How does one improve????

Do you know what other foreigners hold that rank? there are many reasons to use someone as uke, do you think Yabunaka-San is the best Japanese student because he is joubu(sturdy)? You assume quiet a bit.

 

Assumptions are the mother of all , can't ever remember that last part.
Do you feel PR bbt ranks up to and including jugodan are a waste of paper and ink?

 

Not wanting to derail, but actually the movement starts at the core, then down through the hips to the feet. It's an illusion of gravity and the resistance of the ground that makes it feel like the movement starts at whatever body parts are touching the ground.

 

It is also much harder to play drums slowly and correctly than it is to play quickly and 'effectively'.

 

I think it's fair to say that he has a better understanding of Soke's intensity than most people, whether they are Japanese or any other nationality. If you watch the interaction in the class, then surely you are good enough to realise that there is more to it that Yabunaka-san's ability to take a hit?

 

To uke or not to uke, that is the question. Yes, there is more to being uke than just being a sturdy guy that the person demonstrating the technique can throw around. However, not to confuse issues, we aren't really discussing the merits of being an uke and the ins and outs of why they are chosen. What we are talking about is somebody's ability to actually demonstrate that their taijutsu, technique, and understanding of the arts is to a high caliber. None of the videos posted show such.

We aren't asking how much people understand or have felt or been awed by Hatsumi sensei's amazing ability and intensity, we are discussing whether said people have gotten it. Funny, for somebody with so much supposed understanding, it certainly doesn't show in his taijutsu.

@hatsie- I am only interested in the traditional Japanese ryu so BBT and its ranking doesn't really interest me much beyond polite MAP conversation.

 

I hate any demo that your opponent just freeze. It would never happen in reality. When someone stab a knife at your chest, if you can

- move alway fast enough with perfect technique, you will be alive.
- move away fast enough with bad technique, you will still be alive.
- not move away fast enough, even your technique is 100% perfect, you will still be dead.

Here are few of my concerns:

- What is more important, speed or perfect technique?
- How perfect is perfect? A? B? Is C good enough?
- Do you have to have 4.0 GPA to gradulate?
- Will you stay in school and take your classes over and over until you have obtained a perfect 4.0 GPA?
- If you start to train slow to begin with, when will you start to train fast?
- Will you still train slow when you are 80 years old?

 

I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it has to be as black & white as that.

Learning slowly, then incrementally increasing speed ends up with good technique being done fast. If you go fast all the time, you have little opportunity to refine technique, so you end up with scrappy techniques. If you are not refining, you are unlikely to see the same gains in speed over time.

As for striking, it just comes down to opportunity. If the only opportunity is to lash-out a scrappy strike, then that's what you have to do. The real skill, IMO, is being able to set-up your opponent so you don't end up looking all "shirt on fire" (loved that phrase by the way).

If you only have "chasing the fist" opportunities, then you are following, and your opponent is leading the dance.

 

...oh, and I don't think going slowly should just be for beginners.

Experienced people still need to refine and maintain too.

There are other benefits of training slowly, the prime being balance. So it can be as much about building attributes as learning techniques.

 

Since PR brings up the ryuha every time there is a question about qualifications or quality or whether someone 'gets it', presumably... yes?

 

Are you a Brazilian ring fighter? If not, you might not want to take so much speed.


Reread the OP. No mention of speed. So adding speed doesn't help you improve. You misunderstand perfect technique if you think it is slow. It is just fast enough. This art isn't Wing Chun so we don't chase the fist. If he stabs faster than you can move out of the way, you are dead. If you move fast to get out of the way but in so doing, give him a better target, you are dead. To be ninja fast, you must move before he thinks about stabbing you and not be there by the time his mind gets around to deciding to do so. That is the near the highest strategy and speed. After that is the speed of his thought and being sensitive enough to pick that up. If you can't do either, you are stuck on reaction speed, and that's not good unless you are. Even if you are good, your likely to get stuck.

 

Because the ryu are what have come to us down the generations and are what must be preserved.:Alien:

If you master the ryu, you can eventually create your own BBT if you are so inclined, or at least you will have a better understanding of it. Even if you teach BBT now, do you think people will be interested in learning that 15-20 years from now? No, but they might be interested in learning the Takamatsuden still.

 

One day I asked my teacher, "What's lighting speed". He said, "When you feel that your eyeballs are going to fly out of your eye sockets, you have speed." After so many years, I'm still working on it.

 

You missed the pun about competitors on banned substances.

You still won't be faster than a ninja :vanish: so you might as well give up.

 

You can be as fast as you want, but if you don't move at the right time, you are a fast man with a knife in you belly.

 

i do

 

One should be only as fast as is necessary to give the attacker an obvious target that he feels confident he can connect to, yet that you both know he's going to attack, and move away just fast enough that, throughout his entire attack, he feels that he's thisclose to hitting you. And no faster.

I hope that makes sense.

 

You misunderstand, the best way is not to be there so you are never a target. Second best is to get away when you feel danger or that something isn't right, this is moving with the intention or before it is concrete. The first are kinda the same thing. The next best is moving as you feel the attack and is like the sakki test. Moving once you see/hear, etc the attack is worse but what we train most. Finally, there is training for Mr Murphy when you are mid-attack and don't have time to avoid perfectly or worse still, moving on contact. This is akin to getting hit on the head during the sakki test and rolling from there(yes, you would be dead). These are the different timings often discussed.

In other words:

Not there

There but then not there

I thought he was there but....

There, then not

There

There and hit

Dead

 

Ninja poem?