Enter the Dragon!

I refer, of course, to my dragon pole, pictured below. Father, daughter, and dragon pole (circa 2007) In principle, a weapon is simply an extension of the body.  In practice, it takes a lot of intelligent  and diligent practice to attain that kind of mastery.  [I'm working on it...]  In the meantime, training with a weapon, especially a large weapon, is a valuable source of feedback for developing efficient body movement.  Weapons are great teachers. There is also a conditioning effect.  Look at the picture: talk about torque!  Repeatedly working through the hung kuen dragon pole set, or even individual movements as a drill, soon becomes a demanding workout. I like to practice the dragon pole movements not only with the big stick, but to a lesser extent with a 6 foot  bo,  and also with no stick at all.  After training with the dragon pole switching down to a  bo  feels like a toothpick! Nowadays we don't travel around a...

Kani basami  is judo's flying scissors throw, and was banned from competition because of the risk of breaking one or both of uke 's legs. It's a fun throw, and requires a strong breakfall from  uke .  In learning this throw it is helpful to put one hand on the floor, but it's much more satisfying to do it in mid-air. In wrestling you'll sometimes see the even more spectacular and dangerous flying head scissors variation, performed here  (at 1:20) by Scarlett Johansson's character in Iron Man 2. That's not allowed in competition, either!

For a bit of a change I taught a class built out of variations. Starting with our first leg throw (o soto gari) and the related ninth (o soto otoshi) I led the class through about 8 variations. We repeated the dose with around a dozen related hip throws and variations, all emerging from our nfirst hip throw (uki goshi). Because we practice osoto gari and uki goshi so much, even for the beginners this was viable. The related principles form a bridge to the variations. It is not a case of learning something completely unrelated, but rather building on what you already have. At the same time, learning a new variation is not just accumulation; there are distinctive points and refinements to be learned and most everyone runs into a particular variation that poses problems that need to be worked through. After this tour, we went back to some rapid-fire throw-for-throw practice on the first leg and hip throws with a variety of partners, which were -- gasp! -- now a bit better and more ro...

Kano's early Judo included distinctive striking techniques (atemi waza), and training in many weapons, as well as throws, groundwork, and revival techniques, all distilled from multiple jiu-jitsu ryu.  When Funakoshi brought Karate to Japan from Okinawa there was cross-fertilization with Judo, similarly with Ueshiba's aikido (Tomiki, I believe, was ranked 9th dan in both arts). So judo was an evolving composite, from which specialist streams have emerged.  You can see echoes of some of this stuff in the higher judo katas, but overall there seems to have been a loss of heritage, at least in mainstream Olympic Judo, due to multiple factors, including: optimization for a particular rule-set, with victory in competition as the main goal; popularization as a national physical exercise regime suitable for dissemination through high schools; and the banning of most martial arts practice in Japan following its defeat in WWII. Similarly, chinese boxing (kung fu) styles have e...

Our self-defence requirements include scenario training against differently trained attackers, and armed assailants.  That said, I think that intensive training in weapons and in a fist-and-foot style helps a lot in comfort and expertise in those kind of scenarios.  And that takes training time, whether in one art or many.  I have trained in ken-jitsu a little bit, and I like it.  In people who have done a lot of sword-work you can see it reflected (positively!) in their jiu-jitsu.  Similarly, as I make progress in chinese boxing, I am finding all sorts of cross-connections with jiu-jitsu. Real combat, especially when weapons are involved, is of course extremely dangerous.  Personally, I'd rather face a kick-boxer than an attacker with a sword.

I say both.  Despite our large syllabus, we spend most of our time practicing the fundamentals, both techniques and drills.  The higher techniques are practiced less often, but build on and compliment the principles instilled in the fundamentals.  This maintains interest, adds scope, and reinforces the fundamentals ( example ). At first only the basic techniques will be sufficiently internalized to pull off under pressure, but over time one's applicable repertoire becomes richer. An analogy is learning another language.  Maybe you only learn a handful of words and phrases by rote at first -- traveller's French (or whatever) -- but if you are serious, in time you will want to develop a richer vocabulary, a sense of the grammar, idiom, etc.  Even learning those first few phrases may be really difficult (at first), but it is not clear that restricting yourself to a small set that intensive practice of a small subset will lead to better results than a serious, broad...

In response to one of my posts from 2007,  Jiu-jitsu is Adaptable , an Anonymous commenter posted a couple of interesting and essay-length comments meditating on the merits and practicalities of many techniques vs few, and of different systems of martial arts, contrasting and comparing his experience of Jiu-jitsu with various other styles, including Krav Maga, Kali and Kick-boxing, and finishing up with the question: What do you think about cross-training and how do you train defenses against kickboxers and armed attackers? A few comments, broken across a few posts Cross-training Can be good, can be bad.  I appreciate that the hope is that by training in multiple arts you will be able to compensate for weaknesses in one art with the strength of the others, but I think that it is more complex than that.  Do you have time to train sufficiently in both arts to really get them? Do they blend harmoniously, or do they contain opposing principles and strategies? I have students ...

I have just finished reading the fabulous Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court by the all-time greatest ever college basketball coach, John Wooden with Steve Jamison .  Apparently still alive , but gravely ill at 99, Coach Wooden was profiled in Carol Dweck's fantastic book, Mindset, which I reviewed previously , and I am now reading some of the books recommended therein. Wooden's approach to teaching, coaching, and life, which led him to an unrivalled record as coach of the  UCLA Bruins, including 10 national championships, including a streak of 7 (the previous record was 2 in a row), was built on an unconventional but efficacious definition of success.  He disagrees with the dictionary definition: I knew how Mr. Webster defined it: "as the accumulation of material possessions or the attainment of a position of power or prestige, or something of that sort." Worthy accomplishments perhaps, but in my opinion not necessarily indicati...