer. It is also the best
environment to learn to match your opponents speed when blocking
(Too fast or slow and you get hit!)

2. Detached
No ego, no competition and absolutely no testosterone! Learn to ignore your
desire to be the fastest, get the most hits – forget that your practice partner is
human, treat them like your ghost.
The core of this practice is to build up a subtle play of moves and counter-moves
in your brain from which unconsciously fast moves (Expertise) can develop. The
faster you learn to immerse yourself in absorbing movement information and
forget that you are with a human, the faster you become an expert. Someone
who fails to learn this is wasting their own time and will inevitably lose to their
practice partner in actual combat. Check your stance and balance constantly!

Detached Slow Practice is the fourth most important aspect of combat training

3. There comes a time when you know that you have become competent to
develop new techniques and forms for yourself, but it happens slowly, even
experts will still, occasionally, develop bad techniques. Don’t be in a hurry
to be an expert and it will come faster.

Let’s summarise that lot…

You will learn skills the fastest if you remember…

1. Your technique can only get worse if you are moving faster than your level of ability.
2. Apply your priorities in the right order
3. Never exceed your competent speed – but do push that limit up by using hard practice
4. Learn the difference between good and bad practice
5. Always rectify mistakes immediately
6. Remember, A Master is someone who can effectively employ the basics.
7. Practice from slow to fast
8. Learn to work with your ghost: the more realistic the ghost – the better the Warrior
9. Block – stop – drop
10. Learn the solo practice systems
11. Learn slow practice and detachment
12. Become your own teacher
13. Check your stance and balance!

This article is designed to save the time of any Martial student in any discipline, though it should not be followed where your own instructor disagrees! It ignores details of techniques - these are best learned from an instructor.

It also fails to include all our combat 'secrets' - you'll have to come to us for those!