Before I started my blog on melee tactics I had a fairly popular "blog" (actually a location on a web forum with links) on run training for triathletes (I was a D1 collegiate distance runner and competed as a triathlete as an adult some time later in the early 00's). While everyone understood that there needed to be a balance between swim, bike, and run training, they had the hardest time wrapping their head around the fact that there also needed to be a balance between different types of training, specifically fast and slow training.
The best analogy I had heard utilized a recipe for tomato sauce.
You begin with tomatoes and notice that it tastes a little bland, so you add some garlic and notice that garlic improves the taste. Most athletes then assume that garlic is the best ingredient, get rid of the tomatoes, and dump a pile of garlic on their pasta. When it doesn't taste very good, they simply add more garlic.
Likewise, if training specifically for the purposes of melee fighting, one must balance pell work to work on fundamental shot mechanics, singles fighting to learn how to put an opponent down quickly and effectively while also developing a solid defense, and melee fighting to learn how to work with other fighters.
I've heard more than a few people say that one needs only to work on singles (and/or pell work) and that it will all transfer into melee. To those that firmly believe this, I have to ask what percentage of soccer, lacrosse, basketball, and hockey practices are spent working on singles skills?
Part of the inspiration for this post was noticing how quickly some of the fighters I've been working with have developed a great understanding of team work and the ability to think and react quickly, but then realizing that a couple of our fighters have done very little singles work and almost no pell work. I found ourselves in situations where I couldn't leave a wingman for fear that he couldn't survive if a 1v1 engagement was thrust upon him against a good fighter, or that even in a 2v1 there were certain shots that were not available making it difficult to take down a high level fighter.
These are all in relative terms. All of the fighters are doing great and have improved quite a bit, but I like to think about what the shortest pole in the tent is, currently. As I once told a varsity basketball team I coached, "Today we will work on rebounding, not because you are bad at it, but because you have improved everywhere else such that this is now the weakest skill."
The difficult part comes with figuring out how to get in the right balance. If 10 people show up to the next practice, there is no way in hell I'm going to want to spend the day working on singles. ;)
EDIT: for those who may be curious, google The BarryP Plan and you will find a number of links to my running plans for triathletes. Or you can probably just go to this one I found:
http://www.jasonmcgee.me/barryp/running.html
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