Free at Last

I'd like to thank the folks at FightingArts.com, especially Christopher Caille, who gave me the chance to previously host this forum. Time moves on and my research demands did not allow me to focus on the site as would be appropriate.

I intend to remain a contributor at FA.com where there is something my few experiences can be of use.

Best wishes to everyone,

Best wishes to you as well, Victor. You did a great job as moderator and I hope to read more from you in the future.

Victor,

I do not know you and you do not know me. However, for your posts and a few others from this forum, I have at least tried to look into more classical arts via kata.

I have come to appreciate elements of your training and ideas. So, if nothing else, you have instilled curiosity. For that, I am greatful.

Otherwise, I may have been more dismissive than I would have liked and less apreciative of others as I should have been.

In any case, good luck in your endeavors and research.

Warmest regards,

-Brad

Hi Brad,

It's human nature to see things from our own point of view. I've been fortunate to have wide glimpses from several deep instructors, realize how wide the true martial arts potential is, realize how many times systems with totally divergant answers are still very effective and in turn try not to draw lines too tight.

Yet at the same time, knowledge also makes one realize you can't do everything or even a fraction of what potential exists.

So as I've followed and chosen, I simply focus on the base of my system, its kata, and the deep potential it contains.

Among the things that I'm now focusing on is developing a new training program curricula for new black belts in our group, focusing on a very deep study of something very small, the opening of the first Isshinryu kata. It's really looking like over 6 months of material on just that opening, and a potential so vast it really meets almost every range of attack potential.

But of course it is focused on just our set of practice.

Yes, the opening of a kata, any kata, has engaged the best minds of all past founders of a system. It must at once be instantly recognisable as peculiar and definitive of that system; imbedded within it is the basic philosophical underpinning of its combat strategy with a consistency that belies its brevity; and it must above all have at its core, combat appilcations, power-generation elements so that with every kata opening with those few seminal moves, these elements will always be performed and ultimately perfected no matter how advanced a student is.

It defines you initially as a student and eventually a master of the system.

It is therefore no small thing. One mistake here, generations of students will suffer.

The Chinese calls these opening moves "bai chuan" literally 'praying fist' or salutation (but is of course a lot more than that)

One system I know has 10 moves in its salutation. If a student were to practice nothing else but these 10 moves, he would have got the "essence" of that system.

Good luck to your research and let us know your progress from time to time.

"O Master, we ask you attend, this blessed eve and return to this world another time."
-Destroyer series

Thank-You Victor.
-Ed