Etiquette

I know the three of you that read this blog don't come here for super serious discussion so I hope you'll forgive this particular entry because I think it might be just that.

And so does Martin Lawrence

Martial Etiquette is one of those things that are somewhat universal and also as varied as the people that do martial arts.  There are some universal things but school to school and person to person they can change fundamentally.  A lot of these traditions are derived from the cultures where the martial arts began.  Karate, Aikido, Judo, and Kendo all have similar rules of conduct based on Japanese culture.  Shaolin, Hung Gar, Wing Chun, and Taijiquan all relate back to Chinese culture.  Not only are we talking about familial culture but also religious, political, and social.  That's quite a melting pot.

So why, as westerners, do we continue to adhere to these ideals and practices from cultures thousands of miles away and thousands of years old?  Why don't we call our teachers "Tom" and greet them with a firm handshake?  Why don't we show up in our jeans and converse for training and tell fart jokes in the middle of class?

The obvious answer would be simply "respect", right?  That we should respect our teacher(s) and not be total obnoxious douches during class seems the most reasonable explanation for all of the bowing and comedic restraint.  But what if I told you that showing respect was just a bi-product of the real lesson?  What if I said that the person benefiting from you bowing to your teacher, listening with attention, and referring to your teacher as sir/ma'am/shifu/sifu, was you?  It was you the whole time!

Mind = Blown

Humility.  Humility is the reason why we have to do all of it.  Most teachers, if they practice what they teach, aren't a bunch of egotistical A-holes looking for masses of mewling students to kowtow before them.  They are not looking to stroke their own egos and self aggrandize their place in the world.  They want their students to be humble first because only through humility and thoughtfulness can you hope to control yourself.  And what better lesson is there in Martial Arts than self-control?

Without self control, our lives would be chaos.  We would give in to every whim and act on every emotion immediately without forethought. Now imagine that someone with an inability to control themselves are suddenly shown how to violently harm someone with their bare hands, given the ability to brutalize or kill within seconds.  Man that sure sounds like a great combination.  All of those rules and etiquette are teaching us to be thoughtful and mindful of how we act both in and out of the school.  Sort of like how prisoners can't pee without someone with a gun and baton watching them once they get out.... so I've heard.  It's through constant practice that it becomes habit.  Once it is habit, then we can be trusted to go out into the world with our new skills.

When it becomes clear that a student can not remove himself from his ego or learn to control his or her emotional state, that student may be asked to leave.  The typical western mindset (or that of the ego controlled) would simply say that they were being punished for not being subservient.  Meaning they missed the true nature of the lesson entirely.  How we treat others is an indicator of our ability to control ourselves.  How we see ourselves will dictate how we treat others.  It's not great cosmic secret or even an ancient Chinese secret.  It's just another way in which martial arts makes us stronger even when we aren't aware of it.

One of my students recently asked (in a public forum) how do you control your ego without being too self deprecating.  Ch'an tells us that both ideas are really the same.  Ego comes from confidence and self deprecation comes from doubt. Both are falsehoods that we project on ourselves and both can harm us equally. Humility is not a byproduct of self doubt.  It is a state of being that requires us to remain simple in both thought and deed. If we are neither proud of our accomplishments or regretful of our failures, what is left is simple humility.  It is human nature to be proud and regretful and we will all feel that way from time to time, but if we can recognize what those feelings do to us, if we can see how pride fills our cups and how regret will never allow our cups to fill at all, we can understand the dangers of allowing them to control us.

Coming back to our original discussion on etiquette, it is the ego that tells us we don't need to follow the rules and patterns of behavior set forth by our teachers.  If we can put ego aside and "empty our cups" we might find that the lessons we thought we were learning, were only part of the real, larger lesson all along.

As always, feel free to comment or rage.

No Teacher, No Problem... Right?

Online martial arts training has been around since... well the internet i guess.  Sites like Youtube and uh the chinese youtube have opened up avenues for martial artists that were never available to us before. Esoteric systems, variations on known material, and whatever this crap is, all at our fingertips!  No longer were we confined to learn whatever martial systems were in our immediate vicinity.  Want to learn Hapkido? Sure.  How about Ninjitsu? Heck yeah! Want to be a Shaolin monk? Duh, sign me up!  Even if you've never trained in martial arts before, you could have your pick of cyber-teacher and style.  Who needs a teacher?

That was a rhetorical question because the answer is WE ALL DO.

I may sound like an old man yelling at clouds here, but one thing traditional martial arts training should never be is easy.  Teacher's are not just there to give out fortune cookie wisdom (though we get to charge more if we do) and teach you how to kick dudes in the junk, teachers are also there to punish you for being dumb enough to try and learn martial arts.  They aren't sadists, they're just nostalgic.  Most of us who teach these days do so because if we didn't then all the hell our teachers put us through would be for nothing and that isn't going to happen.  Do you hear me?  IT WILL NOT HAVE BEEN FOR NOTHING!!!!

*breath*

Okay haha what I meant to say was that we didn't just learn how to punch and kick and look super cool in silk pajamas, we had to be shown what our limits were and how to push passed them.  We had to be brought to the brink of failure (and sometimes fail all together) only to learn how to succeed.  Martial training is as much about conditioning your body as it is your mind.  Sometimes the only thing that can keep the body from giving up is a strong focused mind and sometimes the only thing that can keep the mind sane during times of stress is a strong enduring body.  I do not wish to speak for everyone, but I know enough about my teenage self (when I began wearing silk pajamas) that I know I would have just skipped all that hard stuff and just tried to learn all the cool Kung Fu stuff I saw in movies. Of course I would have paid for this mistake the first time I tried to spar or fight for any length of time as my lungs collapsed under their own weight.

As anyone who has sparred or fought for any length of time can tell you, it most certainly isn't like taking a jog around the track.  Every muscle in your body is in use or ready to be used and your body is sending a strange mixture of endorphins, coristol, and epinephrine coursing through your system.  You're like an engine in neutral but someone is still pressing on the gas.  Then once you begin moving you don't stop moving until someone yells "time" or someone is on the ground.  In a fight, my money is on the guy with the most stamina over the guy with the most technique almost always, if for no other reason than he can outrun him.

Most traditional martial arts schools stress this type of training.  Stance work, drills, weights, iron body, etc, over and over and over.  Most schools want their students strong, fast, and in control of their own cardiovascular system when the time comes to use what they're learning.  Without this training, and without someone there to push you to beyond the limits you set for yourself, you aren't getting real martial arts training.

"But wait!", you say, "I would not have shied away from doing all that hard stuff so I don't need a teacher.".

Well fine then, I guess just head to Youtube and get started....

Oh but wait, what tool are you using to know if you are practicing what you're "learning" correctly?  Maybe you have a partner who is there to learn with you that you can try stuff with.  Yeah that should do it, all problems solved!  But then you learn that your partner is a super dick and is always second guessing your Youtube Master and with a simple adjustment, renders your brand new 75th degree black belt technique usless!  You have been lied to by your Youtube Master, there is only one path before you... REVENGE!!!! So you track down the location of your former Master, he lives in Japan and has a small school in Tokyo.  Good, you say to yourself, this way you can get revenge and get some awesome authentic Japanese Sushi at the same time!  The tickets to Tokyo will run you three thousand dollars, then there is the hotel to think about, oh and passports, and immunizations.... crap, let's just go back to Youtube and find another teacher.  Then maybe later REVENGE!!!!

Now, had you and your dick partner (note to self: don't type that phrase again) been with a live teacher, the moment he began to ask questions, your live teacher could have kicked him in the groin... oh wait no that's not right.  No what I meant to say was that the teacher could have shown you the alteration to the technique so that it still worked or had a slightly different outcome. Martial arts training isn't about mimicking someone.  It's about trial and error, experimentation, and ASKING QUESTIONS.  If you have no questions at the end of your class, either your teacher is a world class communicator or you aren't putting enough thought into what you're doing and you are happy to just put on your cool outfit and parrot your teacher's moves in front of the mirror.

Adaptability and improvisation are the bread and butter of a great fighter.  Anyone can learn a form from a video, but to pick it apart and analyze it piece by piece and find all of the hidden gems that can be mined from it, that's real martial skill.

I agree that there will come a time in your martial career that you will know how to do these things on your own.  After you've been with a teacher or two for many years and see the way they get you to look at things, then, maybe, you can take a video with your new "martial eyes" and find the meaning and skills hidden within it.  But my advice to anyone who is just beginning or someone who has only been training for a few years, seek out a teacher.  Let them guide you, mold you, and make you better than you ever could be on your own.  That is why they do what they do because as any of us can attest, we certainly don't do it for the money.

In closing:

Q: "Is there a Youtube video I can look at to learn what you do?"

A: "I don't know, is there one that shows you how to stand in Mabu (horse stance) for an hour because that'd be where you should start."

Leggo Your Ego

WARNING: The length of this post may cause seizures.

If you google "martial arts blog" (and why wouldn't you?) and click on any of the links on the search results page, I can say with nearly 98% certainty that whomever (whoever?) is writing that blog has made a post about Ego.  Learning to recognize it and learning to let it go are both central themes in traditional martial arts, but maybe not for the reasons you think.

First, I want to point out that being confident in your abilities is not a bad thing.  Sure, being over-confident in your abilities is a byproduct of the ego, but having confidence in what you know is still important in Martial Arts training.  If you aren't confident, you won't react when you are confronted, you'll be frozen by insecurity and probably get trounced.  At the same time, over confidence can lead you to be reckless and react inappropriately and probably get you trounced.  That isn't as fine of a line as it sounds though.

Ego and humility can not coexist.  The Ego says, "This person across from me is weak compared to me.  He is no match for me and should have left when he had the chance."  Confidence has nothing to do with the person standing across from you.  Confidence is only about you and your training.  Therefore, humility and confidence can exist together.  Confidence tells us, "I've trained for this. I have drilled for this. If I can't get out of this, I can stand up for myself if I need to."

Hopefully the differences in confidence and ego are pretty clear.  I don't want to harp on this subject, I want to focus on Ego and how it is detrimental to traditional MA training.  I'll begin this by sharing a story with you, a sort of martial arts parable.  Remember when I mentioned that Ego is bad but maybe not for the reasons you think?  Well read on true believers.

A long time ago in the golden age of Martial Arts (let's call it 1990), a Kung Fu teacher (we'll call him Shifu B-ego) was thinking about how to get more students.  He pondered this often, wishing that craigslist was a thing, and tried to come up with ways to get people into the door.  One day after sparring all of his students, and standing over their unconscious bodies, he realized that instead of looking for students new to the martial arts, he could take the students from other schools in town!  He would simply go and challenge their teachers to a match and the students would see who the better teacher was and certainly join his school!  What could go wrong? "Nothing you glorious man,"  he responded to himself, "no-thing."

Think this guy, all grown up

So he opened the phonebook (readers, if you are younger than 25, please stop here  and google "phonebook", we'll wait) and found the closest Kung Fu school to his and set out with a group of his students to challenge the teacher of this school and recruit his students after besting him.  Shifu B-ego  and his four top students arrived at the school just as class was about to begin.  He walked in quietly and respectfully and met with the teacher of the school, respectfully explaining that he wished to have a friendly match with him to test his own skills.  It was all very humble as protocol of the Martial arts dictated.  Even though Shifu B-ego knew he was going to obliterate this man, he still went about the proper etiquette required in these situations;

B-ego - "Shifu your school is very nice and your students look strong, you must be a great teacher!"
Shifu - "no no I am only adequate, but your students look very strong YOU must be a great teacher!"
B-ego thought, 'yes I am', but out loud, "No no, not nearly as good as you!"

This went on, as such things do, for another 14 million days, each respectfully complimenting the other while nay-saying their own abilities.  Again, this is the way things were done in the golden age.

Finally the match began, and after a brief exchange of blows, B-ego had defeated the other teacher.  He helped him to his feet and after another 900 million years of complimenting each other, B-ego stood back and looked at the faces of the other teacher's students to see who would be joining him since he had proven his superiority.  To his surprise, the students were all gathered around their teacher congratulating him on a good match!  None seemed even phased by the loss!

B-ego returned to his school confused and a bit angry.  For days he pondered what had happened what had went wrong.  Finally, he decided that it was all the complimentary protocol nonsense.  Yes that must be it, they were both to nice to each other, it was all to friendly and neither had lost face.  Now he knew what he must do.  He pulled out his phonebook again (seriously, this was all we had then to find things in our area, truly it was a living hell) and found the next closest Kung Fu school.  This time for sure he would get some new students.

This time, B-ego made his whole school come with him.  He wanted a big crowd for this.  They stormed into the school in the middle of class (something B-ego had planned) and B-ego loudly proclaimed that he was there to challenge the teacher and prove that his style was the best!  The teacher of the school came forward, he was overweight and sweating profusely, B-ego smiled and realized this fight would be even easier than the last one.  The teacher approached and said, "I'm sorry, but we are having class now, and I am not interested in fighting you."  B-ego was not to be deterred, "You don't look like you could fight to anyone unless they were standing in the way of you getting to the buffet! You are weak and I can easily beat you." All pretense of face saving and false modesty were gone, B-ego knew this time that he would get more students.

Still, however, the teacher refused to fight, "I'm sorry that I offend you, but I do not wish to fight you.  You seem to have a large school and strong students so you must be a very good teacher!  Why would you worry if your style is better than mine?" "Because your students are fools to train with you and your style is crap and I'm going to prove it to them!" replied the douchebag, uh I mean B-ego.  The teacher still remained calm and his jimmies remained unrussled, "I do not doubt that you are the superior fighter!  You do not need to fight me to show my students that your style is good, why not simply put on a demo?  We would be glad to watch your superior skills.  Also we should not fight, we both do Kung Fu, we should strive to get along."  The teacher bowed to B-ego and put out his hand for B-ego to shake.


B-ego had had enough of all of this etiquette crap, "I have had enough of all this etiquette crap!" (I just said that, bro) and lunged at the teacher knocking his outstretched hand aside and started throwing strikes at him.  The fight was underway in earnest.  B-ego attacked fiercely and recklessly.  The portly teacher deflected his blows and attacked with his own.  The fight was fairly evenly matched which surprised B-ego.  They both traded blows with precision and power and they both deflected and evaded with agility and quickness, but in the end, B-ego was in better shape and eventually wore the other teacher down and finally defeated him.  B-ego had won the fight as he knew he would.  It took longer than the thought and he had more bruises than he would have liked, but he had won, his opponent was weaker than him. B-ego was the best!

Interlude

Whoa! who saw that coming?  No one who watched Martial Arts movies in the 80s and 90s would have.  "But wait," you say, "The guy with the ego DID win, he was right.  He was the best fighter.  How is this a good parable?"  I dunno, maybe that's why I do Kung Fu and don't write books JEEZ! Now let's get back to where we left off.....


B-ego reveled in his victory, "Do you see?  I am the best!".  He stood and looked at his new prospective students, but a funny thing happened.  None of them seemed perturbed by their teacher's loss!  They were helping him up and congratulating him on a good match!  What friggen loony-bin had he wondered into?!  Frustrated he turned towards his students to tell them it was time to leave, but something had changed him them as well.  They too were looking at the other teacher and a few of them went over to congratulate him on a good match!  Flabbergasted, B-ego told his students it was time to go.  Before he got to the door, the other teacher called to him, B-ego turned and the teacher bowed, "Thank you for a great match, you are indeed a great fighter." B-ego turned and left without a word.

Over the next month, B-ego realized that his classes were shrinking!  Students weren't just missing a few classes, it was clear some were actually leaving.  He asked some of his remaining students what was going on, but most shrugged and said they didn't know, but B-ego saw some furtive glances that said otherwise.  He was completely stumped, he had defeated two local teachers openly the students should be flocking to his school.

A few more weeks went by and B-ego was even more frustrated as the classes continued to dwindle. Then one day a visitor came to the school.  It was the second teacher that B-ego had fought, the one that he had openly mocked.  "What do you want?" he said with zero preamble (man, this guy is a friggen douche).  The other teacher bowed and asked if he may enter, b-ego waved his hand giving permission.  "I wanted to tell you that you are indeed a fine teacher," began the other shifu, "the students who have come to me from this school are all very strong and talented."  B-ego was simply floored.  He had not, and would not have in a million years, considered that his students were leaving him for someone he had bested.  It made no sense.

"That makes no sense." replied B-ego (look we've already established I'm not a great writer), "Why on earth would my students go to train with someone that I had defeated?"  The teacher shrugged and offered only this, "In your boasting you painted a picture of me that required you to win easily to prove that you were really superior.  I just had to not lose easily to prove you wrong.  I had nothing to lose by losing."

"Say I believe you, that explains why I didn't get your students, but why would mine leave to train with you?" The teacher pondered this for a moment and said, "My prices are cheaper."

Okay I'm not going to pretend that the star of this tale, B-ego, learned a lesson from this.  Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, that's not really the point.  The point is his ego didn't cause him to lose a fight, in fact he won (but that was because of training not ego).  However, his ego did get in the way of his true goals.  His presumptions led to his ego creating a scenario where he really couldn't win even by winning.

 In Martial Arts training specifically, it can manifest in many ways.  Getting jealous when a student in your rank gets promoted ahead of you. In learning a form we can convince ourselves that we have mastered it only to be told by our teachers that we are doing things wrong which in turn makes us question the teacher instead of ourselves if we hold onto that voice telling us we had it down.  In sparring, we can underestimate our partner and be reckless.  I could continue making a longer list of examples about this stuff, but I don't really see a need. Hopefully you can see that Ego affects us in every aspect of our lives and offers nothing but false information based on our desires of who/what we think ourselves to be. It will always be a part of us, we simply have to learn to not listen to it.

As always, feel free to leave a comment or thought.

"Be formless, my friend" - or not

Why?

I feel like my elder Kung Fu brother and I spend a lot of time justifying to our students and perspective students, why we teach forms .  Unfortunately, in this age of MMA and UFC, forms (套路 "taolu" in Mandarin) are considered not only a waste of time, but somehow a sign that whatever Martial Art you are studying is fake or not useful in combat.  This could not be further from the truth.

As always, I'm going to come at this from a CMA angle since that is my wheelhouse, but I'm sure a lot of what I say will hold true for other systems as well.  Also, I have spoken a little bit about forms here.

First, let's figure out what a form really is.  A lot of people outside of traditional martial arts probably don't see it as anything but a dance with punches and kicks.  Like some kind of awesome epileptic seizure but instead of your eyes rolling up in your head and biting your tongue off, you do flip kicks in the air and pretend to punch dudes in the groin from really uncomfortable stances.  However, what forms are really intended to accomplish is to teach us movements from our system in such a way that we can easily ingrain them in our muscle memory and not have to simply learn a billion individual techniques (or thirty, but who's counting).  Let me put it too you this way; if I had 50 techniques or skills I wanted you to learn, would you be able to commit all 50 to memory if we did them as individual numbered techniques?  Sure you could, but how long would it take?  Could you pull a technique out of the middle on command?  Do you practice all 50 everyday so you don't lose them?  However, if I showed you one form with 50 techniques in it and you practiced that form everyday, you would have all of those skills on hand in a package that's easily remembered.  Now that that is out of the way, we can work on the important thing like applications (like punching dudes in the groin from really uncomfortable stances)!

Applications.

Just because a form does a technique a certain way, does not mean that the technique is always done that particular way.  Sometimes in a form, the technique is done in the most basic way possible to ensure that the basic skill set gets into your brain, only then do we dissect it and make it applicable to other situations.  We can teach you a form with only ten movements then we can show you ten applications for each movement.  That's the goal of real taolu.

I admit you can find schools that teach forms and have no idea what the applications are or what they are even doing.  Yes you need to watch out for those.  If you are teaching a system, you need to understand what your system teaches inside and out.

Fighting Vs Forms

Look, you can be taught to fight and defend yourself pretty adeptly in about three months.  If that's all you're looking to do, tell your instructor this, make sure they have a program in place for such a thing.  Most traditional schools front load their systems with all of the basic fighting skills you will need to do this.  However, if you want to learn a system of fighting through and through, that is where forms come in.  It's the difference between being a cook and being a chef.  You can probably make some kick ass pancakes from those years of training at Waffle Barn or whatever, but that won't get you a job at a four star french bakery.  Not that making pancakes isn't awesome, just like learning basic fighting/self defense is perfectly fine if that is your goal, but if you want to learn to fight better, smarter, and with more skill than a brawler, that's why you stick with a traditional school longer.  That is why you learn forms to learn even more advanced techniques and skills.  After all of that, though, it's important that you practice those individual moves both solo and with partners.  Learning a form and even understanding the applications is not enough!  You must practice them.

Final subheading for symmetry 

In closing; forms aren't supposed to look like fighting exactly.  Forms are an important and tried method of transferring a systems skills and require a bit more endurance, both mental and physical, than just learning basic fighting.  If forms aren't your thing, that's okay, there's a million apps schools for that, but maybe now you'll understand why so many traditional schools use them.

Also, if Waffle Barn is a thing, please don't sue me.

Yielding

So... yes it has been over a year since I've made a post on this blog and yes the last post was about how it had been a while since I had made a post on this blog, but hey, you guys still come and check every so often right?

Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about an aspect of martial arts that is pretty specific to Chinese Martial Arts (CMA); Yielding.

In physical terms, we use yielding to avoid strikes, grabs, etc.  Instead of blocking with a stiff arm or jumping out of range, we learn to flow, absorb and ultimately redirect.  It is the essence of Taijiquan and a lot of Kung Fu as well.  We do not wish to stand firm against the raging flood, but nor do we want to be swept away by it so we yield, we bend, we avoid only enough to not be broken.

The physical idea of this should seem pretty simple and relateable even if you don't practice CMA.  The example we gave in class recently was pushing someone on a swing.  You know that as the swing gains momentum, you can just stand in it's path and grab it!  You'll either stop the swinger's momentum (because you hate fun) or you will be knocked down by the impact as your puny arms fail to stop the swing (no, bro, I don't lift either).  Of course we all know that as the swing is coming back towards us, we back up or rock back and allow the arch of the swing to reach it's apex before we apply new thrust in the direction the swing was already going to go anyway.  In this way we can control the swing by applying greater force to make it go higher or keeping a steady force so it remains constant, but the answer to continuing the process was to give in to the power of the swing, to yield to it, allow it to do as it will then redirect it where we wished it to go.

As I said, something we all have done physically, and while it is an important aspect of your martial training in regards to fighting, I want to discuss instead the mental aspect of this training.  Much of your martial arts training is, as we know, as much mental as it is physical.  We've been posting on our facebook page quite a bit about why CMA is so difficult to stick with if you don't have the will power to persevere through the stance work and endurance training.  We know that physical capabilities will only carry you so far.  Unless your mind is willing to bend your body to your purpose, you will never achieve anything more than surface level proficiency in Kung Fu.  So too is learning this principle as much a mental exercise as anything else.

Learning to yield both physically and mentally requires that you learn to let go of that all to common enemy of martial artists; the ego.  The ego has done nothing but get us in trouble our whole lives.  It removes our grounding, it corrupts our sense of self, and it asks for retribution where we should offer kindness and forgiveness.  The ego does not yield, it stands its ground come hell or high water and looks defiantly at that on coming flood.  "Hey wait, the ego sounds pretty bad ass, screw all this yielding nonsense!" some of you may say.  To that I can only ask that you try and take a step back and examine your life, all those times you insisted you were right at the cost of friendships, dignity, reason, and/or love just so you could hold your position.  Then come back and read some more.

Everyone is guilty of letting ego influence their decisions and their lives, no one is immune.  However, by learning and practicing this idea of yielding, we can stifle that natural response of the ego that tells us we are in the right and our way is the only way.  So that was the long form of saying, learn to listen, learn to give of yourself before requiring others to give of themselves first.

Yield first, absorb the hostility coming your way, and redirect it or cancel it out.  This applies in all aspects of life; customer service, construction, office work, martial arts training and teaching (especially teaching).  This isn't a how to guide.  I don't want to list a million examples of the point I'm trying to convey to assure you it relates to your particular situation, but try and picture yourself as a tree in the wind, not standing before it only to be snapped by it's force, but yielding to the pressure and remaining when the storm passes.



PS: There is also a lesson that we can learn physically that also applies to this mental practice.  Never yield past the point of no return or you will also face disaster.


Zaijian

Well it's been a while since I've had a chance to update this blog.  Fortunately, I have a good excuse!  Our new Kung Fu school in Fort Walton Beach is up and running.  Here is a link to the facebook page as the website is, as yet, not finished http://www.facebook.com/BlackDragonKungFu.

I had this very long blog post pre-written(ish) concerning how we, as martial artists, should be treating each other and the rest of the world, but what I discovered was that the endless paragraphs and hyperbole could be boiled down to;

Be excellent to each other

and

PARTY ON, DUDES!


Lol sorry I heart Bill and Ted.  Anyway, just try to remember that all that stuff we all say at the beginning of classes and all that stuff about representing your school and teacher, well it's all actually true so try to do it.

I'll update more in the future, until then, practice practice practice practice and then practice.

Know it alls

I've noticed a weird trend among martial artists concerning teachers and material; students, lay practitioners, and outsiders seem to have a strange disdain of "masters" and teachers continuing to learn and develop new skills.  I assume it's because our minds have been conditioned by martial arts in the media to see masters as the guys and gals who know everything.  Not just about martial arts, but life, philosophy, medicine, etc.  Master martial artists in the media have a long history of just being gurus who know how to fight.

While it is true that to be a master of a particular art should have a better understanding of that art than those under them, it does not mean that they are infallible or that they can not still make discoveries about their own art.  Indeed, I would say that this is the very reason someone should even be awarded the title of Master, because they don't stop learning and seeking.  They continue to seek out new material or refine their own for the sole purpose of bettering their skills and that of their students', but often they feel compelled to do it in secret and then present it as classical material to avoid the stigma of "invention".

I can be taught a form, and I can do it exactly as it was shown and do the applications of that form exactly as they were taught, but then I'm just memorizing not creating.  It's like being a musician!  You can learn to play other peoples songs but if you aren't creating your own work, are you really a musician or are you merely a copy cat?  Now I'm not saying that anyone should drastically change a form or its applications, you should teach as you were taught, but you also need to introduce creative thinking to your students.  Do not be afraid to stand in front of your class and say, "Okay I know we have done this particular strike this way for years, but pair up, because I want to see if this new idea I had works!".  And if you are a student, you should be elated that your master or teacher is willing to think outside of the box because the more tools you have in your arsenal the better of a martial artist you will be. 

Students as well should try and develop new ideas and applications for material presented to them and in a respectful way, present it to their teachers to see if the idea has merit.  But the flip side of that coin is, you must must must respect the material as it was presented to you.  Most arts are very old (as I have previously stated in some rant on this blog) and you can bet that anything that doesn't work was purged long ago.

So in summation (because I have stuff to attend to this is a shorter post than I'd like), do not fault your teachers for learning and also do not forget that just because you hold the rank of black belt or master, you don't have to pretend to know everything.