UNDER THE SUN...

 by Phillip Starr

I've got a great idea that'll make millions! Take a bread bun and slit it down the middle, put a sausage inside and add some condiments, like mustard or relish, and...voila! You've got a snack you could take anywhere...picnics, ball parks, whatever.

Now, in other arenas, this could pass for comedy but in the martial arts it's a fact of life...even in the East. Every now and then someone with a special aptitude might gain some “new” insights and make minor “improvements” to a fighting art. And I mean MINOR. Now, some valid “discoveries” have been made, particularly in training routines; the old “duck walking” exercise has been shown to be potentially harmful and they have consequently been dropped and although forms of resistance training have always been encouraged, most instructors left the students to find ways of doing them on their own. Nowadays we use improved, standardized methods. But with a very few exceptions, these small changes haven't been central to the core curriculum of a given art.

I'm not suggesting that all of the martial ways are absolutely perfect and must never be altered...just that changes occur only incrementally and only after practitioners have acquired a thorough understanding of the art. It must be borne in mind that the martial ways have evolved over a very long period of time, have been tested, and this should be considered VERY carefully before even suggesting any alterations. A LOT of people nowadays seem to feel that the estabished arts are somehow rather fragmentary or outdated at best. Many others seem to be completely unaware that such knowedge ever existed and it is this group that has provided us with so much amusement and it is to them that I turn my attention in this article.

They remind me of cartoons wherein some poor soul struggles so hard to climb up the side of a rocky mountain only to get to the top and find someone else already sitting there, having walked up a stairway carved into the other side of the mountain! I recall a well-known martial artist who “discovered” that by paying close attention to proper timing, it is altogether possible to lauch a counter (a kick, punch, or whatever) just as your opponent was initiating his own attack. There was no need to block anything and you'd catch the enemy at the moment when he is most vulnerable. This fellow even gave his new discovery a name...I believe it was something like “stop-time hitting.” These people are always very keen to give cute names to their “discoveries.”

It's true that his discovery really is a superb tactic and we would owe this guy a huge debt of gratitude but for one one thing....this tactic has been known and practiced for many generations. In Japanese, it is known as “sen” and it's been around for a very long time. Another guy “discovered” that it was possible to redirect an attack and deiver an effective counter strike with the same hand! I think this was called something like “redactive synchronicity theory” - I told you that they really like cute names – but it, too, has been around for a long, long time. Even basic forms (which would likely be disdained by this farsighted genius as non-functional) contain numerous examples.

These “new innovations” go on and on. Every shodan-level aikido student knows that a joint can be manipulated at more than one angle at the same time (making the lock more effective), and that the smaller the joint, the more immediate the response. But don't tell that to the various “experts” who think they've “discovered” this idea and conduct seminars to present their newly-minted ideas. The saying, “There is nothing new under the sun” is very apt here. So many people work really hard at reinventing the wheel...many of them are rather lazy, arrogant, or insensitive. They're like a person who's determined to invent his own language. Why go to such lengths when such knowledge is already available?

Of course, they're not always readily available; to learn such upper-level concepts and acquire skill in them requires submitting oneself to the rigors and discipline of a traditional school. One must be patient, perceptive, and persevering. But this often isn't to the liking of the type of individuals we're discussing here. They go off on their own, looking for shortcuts...and end up working harder than they would have if they'd stayed in the school.