First Time at the LMA Learning Lab (Patreon)

• If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contents

How the Learning Lab works

The Liberation Martial Arts (LMA) Learning Lab is not open to the public. It does not allow walk-ins or drop-ins. It's by appointment only, and appointments are for those we've already engaged with. The first few sessions are an introduction to the LMA approach and part of the vetting process. Vetting is a must for any liberatory project.

You don't have to worry about a mysterious benefactor paying our rent or our training organizers. We don't have one. You're our benefactors. We charge for sessions, which cover rent, parking, showers, lockers, air conditioning, cleaning, equipment, and the labor of our training organizers, who work seven days a week. In fact, the Learning Lab is struggling financially, so we actually need a mysterious benefactor.

LMA ecosystem

From day one, practitioners move with training organizers. As they progress and are vetted, we discuss introducing sparring partners to help with the sessions and give them experience with different movers. Whether training partners are introduced is based on the practitioner's consent. Being a sparring partner for someone else's session is also up to the practitioner's consent and availability. Once sessions are reciprocal, practitioners get individualized programming while supporting other practitioners. It also allows for more training time. It's a healthy ecosystem.

It is not reciprocal when you only participate in other practitioners' sessions while never having sessions for other practitioners to participate in. This is an unsustainable ecosystem. Our regulars are active stewards of our ecology and are essential to keeping it alive.

When an experienced martial artist comes

We recently had an experienced martial artist, Juju, come in for his first session. He's been training martial arts for eight years, seven of which were spent training Thai-boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA). The LMA Learning Lab only started a year ago, and all of our striking was built in that time.

LMA hobbyists

All the Learning Lab practitioners are well into adulthood, many of us with health conditions, and none of us are looking to go pro. We're hobbyists who train because it's fun. We average one to three sessions a week, and some practitioners average once a month.

In commercial gyms, it's not uncommon for even hobbyists to train five to seven days a week, which is what Juju is accustomed to with his own training. Since Juju is acculturated to a different type of training, we began our first session by readying his body for movement, attuning him to his senses, and easing tension in his body.

Startle response

We do as much as we can in an hour to alleviate tension and calm the startle (fight-flight-survival) response. We prioritized unlocking and connecting with the hips and natural rotation. Then, we reviewed our safety rules and how we use the senses, like sound, to hear what safety sounds like. Being a good mover is really being a safe mover. Safety is not something memorized but felt in the senses.

What is safety

In LMA, safety is first safeguarding your partner, then it's about safeguarding yourself. Unlike commercial gyms, your safety is a communal responsibility rather than an individual one. Rather than self-defense, our emphasis is on the defense of others.

Since Juju is experienced and we've already established a long online relationship where we've seen his sparring footage, we felt comfortable gearing up and playing Thai-boxing with him. This is also the best way to see what kind of mover he is while vetting him further for safety and escalation. Since he's known us for so long and seen our training, he also felt comfortable coming in and playing.

Since our approach is hands-on, where nearly everything is live-play, safety is paramount. What we do and how we approach everyone's first session is based on the context. The approach is flexible. We start with something and change the design as we go based on the real-time information we get from the practice. A session is dynamical.

We went light head contact with Juju on the first day because both sides trusted each other for safeguarding. It's also understood if either side doesn't feel safe, we can change the game. Even without explicit or conscious feedback, we'll use unconscious feedback to redesign. For example, if there is excessive flinching or startle response, the game must change.

We want to play but not in a state of tension or anxiety. That's contrary to the experience we want to foster. If the stakes are low, where Juju knows he can't get hurt, he can try things—he can play.

Attuning to senses and getting a sense for Juju

The rounds help us see what Juju needs and how we can design a program for him. For Juju, the emphasis was connecting with his senses as he spars—constantly seeking to perceive better. Also, to see movements as shapes and building new shapes from previous ones. Nothing goes to waste. Every shape (movement) is the scaffold for the next shape.

You can hear this in my live feedback to Juju. Everything I say is related to senses or shape-building. Since Juju doesn't understand our language yet, I kept it simple and used terms he would understand.

Come only to learn our approach

Coming for a session isn't about learning grappling or kickboxing but learning the LMA approach. Despite Juju training in kickboxing for longer than us, we can be his guides because we're not teaching him kickboxing but the LMA approach. This means guiding Juju to rely on his senses rather than memory recall, which often involves unlearning to learn.

LMA against the mainstream

Juju is in the blue chest protector, I'm in the red, and M is in the black. M started her LMA journey four to five months ago. I began last year. We had no instructor or experienced people to train with. We early Learning Lab practitioners had each other and the LMA pedagogy, and we gave it a shot. We treated it as an experiment in radical training design, and it worked well. So much so that M improved faster than the early practitioners because we got better at organizing training. She also benefited from having experienced training partners who were invested in fostering new practitioners and, ultimately, a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. She's already competed once and is competing again in a couple of weeks.

Game sense

If you asked M to name the moves she was doing or how to do them, she couldn't tell you. She was never taught those moves. Rather than memorizing techniques, we develop a sense of the game and our bodies. Most people spend years at commercial gyms memorizing techniques without developing a sense of the game. If you have a sense for the game, you can conjure up the move you need in the moment. However, if you've never developed ease and are always in a state of startle when you spar, you won't even be able to execute what you know.

Intuition

Intuition is when you can feel something better than you can say it, and that's what M has learned to trust. Her movements come out because that's what feels right at the time this many months in. After a year, her movements will change because her senses will have developed further (if she continues her journey). Relying on our senses and intuitions allows us to find our path faster (Wayfinding). We try to move like humans rather than as FAQ bots that give you answers to questions you didn't ask or try to match the question to an answer it's memorized.

Wayfinding vs. memorizing techniques

The best way to describe how LMA's Wayfinding differs from the standard model of memorizing techniques is to compare it to a GPS tracker. Wayfinding is like a GPS that provides real-time updates and continuously adjusts routes to reach a moving object, while the standard model is like memorizing fixed steps to reach the object's last known location. When it comes to movement and movement pedagogy, many may not immediately appreciate the value of Wayfinding over memorizing fixed steps.

Coloniality and capitalism have conditioned us to value learning through memorizing steps over learning through play. Play is often dismissed as frivolous or merely a break from learning rather than being recognized as a valid form of learning itself. This attitude reflects the absoluteness of Western hegemony over our lives.

Internal metronome

Juju got to move with two different products of LMA and two different movers. Going back to senses, M and I also have different tempos. Your internal metronome is also a sense you can harness, and we sometimes use metronomes to help develop it.

Adaptability

Working with different movers creates the most critical component of sparring skillfulness: adaptability. It's hard to adapt when you're thinking or startled. It's much easier when you're relying on your senses and intuition. When you successfully adapt enough times, adaptation also becomes a sense. You develop a sense for each new partner, which we call the game within the game.

It's difficult to adapt, scale, and safeguard without developing your game sense. You can memorize every technique in the world and still be unsafe and startled.

What is good in the absence of safety

When an experienced martial artist comes in, what we care about most and what will serve them the best in LMA isn't how "good" they are but how safe they are. What is good in the absence of safety? Juju was safe, which made him great to work with, and hopefully, he felt the same about us. He told us he'd never trained in a space that cared as much about safety and safety equipment as we did and a place that still masked. In fact, we gave him a mask because he didn't have one and didn't know of any gyms that still used them. We are a culture that protects each other. The more you get used to our culture, the more you'll become a better training partner.

First and only vs. first of many

Since we never know whether this is the first and only time we might work with someone, we don't think too far ahead. We just want whoever comes in to have a good experience and leave with a better understanding of their body and senses.

Trying LMA isn't just about seeing what the LMA approach is like, but seeing what an approach fully individualized to you is like. Your LMA is different from everyone else's. No two paths will be the same. The more you come in, the more you adapt to the approach, and the approach adapts to you.

When you come in once, you can get introduced to ideas. When you come in regularly, you can actually change how you move. There's nothing to remember; it's not a decision to make or a light-bulb moment; liberatory movement is about the time you spend dwelling in liberatory practice. The more you dwell, the more you change.

Good movers don't move while constantly running through a mental checklist; they move while using their senses and intuitions. The tasks and games we design build those senses and intuitions. The more we know you, the better we design for you. It's a relationship, and relationships build on interactions.

– Sam