Styles and their structures

[Bill_Hunsicker]

Greatings all,

I am a student of Sifu Gary Swan studying at the Universal City, TX school. I am also a computer programmer. I am working on my 3rd Black belt and am developing a computer based training assist tool. I would like to design the software to be able to hold information from multipule styles and wanted to get a better idea of the structure used in systems other than the Kenpo I study.

Currently I have this structure to hold the information I will be storing:

System - A place to hold the name and history for each system the program will service. Initially, the NCKKA will be my base system (as that is what I study), but I will also be working to get IKKA and other systems into the program.

Belts - The rank structure for the system/style.

Techs - The techniques for each belt in the style chosen.

My question to everyone here is this: will this structure hold most/all of the styles represented here. For example, once I get the data input for my base system, if I were to approach an instructor from Kosho Ryu, would they be able to fit their styles information into this structure.

The idea here is that once the program is completed, adding information about a new system would entail documenting the system, belt structure, techniques , video taping each technique and then releasing the information.

Thanks for your advice and time.


Oss

Bill Hunsicker

 

[Blindside]

It will work pretty well for kenpo (unsurprisingly) but it may not work well at all for other systems. As an example I will use Pekiti Tirsia Kali as I am the most familiar with that.

Belts - The rank structure for the system/style.

PTK doesn't have belts, but it does have a title (subcategories under student, fighter, and instructor) structure, but it gets confusing in the instructor ranks because there exists a parallel titling system that is about recognition and acheivement rather than curricullum. And some instructors don't really deal with rank until the instructor ranks.

There are also some teaching curricullums that aren't broken down into rank at all. Instructor ranking is based on ability and knowledge of the system.

Techs - The techniques for each belt in the style chosen.

Pekiti doesn't have techniques, it has drills that develop motion and entry lines, but nothing assigned by rank. It has a bunch of common finishes but you may learn those in the first three months. A single drill provides insight into a particular skillset (say entering from long range or close range use of the icepick grip against a forward grip) but each drill could potentially be classified as 50 techniques in the kenpo sense. Most of which the beginner won't know and wouldn't be able to pull of anyway, but an instructor level could. How would you seperate that?

Many systems don't use "techniques" at all, but derive them from kata or forms.

My question to everyone here is this: will this structure hold most/all of the styles represented here. For example, once I get the data input for my base system, if I were to approach an instructor from Kosho Ryu, would they be able to fit their styles information into this structure.

I think it will work well for those systems that are already categorized into small gradients of information, like most of those already using a belt system. Those that aren't designed that way will be problematic.

 

[suicide]

:ultracool

 

[wake2sleep]

Are you still working on this?

I'm a programmer and a martial artist too.

I'm thinking you'd have to be more general than "belt" and instead call it something like "rank" or "level". Then rank can have a type. This type can be belt, sash, or anything else you need to add. While there are all kinds of "ranks" i bet one thing all martial arts have in common is that there's a progression - you don't just walk into a school and start getting taught everything all at once.

Then a rank would be associated with a move or series of moves - maybe call it a "sequence". A sequence would have types of "single technique", "combination", or "form".

So once you had "rank" and "sequence" objects, you could associate them together for each style.

So in SKK, you might have
Rank 1, Type=Belt, Color=White
Sequence 1, Rank=1, Type=Form, Name="1 pinion"
Sequence 2, Rank=1, Type=Combination, Name="6 Combination"

In KungFu:
Rank 1, Type=Sash, Color=Yellow
Sequence 1, Rank=1, Type=Single Technique, Name="Tiger Claw"

In ChiKung:
Rank 1, Type=N/A, Color=N/A
Sequence 1, Rank=1, Type=Meditation, Name="Standing Like a Tree"
Sequence 2, Rank=1, Type=Meditation, Name="Sitting"

Many (most?) MA's would have like about 10-15 Ranks, but this system would also allow you to represent something with no ranks and just a bunch of techniques (that are still probably given in a certain order).

Hope that helps...

 

[Bill_Hunsicker]

That is essentially what I have put together. I hope to have the project done soon. The idea was that the program structure could be used by any martial arts. All the instructor/master would have to do would be create video of each element at the lowest level and some text that goes along with that specific teaching.