Certainly. The truth is painful, but only when we're willing to
wake up and see the truth can we start to learn and improve.
My moment of enlightenment came when I was getting the snot beat up
of me by an untrained street gangster.
Why doesn't my flying kick, or turning kick, or axe kick or back
hook work? Oh, I'm wearing jeans, not gi pants, and haven't done my
warm up excercises and stretching. Should I ask this gangster to
wait while I stretch?
What if I try to back hook him and miss, and he closes with me,
should i ask him to obey the rules that he should not punch my
face? And he should just stick to crescent kicks if he wants to hit
me with kicks at that distance?
When he's charging me, why is it then when I do a side kick, I
connect but end up on my butt on the ground? Why isn't he waiting
for me to get up and for the refree to say continue, but is beating
and kicking the shit out of me?
I don't know. When I asked my instructor why we learn all the
stupid low, high, inside, outside blocks, forward stance, back
stance, punching from horse riding stance with the punch coming
from the hip, and then we spend 1 yr plus training that, how come
when we finally go for full contact sparring, we don't use ANY OF
IT?? WHY??!?
Oh...because they help you improve the beauty of your art, because
of this because of that. It's all total bullshat.
So I woke up! And I opened my eyes to see what actually works. My
advice to akido guys hoping to train for self defense, is also to
wake up.
Peace! 