Museum or Laboratory?

[Finny]

I'm constantly questioning my teacher, but it's not questioning his teachings, it's merely asking for elaboration. I study Judo and a style of koryu jujutsu - if he's teaching something, it's something that he just nearly broke me with. Once I've recovered enough to ask, if I have any question - which I usually do; it's hard to see what someone's doing to you while you're being crushed - I'll ask, and he's always happy to explain. The only times the answer is not mechanical and based entirely on sound physics is in our jujutsu, where it may sometimes be linked to historical practices or behaviour.

[greytowhite]

I have questioned every one of my teachers - often to their annoyance and my injury. That said, I am fortunate to have received strikes intended to harm and have experienced the effects of debilitating skills. Some are truly terrifying and I can reproduce some of what they did because I know what it felt like to receive it. Many of my classmates never received such and only saw me being struck or dropped to the ground in a heap as their only example of application. I have seniors with 15+ years or more of experience in the same style coming to my classes because my understanding differs.

[Doc Stier]

Good points. Form sets and drills can be learned by watching a good teacher perform them, but fighting applications are best learned by feeling them performed on your own body, rather than merely seeing them applied to someone else's body.

Although I definitely didn't think so at that time, I realized in retrospect that I was fortunate to have been my teacher's regular demonstration partner for many years. You can't beat that kind of experience, imo.

[C.J.W.]

The way I see it, we are now fortunate enough to be living in an era where information on various styles of martial arts around the world is more openly and readily available than ever. Even forms, techniques, applications, principles, and theories that were once considered jealously guarded secrets and only passed onto a selected few are now, as Dan Inosanto once jokingly commented in an interview, "all on Youtube." So why not take advantage of this brave new world to "upgrade" and allow our traditional arts to evolve?

If all-time greats like Dong Haichuan, Yang Luchan, and Guo Yunshen were still alive today, do you think they would be glad to see that the arts they'd created are still being practiced the same ways they were done 150 years ago? Personally, I don't think so.