Hi Mike,
I think I know which thread in Kenpotalk you are referring to. I will go ahead and post my initial reply in that thread, here. Hope it adds to the discussion:
"I don't bother to justify it, I just have a wide range of interests and I pursue those. I jokingly refer to it as "The Curse of the Perpetually Curious". It starts with training in one art for a while, then you eventually look over there and see some people doing something else that also looks good. So I wander over and take some classes to see what it's all about, and the next thing I know, I'm hooked. But not willing to give up the first one, I start to practice them both. Then another art catches my attention, and another after that...
I was a shodan in Tracy kenpo before I trained in another method, but perhaps part of that was because I was living in a small town at the time and there were no other options until I moved out.
I have trained in arts that are vastly different. After kenpo, I tinkered in a little judo and a certain messy conglomeration of Chinese arts that shall remain nameless. I eventually left that stuff behind. Not interested enough to keep doing it.
Later, I fell into capoeira and trained it like a fiend for a number of years. Couldn't get enough of it. Didn't do much kenpo during this time. Then, got into legitimate Chinese arts, stuff that was very very different from kenpo and capoeira, and even from each other. Tibetan White Crane is a highly mobile, longarm method. Probably as long as you can get without holding a weapon in your hand. But I also learned Wing Chun, probably the shortest range method you can get without actually grappling. And throw some tai chi chuan in there as well. Mostly Chen style, but a little Yang and Sun as well. And some elements of Shaolin as well. And all these arts have very different approaches to training, and basics, and stances, etc. And now I am retraining my kenpo with a new teacher, after being mostly away from it for 15 years or so.
So how do I not get confused? I don't know exactly, but I don't get confused. When I train kenpo, I train kenpo. When I train Wing Chun, I train Wing Chun. Same with White Crane, and Tai Chi, and Capoeira. I don't mix them up. I don't combine them. I keep their elements distinct from each other because if you mix them up, then you can find yourself trying to deal with conflicting material. But the techniques of each art, when trained from it's proper respective base, works well. Trying to throw White Crane punches from a Wing Chun base just does not work at all. Trying to work kenpo SD techs from Capoeira's ginga base would be an uphill battle. But at the same time, learning each art will in some way influence how you do your others.
But I believe that if you need to actually fight, you can mix it up then and pull out what is appropriate, and you will probably naturally fall back on what you are most comfortable with and that might not be equal from one method to the other. Just don't mix it when training.
In the Chinese arts, training in several methods seems to me to be much more common. There is a more open attitude about it, most of the good teachers have done it, even if they ultimately focus and specialize in just one method. But gaining that broad understanding is seen as a positive thing. The methods are different, but that doesn't make them wrong. Learn them for what they are, and then later decide if it might be wrong or right FOR YOU. But that doesn't mean it is wrong or right in an absolute way. And eventually, you will probably settle on one or two methods that are best for you.
I think there can be an attitudinal danger among people who have only trained in one art. They may become very very skilled in their own art. But they sometimes also have the attitude that their own art does everything "right", and everyone else somehow has it "wrong". In my opinion, "right and wrong" are often not absolutes, when it comes to martial arts. If you ever saw how we do things in Tibetan White Crane, or Capoeira, you would probably think it is really messed up, if you look at it from a kenpo perspective, violating all kinds of kenpo "rules" and what not. But some of the guys who do these arts are scary good, and you would not want to mess with them. It can also be tremendously effective. These other arts have no interest in validating what they do thru a kenpo perspective. In fact, they often look at kenpo and say "what's all that nonsense?" I've had my own teachers in the Chinese arts express that exact sentiment. Kenpo has it's own methods that are somewhat unique, and make it pretty foreign when viewed by others.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I believe the real codification of the arts into THIS or THAT particular art is somewhat newer in history. I don't have any research to back this up, it is just my opinion from what I have read and observed over the years. So elements of many "methods" got borrowed and shared over time, and there was often less of a notion of "crosstraining", because in some way, much of this stuff was considered just another part of the greater whole, so why not learn it and bring it in to what you are doing, and there was little notion of conflict in doing this. Now as I expressed earlier, I definitely dont' think EVERYTHING can be mixed up, at least not in training. But an openness to learning other things should be.
Just my opinion."
