THE SNOWBALL EFFECT

 by Phillip Starr

I have very much enjoyed attending various seminars over the years. Many, if not most of them featured styles that were very different from those I practice. In some cases, they involved wholly different arts! For instance, different styles might include Fut-Ga, Praying Mantis (tanglang), or Changquan (long fist). Different arts altogether could encompass subjects such as judo, arnis, or aikido...

You might wonder why I would be interested in participating in such events. Well...first, I ensure that the featured instructors are highly skilled individuals who have practicd and taught their respective arts for a considerable time. Then I can be pretty well assured that I'll get what I want out of the workshop.

And what might that be?, you may ask. It isn't necessarily that I'm especially interested in learning any of their techniques or forms, per se... what I'm really keen to learn is PRINCIPLES. If I can pick up just one new principle, it often has what I call a “snowball effect.” So learning a single new principle is more than worth the effort (and the cost).

I look at it this way; we're all human and we're all built alike...we share the same skeletal and muscular structure as well as nervous systems. Techniques are performed in accordance with certain principles, and the same holds true for movement (of the body). I know of no one who can lay claim to knowing all of the various principles of both technique or movement, so I'm always ready to learn what I can.

Then when I learn a new principle (which I'll call “A”), I study it carefully... “If 'A' works for this kind of movement, would that hold true for 'B' (a different type of movement)?” And then that might give rise to “C”, and so on. It's very exciting but it's something that should be attempted only by those who have a couple of decades of practicing a given art under their belts.