Here in the States one would have to be cloistered in a monastery or nunnery to not be aware that football season has commenced, and with that commencement the debate regarding head trauma continues. We are not here to discuss head trauma as it pertains to football injuries but we would be a bit less than dim-witted if we did not address cumulative head trauma in regard to combat sports or martial arts training.

          Without a doubt playing the sport of football will likely result in a bracing hit or two in practice or during a game but the same can be said (if not more so) for serious martial sports/arts training. If we accept that cumulative damage can lead to some less than savory physical problems for football players we must also be aware of the fact that full-contact strikers are probably susceptible to similar if not the same future prognosis. If we accept the proposition that cumulative damage is a likelihood then it might be wise to determine ways to mitigate that damage while still training with integrity.

          Now, some arts/sports ban head-contact completely both in training and competition; if the aim in training one of these "zero contact to the head" sports/arts is nothing more than bettering that art/sport itself and you expect no transfers to self-defense or other forms of competition, well, you already have the problem licked. It's the rest of us with head-contact-is-a-given-aims that need to ponder this problem.

          Some may go the Johny Hendricks route and skip all head-contact during training and only suffer head-blows (hopefully few) in competition. To some, this may seem unwise, but his current UFC Welterweight Belt and ability to dish out and receive punishment would seem to stand testament that this strategy has a great deal of validity.

But...we must keep in mind that Hendricks has been playing at an elite level for some time, and he did not always adhere to a "stay away from the skull" mandate. At some point in your training dealing with head blows has got to be addressed or else the novelty of it will change your world when that fist/foot/shin/elbow/knee makes contact with cranium. I think we're all wise to the fact that Hendricks has been hit in the head during training (probably numerous times) in the past, he is merely now at a point where he (probably wisely) chooses to forgo it.

          So, if we want to preserve cognitive function in our later years and still reap the lessons of live head-contact what is to be done? It would be nice if there were a striking correlate to the grappling arts that allows athletes to roll hard without the potential for neurological damage. For the answer let's turn to La Boxe Francaise.

          La boxe francaise is the modern formulation of a few rough and tumble French martial arts (Savate and Chausson in particular). Think of la boxe francaise as the cleaned-up equivalent of English Boxing post-Queensbury rules. La boxe francaise uses a standard boxing vocabulary plus an extensive kick-boxing vocabulary with low-line shots ruled on-limits. Rather than go into the fascinating history of this martial art we want to look at a three-tiered sparring approach used within the system that I think others can adapt to head-off neurological damage.

La boxe francaise uses three tiers of contact in their training bouts: Assaut, Pre-Combat, and Combat.

Assaut-Think of this as the no-contact period. Combatants still work with one another but it is more along the lines of using one another to gauge footwork, to visualize targets, and to work on technical precision.

Pre-Combat-Here, we move to gear (shin-pads and head-gear included). There is contact but it is of a limited variety, a premium is still placed on technical precision in all aspects.

Combat-It is not until the last stage where the head-gear and shin-pads are lost that we see full power come into play.

          It seems to me that we could go a long way towards cognitive preservation by adopting some form of this 3-tiered structure which allows for both aliveness and safety as each drill/combat scenario moves up the experience chain. Trainers and athletes can adjust for contact levels and surfaces (skull or no-skull) as per competition needs, but within the above framework we can still hang on to a bit of the aliveness needed to keep the game true. That is, as long as we all acknowledge that we've got to move on from the Assaut stage to at least the Pre-Combat stage.

Because no matter how much we'd like to play and train safely, combat is a contact sport and folks have got to hit and be hit somewhere down the line.