OK, the word makes me cringe.
I wish people would learn to use the language properly instead of making up words to suit them, but ignoring that, how does Matt Thorntons message sit with you?
Original, or just acronymical re-packaging of what a lot of people were doing already?

Ive got to get this guy on here...

To be honest I listened to that very carefully and I think he actually had trouble articulating what he meant be aliveness.

I switched off at the point where he decided to enter into 'functional martial arts vs Traditional Martial arts' i.e. we all know a traditional karate guy going into a cage would take a beating. It stops been a sport but becomes a beating...

To me that level of ignorance is in the same brackets as racial stereo typing.

Good Post Mule.

My opinions on the subject usually turn out to be as uncommon as they are unpopular, but....

I think you'll find that the reasons most people are involved in any form of MA are primarily for fun and social interaction.

Those that theorise about how effective they are at fighting because of their mode of practice are often the most delusional.
At the end of the day, if you want to be a fighter, you have to fight. The more you learn about what that involves, the less you need to be a part of it.
My 2 carrots on the subject.

haha I had to take a walk to the train station to get a drink I was so annoyed after listening to that audio!

At the end of the day he was talking about matching a 'style' rather then matching a fighter.

Oh there's no doubt he's guilty of commercialism.

Wow, I wanted to listen to this clip all afternoon to see what this bloke had to say and I switched off after the first minute because I couldn't follow the utter drivel he was speaking.

And he has butchered the English language by his 'aliveness' balderdash - if there is one thing to make me mad is poor use of the English language! !

Aliveness my backside - what would it be otherwise - dead?

Lesley Jackson wrote:
Wow, I wanted to listen to this clip all afternoon to see what this bloke had to say and I switched off after the first minute because I couldn't follow the utter drivel he was speaking.

And he has butchered the English language by his 'aliveness' balderdash - if there is one thing to make me mad is poor use of the English language! !

Aliveness my backside - what would it be otherwise - dead?
That's the English Teacher in you Lesley.
Like I said before, my father was an English teacher too.

Taking his 'new word' to mean that training should be as 'realistic' (not a made up word) as possible, is it really a new concept?
Is it worthy of note?

Personally, I'd happily drive over him repeatedly in an 'alive' manner, with him "fully resisting" as much as possible.
Ever seen the Stephen King film 'Christine'?

Matt Thornton practices Jeet Kune Do. Bruce Lee wrote that martial artists should develop "movement which is real, easy and alive." I don't think he ever used the word "aliveness," (though I could very easily be wrong about that), but it's the same old mushin no shin (action without self-conscious mental interruption) that martial artists have pursued for centuries. Perhaps Thornton doesn't mean "realistic" as much as, say, "dynamic and natural action," as opposed to rigidly prescribed responses.

What dismays me is the misguided path some choose. Their reasoning seems to be: I don't want to become a "wooden man," constrained by "classical mess" (Bruce's words), so I won't burden myself with learning the wisdom of those who came before me. But Lee studied wing chun, escrima, western fencing, boxing, and more.

Musashi put it well: "To attain the way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the way of the warrior." His destination is the same as Lee's: the Void (as in his Five Rings), aka mushin.

I can't stand the bloke.
Not only does he talk a load of dribble, but he inspires hoards of nut-hugging n00bs to recite his rehashed tripe as if it's the new gospel.

Ok, I'm going to stick up for him, despite everyone's criticism. I understand people not liking the term or perhaps the delivery, but I don't have a problem with the idea itself.

Firstly I have a lot of respect for a lot of people who have been involved with the SBG both past and present. I love Rodney King's crazy monkey defences and stand up techniques. I attended one of Karl Tanswell's STAB seminars a few years ago which I really enjoyed and I thought that he spoke a lot of sense.

The idea of "Aliveness" is that you train with non-compliant partners so learn through experience what works for you. So that means sparring and drilling with people who react naturally rather than how they are expected. A lot of martial arts indoctrinate people to act in a particular way whether on purpose or not.

Ask the average martial artist to demonstrate a knife attack and many will either thrust forward or use a downward stroke and will leave the hand out. Why when you would naturally retract it and strike again? I couldn't answer this when I realised that did this. How often have you apologised to a partner for not reacting the way they expected? Or heard someone berating their partner for not attacking them in the "right" way when their own defence didn't work?

This causes problems when things don't work out as they expected. I used to think I was pretty good at locks and controls until I started doing submission grappling. I then realised that I had so much to learn and it was so much harder getting a lock and putting it against someone who was wriggling and trying to do the same to me.

Is "Aliveness" for everyone? Obviously from people's reaction above that would be a "no". It depends what you want to get out of martial arts, if you want to do an art because of it's tradition, history and forms fair enough, but it doesn't mean that it is the most effective in self defence. I think that you just need to be honest with yourself about what you're doing and try and be objective and question why you are doing it.

I'm not going to pretend that I focus on "Aliveness" in all my classes, but sparring, free rolling and self defence stress drills form a large part of what we do.

I personally thank that promoting the idea for people to stop and think about what they are doing is a good thing.

SteveBruce:

I think the whole compliant partners issue is a modern phenomenon (sp). Mainly spilling out from mass commercialisation of martial arts.
Not saying that Dojo "chains" etc are bad, but on a large scale like this, ala Go Kan Ryu etc, you have to expect some degredation of training.
When I was first in karate, even as a kid, we would free spar, semi contact and our sensei told us not to "let" the opponent do his thing to us. Back then it wasn't the "aliveness" buzzword - it was just training. And when I moved up to the adult class, the same again, except that semi-contact was moved up a notch, and full contact was practiced also. Again, no buzzwords, just hard work.

SteveBruce wrote:


Is "Aliveness" for everyone?
I'd say that's an individual choice.


Inosanto was certainly talking about 'dead' patterns and drills a long, long time ago (mainly pertaining to FMA).
Inosanto most likely picked it up from other people and the concept didn't appear out of a vacuum.
All too often, you'll see FMA classes, with drills being performed with identical clackety-clack rhythms.
That's just a 'stage' of training though.
The next 'stage' is breaking the rhythm and adding random changes, so the brain is no longer 'going through the motions'.
The majority of people don't pass stage one.

So for me, "Aliveness" is nothing new.
It's almost like inventing the word, means Thornton invented the concept, which he did not.

but he inspires hoards of nut-hugging n00bs to recite his rehashed tripe as if it's the new gospel.
Quoted for truth!