[quote]LondonBoxer123 wrote:
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Dude623 wrote:
Confusion- We have sparred light a lot after that, but our training schedules never really lined up with similar goals again like they did that year where we trained for months on the same schedule. He competed a little the following year and after that life got in the way and he has become a very successful business owner. Although he says he likes to go to business meetings with a bruised up face occasionally.
LB- I have been following your and sentos advise in the other thread and focusing on evaluating everyone’s energy transfer on there power shots. I just wrapped up a 1hr session with one of the LEO I train. We worked on his right hook and UC in close from bag work to exploiting it in sparring. Trying to clean up his form and hips. It was a great session because of all the good stuff you and sento have layed down there in the other thread. It was a great reminder ( well done) of a lot of basics we take for granted.
I had never heard that about Nigel, that’s pretty neat that he could turn it on and off so hard. Most guys just don’t have that switch developed in there brains. I required a lot of hard sparring early on to develop that, my old coach said it took forever. If I cut somebody in the gym I would go and apologize . A couple of times the coach came up to me and said he would put a beating on me if I ever apologized for doing what I had come to the gym to do. He asked me what exactly was I doing in his gym, if it wasn’t to win he wanted to know right then and there. I could always go home and do Jane Fonda tapes in the VCR. ( dated myself there )
Good news I just set up some sparring sessions at a large club for the two 17yo’s I am training. They have been working hard since October and are ready for there first competitive sparring sessions. We will see how effective my coaching has been. We have three weeks to prepare. This time of the year is always electric in the gyms around here with all the prep for Golden Gloves starting.[/quote]
Best of luck to you and your guys; glad I could offer you useful information. 
Interesting topic about fight preparation. Being a more reality oriented system/school than a competition oriented, developing this “switch” that you guys speak of (we call if the “Ki [Killer Instinct] Switch”) is something that we address fairly often. In a real fight you aren’t going to have months, weeks, or even hours worth of time to psyche yourself up to fight someone; many times you need to be able to “flip the switch” at a moment’s notice. You also need to remain in control of your emotions though, lest you get drawn into a frivolous confrontation that could have dire or even tragic consequences; which is even more reason why developing the Ki Switch (and the Ki Intensity Dial) are such integral parts of RMA/Self Defense training.
I think what one learns from a hard sparring session is the ability to persevere through discomfort, and to not back down in the face of adversity; in other words that Indomitable Spirit that GM Lewis was always talking about. This can be developed and fostered by other means as well, many of which don’t carry with them the same negative long term affects, but IMO you have to do this type of training (or competing) at least occasionally.[/quote]
When you say it can be developed by other means, would you be willing to give examples/drills that you think help? Particularly anything you think one can do alone to increase resiliency and hone the killer instinct. [/quote]
Solo drills to develop killer instinct are going to rely heavily on visualization, part of developing the Ki Switch is in tapping into that deep primal survival instinct or drive to protect those dear to you. So things like just visualizing horrific situations involving life or death or even just necessity/honor can help you to feel that Ki Switch.
Tony Blauer has said that he sometimes will get a lot of resistance from participants at Women’s Self Defense seminars when trying to get them to fight back fully or to execute certain tactics. This makes sense to a degree as violence is far less socially acceptable for women in our society, but still problematic from a standpoint of getting them to fight for their lives. So, Tony will paint a mental picture of the women coming home to find some strange man about to rape their child, suddenly every women in that class is prepared to crawl on hands and knees across broken glass and then eat the would be attacker’s face like an apple once they get to them to defend their child and a room full of mild mannered soccer moms suddenly becomes a room full of ruthless killers. That is flipping the Ki Switch.
A less extreme example from the world of boxing would be Marvin Hagler. Marvelous has stated that one of the primary reasons he remain undefeated for so long was that he would visualize that his opponent was trying to take his childrens’ food of of their plate (depriving them of food) right before and during the fight. That visualization helped him to flip the Ki Switch and helped him become one of the greatest Middleweight Boxers in recorded history.
So again, using a similar visualization (defending loved one’s life, imagining the terrible pain and sadness that your loved ones would feel if they lost you, etc…) will allow you to discover and feel what flipping the Ki Switch feels like, then the trick is to gain control of that switch so you can flip it any time you want. From there you can also develop the Ki Intensity Dial (or dimmer switch if you prefer) so you can control your ability to adjust the level of ferocity/killer instinct that you apply to any given situation. These things definitely require practice though if you want to be able to utilize and control them, especially under stress/pressure.