The whole arsenal or only a few?

[gheinisch]

We had a discussion in class the other night and I thought I would bounce it off you guys to see what you think. One night a week we have a black belt training class where myself and two other students have Hanshi all to ourselves to ask questions and train specific techniques. This past week we trained to defend against a knife attack. Our Hanshi has 38 years of experience and has probably forgotten more then I could ever learn. He shows us many different techniques that will work against certain situations and encourages us to find three or four techniques that we are confident in and can become very proficient at and stick with those for real life situations. He has many real life experiences from bouncing and body guarding in his younger years and says that when it's go time you'll fall back on what you know the best and what you know will work. He tells us that if you have the least bit of doubt in a technique that it won't work. Be confident in what you do and do it well! We'll learn several techniques for a certain defense and he'll tell us to pick two or three and make them our own. My three may be different from one of my classmates but they're the three that I feel the most confidence in. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here, he'll teach us anything we want to know but doesn't want us to become a "Jack of all techniques and a Master of none" Do any of you guys teach or are taught that way? Agree, disagree, thoughts, opinions?

[Shorin Ryuu]

I'm a bit concerned about the abundance of the word "technique" in your post and the lack of the words "concept" or "principle". I for one try to be as well-rounded as possible, with a few principles that I prefer to use very often.

 

I'm giving your Hanshi (and his 38 years of experience that dwarfs mine) the benefit of the doubt by saying this. I think your Hanshi may be reluctant to teach you all these different techniques because he realizes that you don't have to know a million techniques, just the principles behind them. It certainly helps to have a few techniques that you can perform really well, and as he says, you have a tendency to fall back on things you are comfortable with during times of stress.

 

However, you can't simply rely on a few techniques to get you through a fight. They may work, they may not. As all those who have been in a fight can attest, sometimes things work beautifully...and sometimes it gets real messy real quick. In these situations, quick improvisation backed by a thorough knowledge of fighting principles rather than a throng of techniques will ensure you can defend yourself. The extent to which you understand the principles is the extent that things will flow and happen by themselves. Not that conscious thought is a bad thing during a fight, but sometimes things happen far too quickly for it. I don't like the phrase "you react instinctively", but I prefer to think of it as your mind is fused with your body so that your calculations happen that much faster, seemingly instinctual, but not quite. There is feeling, but there is also thinking.

 

And if someone posts "Don't think, feel", I'll scream. No, wait, I'll just laugh.

[gheinisch]

Hey Shorin Ryuu. You pretty much summed up what our Hanshi has been telling us. You said it much better than I was able to convey it in my above statement. And yes, I did use the word technique too much. And reading your post reminded me that Hanshi uses the words "concept" and "principle" much more than technique. He also tells us that every technique won't work every time and you may have to resort to plan "b" or "c". It's hard to write down someone elses thoughts but I think you and my Hanshi share many. Thanks for your response.

[delta1]

Shorin Ryuu pretty much summed it all up there! Learn them all, learn what they teach, not what they do. I'd go so far as to say that no technique works exactly as taught in a real fight. But the summ of what you were taught in the techniques can work in every fight.

 

The key is to learn them in stages. First, learn in the air and with a compliant partner, one step at a time. Then start working on flow, condensing the technique. Some things can be done simultaneously, others just naturally lead from one to the next. Start to introduce force and resistance by your uke, increasing it gradually as you get better. Allways think it through, work off his reactions (he's not just going to stand there when you hit him- his body will involuntarilt move). Add changeups, positional variations, extra moves. You'll have to adjust to all these things as they occur, sometimes even abandoning the technique and doing something else. And allways, as SR so aptly stated, work within solid principles and concepts, looking at how they are applied and used.

 

When you pick your few that you like, do so on the basis of the principles they stress and the concepts used to apply them. But don't discard the other techniques. Emphasize whatworksfor you best, without excluding what might not work as well. It still works, and could be all that works in a given situation. If nothing else, you need to understand it to defend against it.

[Ottman]

In my school, there was always an emphasis on footwork, and we did a lot of drills focusing on landing, shifting directions, and positioning to throw certain attacks. Instead of benig taught certain techniques to be used in certain situations, we practiced how to position ourselves to use the techniques we preferred in a variety of situations. Obviously, we had to practice every technique to find which ones we personally liked to use, but when we found something we liked or were good at, we were encouraged to work on it harder than our other techniques until we mastered it. This resulted in many different styles coming out of one school and students who knew themselves and knew about others and what works for certain things and doesn't for others. There was always an open discussion forum in my dojang and lots of information being passed around. Trends in sparring class were brief and changed often, and I learned that it's definitely impossible to learn everything that can be done in any specific circumstance, because that number is infinite.

 

I guess my point is that, with so many different possible courses of action, it takes time, practice and experience to learn what works best for you, and I think your instructor was just trying to simplify this overwhelming task of trying to find a few techniques out of limitless possibilities, by narrowing down your selection of techniques, especially since you (and I, after ten years of training) are still just beginners. Once you get good at a few techniques to the point that you won't even have to think about them to execute them, then you can start learning other techniques/principles/concepts, and eventually master those too. It just takes loads of time, so focus on just a few things at once.