Improvised Training: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!"''|'''Patches O'Houlihan''', ''[[Dodgeball]]''}}

 

 

You can tell a group got Improvised Training because they will absolutely marvel at the luxury of well funded professional teams and arenas.The richer, posh kids will sneer at them, while these kids will reply they didn't need sissy advantages or buy success with money.

Despite the zero budget and dubious training methods, it turns out the rougher and unconventional training pays off and helps them win. The more traditional (especially the ultra well funded prep or snooty Legacy Team that always wins) will have such [[Technician Versus Performer|rigid and inflexible mindsets]] that the rag tag team keeps catching them by surprise. Be it with creative plays or enduring more pain, or outperforming them. Occasionally, the training itself may even give them comparable or superior physical performance, at times bordering on [[Charles Atlas Superpower|Charles Atlas Super Powers]].

 

{{examples}}

* Subverted in ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' where Sano (a brawler) attempts to train while traveling to Kyoto by knocking down trees with his bare hands. Eventually however he admits, that this isn't really training and he's not learning anything useful by doing it. At least while he's lost in the forest he does meet a mentor who does train him and show him new techniques.

 

* ''[[A Knight's Tale]]'' They used jury rigged contraptions to teach William to joust. Plus he had to wear a dead guy’s armor.

* ''[[Cool Runnings]]'' has the story of the first Jamaican bobsledding team. With such gems as "sliding" on a cart down rocky hills, and locking players in an ice cream truck to acclimate them to the cold.

* In ''[[Lagaan]]'' the new Indian cricket team chases chickens and the like. Half of their special skills originate from ordinary tasks that they do in their day jobs too.

* The little league baseball team in ''[[The Perfect Game]]''. They're poor, have no advantages, and actually have to clean up a church yard of brush, tires, and rocks to get a ball field. Their training consisted in a lot of running, cutting their own bats from wood, and hitting balls made of rubber bands/wire. They do eventually get real bats and balls, though they never see cut grass fields until they start competing.

** The opponents high-tech training was only really done in ''Rocky IV'', where the contrast between Rocky lifting boulders and chopping wood and Drago using high-tech equipment with dozens of scientists surrounding him was played up to the extreme

** In ''Rocky III'', this was done with Rocky's opponent <s>Clubber Lang</s> Mr. T, whos training montage was supposedly based on Mr. T's real life training.

* A variant in ''[[Major League]]'' sees the ball players improvising ways to ''recover'' from the exertions of training, after the team's hostile owner takes away all their equipment. One player is seen lying in an improvised whirlpool bath made up of an aluminium horse trough, a garden hose, and [[No OSHA Compliance|an outboard boat motor]].

* ''[[Dodgeball]]'' parodies this while playing it straight.

 

 

* While not truly a common rich vs. underdog example, one common way for Mixed Martial Artists to compensate for their ability is to train entirely in defending a person's strengths even though they might not be glass cannons.

** Made famous by Alan Belcher who trained with the best leg lock masters to defend against Rousimar Palhares the leglock master. While Belcher's JJ is highly respected, many broken fanbase considered Palhares to be so great at leg locks that once you go to the ground with him, it's pretty much over. Belcher did not only initiate the ground but defended multiple attempts of leglocks (which on the ground is less move per move but more like combos that can only work if the person getting hit blocks the attack)

[[Category:Improvised Index]]

[[Category:Skills and Training Tropes]]