I feel until one can confidently say they can protect any attack, in any situation, then one is not complete.
I will continue learning, and tightening up the application of what I have learned, until the day I die. That is what being a martial artist is about.
Even the 8th dan in WTF TKD has the other 6 styles still to learn if he has not already.
It's almost a question which borders on the question of perfection, philosophically. I won't get into it, but the two go hand in hand.
I have seen many claim to be perfect, but I rarely see people execute everything perfectly... though excellence, now and again I come across it and its a constant thing then. I tend to keep those people in my martial arts life for as long as I can, and grow. Just today i was working with a brilliant silat practitioner who after just 2 years is gaining the extra perception it takes some martial artists decades to learn.
However...
I have been fortunate to stumble onto a training which allowed me to actually learn fairly well the system of chung do kwan. In the school I first learned Chung Do Kwan, I have come to see that I learned a very traditional form of the style, which looked as much Shotokan as it did Tang Soo Do. That was what was interesting to me, was seeing for the first time in my martial arts career when I entered that school, a tae kwon do school which had effectively adopted handwork, even excelling at it, without having sacrificed kicking ability.
After the school closed, a number of Khan's students began to attend another, where they continued from their chung do kwan education to re-learn the fundamentals of Shotokan, and Okinawan Karate, and implement it back into chung do kwan. Including jiujitsu, and acujutsu, it is interesting to see how this style of TKD is evolving even today. I suspect within a few years it could arguably be recognized as its own distinct TKD style.
There are a few students who have integrated Krav Maga with Chung Do Kwan from this lineage of tutelage. But... they are a handful, and most contemporary Chung Do Kwan practitioners seem to be straying from the traditional elements of its style... which is odd since its hardly over a half century years old.
Now the question comes to how I feel about completeness. I began learning TKD when I was 4, and have never stopped training, or learning new techniques. Today I was working on a 1080 roundhouse. I'll never use it, but it's a new technique to explore which may one day offer me the insight to survive. Unlikely, but I've been swept and able to turn the sudden change of events to a 720 kick. Can't do that without first practicing. I have learned the 7 styles I consider to actually be separate in TKD (two are less differentiating by technique, and moreso by politic and location, so I ignore that). I feel a 4th dan of one of the styles is not completely a master of TKD. To master a style is to master it; completely. Every aspect. I was a 3rd dan in Moo Duk Kwan, and from learning each of the TKD styles, I made it a core tenant when I learned, that I practice that style until it was of equal ability. So I could say to another martial artist with integrity; the Chung Do Kwan I use is of equal ability to the Jidokwan, and Moo Duk Kwan, and Tang Soo Do. I don't like belt counting, but I have seen a couple of my masters do it now and again to illustrate it's point of how petty it is. If I put all my TKD belts together, even the ones I never bothered to test past first dan, but was still trained past that ability level (for what does a first mean when you have a 3rd in two other styles of that system?). If I put all those together I'd be in excess of 10th dan. It means nothing, as a standard, subjective or objective. The first time you put a 6th or 7th dan on the floor, and not by accident, I feel it occurs to people.
For I must make this point; when you are at a 3rd dan, perfection is your goal, in every technique you choose to retain. If a 3rd dan learns a technique from another system or delineating style of their own they will practice and hone it until they either understand it and choose not to implement it, or train it to the same degree of skill as they do their other techniques. If you are learning anything new in that system, I would venture to say the individual does not qualify as a third. 1st is learning, 2nd is re-evaluating, and tightening, and 3rd is for perfecting. 4th and higher I have found I agree with others is solely about politics, and I have no desire for that.
But I loathe the title master, outside of describing usage of the arts. One could argue then, I will never be a master, and never complete.
Why then do so many approach me to ask how it is I look so complete (and I assure you, I have worked to be as much as possible). The video I posted online does not do myself justice, but it wasn't meant to; just to refute people's accusations I'm a mean fighter with no control, and clobbers lessers. I would not have become a head instructor at over 5 schools, of different styles, regardless of my rank within that school, if I did not have an intrinsic worth.
I tend not to give an answer... but this is why; because I decided long ago there is endless amounts of techniques to constantly learn and how to utilize. It's like finding out you have yet another passage in your favorite holy book, and then another after that. Forever, till you die, not until the book ends, for it never will. And when I learned those techniques, I kept in mind that I have the patience to recognize I have a lifetime ahead of me, and with proper understanding, and with practice, even if just once in awhile, sooner or later it will catch up.
I also ask what of those styles which have abandoned techniques, are they now incomplete from what they were?
Is it not strange one can learn a style so much, and yet still not be complete?
That incompleteness gives us room to grow, so we may become more than ourselves and who we were as martial artists.
Bruce Lee was a phenomenal influence on Martial Artists, but he rarely actually fought, and would never concede when he lost. Was he therefor confident, or arrogant? In anyway signs of the martial artist. His techniques, especially in regards to kicking, are consistently sloppy. One has but to look.
But his philosophy of fighting is remarkable in its genius; to stop growing is not to die. But it is as a martial artist.
When you hit a plateau, there is more to climb, and it's up to us to see that.
Maybe we're setting ourselves up for falling short, but unceasing perfection means we have nothing left but to stagnate. Between the choice of perfection, and its inevitable corruption, or to be erred, and always improve.... as an existentialist I'll always choose the latter.
