Do you agree with what this instructor says in this video about ethics in martial arts??

I've never asked my judo coach what he ever trained out side judo, why do I care I'm there for judo not anything else

Some of my other coaches have told me there backgrounds but I'm there for the specific art they teach now not what they have trained before,

When do you stop how far back do you go...and who cares as long as they have credentials in what they are teaching now

 

But you DO ask him his background in Judo - and art that has an intrinsic pedigree and quality control

When you are dealing with an art that - to be blunt - has one of the least plausible history this side of Frank Dux then yeah, you ask questions or you are pretty foolish

"Yeah I am a master in this art of Myadestuvup and can teach you to be a streetfighter" - if you are telling me you won;t ask questions on that resume I will
call you a troll directly to your face!!!

 

Oh, I can tell you the background of my first instructor. It was Taiji and wing chun, with a big dose of qigong and yoga.

I didn't start training to learn how to fight though. I already knew that I could de-escalate, and even ingratiate, actual murderers [EDIT: well, one particularly aggressive one, and lots of run-of-the-mill louts]. I'm confident that my verbal skills would have got me out of pretty much any trouble I might have found myself in for a lifetime. I started training because I wanted a physical discipline to tether myself because I was big into meditation and didn't want to disappear up my own bum in a puff of visualisation.

It was only through sparring with people from other arts and having the confidence to step in and have other people try to hurt me that formed my opinion on how effective our training is. Most important to me are the stories of my students using what I've taught them to protect themselves and their loved ones.

 

Way to keep changing the goal post, I could put Kali lau gar, him gar, mma bjj instead of judo and the fact remains their background has zero impact because its their current art I'm interested in.

David isn't looking to train the arts host teacher might have trained in he is looking to train what he teaches now.

I don't agree with him but its a bit of a witch hunt and funny coming from a man complaining we were all always picking on an art (wing chun) instead of posting poative stuff lol

 

Oh yeah, and before you get too far up your bloody high horse, I think you might be forgetting that I was perfectly willing to share when I offered to come to a MAP meet, even after the hostile reception I got from MAP. It was you that decided to turn around and disinvite me without reason.

 

Don't talk crap. They have not even shifted one inch - It is entirely consistent with the previous post. Read it again

Cant be fussed? Allow me - Murky background, less credible, question more

And i said David doesn't have to ask if he doesn't want; the fact others would and do ask is for the reasons I outlined and answers the question raised of "why?"

I don't complain about chunners getting picked on either...half the time I am the one pointing it out.

Thing is martial arts attract flakes more than most things; if you just accept blindly you give free reign to Dux, Kim et al so I will stay negative if it weeds out the dross even a small bit.

When you claim an art is a combination of arts then the ingredients and how you learned to cook them absolutely matter; end of

 

That bit was aimed at simon who I responded to first and who started in on Davids style website he was the one saying we should all be more positive not you apologies but you originally said

What does previous arts experience have to do with that?

Nothing I don't care what my current instructor might have trained years ago and why should I or David, its what he teaches now that's important and if David is happy with that what does it matter if he does or doesn't ask his coaches past experience?

 

Hannibal, if you read the thread, or remember the last one, you'll find that the person claiming that was not representing us and was talking about things he was not around for. Presumably to make it more palatable, which judging by the reactions here he was successful at.

Is there technique from other systems in it? Yes, but that doesn't really matter as any technique is fair game as long as it fits within the principles of the system.

 

I've told you what my original instructor did. I still use a couple of bits of yoga and Qigong I learnt from him!

As for my current instructor, like I said, I think he did some form of kung fu, but I've never done kung fu so the different styles don't really mean much to me. It's much more the case that I'm not fussed about it than he's keeping his previous experience secret from me. He has talked about it in the past, even busted out a bit of a form for a laugh, but it probably accounts for around 5% of his life in martial arts at the most.

 

I really don't get why they are so hung up on this.

My MMA coach was self taught and I never asked about his background but he volunteered once he was a shotokan black belt, didn't matter to me as he never used this in mma,

What mattered to me was he had cornered multiple ufc fighters and produced some of the best fighters and grapplers in the UK and was a great coach for what I wanted.

For instance if I trained with simon I wouldn't care about his kung fu history id want to know how much jkd he had trained in and how often he trained face to face with his current jkd instructor

 

What matters to me are the times I've seen my instructor get stuck in when we've been around trouble. That and he's had jobs that involve being attacked for a big chunk of the 20 years I've known him. What matters most of all is the worth to me, in my own judgement, of what he teaches me. The fact that he did some kung fu decades ago, that he doesn't rate btw, has little-to-no importance to me.

Ever since I started I've never judged a teacher by what they can do, but by what I believe they can do for me. I'm the one who has to take what they give me, run with it and make it work for me. Simon posting video of his boxing coaches tells me exactly nothing about his boxing ability (which is a bit weird anyway - isn't boxing ability judged by competition record?).

 

Valid point and well since simon had put his boxing history out there as credentials the questions to be answered are
1) how long did he train with each person directly and on what regular basis
2) what is his fight record am or pro
3) what fighters has he trained

Without context such a list is meaningless

 

How did you manage to box with Ernie Alesna and never feel his body shots yourself?

How long did you spend in the Philippines, or did he spend time in the UK while he was training you?

 

I mean I find the background of Marbo, it's cult like tendencies and farcical attempt to link itself to some spurious ancient culture or other as ridiculous as anyone and even I think David s being unfairly piled on a bit here.
I knew the lineage and experience of every instructor I had (beyond the first one who's club I joined based in the association rather than the instructor) but the here and now of what they can do for me is the important bit.
I've had instructors that were world class competitors in recognised systems that were "meh".
And I've had instructors no one would have heard of teaching their own systems (with suitable background mind) that had a profound effect on me.

Marbo would be much better off or easier to deal with (IMHO) if it called itself "Survival combat systems" or something, was more open with the arts and influences that formed it and dropped all the strange trappings.
Such things don't immediately negate the quality of what's on offer but they give cause for concern and a double take.

 

Thing is though...if the instructor is teaching Judo or boxing you don't have to establish the credentials or history of "judo" or "boxing". Just the credentials of the instructor to be teaching them.
With something like Marbo though (and any recently made art really) the instructors credentials in that art and the history of that instructor are intertwined much more closely and inform each other. In effect the instructors history with Marbo and where Marbo came from (even if it's been made up from whole cloth with no influence at all) form part of the instructors credentials in a different way to the history of boxing or even sub-grappling (to use Icefield's instructor's example).

 

Maybe it's because I came to MA from left field, but my only metric for a MA class, or any class for that matter, is: "can a fair proportion of students actually do what the school claims it can teach them?'.

 

Ultimately that's the only metric that matters.
However seeing almost none of us (or our fellow club members) are getting into life and death struggles every day that's not an easy metric to measure or even quantify. Especially in a system with no objective competitive outlet.

 

But he can say anything and how do I prove it...the amount of people who set their own kung fu style up in the 70s with made up lineages is massive, how do you prove what he is saying is true?

Ultimately it doesn't matter whatever the arts called as long as you enjoy the training and get value from it, what an instructor may or may not have trained before is immaterial if he is not teaching it now.

 

I don't actually think it's so different. I suppose if you include friendly and inter club matches then the rates will be much higher, and competition is certainly easier to measure because of the even playing field nature of it, but having to use training to defend against assault is more common than the amount of professional fighters that come out of gyms, I would have thought. Especially when people training there have professions that require dealing with violence. If it can work for different people across a range of incidents from very minor assault to serious intent to harm, then I think it is doing its job.

Like anything, all we really have is our own judgement of what we can do ourselves with what we are being taught. I don't look to my instructors to validate my ability, I take my experience of using it against people from outside my art, and I take it from how my students have used it in the same way.

 

Wow - can't believe people are still talking about this! Last time I looked, I thought the massive 'Pathwalker Guild' thread had been closed permanently...

I think I said years ago that I built that site for the express reason of divorcing the good, solid physical training from the intangible misty origins, and to give it a history that had some definable facts and leave it at that. I haven't run a Marbo club for over 13 years now, and I should really take the site down. The only reason I leave it up is to provide a bit of a realistic counterpoint to the other one - and to perhaps give people who are training in Marbo something to talk about, and question their instructors -chances are they are told something along the lines of 'ignore it, he left and stole our knowledge, the information is not to be trusted - it is in fast DIS-information designed to shake your conviction in the secret ways' (i'm joking, but you get the idea). Perhaps more honestly, I am tweaking the beard of my old instructor as I know it irritates him, but if you can't take a bit of criticism as a martial artist of 40 odd years i think there's something wrong.

Technique-wise though I am firmly of the opinion that Marbo has a value. I think that we are all doomed if we take the text and pictures on a site as definitive examples of what is done (to be honest, the whole site is dated) - as for MMA? well.... it fulfils the criteria as it teaches punches, kicks, holds, locks, throws and groundwork - there's no claims there really, just stating that this type of training was already being done before the surge of MMA popularity (as it was in loads of other places).

I've been teaching Krav for quite a while now, and I was lucky enough to get involved with a 'proper' organisation that focussed on quality techniques and applying solid principles for handling high stress situations - the interesting thing for me in this is that there are some very direct similarities between Krav and Marbo which certainly helped me to assimilate the training. That said there are also some startling differences, which required a fair amount of adjustment, but the good thing was that it again reinforced that the physical training that I had done with Marbo had value and relevance.

Honestly, if David came to a MAP meet then I am sure that you would see that what he does is no better or worse than any one of a hundred martial arts out there. The mystical clap-trap and search for transylvanian roots lets it down horribly though. It is not an 'Apex' martial art, any more than Krav or anything else is. What I believe is that it is the person that does the training that makes it special - dedication, hard work and training will beat smoking, drinking and the belief that you are the best any day.

Cheers