Zyaga Writing about whatever the hell I want, cuz it's the Interwebz!

Natural Aggression

There is a wide controversy that continues still today as to whether aggression is a good feature for a Martial Art student to have. Some argue that aggression is bad because it allows it to get the better of you and so you start thinking with emotions, aka your mind gets “clouded”. Others argue back that aggression gets your blood pumping and allows those who are even normally docile to immediately jump in and start fighting back if a situation arises that calls for it. I can see both sides of the situation, but both of those sides have it wrong and both sides have it right. What they don’t seem to realize is that there are different types of aggression.

Marks over at MarksTraining wrote an article about aggression: Aggression in the Martial Arts. In his article he wrote:

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Take the following example. A new student starts training and after a couple of lessons of learning basic techniques, his told he will start sparring. Really nervous as its his first time, he does not really try any techniques he has practiced, instead just stands there taking many controlled punches as his sparring partner decides to go light on him. This carries on for the next few lessons, but his sparring partner strikes him harder and harder in a bid to make him counter. Knowing that the beginner has to start throwing punches back, his teacher shouts, “hit him, hit him”. After a few more lessons of the same punishment, the beginner decides that enough is enough. However many times he gets hit, he makes up his mind that he shall also start hitting back, hard. His aggression increases immensely and as the weeks go by, he learns that he has to also strike back himself in order to save taking any punishment.

You may have been in this predicament or know someone who has. Someone who goes from being non aggressive to be becoming someone who does not take any abuse from anyone and uses aggression to overcome others.

Obviously for self defense situations, he would probably find that he shall be able to take care of himself but in the long run has the aggression he has built through training and sparring done more worse than good. Is today’s martial arts training producing bad people instead of good ones which is what the old masters intended?

I think in the situation he was talking about, yes, the way the teacher taught has caused the student to learn aggression in the wrong way.

The teacher is basically wearing the student down until he “snaps” and starts fighting back. That kind of aggression is angry aggression. The student should actually be learning natural aggression, as I like to call it.

In angry aggression mode, the student is caught up with emotions and thus that will actually decrease his skills and technique and not allow him to learn properly. In natural aggression mode, the student learns to be naturally aggressive and play rough, but at the same time he attaches no emotion to that aggressiveness. The same way when brothers or friends play rough, especially in sports, but each other is not really trying to hurt the other person. They attach no emotion to their aggression.

Each student will learn natural aggression differently, but one of the big playing factors is to quickly get him hitting back so that he feels comfortable in doing so. If you wait till he simply gets upset and starts swinging, he’ll learn the wrong type of aggression. After awhile, it can be a hard type of habit to break in a student. Because I’ve learned natural aggression I can safely say I can aggressively spar with anyone without attaching emotion to that aggression.

Aggression also spans off to more intricate areas such as “how much” aggression. For instance, I believe there is such a thing as relaxed aggression, but I’ll leave that for another article.