Martial Arts

Use it or lose it

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I’m constantly amazed at how long it takes to gain things, but how quickly they are lost.

Since I switched my martial arts study, I haven’t done any Kuk Sool work — I’ve barely thought about it. However I realized that I’m losing a few things. Not the mental knowledge, but the physical conditioning that Kuk Sool gave me. Granted, I’m using a different set of muscles and physical movements, so I’m gaining physical conditioning in other ways. But some of the losses I’m not liking. For instance, Kuk Sool did a lot of leg work. My current studies aren’t as heavy on leg work. Consequently, I’ve noticed my legs fading a bit.

So this morning after doing a bunch of kali stick work, I opted to run through all my Kuk Sool forms. Nothing intensive, but just something to feel the burn again.

And burn I felt. 🙂

My legs are aching a bit from all the low stance work, going in and out of low stances does work your leg muscles quite well. It also made me realize how part of my ankle rehab was coming from doing all of that work. Furthermore, my knees aren’t so happy these days, since they’re not getting the same level of use/strengthening. It’s all crazy.

So, I’m going to resolve to at least do a bunch of deep knee bends every day. Nothing major, just something to ensure I use it and don’t lose it. And I’ll keep doing my forms from time to time. It’s good for me. 🙂

Siniwali tutorial

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Reading tgace’s blog this morning and I find a neat thing that he did. He participated in making an online tutorial for how to peform the Filipino Martial Art concept of siniwali. Specifically, heaven and earth 6.

Yes it’s basic, yes it’s not a substitution for being in a proper class with a proper instructor, but it’s still a good tutorial. It does a gradual build from the basic motion alone, to with a partner, to stylized application, to more free-form application. It also emphasizes how FMA teaches concepts, not just rote techniques, and presents questions to help you explore further.

It’s nifty. Check it out.

One thing I liked was just watching someone else move. I’ve found myself seeking FMA videos because while all FMA’s share similar concepts, there’s an amazing amount of variation. It’s nice to see what other people do because it expands your outlook. For instance, in tgace’s initial siniwali movement it’s not just a parry but also a downward pull on the blocked hand; I usually just parry.

Small incident

/ hsoi

Had a small incident tonight.

I’m chillin’ with Daughter in the house when Oldest rushes into the room and says, “Mom needs you, now.” Urgency there, I get up and go. Wife briefs me. There’s some dude hanging around the street-light a couple houses down. Gave Oldest the willies, and it was certainly odd behavior. Strange person, why would they just be hanging out at the street-light?

I head outside to check on things. I’m able to do a few things in the yard to look busy and otherwise occupied, but watching what the dude is up to. Then I see good neighbor across the street, who has a similar penchant for paying attention to the neighborhood goings on. I head over and we talk, as he too noticed the dude.

As we watched, dude’s behavior wasn’t too suspicious. Perhaps just waiting for someone to pick him up. But then it dragged on. We were standing outside talking about life, family, work, hunting, playing in band back in grade school, whatever topics. But dude was still there… hour went by, still there. It went from a concern, to probably nothing but we’ll keep an eye, to “this is just getting weird.” Why just standing there, doing nothing, for about an hour? Gave the police a call to have them drive by. I don’t know exactly how long it took them to show up, but I know I checked the clock and 15 minutes went by and it was some time after that before APD rolled onto the scene. Two cruisers showed up, they spoke with dude, eventually some people from a nearby house come out and there’s interactions with the police and discussions. Back and forth for a bit, APD seemed eventually satisfied and left. People from house brought a phone out to dude, and eventually he leaves in a car with someone (they had pulled up prior to APD arriving).

While the men were outside minding things, the women of the neighborhood were on the phone alerting all other neighbors. People were watching out their windows, noting things, taking descriptions, pictures, whatever. If something was going to happen, we were going to be prepared. 🙂 Plus, as everyone connected, it was evident that others had noticed dude too and had similar concerned feelings about the matter.

No idea what was going on, but it was still all very strange. We’re attempting to contact APD to find out the story.

Lessons learned:

  • Don’t blow off gut feelings. If something feels wrong, act on it.
  • You don’t know when ugly will strike, so always be prepared. I have all my everyday gear on me (including my flashlight), every day all the time. Wife needed me now, I was able to go and was ready (well, didn’t have my phone on me… still trying to work out a good “gotta keep it charged but need to keep it on me” strategy). I didn’t have to take time to get all my stuff together, I was ready and could act immediately.
  • Ensure all your neighbors know each other and have each others contact information. You don’t have to be friends, but you are neighbors. Even if you might not like your neighbor, there may come a time where there’s a bigger evil that will require you to come together.
  • If you’ve got a team, ensure you’ve got a plan. My wife and I? Team. Kids can be involved too. Then have plans, and ensure people know their parts; practice. Wife knows one of her primary roles is communication: she calls proper people, gathers information. I didn’t have to walk out the door and tell her to do any of this; she knows her role, I know mine. Kids even do to, for instance, they know that yeah sometimes in life you might be able to argue with Mom & Dad, but when something serious is going on you must obey… and they know that.
  • Don’t count on a fast police response. I’m not surprised they didn’t come blaring in with sirens within 2 minutes, and I expect if they had to get two cruisers/officers and coordinate a bit that that would require a little more time too. I wish they were a little faster in their response but in the end it was acceptable response time. Still, it was quite a long time for the response…. you can only count on the police for so much, and your immediate safety isn’t necessarily part of that equation.
  • If you believe in self-defense, your training shouldn’t be in only physical skills such as punching or shooting. You need to know street smarts, mental skills, and other such things. That will take you further.

I believe the world is a generally safe place. I believe the world is filled with good people. But evil can come in any form to any place at any time. Nothing is immune. If you don’t want evil to harm you and your loved ones, it’s good to be prepared to deal with it when (not if) it comes your way.

Kuk Sool and cross training

/ hsoi

There’s a discussion going on in the Kuk Sool forum at Martial Arts Planet about “Hypocritical aspects of WKSA” and one of the larger themes coming out of the discussion is about cross-training.

The notion of cross-training is an attempt to overall improve something towards meeting your goals. That one avenue may get you part of the way there, so you want to also add another avenue to get you all the way there. In martial arts, the classic situation is handled in today’s mixed-martial arts (MMA) environment. If you just study striking, you may be a great striker but what happens if someone takes you down to the ground? If you just study wrestling, do you know how to deal with someone that wants to stand up and throw punches? If you know how to fight on the ground, can you handle avoiding going to the ground in the first place? There’s a desire to be well-rounded because you cannot predict where a fight will go. Sure in a sport competition environment you can have rules and that dictates what will and won’t happen, e.g. in a boxing match you can be sure people will only be throwing punches. But in combat, you don’t know what you’ll be up against so the trend with MMA today is to be well-rounded and study all aspects so you can handle whatever situation may come your way.

One appeal of Kuk Sool as an art is that it is fairly comprehensive, even at higher levels supposedly teaching healing arts. Nevertheless, as you get into Kuk Sool study you start to discover that it does have some holes. One notable point is the ground game. The Wah Ki set of techniques are “defense from a recumbent position”, and while they may be sufficient to help one defend themselves from an untrained attacker, they barely scratch the surface of what can be accomplished on the ground. Other parts of the Kuk Sool curriculum come across in a similar way: it’s there, it’s something, but it’s not much. Kuk Sool’s “cane curriculum” is a whopping 10 techniques. If one examines more typical Hapkido cane curriculum, there is far more involved and available in terms of the study of a cane as a weapon. Dan bong curriculum is 3 meditations and 2 forms, no formal technique work (tho you can do things such as apply it to Maek Chi Ki or Ki Bohn Soo and see where it takes you); no real application of the weapon.

One could assert that the formal curriculum is but a start. I would agree with that. Many times packed within those few techniques is a great deal of information. One shouldn’t limit their focus to just the performance of the rote technique, but one should break the technique down to see what’s being discussed and demonstrated by the technique. From there, one should explore and see where you can go and how to find yourself in the art. For instance, as I explored dan bong on my own I went through all of my empty hand techniques seeing where or how or if a dan bong could be used in such a situation. What helps is having a good teacher that works to encourage this exploration, but I fear that Kuk Sool Won (WKSA) far too often emphasizes memorization and regurgitation of “textbook curriculum” and just adhering to the formal book techniques. You watch demonstrations and far too often every move you see is a rote move; that’s fine to some degree, but why can’t people branch out beyond that to make their art alive?

Consequently, a lot of people that study Kuk Sool want to cross-train. They feel there’s something that Kuk Sool isn’t providing them. They don’t want to leave because they feel there’s something Kuk Sool is providing, but it’s just not taking them 100% of the way to their goals. The unfortunate thing is, WKSA frowns upon cross-training. I’ve heard numerous reasons as to why. Some say it’s a quest to keep the art pure. This is understandable because if people start to add more and more of their own outside knowledge and flair, eventually that will change the art (like playing the telephone game). Part of Kuk Sool’s “charter” is a study and preservation of traditional Korean Martial Arts heritage, and if they wish to preserve history then they must work to preserve how things are. Fair enough. The trouble then becomes that the art can never change, it can never evolve. Of course, anyone that really knows WKSA history from the past 50+ years knows things have in fact changed, but whatever… we’ll take SUH In Hyuk at his word. Another reason for no cross-training is that Kuk Sool is a complete art and there’s no need nor reason to cross-train; the system is perfect as it is. I’m not sure about that, because it depends upon who defines it as perfect. To SUH In Hyuk, it’s perfect. To me, it wasn’t perfect. I see nothing in Kuk Sool’s curriculum about the study of firearms, despite the assertion that Kuk Sool preserves Korea’s martial history and KJN Barry Harmon’s book, 5000 Years of Korean Martial Arts, saying Koreans did use gunpowder. In the MAP thread, one school owner even said:

YES! Here’s why, I had a student (yellow belt) been with me for six months he started training combat firearms. His firearms instructor told him that his MA training was limiting his performance in his target shooting. He told him his stance was all wrong and it was effecting his ability to hit the target. So he insisted in changing his stance in Kuk Sool to fit his firearms training because he wanted to be consistant. I of course insisted that he do the stances correctly. It came down to him having to make a choice. He did and left on good terms. Thats why I don’t allow any cross training at my dojang. It’s a simple business decision it saves alot of hassle and things like that spread like wildfire throughout an organization as you can see in WKSA right now.

I think it’s a shame that WKSA/KSW demands such rigid adherence to how things must be. It assumes we’re all the same, with the same goals, same abilities. That this small elderly woman can do things just the same as this large young man. Now, I do know they aren’t that rigid about things, but the above and my own experiences do show that depending who you are working with, the organization really wants things done their way. That’s certainly fair of them to require. I’m just not sure how good it is for the longevity of the art and the organization.

In order to survive, all living things must evolve. If you don’t evolve and change and adapt, you will die. Kuk Sool is a great art in and of itself, but it needs to determine what it finds more important: what is the goal of Kuk Sool? If it is to unwaveringly preserve the martial history of Korea, then to remain static is mostly acceptable as history doesn’t change. However, every day Korea adds to its martial history; why shouldn’t modern evolutions of Korea’s martial history also be preserved? If the modern Korean military is studying X, shouldn’t Kuk Sool Won consider incorporating X to also maintain that history?  But if Kuk Sool’s goal is to allow people to find themselves, to provide them with an effective martial art, wouldn’t it too want to evolve? That as new discoveries are made, as things are found to work and not work, wouldn’t the art want to grow and evolve to keep meeting those needs? Or perhaps WKSA’s goal is making money, but I don’t want to digress into that discussion.

Perhaps we can see why people that study Kuk Sool often want to cross-train: the art refuses to evolve, but these students wish to evolve. The art and those in control of it are free to do as they wish, just as those that study ought to be free to do as they wish. If WKSA wants to prohibit people from freely exploring and learning, I suppose they can try to do that… but it can’t stop us from leaving when we get tired of being held back for no good reason.

In the end, it’s all about satisfying goals. So long as you are being true to yourself, you being the martial arts student or you being the head of a martial arts organization, so long as you’re satisfying the goals you have and are being honest about them, that’s all you can do.

Carano vs. Cyborg

/ hsoi

Finally got to see the Carano vs. Cyborg fight from the Strikeforce show from this past weekend.

No question, Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos dominated that fight. She was aggressive, threw and landed more and better punches, had the ground game, submissions. She was just all over it. I think maybe for a few seconds Carano may have had the upper hand, but any judge watching the fight would have easily scored the round for Cyborg. Any that scored for Carano could only be voting based on beauty.

That’s the thing that I have to wonder about Carano. She’s pretty, and consequently she’s been dubbed “The Face of Women’s MMA”. She gets to doing so many other things, from appearances, to TV shows, or whatever… any time doing those other things, that’s time not training. I honestly don’t know what her training was like up to this fight, but I can’t help but wonder if non-training-related activities cut into training. I also can’t help but wonder if that added a little extra motivation to Cyborg, to want to ensure to beat Carano in a decisive way. Motivation or not, IMHO it was a decisive win for Cyborg.

But some will say the ending of the fight isn’t decisive. Yes, Carano was covering up, but she was not truly defending herself. From what I could see from the camera angle, which certainly wasn’t as good as the ref’s vantage point, it looked like Cyborg’s punches were breaking through Carano’s arms and landing on her face. Carano was getting a lot of hits to the head, she wasn’t actively improving her position, and the ref did the right thing to stop the fight to avoid any serious injury to Carano. If it had gone one second longer and the bell ended it, I’m pretty sure Cyborg would still have won and probably in round 2. Carano was dazed enough from all those punches at the end, then walk back into round 2 not only with the shots landed but probably some mental/emotional dejection because she was dominated that entire first round. I feel safe in saying that Cyborg would have eventually won.

Nevertheless, the 4:59 that it did go for was exciting. The crowd was hot, the fighters worked hard. Congratulations to Cristiane Santos.

The pain of training

/ hsoi

I admit it. I’m human.

That means in my core I seek pleasure and avoid pain. It’s just how living things behave. However, as humans we have this ability to think and reframe things. We may undertake “small pain” if we know it will help us avoid “large pain” and there is some pleasure-seeking in such behavior. For example, giving a small child a spanking because they ran out into the street, that’s a small pain to help them learn to avoid the bigger pain of getting hit by a car. Letting your child turn in a term paper late and getting a failing grade is a small pain compared to the bigger pain of perhaps losing their job because they never learned how to work under deadlines. One advantage of studying a martial art that spars is you learn what it’s like to get hit and how to deal with it, a small pain compared to the first time getting hit being when someone is attacking you bent on taking your life. We can learn how to take small pain if we know it leads us towards a better end.

That said, the small pain is still pain, and at least speaking for myself, I still don’t like it. 🙂

I was reading this quip from John Farnam about training. It helped me reframe my mindset.

Good training is ever scary, demanding, and makes you feel inadequate and stupid. When you finish and ‘feel good about it,’ you probably weren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Learning takes place when you fail, not when you succeed!

I disagree that learning can’t take place when you succeed, but the overall point remains valid.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt inadequate and stupid during training. I didn’t shoot well enough, I got my butt handed to me, I got choked out, I totally botched this, I feel embarrassed about that. People learn who I am and due to my résumé/credentials think that I should be some badass, but then I get out there and while afterwards others may tell me I did great I still feel like I suck.

Next month I’ll be participating in a weekend-long seminar. It promises to be very intensive both in terms of shooting skills and hand-to-hand skills. I admit, I’ve been a bit anxious about the class because I know the teachers are demanding yet some of the best in the business. I know my skills will be pushed to the limit. I want to do well in the class, but I think my measure of doing well was “succeeding” at things: that I would shoot in the top 10% of the class, that my empty-hand skills would always lead me to victory in all the drills. After reading the quip, I have reassessed my measure of success: how much I learn. Even if I wind up at the bottom of the heap, that tells me what I need to do to improve. Deep down I know this, but being human, I guess there’s some need to satisfy ego, some need to save face and not look like a total doofus out there. I just have to make a bigger effort to be, as Bruce Lee said, “be a doll made of wood.”

Thus, any training worthy of the name is going to be both frustrating and ‘dangerous,’ no matter what safety procedures are in place. But, failing to train is even more dangerous, and the consequences ever appalling and irrevocable. Ask any commander who has lost a battle!

That’s the more important thing. To get out and train. To push myself beyond my limits. Allow myself to be humbled and embarrassed, so long as it means I’m learning something about myself. The only external opinions I should care about are those of the instructor, but then only so far as it takes to allow me to continue to learn. As a human, it’s tough to allow yourself to go through these small pains. I just have to keep reminding myself that the small pain will help me alleviate the bigger pain. 🙂

Heaven Six in tonight’s class

/ hsoi

Sometimes the stars align and life is good.

In Kali class tonight we spent most of the time working on Heaven 6. Just a few days ago I blogged about Heaven 6, taking it beyond the use of sticks and applying it to empty hand work. That’s just what we did tonight. It’s been on my brain, and to take it further in class was serendipitous.

I have no idea what my problem was, but take the stick out of my hands and suddenly I couldn’t do it. 😮  I could do a single pass at it, but to just flow constantly just wasn’t happening. Could be that I’m mentally distracted, I don’t know. But regardless, it means lots of homework and practice for me, which isn’t a bad thing either way. So to make up for it, I just slowed down. That’s just as well. Better to be slow and correct. Speed will come.

It’s also important to realize that while there’s a lot about Filipino martial arts that’s common, there’s also so much that’s different. There’s thousands of “flavors” of FMA and while foundations are similar, details are different. Little details in how my Guro applied the empty hand Heaven 6 was really nice. For instance, assume you’re facing an opponent and they throw a right punch at you (e.g. the classic “right haymaker”). Doing the 3 motions you use your right hand to parry/block, then the left hand comes in… and that becomes basically a backfist into the inside of their bicep. It’s not how Janich was doing it, but boy I like this way because it works to continue the flow of things but not just being defensive but damaging as well. Nice stuff.

Nevertheless, I continue to be impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of Filipino martial arts. Something as fundamental as Heaven 6 is just awesome and ever so useful. I need more practice.

A Brief Analysis of Heaven Six

/ hsoi

Gun folk might know Michael Janich from his co-hosting of The Best Defense TV show. He’s also an accomplished martial artist with a background in escrima. Here’s a video with him explaining “Heaven Six”, a foundational drill in Filipino martial arts such as escrima, arnis, and kali.

What I like about this video is it shows how the basic “Heaven Six” movement goes beyond the sticks. Janich demonstrates a lot of empty hand application, from strikes, to blocks, to joint locks. Certainly he’s just touching the surface, but it does point out all that you can do with just that simple movement.

I haven’t regretted my decision to study kali. This sort of power in simplicity is awesome.

Regular firearms instruction

/ hsoi

In the original article that brought up working the unfun, ToddG, a handgun instructor, was talking to other instructors about what their duty is as instructors:

It’s a simple truism in teaching adults: they want to have fun. Being a good instructor is partially about being able to shoot, partially about being able to impart knowledge, and partially about entertainment. Keeping students engaged, excited, and motivated is a key responsibility of any instructor. The more fun a shooter is having, the harder he’ll work and the more he’ll just plain enjoy shooting.

So from a student’s perspective, remember that working on the things you’re not good at is the only way you’ll get better at them. And from the instructor’s perspective, think about how you can make your lessons more interesting, more challenging, and more fun. Trust me, the result will be not just happier students, but better shooters.

It got me thinking.

I’m able to self-motivate, but I know that I do a better job when I’ve got an instructor there pushing me. They’re able to watch me and pick up things I need to work on. They’re able to push me to go a little bit harder, a little bit more. I know this from my martial arts training that when I’m in boxing class, the way my coach pushes me? I can’t get that when I’m just working out at home. I get so much more from the coach/instructor being there.

I know there’s debate on if gun skills are a martial art. I would argue they are, but that’s a topic for another day. The point is, martial arts tend to be taught on a regular basis. You sign up, and it’s something that you regularly undergo. Maybe you attend 3-5x a week, every week of every month of every year. There might be one-off seminars now and again, but for the most part the training is constant. Some classes are instructional classes, some are just practice/work sessions where you aren’t taught anything per se but you learn because you’re practicing earlier teachings under the watchful eye of the instructor/coach. But with gun skills, every school I look at tends to do things on a one-off basis; more akin to the seminar format. Sure there might be various classes you can attend, the classes may escalate in knowledge and skill, but still the classes are just a few hours or a weekend dump of information, then off you go to fend for yourself. All of your practice is done independently, and there’s no watchful instructor eyes to help you.

Why aren’t there any gun schools that work on a more perpetual training approach? Apart from the military, of course. That is, maybe yes you go to class once a week and learn some skill, but then you come back to the school/range and work on those skills under the watchful eye of the instructor. This allows them to see if you really picked up on the skills, make corrections, improvements, and really ingrain the skills. Why isn’t that done? I could see much advantage to it.

My guess, it’s a market thing. Is there a market? Can you justify the cost? Of course, it’ll be expensive to deal with all the ammo. So I do figure that cost is one big factor here. Nevertheless, I think there could be a clever way to deal with that. Maybe the skills are something that can be exercised in dry fire or with things like cheap Airsoft guns. Or it doesn’t have to be a weekly matter; perhaps you just come once a month. For instance, you have class this week and learn some skills then go home and work on them. You come back next week for a practice session and work things out. After that, who knows… maybe you make practices a weekly thing, or wait until class next month (I’m talking about sessions with a coach/instructor, not your own independent practice).

I guess I just have experienced a lot of direct martial arts instruction and see the benefits of having an instructor there to watch over you, even if it’s just a practice session (not a teaching session). So I wonder why that cannot or is not done for firearms instruction (outside of the military). And if it was done, I guess I predict we could have a lot of awesome gun handlers.

Just wondering aloud….