Repetitive techniques

[shesulsa]

I run across styles that have separate technique names or numbers for the same technique applied to a different grab; for instance a winglock applied after escape from a shoulder cloth grab would be Tech. A, the same winglock applied after escape from a cloth grab at mid-upper arm would be Tech. B, same lock applied after escape from a cloth grab at elbow would be Tech. C, etcetera.

Curious what you all think about this approach to learning, training? Redundant? Helpful?

Thanks.

 

[punisher73]

The theory behind that is if you practice a technique for a specific situation 1,000 times you will be good at that EXACT technique for that specific situation. If you have 5 techniques that deal with a very similiar situation with minor variables and practice those 200 times each you are better preparing yourself by having prepared for inevitable variables in the situation and are more apt to respond better because you have seen the variables.

Then you can bring in the whole argument of technique vs. concept, and is it better to teach "one concept" to deal with that situation wherein the practicioner creates their own techniques to deal with those situations or have preset techniques to ingrain the responses ahead of time.

 

[morph4me]

I think that one technique taught from 20 different attacks is still one technique, not 20 techniques. The principle behind the technique may be applied differently, but the technique is still the same. Calling it something different may be helpful to some people to learn those differences how to apply them.

 

[JWLuiza]

I think that the learning curve should take a student from the type of training you described towards a more complete approach where the student learns what makes a certain lock work regardless of the situation.

 

[tellner]

Confusing and counterproductive.

If you learn the root movement as a thing and learn how to apply it in many ways explicitly you will become familiar with your tools and familiar with the range of application that they offer.

Learning a thousand different techniques by different names for very specific applications is what my teacher so pithily calls "organized despair". Ten or twenty different names for the same thing confuses what is really going on and gets in the way of the student developing the creative competence mentioned above.

 

[kwaichang]

we tend to do exactly what we train to do and should you only practice one or two grabs, for example, you'd be caught unawares as how to handle a different type of grab or attack.

 

[championmarius]

It depends on how competent the instructor is.
If the instructor is teaching literally, then it is unproductive at best, and a hindrance at worst. Without some kind of explanation and correlation illustrated between the disparate techniques, then it will get lost in the sea of countless techniques.

On the other hand, if the competent instructor knows the concept and reasoning behind a certain family of techniques, then the multitude of variations might prove beneficial to conveying the concept of the family of techniques.

I myself prefer to work in the conceptual arena, and encourage folks to develop their own way, but I was taught in a system veritably awash with hundreds of mini-kata techniques. I was lucky to have someone who knew the whys and wherefores, to help my grasp the concept rather than have six hundred min-katas keyed to specific stimuli..

 

[Sukerkin]

Excellent string of posts gentlemen, which I think when combined strike (yeah, MA pun attack !) at the core of the question.

I have to go and wave swords about now so I don't have time for a detailed addition to what has already been said. A little food for thought tho' is maybe the teaching approaches have to vary depending on the nature of the student? Some will respond better to rote responses to a specific circumstance, others will prefer to mould a principle to suit the problem and others work best with a combination of the two.

 

[Kacey]

I run across styles that have separate technique names or numbers for the same technique applied to a different grab; for instance a winglock applied after escape from a shoulder cloth grab would be Tech. A, the same winglock applied after escape from a cloth grab at mid-upper arm would be Tech. B, same lock applied after escape from a cloth grab at elbow would be Tech. C, etcetera.

Curious what you all think about this approach to learning, training? Redundant? Helpful?

Thanks.

Redundant - and it assumes that students have no understanding of the technique itself, and are incapable of applying it in any fashion other than exactly how they are taught. This type of training limits - and in some cases prevents - students from interpreting what they are taught, making improvisation difficult, if not impossible, and improvisation is vital for self-defense. Otherwise, you risk getting back to something like that Jim Carrey skit about teaching knife defense where the woman comes at him and slices him open, and he says "Like a lot of beginning students, you attacked me wrong" - because he only knows one way to defend himself.

Now, if you teach beginning students combinations as a means of introducing different applications, and then moving on to having them improvise from there, that's a good thing - but teaching them that each situation in which a technique occurs is a different technique is, IMHO, self-defeating in the long run. Students will lose time thinking about which variation of that technique (now, is it variation A, B, C... however many there are) instead of reacting appropriately.

Students must learn to think, to be able to react to a wide variety of situations - or you're not teaching self-defense; after all, no two self-defense situations are identical, and thinking that you can teach every possible response using a technique is like thinking you can teach reading by exposing a student to every possible way in which a word can be used in writing.

 

[kwaichang]

It's sort of "wax on-wax off". The technique can be applied to either up/down/left/right; however, I feel it does help beginners to actually DO the techniques in a varied way to help let the principles sink in to their subconscious.

 

[Deaf Smith]

Your technique should always be adaptable to many situations (same goes for stances to.) I really don't like to have just one technique that works in just one situation and then have a huge number to train cause there are just to many situations one may have to defend oneself.

Now I know lots of arts try to add more and more so as to keep it interesting, but I feel less is more. I don't need 50 methods for stopping a strait punch. I don't need 50 methods to stop a front kick. Nor do I need a bunch of methods of each type of grab. In fact, the more grabs that are solved by one technique the better.

And while I'm at it, I'll say I really don't like a SD technique that takes several moves to execute it. That just don't work in real life.

Deaf

 

[kwaichang]

And while I'm at it, I'll say I really don't like a SD technique that takes several moves to execute it. That just don't work in real life.
Deaf

Thus the reason I travel with S&W whenever possible.

 

[Deaf Smith]

Thus the reason I travel with S&W whenever possible.

Glock 27 for me kwaichang, and sometimes a Smith J 642.

We think alike!

Deaf

 

[kwaichang]

Indeed, also an excellent choice. Preferably with "saftey ammunition" for more shock value.

 

[Kacey]

Your technique should always be adaptable to many situations (same goes for stances to.) I really don't like to have just one technique that works in just one situation and then have a huge number to train cause there are just to many situations one may have to defend oneself.

Now I know lots of arts try to add more and more so as to keep it interesting, but I feel less is more. I don't need 50 methods for stopping a strait punch. I don't need 50 methods to stop a front kick. Nor do I need a bunch of methods of each type of grab. In fact, the more grabs that are solved by one technique the better.

And while I'm at it, I'll say I really don't like a SD technique that takes several moves to execute it. That just don't work in real life.

Deaf

I think that's pretty much what most of us are saying - but the original question was whether or not a technique should have a different name each time it is used differently. I don't think it should, as I said before - a wrist lock is a wrist lock is a wrist lock, no matter where I start; students should be taught a variety of applications for each technique, certainly - but giving each application a different name only causes confusion, I think. I ascribe to the KISS principle of self-defense (Keep It Simple, Stupid) - having too many choices, as giving a single technique different names in each application would do (for me, anyway) seems like a way to make students think they're learning more techniques, but instead, I see it as slowing their response time, as they try to sort through too many variables.

 

[jks9199]

I think that's pretty much what most of us are saying - but the original question was whether or not a technique should have a different name each time it is used differently. I don't think it should, as I said before - a wrist lock is a wrist lock is a wrist lock, no matter where I start; students should be taught a variety of applications for each technique, certainly - but giving each application a different name only causes confusion, I think. I ascribe to the KISS principle of self-defense (Keep It Simple, Stupid) - having too many choices, as giving a single technique different names in each application would do (for me, anyway) seems like a way to make students think they're learning more techniques, but instead, I see it as slowing their response time, as they try to sort through too many variables.

Let me throw a monkey wrench into the works...

Maybe it's not really repitition!

I see a few possibilities.

First, maybe there are subtle, but key, differences that the person seeing them as being repetitive is missing. Let me use an issue one of my students had recently as an example. In one of our forms, there are several places where we do a cross step, and double block (one low, one high). He couldn't understand some why I was telling him to turn one way in one move, and a different way in another... "They were the same thing!" Nope; they're reflecting different strategies, different steps, and they lead to different techniques. But he couldn't see that yet...

Now, imagine if he goes out next week, and starts teaching the way that "feels right to him." That sets up the second possibility... The moves were different, and for one reason or another, someone didn't continue to maintain that difference as they taught. So, today, there are "repetitive" techniques -- but they weren't always.

Finally, there's one more possibility. Not everyone is mentally wired to adapt one approach to various similar situations; if it's not A, then they can't do B. Even though it's a very A-like situation, and B would work -- they can't make that leap. So they have to see as many uses, with unique identifiers, or they can't use it.

 

[Kacey]

Let me throw a monkey wrench into the works...

Maybe it's not really repitition!

I see a few possibilities.

First, maybe there are subtle, but key, differences that the person seeing them as being repetitive is missing. Let me use an issue one of my students had recently as an example. In one of our forms, there are several places where we do a cross step, and double block (one low, one high). He couldn't understand some why I was telling him to turn one way in one move, and a different way in another... "They were the same thing!" Nope; they're reflecting different strategies, different steps, and they lead to different techniques. But he couldn't see that yet...

Now, imagine if he goes out next week, and starts teaching the way that "feels right to him." That sets up the second possibility... The moves were different, and for one reason or another, someone didn't continue to maintain that difference as they taught. So, today, there are "repetitive" techniques -- but they weren't always.

Finally, there's one more possibility. Not everyone is mentally wired to adapt one approach to various similar situations; if it's not A, then they can't do B. Even though it's a very A-like situation, and B would work -- they can't make that leap. So they have to see as many uses, with unique identifiers, or they can't use it.

Ah... but the question was not do you teach different variations, different applications for different situations - the question was, does each variation /situation need it's own name?

Do I teach different variations? Of course I do. I throw a bunch of different possibilities at my students and help them work through how to respond, so when they don't have time to think they won't have to - but I don't give each option a different name.

 

[exile]

I throw a bunch of different possibilities at my students and help them work through how to respond, so when they don't have time to think they won't have to - but I don't give each option a different name.

That is the gist of the issue. Why call things by different names if you want people to conceptualize them as variations of the same thing (e.g., the application of a specific principle)? I have never ever believed in the simple-minded Whorfian attitude that your language determines your ability to conceptualize the universe, but there's no question that by giving distinct names, labels or tags to two entities, you're predisposing others—especially students—to regard them as different. We don't call the letters in the set {a, a and a} by different names—they're all pronounced (in good Canadian fashion ) 'eh'—even though they represent different fonts/styles. They're the same letter. So what's the point of distinguishing things which instantiate the same underlying principle by different names, just because they represent slightly different applications determined by choice of target or whatever?

One of the ultimate goals of MA training, I firmly believe, is to equip advanced students to think through the practical combat applications of the techs they learn, a process which requires them to see how a small number of basic strategic principles can be enacted in a variety of situations by slightly different tactical executions. Separating everything from everything else and giving each minutely different application a different name sends the wrong message: it says, in effect, that a strike to the side of the neck with a knifehand is just as different from a strike to the collarbone with a hammerfist (with both of them enforced by an elbow pin on the attacker) as the neck strike is different from a knee to the attacker's abdomen simultaneous with a palm heel strike to his face. You don't want to do that, for the same reason you don't want to say that a six-cylinder automobile is as different from a four-cylinder as a six-cylinder car is from a tube of toothpaste, a Dead Sea scroll, or a clarinet....