Ian wrote:
We can all figure out what to do with these motions if we only use parts of them... that's easier... but do we think they're supposed to be done together? I would assume so, why else would they be assembled?
Why would you "zip" a large file of data before sending it?
Bill Glasheen's maxim about Uechi kata is the following - They are concise reference books, and not story books.
What happens to performance under stress? As a student of mine who used to compete in skating once said, take off 10% of your ability when performing. It's worse when fighting for your life.
If it's more difficult to do complex motor movement when experiencing the survival stress response, then doesn't it make sense to practice movements in a "more complex" way in the classroom than you would need to do them when facing The Grim Reaper? As long as you teach the student how to "un-zip" the pieces and parts and use them as they please, then the pedagogical principle involved works pretty well.
If it's more difficult to do complex motor movement when experiencing the survival stress response, then doesn't it make sense to practice movements in a "more complex" way in the classroom than you would need to do them when facing The Grim Reaper? As long as you teach the student how to "un-zip" the pieces and parts and use them as they please, then the pedagogical principle involved works pretty well.
Not sure I would take that route for fear of smacking head first into Hick's law.
I'm not sure where Hick's law applies, Van. Would doing more weight exercises in the weight room cloud my mind with too many choices when it came time to respond to a threat? As I was often told by various masters, "Kata are kata; application is application." In kata we drill principles of movement into our body. In application we put it together in whatever way makes sense for the problem right in front of our face.
My approach is no different than what they do with people at the firing range. Targets are always smaller than what you get in real life because of the way FMC and CMC degrade under stress. You teach someone to hit a target with the handicap of a smaller-than-life target, thus demanding more of your coordination systems. Then in real life, what you are able to do with real targets seems not to be beyond what you sense your body is capable of doing.
"Hawk chases sparrow" is a treasure trove of applications in one package. And in all the various applications I have to use it, I can't think of one that uses the motion EXACTLY like the way I do it in kata. On the contrary, I've worked very hard NOT to make the movement too specific, just as a famous weight trainer once told me never to try to do weight training exactly like my athletic movements. That way I don't limit what I'm able to draw from it.
When practicing application for a specific situation, I will indeed customize and tailor the movement. I will use whatever pieces and parts I need. And invariably it's much simpler to do than the way I do it in kata when everything is condensed/combined and done just so. Because of that, it's much easier for me to do the application.
I find Hick's law to be on my side in a way most people don't consider.
1) No real world situation is exactly like what we practice "in the lab." We can practice and practice a unique scenario, but one slight deviation may make an individual "locked" into that mode of responding suddenly incapable of adjusting.
2) Another approach is to ingrain the principles, and teach the individual how to respond by adapting to the specific threat on the spot. Some "canned" responses are programmed, but the person must be capable of and comfortable with adapting. Using this approach and addressing Hick's law, one must be given a very small number of principles and degrees of freedom of movement from which to construct an ad hoc response. By keeping the degrees of freedom of the system small, we minimize the response time. A computer science karate student of mine once classified my approach as RISC. RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computing. That architecture leads to machines that are inherently faster in performing tasks.
I also try in whatever mental pnemonic way to tie everything I do to my martial core. I attempt to "come home to mama" (Sanchin) whenever possible. I may see more in Sanchin than most, but then that's my prerogative. My intellectual structure is tight; I'm not digging down into a disorganized, cluttered toolkit.
That's my approach.
Having "transferable" skills is supported by some experts in the field. In On Combat, Grossman talks about how someone expert in one activity may initially be less capable than others in a specific scenario (the example was a mixed martial artist doing paint ball warfare), but that they adapt pretty quickly. And the more one tests these transferable skills in myriad ways, the better the skills adapt to a threat not previously conceived.
- Bill
Last edited by Bill Glasheen on Wed Jun 21, 2006 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hmmmm, I'll still not sure I would teach students the parts of the seisan jump by having them do the whole seisan jump. If they're used to that, hard to envision the whole thing at once technique, and then they're given adapt or die situations where parts may assist, I wouldn't expect good results. There's a video of a wing chun guy against a submission fighter that lasts a brutal 7 seconds and is an anecdotal reminder of this--here's an art based on adaptability, that has the motions displayed in the cool clip, that didn't suddenly figure out how to apply them in practice in a novel situation. What they would succeed with is, take this one part and lets not do kata anymore, lets drill this application--and then, have different sized and mannered people do it with them forcing them to adapt to those specifics. I think if you want people to use an interesting technique, you're better off with something like judo where you drill those techniques first with willing then with resisting partners. Repetitively doing something obliquely related in kata is fun, rewarding, productive in producing people who might be able to adapt those cool techniques on the fly--but not nearly as effective as practicing them over and over instead. At least that would be my mindset if I were headed into a fight. Einstein said something like insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results--if you drill people to do kata, you get people good at doing kata. I do them now because they do over a repository of techniques and are rewarding and challenging--not because they're the best way to learn hawk follows sparrow or something like that. In the modern age, internet clips make a better memory bank for techniques. But that's just my technique and everyone can read their own into their uechi...
You're bringing up some good points. Perhaps you're exposing weaknesses in current teaching methods.
A very good student of mine who has been more on the teaching end lately came into my class last night. She commented about how I was teaching people, saying some nice things. Not to pat myself on the back but... I find myself unconsciously evolving to a way of teaching kata and other material that is similar to the way Kanbun and his teacher allegedly taught their students.
It is said that Kanbun rarely performed a kata from beginning to end. Performing kata as such is sort of like reciting your chatechism or the Pledge of Allegience. You get through it all but... What does it really mean? The only way to figure that out is to get down and dirty with the pieces and parts, and make it real.
As I've said before and I'll say it again, Bill's maxim of Uechi kata is the following: Kata are concise reference books, and not story books.
That being said... Once you've been through the details and continue to work on them, then the kata become powerful pnemonic devices which allow us to retain, organize, and gain quick access to the tools in our martial toolkit.
Without the reference books, a person is always looking to someone else to teach them how to do something. I can remember my first year of graduate school pretty well. More often than not, a student would ask a professor or a technician how to do something. The question would be met with a sour face, and a book would be dropped in front of you. "It's in here. Figure it out yourself!" Rude, yes. But... That's why we were in graduate school - to become the experts others came to. The kata help you to be that when you learn how to "read" them.
We learned the same thing in residency. After I finished internship and became a resident, I was on the new interns like white on rice making sure i helped them enough. A year later, as we became the seniors, I decided to let the new guys sweat a little and hide in the residency lounge to check what they were doing by computer and by occasional page. Two of the few other residents on that night were already doing the same thing.
Now I just have to figure out how to accomplish more of that kind of challenge and practical training into the uechi I do--and it will probably mean crosstraining. My current training space is cement, and if you go down you also get beseiged by licking dogs.
There's really more to these "esoteric moves" as Ian describes them than is seen on the first viewing, or even the second or third. I liked this article:
In fact, if you read Rick's excellent article on ground striking, you'll find moves from ...............Drum roll please....
The katas!
That neck crank looks a heck of a lot like the crossed arms and slide back in Kanchin.
Look at Rick's arm position when he is executing the elbow break dismount. That's exactly like the second move in seiryu. And Rick seems to have adapted the seisan elbow strike to a shoulder hyperextension. Kata are amazing!
While I agree with the author of the first article (not Rick's, the other one), Ian something or other, he said in an interview one thing I disagree with.
He said karate was never meant for defeating a skilled attacker.
Of course, everything's harder when you're facing a skilled attacker, but karate dosn't suddenly stop working as soon as you face someone who knows what they're doing.
