JusticeZero

"Yes, master, because I learn so much from getting stomped flat by you in ways that I had never even thought of!"

Well, if anyone finds themself headed through New Orleans, let me know. I may not have my own studio, but I have a paved yard and know where to find a couple of halfway-decent clear spots. Also I know where to find some of the nummy food of New Orleans and some of the non-spendy sights that aren't in the touristy and drunken party central French Quarter. (Not the crawfish, alas, my wife is allergic. But that's easy enough to find.)

It is, as best I understand, the question of whether it is best to study from the master teacher with practical experience who can't speak a lick of English and has zero teaching experience, or from the expert coach who happens to be a quadraplegic. Honestly, I would have better luck with the master coach; the nonverbal masters I have tried to train under or dealt with students of tended to be frustrated when I mimicked how they moved because that wasn't the way they wanted to teach it. They wanted us to move some other way for reasons i'm not sure their accent was impenetrable.

You need experience, yes, and that experience tends to be very intense and tied to adrenalized states that do interesting things to your learning process in general - but these aren't "instinctive, natural" reactions, they are trained and reasoned reactions that have been burned in by experience.

People like to romanticize "natural" movement. Watch a kindergardener flail on the playground. That is a very natural motion that you naturally have ingrained.It isn't terribly effective. "Ah, but maybe that's a result of trying to fight your natural instincts? What do people do naturally under stress when they aren't thinking?" Well, you can achieve that state through a massive surge of adrenaline. The Nature-given innate natural response to such a state is to release the bowels and bladder reflexively, while shrieking and huddling in a protective ball. not exactly awe-inspiring ultimate combat techniques. Really, the best results have been shown in people who train biomechanically efficient techniques to the point of imprinting it into the reflexes, being used by someone who is experienced with mitigating and controlling the adrenaline response.

Power and ability comes with time and practice. If you can do anything perfectly the first time you try to do something, that thing probably has no value! It's certainly nothing to take pride in. real skills take practice. When you start, you will look like a sick whale on a beach. After a few hours of practice, you will still look like a sick whale, but you will be noticably more on target. After weeks of a practice, you will think that you will still look like a sick whale, but you will actually have achieved some minor bit of basic proficiency. After a decade, you will have realized that you no longer look like a sick whale, and instead will merely think that you look like a dizzied chicken. But at last all of the hideous mistakes that you are still making and cringing at will have progressed to the point that the only person who can see them is you.

Is the extension of a punch a different technique than the return of that punch to your guard, for instance? As that is how we detail it.

No, I am saying that "small, compact" movements can also be seen as similar to terse sentences with lots of adjectives and vague impliedness in it. If you are trying to make the "sentences" terse like that, that is fine - but when learning, all of the parts need to be visible, pronounced, un-abbreviated, and explicit in order to communicate how it is constructed. it is entirely fine to then immediately communicate that in practice, the movements must be compacted, then explaining the method behind which they are compacted. "Here are the parts, decomposed and explicitly shown. Drill them this way for a bit to see the structure. NOW, here is the way that the movements are folded down tightly in ways that achieve even more." It has been theorized by several people that the way ones' martial art form approaches problems is reflected in their communicative style. Statements such as the one referenced are profound, but they have been compacted to the degree that they rely on understandings which the reader may not yet possess, and the very compactness of the statement often seem to make those understandings difficult to unpack. no excess is left to create the redundancy needed to grasp the idea that was unseen. Martially, this is good. profound, without waste and with each movement serving multiple purposes. in communication, it might be more frustrating.

It's employment. I can see omitting it if it is hobby and not directly relevant.

unfortunately, I can't work with an answer that vague and lacking in ideas that I can understand from my viwpoint that does not contain a lot of study in your style. Neither can the students who are trying to learn it. the movements are often taught large simply so that the teacher is kinesthetically en-nun-ci-at-ing the parts that are important so that the student can start by doing the techniques in a functional, albeit verbose and expansive, way. They are learning our kinesthetic language. We are en-nun-ci-at-ing e-ver-y syl-la-ble of our mo-ve-men-t so that they can clearly hear the words of our muscles and joints, rather'n slur'n 'thing mmgether 'nmak'n'll "c'mpac" 'n'speccn'm un'stan'.

it's simply because of this: If you encounter a six year old second Dan black belt with a uniform covered in patches whose structure is dodgy and consists of flaily acrobatics, and you ask "What style do you do?" they are, by far, most likely to answer "TKD". Not to say that there aren't other arts that have schools like that, or that all schools do that, but they've generated a large portion of the horror stories that plague us all.

Well.. what are you understanding a "technique" as? A movement? An application? A sequence of movements to achieve an application?

I'm not sure what to say to this, but that might be because we don't really define "techniques" as core, so much as we care about the building blocks which are used to construct them..

Well that depends on what parts you think of as "small". Our movements are, in ways, huge, but they have a lot of elements where they have been compacted to be tighter than other movements that look smaller at first glance. Conservation of angular momentum, lines and so on are important, but they have to be taught. If the movement is too subtle, it is hard to communicate the important parts.

If you teach the movements small, the student shrinks down to ineffective twitches. You need to enunciate the mechanics, structure, and dynamics first before you start trying to shrink and simplify.

Most commonly its something like "I am going to do 200 shin kicks a day keeping my base foot pointed toe forward!"

The core problem is that you need to have someone who can check your form who is not you. There are mistakes that you can make in form that are not immediately obvious, subtle enough that you don't see them, and which can eventually put you in a wheelchair. That said you can dial the frequency down quite a ways; this is, to my understanding, a reason for creating forms to begin with, a full syllabus in one ritual to be checked and critiqued as a whole that the student can practice solo during periods while the instructor is unavailable.

A: So far, yes they are all a joke. B: If there is, we don't know about it. C: Run away. We used to have our classes at 6 AM. I tried 5 AM but the commute was a problem. If you start doing some MA, some people might become interested.

Test or no, ask the instructors "What do I need to improve to get ready for my next belt?" without referencing any specific testing date. that should get you the feedback you need without looking like you're in a rush to test.

I do, because I have taught it, and most of my jobs have an educational component. As such, it is highly relevant experience given that it is the only experience to date where I have been free to develop my own teaching program.

Well, given that the idea of using colored belts is a very new and modern one, it's reasonable to expect that people are still playing around with it.

You are theoretically at the level when you are free - black belt 1st dan always seemed like journeyman level. what does your instructor think? Maybe they know someone or want you to try teaching beginners. Alternately there might be a great teacher of something nearby.

Not very! I do know that Americans tend to over-fancy everything they see as "foreign", however, when in reality, the people there mostly just throw things together too. The stuff to make sushi at the Asian grocery that catered to the Asian populations did not seem any more elaborate than the stuff at the grocery store. The only place to get a really wide selection of tools and goodies was from the yuppie store that nobody from Japan tended to set foot in.

Errr, to my knowledge, most people in Japan who make sushi use pretty much the same stuff you get in the supermarket?

Depends on the school, really... I do a different martial art and never need it, some Karate schools never need it, some only get up to the contact that needs it later on in the ranks, some throw people into the deep end right away.