This is another one of those great misunderstandings in the commercial system. Parker was in business so he gave people the information they wanted, but he also told them what they needed. Students decided which advice they chose to heed. He gave them clues everytime he spoke, put it in print, and told them constantly but because it was a business, he allowed them to do what they wanted.
He told them what they needed to do and suggested how they might accomplish it. Instead, they did what they wanted or understood. (See James Hawkins posted video of Parker teaching Sasha Williams Thundering Hammers). Principles are a constant but because Parker never taught them a definitive way to perform a technique, (notice in that same video Parker is not demonstrating the “accepted manual” version of Thundering Hammers); he allowed a student had to “tailor” to make it work for them. Instead, he watched what Sasha was doing and attempted to suggest a method to correct his execution.
Anatomical movement is defined by parameters of human physics that are not to be tailored. However, if a person is short, and the attacker is tall, you may have to “tailor” a technique like “Sword & Hammer,” where the first retaliatory strike is above the shoulders. This is the real message of tailoring for most.
However, because Parker never taught a definitive technique in the modern era, teachers and students were left to “change” techniques at will to suit their own proclivities and desires. As long as the method worked, it didn’t matter. Parker espoused that all should take responsibility for the effectiveness of what they did. How could he do anything else when he was not there every night teaching basics, and correcting execution to conform to anatomical efficiency of a definitive technique? Instead, he told them “what” to do within a conceptual framework, and gave them the responsibility to figure “how” to do it utilizing those concepts. When he saw them, he merely adjusted their thinking by making suggestions, not hard corrections. No wonder everyone “tailored” what they did, with tacit approval from Ed Parker but not a stamp of approval of “what” they chose to do.
There has always been tailoring in the arts, but the commercial arts took it out of the hands of the teacher, and handed it to the paying customer.
Anyway...I'm assuming that the technique in question was completely different than the normal way it should be done. Why did the student have to change it? Wouldn't it just make more sense to keep the same motion just with different application, such as in Sword and Hammer?
