Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
In my limited and brief experience in the martial arts community I often found that knowledge was almost exclusively a physical one, i.e., learning basics, stances, drills, kata, kumite and self-defense (as it was perceived at the time), etc. So much effort was made to gain that physical manifestation of a martial discipline that often, at least in the young, the more academic, etc., knowledge was pushed to the back burner as one of those necessities that really didn’t hold attention in training, practice and toward a more comprehensive in-depth understanding.
I have come to understand that simply practicing the more physical does not always lead to knowledge and understanding especially as it applies to self-fense and fundamental principles the are the very foundation of the martial disciplines - at least where I personally sit. It also came to me that in a sense the physical and mental knowledge and understanding were reversed, i.e., a drive to learn the cool martial-stuff often seen in competitions, movies and television, etc. Everyone wanted to be Bruce Lee but few actually followed the proper path to that goal.
Yes, this is my sense of things and for me I see a need to reverse training and practice toward a more academic study of the disciplines so that when the physical and mental and spiritual and psychological and philosophical are presented the practitioner has a better change of accomplishing great things in their efforts. It comes to my mind that these things are what truly make for a masterful practice of martial arts disciplines.
Some professionals tell us that once you learn something and it becomes ingrained as a type of primal conditioned response it takes a huge effort and very long periods of dedicated practice time to turn that often incorrect response to one that is correct. To not program the primal conditioned procedural memory responses incorrectly the physical should be the result of academic studies, a academic and physical analysis of those studies and finally a physical and academic synthesis of the entire effort into the physical manifestation of martial disciplines regardless of the training intent, i.e., sport, self-fense, combatives, or philosophical, etc.
In my personal case as to my understanding and application of the disciplines toward self-defense and so on it didn’t get to me until almost thirty years after I began in karate that what was taught, what I understood and what I experienced and applied was NOT self-fense (self-defense through fense as in defense and offense, etc.). Only in my last years of a more academic to physical study and learning and understanding did I come to realize that self-fense spanned a wider range of both academic and experiences that dwarfed what I had learned as inappropriate and incomplete as to self-fense - and this is just one example of what I have come to understand ‘AFTER’ all the effort before that comprised my primal procedural conditioned responses.
It now seems to me that only those who have come before who have reached a certain level in their age along with a much longer time in training and practice actually begin to take an interest in a more academic study of the very disciplines they have practiced and trained for all those years. Granted, due to the efforts of many professionals and martial luminaries this seems to be changing and yet in many circles it remains dogmatic dogma to the masses who take up sport and self-fense MacDojo roads (actually, I may be overemphasizing a slowly diminishing/disappearing mind-set on this topic but … ).
Bibliography (Click the link)
“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)
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