the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

This may be a "done to death" discussion but here we are.

I've spent some time in the last while thinking about the volume of information I've collected in 30+ years of training. As we get older is it important to try to retain "everything" or is it permissible (or preferable?) to parse the syllabus into the skills and methods that you've found most valuable to ongoing development, applicability, or enjoyment?

This is not a slight against a practitioner that owns a school or is devoted to "preserving the art as taught," only speaking for myself as a style-mutt that started in traditional and had a long and drawn out segue into boxing/muay thai/submission wrestling and how I struggle to justify some of the practices I spent so many years working on.

Is it objectively more valuable to retain a little of an art in good faith (able to demonstrate form and application under pressure) or to retain a lot of the form and ritual of the art at the expense of the trainings rigor and ability to apply the diverse concepts.

Think you answered your own question? If you do not have to "preserve the art as taught" or play a specific role in that legacy and continuity, how is there personal pressure on what to retain? Isn't it up to you? Sometimes The Beatles (or pick your musician of choice) could not remember their old lyrics or chord progressions and had to go back and re-learn them. It seems like "artists" and "art" change over time for various reasons. Not necessarily wheat/chaff reasons. Could be other reasons.

My teachers advise to take what is useful to you and leave what is not.

everything wrote:Think you answered your own question? If you do not have to "preserve the art as taught" or play a specific role in that legacy and continuity, how is there personal pressure on what to retain? Isn't it up to you? Sometimes The Beatles (or pick your musician of choice) could not remember their old lyrics or chord progressions and had to go back and re-learn them. It seems like "artists" and "art" change over time for various reasons. Not necessarily wheat/chaff reasons. Could be other reasons.

You're right, that there is a funny friction in "leaving" tradition is the part I'm getting at.

Martial arts are unique in that their preservation can be both functional, aesthetic or a spectrum of combinations of the two. Practices becoming flowery and demonstrative are fine as long as they retain the ability to convey function (if function is the point), but hyper-focusing on function can lose the more ubiquitous appeal of practice for enjoyment. I trained a style of karate for many years, it had its good and bad points but instead of "fixing it" to make it suit me and continue I thought it better to abandon it completely.

Similarly, wrestling with the perceived intrinsic value of training "as taught" which is the traditional norm, vs the contemporary maxim of filling in gaps to make things more functional (hedged by the hyper-traditionalists who will say "it would work if you were better at it").

I'm not looking for a specific answer to this problem, only asking for the experiences of others with a diverse (or narrow) practice history and their perspectives on what they value and gain from their methods.

over 30 years of trainings is nuf time to sublimate into your own style, if you practice daily.
If you unable to select pearls...
well,
guess the bitter truth.

Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote:

everything wrote:Think you answered your own question? If you do not have to "preserve the art as taught" or play a specific role in that legacy and continuity, how is there personal pressure on what to retain? Isn't it up to you? Sometimes The Beatles (or pick your musician of choice) could not remember their old lyrics or chord progressions and had to go back and re-learn them. It seems like "artists" and "art" change over time for various reasons. Not necessarily wheat/chaff reasons. Could be other reasons.

You're right, that there is a funny friction in "leaving" tradition is the part I'm getting at.

Martial arts are unique in that their preservation can be both functional, aesthetic or a spectrum of combinations of the two. Practices becoming flowery and demonstrative are fine as long as they retain the ability to convey function (if function is the point), but hyper-focusing on function can lose the more ubiquitous appeal of practice for enjoyment. I trained a style of karate for many years, it had its good and bad points but instead of "fixing it" to make it suit me and continue I thought it better to abandon it completely.

Similarly, wrestling with the perceived intrinsic value of training "as taught" which is the traditional norm, vs the contemporary maxim of filling in gaps to make things more functional (hedged by the hyper-traditionalists who will say "it would work if you were better at it").

I'm not looking for a specific answer to this problem, only asking for the experiences of others with a diverse (or narrow) practice history and their perspectives on what they value and gain from their methods.

Some people treat their practice like a museum, my art is a laboratory.

IMO, it's important to understand what is important and what is not for your art, your training, your development and your over all well-being, understanding what brings value and what does not.

Principles, body mechanics and having a strong foundation is some of those few things which are important. Collecting and learning forms is not.

And also, what value do you want to, and believe that you could, pass on to others? People can learn forms here and there and everywhere. But a skillful teacher who has integrated deep understanding inside of his own body, who can teach people principles with clarity and how they can achieve a strong foundation, that is something rare.

Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote:
I'm not looking for a specific answer to this problem, only asking for the experiences of others with a diverse (or narrow) practice history and their perspectives on what they value and gain from their methods.

as a hobbyist who usually only gets to intermediate level at best, not advanced level, in sports or arts, I can't worry about it. but it's like wiesiek (or Bruce Lee) said, but even more broad. for example, tennis gives lessons useful in football/soccer and probably MA, and the list goes on.

scholars, teachers, commentators (for sports/arts with massive amount of film) can worry about it professionally if they wish.

I guess MA can be fairly quickly re-engineered after the zombie apocalypse ... something like launching satellites or creating mRNA vaccines may get lost for much longer

If you're training in a coherent system, then whatever you practice should have the critical elements common to all the material. This means you could cycle through material and not lose too much on things between cycles, or you could practice a few things and relatively easily pick up less practiced things as needs or interest dictate at a later time.

wiesiek wrote:over 30 years of trainings is nuf time to sublimate into your own style, if you practice daily.
If you unable to select pearls...
well,
guess the bitter truth.

Thanks internet random, I must be truly awful.

Bhassler wrote:If you're training in a coherent system, then whatever you practice should have the critical elements common to all the material. This means you could cycle through material and not lose too much on things between cycles, or you could practice a few things and relatively easily pick up less practiced things as needs or interest dictate at a later time.

I really like this concept, cycling through complementary training methods like a triathlete periodizing their training sessions leading up to a race.

everything wrote:

Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote:
I'm not looking for a specific answer to this problem, only asking for the experiences of others with a diverse (or narrow) practice history and their perspectives on what they value and gain from their methods.

as a hobbyist who usually only gets to intermediate level at best, not advanced level, in sports or arts, I can't worry about it. but it's like wiesiek (or Bruce Lee) said, but even more broad. for example, tennis gives lessons useful in football/soccer and probably MA, and the list goes on.

scholars, teachers, commentators (for sports/arts with massive amount of film) can worry about it professionally if they wish.

I guess MA can be fairly quickly re-engineered after the zombie apocalypse ... something like launching satellites or creating mRNA vaccines may get lost for much longer

Catching onto your final point - the idea of reverse engineering utility if it becomes necessary - my current interest is deerhorn knives and while there is a wealth of forms and demonstrations there is very little in terms of open training with them aside from some HEMA enthusiasts taking a crack but those efforts are usually derided as "not using the proper methods" but no offering of those proper methods and their efficacy in the same context - we can see arms and armour co-evolving through history with weapons rising and falling out of favor but the methods they used in many cases are only inferred in the same way a fossil record does. The idea of "this is useless, unless" or "this is invincible, but" is more nuanced than rocket science and epidemiology because the arbiter of judgement present in history is much less available until the zombies rise. Are these methods more complex than is worth exploring in a dire situation, would we not default to the most effective result accomplished with the least effort. I'm mostly trying to think about cutting out the middle man prior to hacking into Z's to make it home at night.

origami_itto wrote:
Some people treat their practice like a museum, my art is a laboratory.

I like that.

Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote:

origami_itto wrote:
Some people treat their practice like a museum, my art is a laboratory.

I like that.

Me too, but like Hawkins said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. I have to be careful not to discard something before I understand it well enough to KNOW if it's good for me or not.

origami_itto wrote:

Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote:

origami_itto wrote:
Some people treat their practice like a museum, my art is a laboratory.

I like that.

Me too, but like Hawkins said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. I have to be careful not to discard something before I understand it well enough to KNOW if it's good for me or not.

This is why I'm curious what others have chosen as being necessary to keep or acceptable to discard. Someone who isn't comfortable with a method of training may exclude it from their curriculum, so too a method that is too physically taxing or becomes difficult as a result of injury.

The "Coles notes" of situations people encounter varies from region to region. In the US it may more likely to encounter someone who can wrestle or box (or guns... so very many guns), in Japan - judo or karate, in the Philippines - a knife or stick.