Being a Purist in One Style is Too Limiting

[sensei8]

Take Michael Jai White with his 7 or so black belts. How much depth of knowledge does he really have? Are 7 lower black belts equal to a master-level rank? Is he an advanced student, or just really, really good at the basics?

Anyone know the highest rank he’s achieved in any of those 7 arts?

Check this out...

https://www.martialartsentertainment.com/michael-jai-white/

Edited July 19, 2018 by sensei8

[XtremeTrainer]

There has been some talk here about people holding multiple black belts in various styles and about people who might hold high degree black belts in a single style and so forth. I will say this, rank only goes so far in representing how much knowledge, skill, and ability a person has in a martial arts style. What a rank actually means depends much on where and how you get it. A black belt in one school might only be as good as a brown belt in another school because the school where he got the black belt has lower standards than the other school. That being said, when I learn a style I like to earn a first degree black belt but Im not concerned with rank advancement beyond that. Earning a first degree black belt to me is a rite of passage but I don't really care about earning 2nd degree, 3rd degree, ect. After earning first degree I will still train to keep getting better and better, as a matter of fact from my experience after you earn a black belt you start training even harder in the style, but particularly when it comes to the really high dan ranks, at that point it just becomes political.

Anyway, concerning training in multiple styles, Bruce Lee trained in multiple styles. From what I understand Wing Chun was his first primary style but he went on to learn more and he ended up focusing on Jeet Kune Do as his main style, a style he invented himself which was partially based on Wing Chun but also involved lots of material from other styles. He learned high kicking from Chuck Norris and he also learned grappling later on and incorporated it all. He learned how to fight with nunchaku as well which is not a weapon used in his styles I believe. So Bruce Lee took multiple styles and combined them and used them all.

[sensei8]

There has been some talk here about people holding multiple black belts in various styles and about people who might hold high degree black belts in a single style and so forth. I will say this, rank only goes so far in representing how much knowledge, skill, and ability a person has in a martial arts style. What a rank actually means depends much on where and how you get it. A black belt in one school might only be as good as a brown belt in another school because the school where he got the black belt has lower standards than the other school. That being said, when I learn a style I like to earn a first degree black belt but Im not concerned with rank advancement beyond that. Earning a first degree black belt to me is a rite of passage but I don't really care about earning 2nd degree, 3rd degree, ect. After earning first degree I will still train to keep getting better and better, as a matter of fact from my experience after you earn a black belt you start training even harder in the style, but particularly when it comes to the really high dan ranks, at that point it just becomes political.

Anyway, concerning training in multiple styles, Bruce Lee trained in multiple styles. From what I understand Wing Chun was his first primary style but he went on to learn more and he ended up focusing on Jeet Kune Do as his main style, a style he invented himself which was partially based on Wing Chun but also involved lots of material from other styles. He learned high kicking from Chuck Norris and he also learned grappling later on and incorporated it all. He learned how to fight with nunchaku as well which is not a weapon used in his styles I believe. So Bruce Lee took multiple styles and combined them and used them all.

Like I'm fond of saying...

Proof is on the floor!!

Not all high ranks are political. I earned my Kudan through a Testing Cycle; it wasn't given to me through some political ploy. Even though the SKKA tried to force it down my throat for many years through a political excuse via our By-Laws.

[JR 137]

There has been some talk here about people holding multiple black belts in various styles and about people who might hold high degree black belts in a single style and so forth. I will say this, rank only goes so far in representing how much knowledge, skill, and ability a person has in a martial arts style. What a rank actually means depends much on where and how you get it. A black belt in one school might only be as good as a brown belt in another school because the school where he got the black belt has lower standards than the other school. That being said, when I learn a style I like to earn a first degree black belt but Im not concerned with rank advancement beyond that. Earning a first degree black belt to me is a rite of passage but I don't really care about earning 2nd degree, 3rd degree, ect. After earning first degree I will still train to keep getting better and better, as a matter of fact from my experience after you earn a black belt you start training even harder in the style, but particularly when it comes to the really high dan ranks, at that point it just becomes political.

Anyway, concerning training in multiple styles, Bruce Lee trained in multiple styles. From what I understand Wing Chun was his first primary style but he went on to learn more and he ended up focusing on Jeet Kune Do as his main style, a style he invented himself which was partially based on Wing Chun but also involved lots of material from other styles. He learned high kicking from Chuck Norris and he also learned grappling later on and incorporated it all. He learned how to fight with nunchaku as well which is not a weapon used in his styles I believe. So Bruce Lee took multiple styles and combined them and used them all.

While it’s true that a lot of high ranks are political promotions, “political” needs to be defined IMO. Quite often, that “political” means what the person has done for their art and organization, and for the MA overall. Someone who’s continually trained very high quality and deservingly high ranking MAists, and has spread and furthered his/her art and organization is typically worthy of being promoted to a high dan rank without any negative connotations of what people consider a “political” move. Add to that most very high ranking MAists are advanced in age and have been through many, many physical tests, and a “political promotion” isn’t a bad thing at all.

As far as Bruce Lee studying and pulling elements of multiple arts to create his own MA is concerned...

While it’s true he did that and did that effectively, Bruce Lee is a bit of an anomaly here. Just because he did it the right way doesn’t mean anyone nor everyone can. Nor should they. I’m certainly not saying no one else should nor anyone who does so must be at his level, but citing Bruce Lee is a like an average boxer citing Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson saying ‘hey, he did it’; it doesn’t quite hold up very well.

Keep in mind Bruce Lee didn’t train in Wing Chun for that long. He studied under Ip Man (and his students) from 13 or 14 years old until he was 18 or 19, so 5-6 years. He was allegedly quite good and trained hard for long hours daily, but he didn’t “complete” the system nor was he considered a master of it in the traditional sense. I don’t know if Lee was ever formally authorized to teach Wing Chun at all to be honest. I’m not saying that to take anything away from him; just stating facts here.

[sensei8]

There has been some talk here about people holding multiple black belts in various styles and about people who might hold high degree black belts in a single style and so forth. I will say this, rank only goes so far in representing how much knowledge, skill, and ability a person has in a martial arts style. What a rank actually means depends much on where and how you get it. A black belt in one school might only be as good as a brown belt in another school because the school where he got the black belt has lower standards than the other school. That being said, when I learn a style I like to earn a first degree black belt but Im not concerned with rank advancement beyond that. Earning a first degree black belt to me is a rite of passage but I don't really care about earning 2nd degree, 3rd degree, ect. After earning first degree I will still train to keep getting better and better, as a matter of fact from my experience after you earn a black belt you start training even harder in the style, but particularly when it comes to the really high dan ranks, at that point it just becomes political.

Anyway, concerning training in multiple styles, Bruce Lee trained in multiple styles. From what I understand Wing Chun was his first primary style but he went on to learn more and he ended up focusing on Jeet Kune Do as his main style, a style he invented himself which was partially based on Wing Chun but also involved lots of material from other styles. He learned high kicking from Chuck Norris and he also learned grappling later on and incorporated it all. He learned how to fight with nunchaku as well which is not a weapon used in his styles I believe. So Bruce Lee took multiple styles and combined them and used them all.

While it’s true that a lot of high ranks are political promotions, “political” needs to be defined IMO. Quite often, that “political” means what the person has done for their art and organization, and for the MA overall. Someone who’s continually trained very high quality and deservingly high ranking MAists, and has spread and furthered his/her art and organization is typically worthy of being promoted to a high dan rank without any negative connotations of what people consider a “political” move. Add to that most very high ranking MAists are advanced in age and have been through many, many physical tests, and a “political promotion” isn’t a bad thing at all.

As far as Bruce Lee studying and pulling elements of multiple arts to create his own MA is concerned...

While it’s true he did that and did that effectively, Bruce Lee is a bit of an anomaly here. Just because he did it the right way doesn’t mean anyone nor everyone can. Nor should they. I’m certainly not saying no one else should nor anyone who does so must be at his level, but citing Bruce Lee is a like an average boxer citing Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson saying ‘hey, he did it’; it doesn’t quite hold up very well.

Keep in mind Bruce Lee didn’t train in Wing Chun for that long. He studied under Ip Man (and his students) from 13 or 14 years old until he was 18 or 19, so 5-6 years. He was allegedly quite good and trained hard for long hours daily, but he didn’t “complete” the system nor was he considered a master of it in the traditional sense. I don’t know if Lee was ever formally authorized to teach Wing Chun at all to be honest. I’m not saying that to take anything away from him; just stating facts here.

Solid post!!

What you've posted above in the bold type...

More often than not, the words "politics" and "Senior Dan's", used in the same sentence, are thrown around with the tone of disrespect without considering the points you've made here, imho. Thank you!!

[XtremeTrainer]

There has been discussion here about how not all high dan ranks are political. Well this is my experience. In the first art that I got really seriously into, a style of Karate, there were ten Dan ranks so the highest rank in the art was 10th Dan. If you were ever promoted beyond 5th Dan, so for promotion to the Dan ranks of 6-10, you would not be promoted by an instructor but rather by your peers and promotion would not be based on your skill in the art the way it is for the lower Dan ranks and the Kyu ranks, promotion would be based on other factors such as your dedication to the art, how much you've contributed to the art, teaching ability, ect. So promotions beyond 5th Dan were political and by political Im talking about politics within the art. That's just how it is with my primary style, I can't speak for other styles or other martial arts.

As for combining styles the way I see it every style has its strengths and weaknesses so that's why I like to train in multiple styles. I still stick with my primary style of Karate but since I've started I've also taken up Gracie Jiu Jitsu since I like to be well rounded and that means I like to have a good striking style and a good grappling style. I've also dabbled in other styles here and there and I've applied some of the concepts to my overall training, for instance the head clinching, elbows, knees, and low round kicks of Muai Thai and the mental aspects of Tai Chi as well as some stuff that I've learned from other styles of Karate. As for Bruce Lee being an anomaly, yes he was as he was such an exceptional individual but the fact of the matter is Bruce Lee wanted to learn everything and anything he could about martial arts and apply it to make it work best for him and I like to follow Bruce Lee's example. Royce Gracie once said in an interview that if Bruce Lee had lived longer he would've been a student at the Gracie academy as the Gracie style would've definitely been an art he would've wanted to learn and most if not all of his living peers have trained under the Gracies.