Crosstraining karate?

[dancingalone]

Some instruction does take many years to acquire and even then not because of the years but if the student can take the time to pursue a deep enough level of training to actuate the skill. I realize that's not popular, but teaching for decades has shown me there are no short cuts.

Absolutely true. I can demonstrate certain things that most of my students simply can't duplicate because they have not refined their skills to the extent that I have. Regardless I still do it and somewhat frequently too. The reason is I want them to know what is possible and to aspire to reach it. I don't want to hide it away as 'advanced' material.

In the issue of not naming your art, we live in a time where too many names are grabbed for everything and naming restricts potential. if you buy a kata movement as a bunkai for beginning, intermediate and advanced students you've locked it down to 3 applications. But any movement may have dozens of application potentials to drop an opponent, and by naming the 3, you leave out the 50.

I actually do teach formal bunkai as my teacher did to me. The formal bunkai are gateway illustrations. To the uninitiated they can appear impressive and innovative, so it's useful to show them as a teaching tool. At the same time, we stress of course that kata applications are only limited by one's imagination and one's physical skill. Knowing a few examples given to you by your instructor should not limit a dedicated student from devising 'new' ones for themselves.

About once or twice a year during our internal seminars, I challenge all my students to demonstrate an application to a certain movement. I'm exceedingly pleased every time I am shown something I know I did not teach them myself, and this happens frequently enough that I know I am not rooting my students in dogma.

 

[Victor Smith]

Hi Again,

BTW thanks for you kind comments on my blog. I've taken to putting the ideas there I don't want lost in discussions. I think you're going to find the next post which includes an interesting historical perspective on bunkai.

I come from an era where 'bunkai' didn't exist. In fact my instructors shared exactly what they studied on Okinawa in 59 and 72 and it never included kata application. There are Okinawan traditions that do't teach applications and use different answers. There is not one way.

But in my early years all of the schools I trained with didn't do 'bunkai either'

Bunkai came into use in the early 80's, and one of my friends taught extensive bunkai, but as kakushite (my use of the term hidden hand, not his), where the thousands of applications have absolutely nothing to do with the kata movement they were tied to (for the most part).

It a sense it's an extension to the points made by Shiroma Shimpa on my blog about Itosu's students. (for the blog search for ISSHIN - CONCENTRATION ART).

So it all depends on our arts and our studies.

I had occaion to train with the late Sherman Harrill for maybe 60 hours over 8 years, and from my notes I got 800 application studies from Isshinryu's 8 kata (and that was only a piece of his art). Very informative and directed many of my own research, but his student John Kerker had 15+ continuous years and there is where the depth come from.

In depth about 1/2 of the applications are brillant, and the other 1/2 work but you'd never choose to do them, chosing something else. But the key hard work on the last 1/2 are where true skill for fitting into an attack is developed.

Today Isshinryu is my focus but through the lens of Isshinryu I focus many arts Okinawan, Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese I've studied.

The truth is there's an attack and then there's the choice of entry (if your skilled) interior line of defense or exterior line of defense, and then there's the technique, and the most suprising thing is 99.9999% of the time any technique works.

So you really don't need thousands of answers, just skill to insert yourself, and then a lifetime working on those thousands to give you depth and keep your mind and body fresh and focused.

 

[Maiden_Ante]

Thank you for all of your interesting answers, it has been interesting to read.

FYI I attended a training camp this weekend, and we did some bunkai. I have done this before. As for "breaking down of techniques in kata" I think we did that pretty well.

As for not saying the name of your art - to be honest I thought that sounded kind of stupid. I don't "buy katas" or "buy techniques". The only fees I pay is the training fee so that the dojo can keep running and a small fee for insurance matters.