DOTTING I'S AND CROSSING T'S

 by Phillip Starr

     I'll bet I studied something in elementary school that the rest of you didn't (except for some of the oldsters out there).  And what might that be?

Penmanship. 

     Really.  We actually had inkwells built into our desks and used pens with removable heads which you dipped into the ink!  After class, we had to wash off the inkpen heads and remove them from the stem (of the pen).  It was just about one klik up from using the old featherpens of the 19th century.

     As lousy as my memory tends to be, I clearly remember those boring classes.  We had lined paper which featured a thick, solid line and then a dotted line...then a solid line, then a dotted line...all the way down.  Upper-case (capital) letters had to touch the top and bottom of the solid lines while the lower case letters touched only the top of the dotted line.

     We'd practice just making loops and circles and wavy lines...I thought I had it down pat, but the teacher was always at my side telling me that it was terribly sloppy and to start again.  I remember getting really frustrated.  Then she demonstrated what she meant and her circle and whirls were flawless.  Really smooth and beautiful.  So I did my best to imitate that.  We practiced how to hold the pen correctly between the thumb and forefinger with the shaft resting on the side of the middle finger.  It had to rest at a specific angle.  They were very persnickety about all of this business.  And when you finished a few loops, you had to learn how to soak up the excess ink with a "blotter."

    Eventually, we got around to writing individual letters.  They had to be just so.  The loops, dots, and crosses had to be just right and pleasant to look at.  We practiced every day.  For two years.  Later, if you wrote something and the teacher didn't like the handwriting, he'd give it back to you and tell you to do it over!  It didn't matter if the material was correct or not, if it looked even mildly sloppy, you'd get to do it again. 

     Years ago, I watched as a local police officer (a good friend of mine) wrote out an incident report.  I could barely make out his writing.  It was tiny and the letters weren't clearly formed.  I suppose you notice junk like this as you get older.  I never used to pay much attention to it... So I teased him about it and he made reference to my personal hygiene and ancestry.

     Later, I wrote a check at one of the registers in a department store.  The young lady looked at the writing and remarked, "What pretty handwriting!  I've never seen a man write like that."  Actually, I thought it was kind of sloppy, but compared to my police officer friend, it was a work of art. 

     I have my paternal grandmother's high school autograph book.  Seriously.  Some of the poems and autographs in it are dated back as far as 1867.  What is most incredible is the magnificently beautiful handwriting in it.  Even the boys had beautiful writing and many must have used broad-tipped pens.   

     You don't see writing like that anymore.  It was just too much extra work, I suppose and nobody saw a need for anyone to have to learn it.  And that's my point. 

     The martial arts is exactly the same thing.  We used to do our best to imitate our teacher's flawless movements.  A lot of martial arts don't do that anymore; they have a kind of 1970's "do your own thing" sort of approach...which doesn't work.  Your "own thing" will likely be wrong.  Stick to the things that have been proven to work over time.  It may be boring, tedious work, but it's worth it.

     I have to admire the systems that adhered so closely to their teacher's movements that they even imitated little quirks.  The founder of Isshin-ryu, Tatsuo Shimabuku, had a crippled leg due to his getting rickets when he was very young.  He could never execute a proper kick with it (I think it was his right leg).  He made a kind of little short, jerking kick with it because that was the best he could do.  His American students (who didn't speak much Japanese or Okinawan dialect) imitated it perfectly.  To this day, their kick(s) in certain kata are done just as he did them...but the kicks made with the other leg are different because his left leg hadn't been so severely crippled.

    Another Okinawan karate master (Azato, I think), had had beriberi when he was a youth.  He couldn't completely straighten his fingers.  When he formed a shuto (knife-hand), his little and ring fingers bent inwards considerably.  Consequently, his students imitated that form and it has been carried through to this day.  The karate styles which descended from his teachings all use the same form of shuto.

     Many years ago, one of my own students noticed that the forefinger of my right hand did not flex fully when I made a fist.  It remained nearly straight at the first knuckle.  Knowing that some Okinawan karate styles use a similar form of fist, he figured that that was what I was doing...and he formed his fists in the same manner.  I didn't notice it for years and then when I saw it, I asked WTH he was doing making a geeky-looking fist like that.  He told me that he was making his fist in the same manner as I formed mine.  I had to laugh and I told him that when I was young, the flexor tendon of my right forefinger (first knuckle) had been severed and I couldn't bend it!  That was why I formed a fist the way I do.  But I have to give him credit; he was watching very closely for the little things that might make a difference.  Like how to make a smooth and beautiful loop with an old inkpen. 

     The old and beautiful form of handwriting that existed only four or five decades ago is now gone.  Think about that.  People didn't see the need for it and stopped practicing and teaching it.  Now it's gone.

     Let's not let that happen to the real martial arts.  It doesn't take long for things in this world to disappear forever.  Keep practicing those loops and learning how to correctly dot your i's and cross your t's. 

As Years Go By…

 by Phillip Starr

    In a conversation with an old and dear friend (who, like me, was a long-time martial arts instructor) I asked about several of our mutual martial arts friends.  I inquired about their health, their families, and whether they were still involved in practicing or teaching martial arts.  I was saddened to learn that quite a number of them no longer practice the disciplines that they once embraced; it seems that once they were no longer able to participate in the sporting aspect of the arts, they’d lost interest in them.  And since I lean towards the philosophical side of life, it got me to thinking…

     Most martial arts enthusiasts are rather young, not having yet reached what we call “middle age.”  I don’t have the demographics on this subject but I’d bet that younger children and teens make up the vast majority of today’s martial arts practitioners.  The next largest chunk would be taken up by those who have not yet reached their 35^th or 40^th birthdays.  And the numbers dwindle dramatically after that…

     The conversation with my friend got me to thinking about the different paths that martial arts enthusiasts travel.  For most, the path is very short.  They practice for a while – some as few as a week or two and others as long as several months or even years – and then they fizzle out.  For one reason or another, they lose interest.  Oh, they come up with some pretty creative excuses but what matters is that they gave up.  You know, it’s okay if you lose interest; it’s perfectly alright if you find that there are other things you’d rather do than throw punches and kicks, and gasp, and bleed.  There’s no need to make up some kind of bizarre story.  Just tell it like it is.

     But the fact is that the vast majority of martial arts devotees just fade away into the sunset, never to be heard from again.  It’s always been that way, and always will. For others, it was fun so long as they could enjoy the art as a sport.  They enjoyed the rush of competition, the give and take of a good match.  But life has a way of putting an end to this aspect of martial arts.  It’s called AGE.  And when these folks could no longer compete due to age or any number of other things (such as lack of tournaments in their area), they pooped out.

     Some turned to teaching but even then, for many of them it became little more than a business enterprise.  They no longer trained themselves; the almighty buck became their new sensei or sifu and their love of the martial arts turned bland and sterile.  The objective no longer had anything to do with self-development; instead, it became focused around making money.  Their art and their spirits died for the sake of better business.

     I considered all of this and decided that these people had never really been true martial arts practitioners.  They might have once thought that that was what they wanted but they couldn’t stand the gaff and they quit.

     There are few things in this world that are worse than false teachers, especially false martial arts teachers.  Certainly, age robs us of some of our youthful abilities – I can no longer kick as fast, jump as high, stand as low, or look as pretty as I could when I was a few decades younger – but what counts is that I keep trying.  If I don’t train on my own, how can I expect my students to train on their own?

     Too often I hear older martial arts enthusiasts cry about aching backs, knees, or whatever.  Actually, quite a number of them have not yet reached their 50^th birthdays…and they use excuses like aches and pains as reasons for not training.

     Get real.  Don’t you think that the martial arts masters of generations past suffered with the same problems?  Of course, they did!  The difference is that they absolutely wouldn’t give up.  Period.

     And, unlike so many of our current “older” martial arts practitioners who train (minimally) just to maintain health and stay in some semblance of good shape, the practitioners of former generations continued trying to improve their skills even into old age!

     Gichin Funakoshi practiced perfecting his punch while sitting up on his deathbed just one day before he passed away!  Tatsuo Shimabuku suffered from malnutrition as a child and developed beriberi for a time.  This left one leg slightly shorter and weaker than the other.  Kicking with that leg would have been very painful.  If you watch videos of him doing kata, you can’t tell which leg was deformed!

     Bruce Lee was born with one leg shorter than the other and he frequently wore an insert in one shoe.  But you can’t tell which leg was malformed by watching films of him performing his techniques.

     These men and many others like them refused to sit back and whine about their problems.  And they weren’t content to just try to stay “fit.”  They were constantly striving to improve themselves.  And that’s what martial arts is all about.

     It’s not about trophies, making lots of money, or just doing enough exercise to maintain fairly good health.  It’s a thing of the spirit.  It’s about a continual striving towards self-perfection.

LENGFAN

 by Phillip Starr

Sun Lutang (1860-1933), renowned founder of the Sun styles of both baguazhang and taijiquan rose early each morning in Beijing to walk to his baguazhang practice with the famous master, Cheng Tinghua. Upon completing his bagua training for the day, he'd immediately set out to walk to the other side of the city where he'd train in xingyiquan under the tutelage of the legendary Guo Yunshen (the “Divine Crushing Fist”). That must have been a really arduous task; even in those days, Beijing was huge. The foot traffic had to be all but impassable, but he walked the route every day, in the blistering heat of summer and the snowy days of winter.

In 1938, Masutatsu Oyama left Korea (being a native Korean named Choi Young Li, and he would later adopt the Japanese name, Masutatsu Oyama) to apply at the Yamanashi Aviation School. He had high hopes of becoming a pilot but was refused because of his nationality, so he managed to find a menial job driving a small truck through Tokyo in the wee hours of the morning. After studying karate under Gigo Funakoshi at Takushoku University, he went into the wilds of Mt. Minobu in Yamanashi Prefecture where he trained outside of the small hut he'd constructed. Eventually, he stopped living in the run-down structure and when he no longer received supplies of food from a friend who had been bringing them to him regularly, he lived outdoors...even in the winter! He noted that he'd sleep on the snow-packed ground and hunt for berries and other foodstuffs to sustain him during the nearly 3-year period he spent on the mountain. He would go on to found the Kyokushin school of karate.

Morihei Uyeshiba (founder of modern aikido) often allowed his most senior disciples to live in his home and he'd wake up in the middle of the night, having dreamt of a new technique. He'd wake his pupils, who would act as his uke (receiver) although they were still half-asleep and bleary-eyed.

And today...students ignore the aches and pains of daily training, push aside the concerns of a day at work or school, and do their best to resist the urge to settle back onto the couch and watch a movie or settle in with a good book. On certain evenings they venture out to class, where they'll be thrown about and be attacked with a variety of punches and kicks...for reasons that are a little difficult to verbalize. They're bright enough to understand that practicing their chosen art will likely never land them a Hollywood contract, turn them into invincible super-heroes, or enable them to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle. But they endure through the humidity of summer and the ice of winter to continue travelling their path where the reward for suffering through the physical and intellectual maze of technique and form is to have more of the same heaped on. And the further they travel along this path, the more demanding it becomes.

Errors and lapses in attention might be forgiven when they are beginners, but illuminated in a harsh spotlight by their teachers as they progress. And finally, as they approach the level where their teachers have no more to teach or even criticize, they may think their journey is nearing the end. Not so. At this advanced level, the practitioner must turn inward to re-examine his technique and lifestyle to seek out weaknesses, impose upon himself even more hardships, and searching for a level of the Way that is increasingly severe.

This is sometimes referred to as “lengfan” or “eating cold rice.” Unless you eat rice as a part of your regular diet, you may wonder about this expression. Well, the next time you find some leftover rice in the refrigerator, try a mouthful before you warm it back up. You'll probably find it a bit less than palatable. Very different from the freshly steamed variety. Soldiers in the field would eat cold rice because they lacked the equipment and time to heat it. Bachelors are known to garf it down in the morning when there's nothing else available for breakfast. A bowl of cold rice can make us appreciate that even the most blessed and fortunate among us will suffer from time to time. Not every meal will be just as we like it...

Eating cold rice puts eating in a new perspective. If we're hungry, it sustains us. The austere training of the martial will fill our bellies even though it's not as tasty as we'd like. The austerity of practice in the martial Ways is a lot like that...they are disciplines that are stripped of self-indulgences and ego decorations. To follow them requires a certain amount of stoicism and an enduring spirit. The true martial artist doesn't mind cold rice; he sees it as an essential means of improving himself and perfecting his spirit.

He doesn't prefer cold rice, but he accepts it; he knows that true contentment is not gained through acquiring things. If one cannot be happy or content unless they have hot rice (or that new car, or the latest fashionable shoes...), one is probably going to live a very unsatisfied, unhappy life. But if you can be content with the rice – hot or cold – chances are that you'll find contentment in everything life offers.

The masters of days past ate cold rice many times in their lives; they endured and moved forward. Their lives weren't centered on material goals; they'd accepted a different path – one that requires accepting some hardships. Without such a stoic outlook, they'd have learned much less than they did. One well-known author said that all of the valuable lessons he'd learned in life were learned through suffering. So those who have chosen to follow the martial Ways must determine in what direction they want to go. But they must be prepared to eat a bowl of cold rice from time to time...

WELL, THAT WAS FUN...

 by Phillip Starr

As Westerners, we place a lot of value on “having fun” when we engage in various activities, including martial arts. Having been involved in teaching the martial ways for more than five decades (and practicing them for more than six), I will say that more emphasis is placed on this idea than in years past. For those instructors who run full-time schools, it has become one of the top priorities of their class curriculum; after all, if students don't have fun in training, aren't they less likely to continue to attend class? Probably. Our priorities are flawed.

When you enroll in a martial arts school/group in the East, the #1 priority is learning the art and acquiring skill as opposed to having “fun.” They feel that strength of will and spirit, and the building of character is achieved primarily through very hard training. Period. For instance, kendo is very arduous and rigorous. After training one day, one young man remarked to his friend that “class today was a lot of fun.” He didn't notice that the instructor happened to be standing within earshot. The next day's class was fairly brutal...

The teacher(s) aren't trying to mistreat students at all; they're determined to teach them an authentic martial discipline and assist them in becoming better people. Spirit and character, they feel, is not to be developed any other way. I've had many students over the years who expressed a desire to learn the “spiritual” side of the martial ways, but were apalled at the severity of the training. The spiritual side of these arts is not to be achieved through meditation or simply reading about it; the spiritual truths are revealed only through relentless training over a period of time.

Now, I'm not anti-fun or anything like that...having fun has its place in training, but for the most part, training should be serious and rigorous.

THE FOUR LEVELS OF APPLICATION

 by Phillip Starr

Back in the day, China didn't have training halls such as those we enjoy in the West. They still don't; most training was and still is, conducted outdoors. And the teachers of those bygone years were very concerned about people hiding in the bushes and watching them teach and practice; they feared that the secrets of their style might be learned by others who might then find ways of defeating them. I'm quite sure that they didn't plan to “spoon-feed” their students; they wanted and expected them to train hard to learn the entire system. Those who were in a hurry or who just didn't want to bother with it weren't worth the trouble of teaching beyond a certain level, anyway.

And so it was that they began to “camouflage” certain techniques in the forms. The veils were several, which I refer to as “levels” of breaking down the information contained in various forms. I'll cover them briefly here:

The first level I call “Obvious” because what you see is exactly what you get. A punch is no more than a punch and a kick is just a kick. Not every technique or posture contains hidden breakdowns and too many people, in their enthusiasm for unveiling these things get carried away and start “seeing a wolf behind every tree.”

The second level I call “Concealed” and it involved hidden joint techniques and/or chokes as well as holding techniques. These can be rather difficult to uncover; an extensive knowledge and understanding of such techniques is necessary. If you're not familiar with a variety of such techniques, you're not likely to spot them.

The third level is the “Mysterious” level and involved hidden takedowns and throws that are concealed within the form(s). Like the previous level, finding them requires familiarity with such techniques.

The fourth level is the “Dark” level, wherein certain types of blows are applied to certain vital points. The points are mapped out in the form. But most forms do not contain this level of information; only a few do. You must learn to “decode” certain movements as you “read” your form.

To find levels 2 and 3 also require that you recognize certain “red flags”; that is, movements that don't seem to make sense in the form. For instance, in the first form of most karate styles as well as taekwondo -heian shodan (some call it ping-an shodan, and Okinawan styles refer to it as ping-an nidan) and known in taekwondo as chon-ji, there are several red flags right out of the gate:

1. You step to the left in a forward stance and do a left low block. RED FLAG!

2. You advance the right foot in a forward stance and execute a right lunge punch. RED FLAG!

3. You pivot on the left foot, moving to the right. The right foot steps around 180 degrees to a forward stance and do a right low block. RED FLAG!

That didn't take long, huh? Why are these movements red flags? Well...

Movement #1: We're usually told that we're blocking a low level attack coming from the left. WHY would you ADVANCE into an attack to block it? If it's a kick, it'll certainly reach you before you get halfway through your step!

Movement #2: We're often told that following the block, we advance to punch the bad guy. Nah. If you're close enough to block, you're much too close to execute a lunging thrust! WAY too close!

Movement #3: We're told that a second bad guy attacks from the rear, so we turn and block his low-level attack. Then I ask, WHY are you stepping the long way around? It'd be much faster and more efficient to cimple reverse your stance, wouldn't it?

Red flags such as these indicate that the movements are not as they seem. To be brief, the first movement isn't a block at all...it's a pre-emptive thrust. The 2nd and 3rd movements show a peculiar throw, not another block and punch.

Forms are replete with such red flags. You must learn to recognize one when you see one, and then work diligently to figure it out (this is why familiarity with various throws and joint manipulations is so necessary). It is also why each movement in a form is to be done exactly so and why, if you don't understand a particular movement, you mustn't just go ahead and change it.

ENJOYING THE MEAL

 by Phillip Starr

Most group activities (such as meetings of almost any kind) in China involve various foods. And the Chinese truly love their native cuisine. It's the same in Japan. Unlike many Western barbarians (I say that with a smile), they take time to truly savor each mouthful while they also appreciate the aroma and even the appearance of the food. So many of us slug down our food with such zest that we often miss many of the subtleties, which add so much to the meal.

It is often the same in our martial arts practice; we tend to gobble down the meal without taking time to experience every part of it. While visiting Japan with my senior student, Hiro Misawa ( a guide of inestimatable value), we stopped in at a local sushi restaurant just a few blocks from the room where I was staying. It was a traditional eatery and Hiro started us off with two bowls of miso soup. Before I tried it, he told me that the cook had used a very subtle fish stock to cook the dish and I tried a spoonful. Instead of simply gulping down the soup as is my wont, I took time to gently savor it. Yes, the hint of fish was there; it was veiled and delicate rather than overbearing... I very much enjoyed this special soup.

It has occurred to me that this should be done with our techniques and especially, our forms. If we simply go crashing through them with hurried enthusiasm (what my teacher called “youthful enthusiasm”), we miss out on so much that is shrouded and difficult to see or feel. Such seemingly nebulous details will, once experienced, add so much to the technique or form! That which we once regarded as rather bland suddenly becomes a magnificent feast!

Go back to your first form, your first technique and taste it again. Savor it carefully and look for subtle flavors.