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Examining the Established Traditions within the Martial Arts

  

Much has been written on traditions within the martial arts.  But how often do we closely examine those traditions, and more importantly, how valid they are to our training?  In this article, I’d like to examine one area within the arts in greater detail.

The Dan ranking system has been around in Judo since the late 1800’s.  In mainstream Karate the Dan ranking system has only been around since 1924.  That is a relatively short amount of time considering the martial arts have been with man for the last five thousand plus years.  The current Dan ranking system came to us courtesy of an individual named Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate.  But why?  What was the reason the Dan ranking system wasn’t introduced until 1924?  Was it suddenly realized that the martial arts had been lacking in this area for thousands of years? 

As is the case many times in the martial arts, truth sheds mysticism and leaves politics.  Funakoshi Sensei was a Karate master from Okinawa that caught the attention of the Japanese Ministry through Karate demonstrations on the Japanese mainland.  But in order to make Karate into a mainstream product, certain stipulations were ‘requested’ by the Japanese government.  This is where the standard white uniform or ‘Gi’ as it has come to be called came about.  Another of course, was a unified ranking structure where before it was simply teacher and student. 

Enter the Dan/Kyu ranking system. Well, this isn’t mainland Japan, nor is Karate limited to that part of the world.  Karate has morphed into a plethora of other systems that aren’t under the jurisdiction of 20th century Japanese politics.  So is the system still valid?  Yes and no. Funakoshi was the first ‘Karate’ man to promote a student to black belt.  In fact, he promoted seven.  Five were promoted to Shodan (1st Dan) and the other two skipped directly to Nidan (2nd Dan).  Twenty years later, Kanei Uechi who was the head of the newly re-named Uechi Ryu system of Karate held a mass promotion ceremony when the Dan/Kyu ranking system was formally adopted.  Multiple students were promoted directly to Godan (5th Dan), some to Yodan (4th Dan) and the rest filling in the 1st through 3rd rankings.  Yet interestingly enough, if anyone today were promoted directly from nothing to 5th Dan, despite any amount of appreciable training they’d be flamed off of most martial arts forums.  Why?  If the precedence was already set, requirements achieved and a qualified authority acting as the sanctioning body…what is the difference between then and now? 

We’ve had many ‘masters’ in the Orient achieve very high Dan rank while still relatively young.  I’ve seen Korean 8th Dans in their mid 30’s despite seeing organizational rules that have a minimum age requirement.   But if a Westerner achieves a high rank at a relatively young age people on the internet tend to lose their minds.  For that matter, martial history has people in their early 20’s beginning their own arts and doing it successfully.  Yet if that is attempted in our ‘modern’ era they are scorned on the various ‘enlightened’ discussion boards.  Again I ask why?  Either a person is qualified to begin a new art, or hold a higher rank or they aren’t.  If they aren’t they will be revealed soon enough to those they teach.  Not from those on the net that haven’t even meet them, much less seen them train or teach. A black belt is a subjective, personal and local achievement and nothing more.  A black belt in Taekwondo really can’t be compared to a black belt in Jujutus or any other art.  The length of training may differ.  The requirements of training may differ.  The focus or principles of the arts may differ.  It is apple and oranges.  Indeed, even within the same art the qualities may dramatically differ from school to school or country to country. 

Yet I’ve seen in print or on the internet many people that place such a high priority on such a subjective issue as to move it to the realm of the ridiculous.  I’ve seen one group of self-pious individuals disparage one particular individual for months and even years on the matter of ‘rank’.  Most of the self-righteous never actually trained with, or even meet the individual yet feel imminently qualified to negatively remark on a plethora of items regarding this individual.  What was this individual’s ‘crime’?  He went outside his art for promotional purposes.  In other words, instead of bowing to the politics that seem to run rampant within this fragmented art...and also paying exorbitant organizational fees for a piece of paper, he went to others who offered promotion using his previously earned experience as a guideline and charging next to nothing.   Now here is the crux of the matter; he didn’t need their permission to teach what he teaches.  Nor did he need a mere piece of paper from them with a number.  And he lives and teaches in an entirely different state from any of them.  He has students that I’ve talked at length with that value his instruction.  But because he chose a route of advancement other than what they had chosen he was now to be belittled at every opportunity.  The funny part of the whole matter was the self-righteous group themselves.  One had received promotion from a buddy in another state without a proper test.  Some call this a ‘good-ole-boy’ promotion.  I’ve seen the picture of him with all his buddies clapping for him.  I’ve seen the posts from people that never meet him or trained with him and proclaiming what a wonderful and well-earned promotion this was.  I’m not sure how you can ‘earn’ something that is simply handed to you by someone you don’t regularly train with or even lives in the same state?  One of them claimed rank yet never actually trained with the promotional authority that signed his certificates.  He just flew in for a test, paid the appropriate fee and went home with a new piece of paper with a higher number.  Yet another wasn’t even in the same art.  Just felt like jumping on the bandwagon.  And to top it off, publicly admitted he hadn’t learned anything new in his art for 9/10ths of the time he’d spent in it yet was a very high Dan rank.   

Pretty pathetic behavior for people that claim to be adults and ‘masters’ in the martial arts in my opinion. Bottom line on Dan rank, or whatever system is used within your art; it is personal to what you have achieved and is not to be compared to anyone else’s rank, be it the same or a different art.  To try to compare is simply a waste of time.  Leave it to the cyber-warriors and net-ninjas to piss and moan about who’s rank should be what.  You just train and let them whine and cry because in reality, their immature behavior doesn’t change reality.  And the reality of the matter is that rank is simply a personal marker in your training.   

Master David Schultz is the Head Master (8th Dan) of the Tsunami Dojang in West Central Florida, teaching Mu Shin Kwan Kong Soo Do http://ksd.8m.net.  He is an active duty Deputy with the Bureau of Detention and Corrections with over 18 years of service.  He has six Instructor certifications in the areas of firearms, defensive tactics and edged weapons.  He holds black belts in four different systems of martial arts with over 7000 logged training hours.  He has trained over a thousand military, law enforcement, corrections, executive protections agents and private citizens since the mid 1980’s.  He is the Director of the World Mu Shin Kwan Federation. 

 He can be reached at cqdt1@yahoo.com or www.martialwarrior.com. 

Realism & Integrity in the Martial Arts 

Recently I reviewed a DVD presentation on Hapkido that was quite good.  That review is on the board in the review section towards the bottom of the main page.  It got me thinking however of the other recent critiques I’ve been asked to render that were pure crap.  I don’t say that to be mean-spirited, rather as a reflective comment on the nature of modern martial arts in general. 

One offering was an Aikido video.  I beheld an elderly master walking up and down the length of the room; effortlessly tossing men half his age like rag dolls.  The choreography was beautiful.  The throws were dynamic.  It very probably would greatly impress the individual looking for a martial art to join. 

So what’s the problem?

Well, a plethora of things immediately leap to mind.  In no particular order of importance; there were probably a dozen Uke for the master to defend against.  And a more cooperative, polite group of Uke you could not hope to find.  Not only did they offer their wrists to the master without a fuss, they launched themselves into and through the air like Olympians, impressively tumbling and then returning to a standing position to orderly await their turn to attack again.  The uninitiated this video was designed to impress may never have considered these points. 

Are determined attackers polite?  Or are they rude enough to attack you from an ambush at a time likely to be advantageous to them while placing you at a decided disadvantage?

Do they offer their wrists, arms or necks for you to effortlessly perform your favorite techniques on?  Or are they too busy flailing them at your head as fast and as hard as they possibly can in order to inflict as much damage upon you as possible in the shortest amount of time?

Are they likely to know what technique you’re trying to perform so they can assist with a pre-scripted jump and roll?  Or are they more likely to clock you upside the head as you fumble around trying to place your favorite lock on them under duress all the time wondering why its become so difficult…because…well it always worked on your compliant partner in the Dojo?

If there are multiple attackers, are they going to wait in line to take their turn?  Or are they rude enough to bum-rush you and pile on top as you hesitate because you’ve never been faced with this possibility before?

The second offering was a Korean ‘grandmaster’ performing Hapkido self-defense techniques.  For some reason I didn’t think Koreans used the term grandmaster..or did they come up with it to impress the Western audience.  I always forget which it is, but I digress.  The presentation was fast, dynamic and really ‘wowing’ the audience.  Again, the uninitiated was sure to be impressed and it would be a guaranteed success on YouTube.  But then, looking at it a bit closer and perhaps a bit candidly, the grandmasters partner was doing the same thing as the Aikido Ukes i.e. giving their wrist without any argument whatsoever.  Basically he could very well have been shouting, ‘here’s my wrist!’  And of course the grandmaster was taking the offered wrist and very dynamically throwing the guy all around the mat, pausing only long enough for the guy to roll back to his feet and rush over with his arm outstretched.  Don’t recall the grandmaster delivering any solid strikes or kicks to set any of the fancy stuff up at all.  Maybe it was there, but I missed it while staring at that outstretched arm with the sign hanging from it with big red letters saying, ‘grab here’ with an X.
 
The last and biggest waste of my time was a group of Korean arts instructors here in the U.S. at some seminar.  I’m assuming the thrust was Hapkido but I recognized ‘high level’ Tang Soo Do people ‘oohing and aahhing’ in the crowd.  I used this phrase in my review and it is appropriate enough to repeat again.  The instructor moved like ‘molasses in January running uphill’.  I thought it was a comedy skit at first.  It was so ponderous and slow it was like the guy was trying to remember the moves as he went.  At least the other two guys were flashy and dynamic and kept you interested to a point.  This guy was like watching ice melt.  And again, the offered arm, half-hearted punches aimed three feet short of the instructors head and obligatory launching of oneself through the air at the slightest effort was brutal to watch.  That is another point, a determined attacker is not going to aim his fist three feet to the side of your head and then leave it there for you to play catch up with your fancy refined motor skill block. 

What is my point in this rant?  Glad you asked.  The uninitiated need to be initiated in the proper mind set for combat, realistic expectations of what may be faced, and appropriate skills to cope with them.  They need gross motor skill responses that work under duress against a resisting attacker who doesn’t want you to do what you’re trying to do to him.  They need to understand a fight is an unpredictable, chaotic affair that isn’t pretty, isn’t neat and isn’t choreographed.  They need to understand that locks work great, but they need to be preceded more often than not with a good solid strike in order to set it up.  They need to know how to SEIZE an attacker who doesn’t want to be grabbed.  They need to be able to defend themselves inside of a phone booth, on stairs, in an elevator, on a sloping or wet surface, from a disadvantageous position and in dim lights.  They need to get Hollywood and the damn UFC out of their minds and concentrate on real life.

Do you teach an art that is primarily striking and kicking?  Great, why not learn how to protect yourself if you wind up on the ground?  I don’t mean the MMA version either.   Do you teach an art that is primarily a MMA ground grappling version?  Great, is it sport or is it realistic?  Yeah, there’s a difference.  In real life attacks your not on soft mats, in a well lit venue that is level and dry with one opponent who has agreed to abide by the same rules you have will being monitored by a referee who can stop the fight or you can tap out if you had enough.  Yeah, a Kimora or triangle arm bar is cool to watch on the tube.  But try it while the guys buddies are using your head for punting practice.  At that point in a real fight between a couple of parked cars on concrete it may not be as cool as gouging out his eye, hitting him in the throat or biting off an ear so you can regain your feet and get out of dodge before his buddies stomp you to death.

Do you teach gross motor skill responses or fancy, refined motor skills because they look better and get the ‘points’?  Do you teach the O.O.D.A. loop?  Do you even know what it is?  Do you teach about adrenaline dumps, auditory exclusion, loss of manual dexterity in the extremities, tunnel vision?  Have you ever experienced so that you can pass that experience on to your students?  Have you invited someone into your school more experienced than yourself so your students get the benefit or would that upset your fragile ego? 

I know that a lot of ‘instructors’ don’t know any better.  A few teach from experience but most teach from theory.   That isn’t necessarily bad if the ‘theory’ is sound.  But if it isn’t then they’re doing their students a grave and dangerous disservice.  And these days they are without excuse with the ready availability of modern research and data from real combat situations.  I don’t buy the excuse of ‘my dojo/dojang/ryu/kwan/federation/master/grandmaster/great-awesome-supreme-professor-grandmaster Ph.D MA never taught it that way.   The information is available and a mouse-click away.  Failure to use it is either ego, stupidity or both.

Ok, I feel better now.  And I’m sure that has won me some new friends.

Stay safe.

Master David Schultz

Master David Schultz is the Head Master (8th Dan) of the Tsunami Dojang in West Central Florida, teaching Mu Shin Kwan Kong Soo Do http://ksd.8m.net.  He is an active duty Deputy with the Bureau of Detention and Corrections with over 18 years of service.  He has six Instructor certifications in the areas of firearms, defensive tactics and edged weapons.  He holds black belts in four different systems of martial arts with over 7000 logged training hours.  He has trained over a thousand military, law enforcement, corrections, executive protections agents and private citizens since the mid 1980’s.  He is the Director of the World Mu Shin Kwan Federation. 

 He can be reached at cqdt1@yahoo.com or www.martialwarrior.com.