given that confucius was chinese, it's probably mix of weird medieval wording and a wonky translation, originally referring to inspiring respect towards and the will to follow (or learn from) the teacher. re: awe: true story some years back when i was still in paraguay: sensei: ok, we're each gonna work on our kata individually for a while. *class disperses, everyone starts doing kata* when my sensei finished his kata, he found that we had all stopped moving and were instead looking at him instead of training. moral of the story: awe = bad
Hi Gary, Yes, it's been a while! Mainly lack of time - I'm now deliberately setting aside forum time! I don't think we are as far apart as normal on this one. I should like to say again that my suggestion to the OP was that the elbows were already there, he just wasn't familiar enough with the system to recognise them! I have no issue with that, but I feel that in some ways this can be irrelevant. Sometimes one style isn't enough for what that student wants, and sometimes an instructor's knowledge is not enough. I don't fully agree with you on this - which isn't to say I disagree either. There is a danger of over-generalising: not all students are the same, and neither are all systems or all instructors. . There are benefits to learning a system for a system's sake. I would certainly say that a student does not need to learn my entire syllabus to be competent at self protection for example, the syllabus contains more than that (and I raise my syllabus here as it is designed first and foremost to make someone proficient in self protection asap). However, I would say that a large proportion of people are attracted to the martial arts because of the advertisement of its being good for self defence, and this is something that the pedagogy of many martial arts is not designed to deliver (in a reasonable amount of time) even if the art itself has the potential to deliver it. Yes, I agree with that. However I also think that many systems have a pedagogy that is designed for a different cultural/learning model than we have in the western world. Whether you are jumping ship too early will depend very much on the instructor, the style, and whether you are more of a Student A or a Student B (generalisations I know). Chronologically the two are not the same. I know. I know you're referring to a Wado group here, and not having personally studied that form of Ju Jitsu to a strong foundation, or being immersed in its politics I can't really comment. This is not an argument I made. My post was more an objection to your previous metaphor which I found inaccurate and rather offensive.
Awe is a distraction. Respect for technical competence is a different thing. Lack of understanding sometimes confuses the two. Gary
And that's where we differ. I found the analogy of baking in an oven to be massively flawed. It implies that you'll only be a decent martial artist/have a decent knowledge of a system if you spend a preset amount of time working in one system. That's why I substituted the analogy of gathering and using ingredients.
I think baking in the oven is a good analogy for some aspects of martial arts. At the same time, the "martial arts is like an all you can eat salad bar" is also a good analogy for other reasons. I like your analogy of taking into account the quality of the ingredients because in all the cooking/salad bar analogies, the quality of the ingredients matters. Or as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." The internal arts are a good example of the baking something in the oven in that a lot of time (from day one) is spent practicing isolated and detailed movements as part of an over all system for generating the desired results as natural movements. Of major concern is the elimination of bad habits and not forming bad habits. This requires that the teacher be very good at what they do. Anything the teacher passes on will be part of your muscle memory and if is not good (if it is not of top quality) then you end up with the chance of passing on this flaw (bad ingredient) to others. The salad bar analogy is the take what you want (what is useful to you) and throw-out what you don't like (what doesn't work for you). This will get a student up to speed faster, but has no real checks and balances for preventing bad habits from becoming muscle memory. This approach will get someone very far, but at some point, they have to take the baking in the oven approach to ensure certain aspects of their training are understood (this is a kin to actually going to the source of some material and learning directly from them). None of these analogies I have seen directly related to karate. In fact, the only analogy that was told to me by my first Sensei was the iceberg analogy. Everything else was not philosophy but was in the doing. The iceberg analogy applies to black belt training. Chinen Sensei told me that such things such as kata were part of the visible part of karate (10% of the iceberg above water). The visible part of karate should NOT change. However, the other 90% of karate is in the supplemental training. Supplemental training included cross-training, by the way. Chinen Sensei was also a Judo guy too. It could also include weight training, endurance training, sparring, real world experiences... etc, etc... it could even include making your own kata for training purposes. For the most parts, it takes the fundamentals and real world experience you have and applies them as principles in action, this means subtle details of technique and understanding of subtle movements not easily seen by the naked eye also become more clear and understood. The supplemental training (90% of karate at black belt) was the SECRET TO KARATE. You cannot learn this from watching kata or just the visible parts of training. It is in the doing the hidden, the parts not easily seen by the naked eye.
Hi Gary I've never said that it wasn't. It's just that my primary focus in what I teach and study is to avoid, deter, negate and escape physical violence. Of course as with any martial system you learn a great deal along the way.
