What is Control?

I been thinking about what we talking about at the end of Monday's class, about control. I realized that I have two approaches to my intent during a technique: "learning" mode (getting familiar with how a technique should feel, where you feel strong or weak while you're doing it, figuring out the rhythms of your partner and how they're moving) or starting to move towards "full realism" mode (moving faster, striking with more power, following through even if things don't go they way they're supposed to, trying to feel your heartrate pick up and what it would be like to do the technique full of adrenaline). 

I was trying to wrap my head around the concept of control, and why I was having some troubles with it. We talked about one facet of control relating to distancing, and being aware of where things are at all times. I definitely struggle with this in my sparring, I try to keep my techniques clean, but I find I am just out of range for most of my strikes to land, I think this might be because I don't trust myself to be able to soften at the last moment. I am also finding it hard to have this type of control in my 5 applications, almost all of the techniques are implicitly designed to be dangerous so I know I need to be able to do them without hurting my partner while still maintaining a level of realism,

This is when the thought popped in my head that there could be a third type of mindset I can be in while training. Once I reflected on what I was doing I realized I was trying to start off with a "full realism" mindset and then turn it off once I got as close as possible to the strike zone, and then switch it back on for the next technique, etc. I think it clicked after Sifu Brinker answered my question at the end of class about balancing training realistically (i.e. with the intent to strike) and training safely (i.e. being able to change your hand shape/distancing/etc. at the right time). I realized that instead of trying to turn the realism off/on repeatedly depending on the relative danger levels throughout a technique, I should have a different intent all together, that I am going to do the whole application with control. Instead of trying to switch my intent during the technique, I want to try to have the intent to do the modified/controlled version from the get-go. Treating it like a different technique all together even though they are (externally) really only different at the end. 

I think trying to be in this mindset will help me with my sparring problems I was mentioning earlier too, trying to focus on the intent to do a strike with that modified ending in mind, rather than trying to maintain realism up to a certain distance/timing and then trying to turn it off in that split second. 

(This is all theoretical as I'm writing this out, I'll have to try it out and see if I can and if it's an improvement, but I'm excited to try nonetheless.)