The issue with combat sports/martial arts training is that a lot of people are used to seeing “average training”. By that, I mean that we train people as if they have average stats, and as such, a systematic approach to fighting is instilled from the beginning. While consistent, and possessing tangible metrics, my critique is that it doesn’t favour true individuality which is arguably integral to the concept of a martial artist (and at this point we may see varying points about what constitutes a martial artist, and what the differences are between A combat athlete or a tactical self defence exponent).
Firstly, there is the nature of being a qualified teacher, and the most essential factor isn’t skill, prowess, or charisma, but temperance. As a teacher in anything, one must understand that another sentient being isn’t going to absorb your teaching methodologies and philosophies exactly as you have learned them, and that is perfectly fine. While the form may change, the essence of learning has been perpetually explored and repackaged over millennia. Secondly, we DO have to address the issue of qualification, as the higher a teacher’s own skill/experience, the better the correlation with a student’s success. In many cases, a teacher whom often has a cycling batch of students may recycle their teaching methods, but one should beware of growing stale in such cases, while also appreciating the benefits of knowledge reinforcement. So should we teach safe and sound basics/tactics/strategies, or do we try to incorporate the other extremity of Holistically creative epistemology? The solution, via my display of anacoenosis, can be duly summarises as a case-by-case basic. Personally, I teach better by taking an apprentice as opposed to a classroom.
When I train my students, I do some pretty bizarre things by the general community standards, but that’s because I encourage a sense of development and expressionism while developing the fundamentals. Often, I get criticised by other practitioners who witness this, and they often attribute it to a flawed training approach because it doesn’t concur with their own training narratives. Yet every time I spar, or do exchanges, the seemingly weird and random training drills become strangely effective. An example is when I am teaching “boxing basics”, which really isn’t true boxing basics as I am at heart a Kung Fu exponent, albeit one that doesn’t crumple under the figurative mma-machine… nonetheless, the age old adage of martial arts is that anything that is used and deemed effective is by default valid. To tie-in with the premise of my essayist introspection, I have long since realised that the crux of my success isn’t because my technique is structurally better, but because the ersatz randomness suits an individual with a high degree of stat/attribute distribution, and at the end of the day, that’s what being the better fighter is all about.
The caveat to this is that a better fighter is not always a better martial artist, as I have faced enough skilled exponents who simply cannot hurt me without a lot of work and effort. If we argue that technique is key, we must also factor in that the person using the techniques, on the persons with which that technique is being applied, creates enough of a difference to render the concept of a “standard technique” moot. In this, the best fighters I have met all agree: you make the technique work, it’s not about relying on its supposed effectiveness. In the words of the old masters, “Adhering to the correctness of technique is akin to studying fossils for better movement: the user gives the technique life.”
So far, I have yet to find anyone I couldn’t cripple if I really felt like it, and that’s a good thing- the martial arts do have Inherent brutality, a feature of the times when real pugilism took place with tooth and nail. By actively suppressing my urge to tear flesh/tendons, shatter bone, or rearrange internal organs, I aim to make a statement about the nature of martial arts as a gateway to self-cultivation. In addition, taking a seemingly whimsical approach with a greater reliance on trial and error is a better system at encouraging the independence of a student, provided that we provide true and proper guidance. Ideally, the student-teacher relationship should be about growth in BOTH parties, with the reciprocity enhancing the whole experience. In that sense, my aim isn’t primarily to create a killing machine, but an entity that can show ultimate respect to life by defending themselves against those who do not.
Solosopher & Solosophy 