Over the years I have met a number of instructors and students who have voiced the opinion that unless you’re training at maximum effort, force etc., your training isn’t realistic. I’ve also heard many “old school” practitioners make the argument that training back in the 1970’s and 1980’s was so much harder, more physical and demanded students to be much tougher etc. There may be some truth in this, but I’ve also heard ex-students of mine, at social gatherings, tell current students the same old story; that “back in the day” when they trained, training was much harder, tougher and everyone was beaten up and injured after each session etc. Personally, I don’t remember that being the case, but everyone is welcome to their war stories. Whilst there is a place for hard – but safe – training, there is also a place for softer, gentler training however many people underestimate the value of this or don’t value it because in their eyes it de-legitimizes what they are trying to accomplish i.e., prepare them for a real-world fight where there are no rules and the emotional, psychological and physical consequences may be extreme. However, “play” and “games” are important ways and means for preparing ourselves for real-life encounters, and this is something we should take and learn from the way that animals prepare themselves for combat. In this article I want to look at why “fighting games” are such an important part of our training, and how we shouldn’t confuse them as being competitive events but something that we do together in conjunction with our training partners. If we can get it “right” this part of our training can become the building block on which we develop genuine fighting skills that can be incorporated into our other areas of training.

When young animals play there are no consequences, however the reason they play is to prepare them for real life, in an enjoyable way. If their play is not enjoyable, then they will be reticent to engage in it and miss out on an education. Young lions will play together replicating the way they hunt e.g., they will put out a paw to try and trip another up, in the same way they might try to bring down a running antelope or zebra. They will play bite each other’s throats, mimicking the way in which they suffocate their prey. Sometimes adults/parents will join in to teach lessons. Play is an important way of learning in the wild which prepares animals for the real world, and it is important that there are no physical consequences, such as pain, when learning these lessons. In most classes I teach I use “Fighting Games”, which is one of the training methods that really attracted me to Krav Maga. Unfortunately, some people see these games as a chance to be competitive, with their focus on winning rather than playing. The point of a fighting game, just like “play” amongst wild animals is to replicate actions and behaviors that will be useful in real-life e.g., one game I play is having partners try and touch each other’s feet with their feet, a drill/game that should teach good movement and how to control range etc., however there are times when the footwork will start to resemble Irish Dancing, with participants jumping around in order to do anything but have their toes touched i.e., the play has become competitive and has lost its meaning. In the wild lion cubs will adopt different roles and play different parts to get the full experience of combat e.g., sometimes they will put themselves in a top position, sometimes a bottom, sometimes they will play the aggressor, sometimes the submissive etc. There is no competition in their “play”, they are practicing how they may have to act in a real-life encounter i.e., there are rules to the way in which they play. It is easy for humans to lose sight of the purpose of the game/play by becoming overly competitive and wanting to put undue pressure on our partner/opponent in order to win, rather than giving them the chance/opportunity to practice developing a skill or technique.

Perhaps the most important part of “play” and “games” in training to fight is the opportunity to develop creativity – in my view one of the most undervalued and overlooked fighting skills. When I look back to real-life encounters I’ve been involved in I don’t remember performing and replicating techniques, I simply remember solving problems using ideas and solutions that techniques had taught me. In a fight you largely have to improvise, modify, and create solutions, as nobody attacks you exactly how you’ve trained. As “realistic” as you believe your training is, it will never entirely reflect the utter mess that reality is – and that means you have to be able to be creative in your approach. If you believe you will exactly follow the A-B-C steps of a technique in a clean and clinical fashion, and that afterwards when you throw your punches, strikes and combatives the fight will magically end, you are mistaken. Techniques exist to guide you, to teach you concepts and to give you an idea of how an attack might look and feel, they are not keys that unlock certain doors. “Play” and “Games” allow you to test out and develop ideas without a consequence, to create solutions that might sometimes work and might sometimes fail. In short, play should teach you how to be creative. You might have a great “idea” or tactic for sparring but be too wary to try it out because of the potential consequence of getting hit; you are human, and this is genuine concern. It may be that you try something out in sparring, get hit, and conclude that your idea was a bad one, when in fact it was a great one, but you simply lack the skills at this time to make it work. When you play, you have a chance to try things out and develop them, without receiving inappropriate feedback.

Perhaps one of the most creative martial arts on the planet is BJJ. I have trained at overly competitive BJJ schools where play is not a part of the game, and the “best” guys are usually the strongest and heaviest, and I have trained at schools which are more laid back, and more playful in their approach, where the practitioner and the art are allowed to develop; and certainly, at the higher level these schools produce the better and more skillful competitors, who are able to create solutions on the fly. When a school/instructor wants to promote Krav Maga as the toughest, most badass system around, and so only trains in one way, their students lose a lot, and become fighters who can only bulldoze their way through a fight relying solely on aggression and brute force, rather than creative ability.