What I mean here is an interesting phenomenon that occurs as a result of experience gap in a given filed, which in our case is martial arts and combative training. Specifically, with years or decades of training and practice certain things become kind of obvious, or at least they seem that way...to us.
art by Karl Addison
However, the level of perception for the phenomena that make one's field of study can become quite high due to an equally high degree of kinesthetic perception, i.e. inner feel for the movement and general body behavior, stemming from countless hours of working on and with our bodies. And, after long period of such experience it is easy to forget how it all looked and felt in the beginning.
If you are an instructor, you should not allow obviousness to become a part of your training plan. OK, if you are a coach who spends most of the time working with fighters and competitive athletes, who follow a continual training regime, the understanding of all the important things will indeed unfold over time. Yet, if you are working with who cannot or will not engage in that sort of work, for whatever reason, and particularly in a group format, it is important to regularly repeat even the most basic (and seemingly obvious) lessons/instructions. There are at least two strong reasons for this: one, there is always someone in the group who "doesn't get it", and subsequently may hinder others as a training partner; two, even for those who did get it (or think they did), such instruction may gain new/deeper meaning when reiterated over time.
This is especially case when you have in your class a person who shows the potential and/or desire to also be an instructor at some point. Namely, for them it is not just the process of learning the subject matter, but also learning how to present that material and helping others understand it. And if the art/system you happen teaching is important enough that you'd like to see it grow in the future - this is an important element of contributing to it.
Finally, regularly repeating even the mundanely "self-evident" axioms of your teaching will make you seek new ways of doing it, thus improving, expanding and deepening your own understanding of the material, not to mention the benefits for your teaching skill.
Obviously, it is a win-win proposition, so what's not to like?
On the heels of the previous post, I wanted to see how such a thorough approach could help in one's own learning and training experience. Although at the first glance it may seem that a more or less scholarly approach to learning a martial/combative discipline is more theoretical than practical, it doesn't have to be. The thing is, on one's training journey it is very easy to fall into the trap of accumulating information, especially nowadays, i.e. going for breadth of research. However, we would all probably be much better going for depth.
In practice it means seeking to really, truly get a hang of any chosen skill by putting it through the wringer of working on it through a series of filters and criteria, in order to figure out all of its advantages and shortcomings. It could be any specific skill/technique you want to work on, armed or unarmed, and you can find some good ideas and insights into the aforementioned filters and criteria in a book that I reviewed quite some time ago.
Of course, the experience will be more fruitful with a systematic approach to the study, and choose the material so that you will not lack motivation to work on it.
So, this has been a short post, but could prove to be a very impactful one. Let me assure you, from personal experience, that if you undertake this sort of activity at least once in a while, it will propel you understanding and subsequently benefit both your learning and teaching endeavors.
Every once in a while a person or a piece of work
appears in the ever growing universe of martial arts, and leaves a mark that
can change the shape of our understanding of that universe. Some do it by
shaking things up, almost causing seismic effects on the previously accepted
views, like Jigoro Kano, Bruce Lee or the Gracies. Some give new appearance to
older traditions and propel them to unforeseen levels of popularity, like Choi
Hong Hee, Morihei Ueshiba and Karl Gotch. Some leave behind written works that
keep providing inspiration and food for thought for future generations, like
Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi and, again, Bruce Lee.
It is the last category that I’d like to discuss
today. In the Western world, the topic of martial arts has for a long time been
treated in a book format primarily as either an esoteric phenomenon to feed the
imagination, or as a rather banal sort of pictorial book. The endeavors that
would successfully join a scholarly approach in study and popular accessibility
in presentation have been few and far between. Interestingly enough, in Europe
that path originated with fencing treatises, especially those in the second
half of the 19th century, penned by the likes of Alfred Hutton or
Egerton Castle. However, the man who took it to a higher level was the
legendary sir Richard Francis Burton with The
Book of the Sword, and he gave this field of study a name – hoplology.
Burton and Draeger
However, it took several decades for this approach to
gain some traction in the 20th century, under the guidance of Donn
F. Draeger and his associates (Armstrong, Beltzer, Smith etc.), with special
emphasis on the martial arts of the Far East, resulting with several excellent
books on the arts of Japan, China and Indonesia. Unfortunately, with Draeger’s
passing in the the early 1980’s, hoplological research slowed down drastically.
A few years ago I was
thrilled to see the emergence of a new “player” in the field, namely the
organization called The Immersion Foundation (TIF for short), which
injected the much needed energy into this field of study, with its driving
force Mahipal Lunia at the helm. To be brief, they undertook a two-pronged strategy
in continuing the development of hoplology: on the one hand they continued the model
of expeditions, in order to learn the arts in their “natural habitat” (such as
the Caribbean, Philippines, Portugal, South America etc.); on the other hand
they organize the annual Immersion Labs, i.e. seminars with several instructors
giving presentations and providing deeper insights into a chosen topic for that
year.
During all of those events, the material is carefully
recorded and processed for archiving, analysis and publishing. Owing to such
work, a couple of month ago we got the brilliant opportunity to enjoy the
benefits in the form of The Book of the
Stick! What we have here is a four-volume
anthology of articles, interviews and scholarly papers on various facets of
stick fighting arts and methods from all over the globe. With more than 2000
pages worth of material, this is an unprecedented presentation, both in terms
of breadth and depth. Besides the soft cover edition with b/w photos (see the
previous link), it is also available as a hard
cover, full color version or even an eBook.
Now, each volume is available separately as well, but
it may be really hard to take your pick. Namely, the material isn’t organized
and presented along the lines of geographical or cultural criteria, but rather
in the alphabetical order of featured authors’ names. While this may seem
strange at first, I really came to appreciate this decision by the editorial
team. See, it would be too tempting to immediately go for the “usual suspects”
of Chinese, Japanese or Filipino arts, in line with personal experiences and
preferences. And yes, it might appear to be a rational way to invest your
money, right?
Well, I firmly believe that disadvantages would
outweigh the benefits here. I mean, you would easily miss on some true gems
that are to be found in each of the four volumes this way. Let’s have just a
quick glance at some of the great featured to be enjoyed:
Vol.1 –
the introduction to hoplology and TIF, which gives us a better understanding of
the whole field and the scope of work; Kalinda, the stick art of Trinidad;
Bonafont cane system of urban Argentina from 1930’s; African stick practices in
the House and Zulu cultures; the Irish methods of Bataireacht.
Vol.2 –
the Colombian art of Grima; war club in Native American war arts; actual application
of stick skills in the modern day environment; the so-called hermit training
avenues; combat measure methodology of Antonio Tatang Ilustrisimo.
Vol.3 –
framework of the Hawaiian art of Lua; the Cuentada training methods of FMA; the
rarely seen stick aspect of Burmese Bando; the amazing presentation of how HEMA
material can be approached in a modern way for general applications; stick arts
of North Africa.
Vol.4 –
the Italian tradition of stick fighting; the Lathi of India and Punjabi stick
arts; dueling and multiple opponent engagements in the Portuguese Jogo do Pau;
Indonesian Ulin Limbuhan.
Don’t get me wrong – this is just a small sample of
what can be found in this invaluable resource. Of course there is an abundance
of material on the Japanese and Chinese methods, as well as those less
expected, such as Greek/Byzantine legacy of pole arms, Maori arts, when it comes
to geographic origin, and various approaches on the traditional-modern
continuum. Above are simply some of the “chapters” that I found most
interesting, for one reason or another. Obviously, the amount of work that went
into preparing this seminal publication was astounding, so I would like to say
the entire editorial team and organization deserve thumbs up and hat off for
their effort.
In the end, no amount of reviews or talk about The
Book of the Stick will ever convey just how excellent and important this series
is. You will have to get the books and see for yourself.
