Anyone started late in life?

Gerry Seymour

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So I have a question for those of you who have been around for a while. I'm going to ask Sensei about this first chance I get to pull him aside privately, but it's hard to find a good time to really talk one on one. I'm just curious to know if my experience mirrors others starting out.

The almost universal advice I've gotten from everyone I've spoken to is, "focus on the fundamentals," which seems like pretty good advice. I've been training for about 3 weeks now, and almost all of our sessions have been spent practicing techniques that are more advanced than I feel I am ready for without a solid foundation - advanced variations of ura gyaku, ganseke nage, cross grabs, and others. I'm having trouble getting my head around some of these techniques because I feel that my fundamentals are not sound, and I'm concerned that I may be developing bad habits by performing these techniques poorly before I'm ready. I've also been assigned a couple of times to some training partners that I feel don't have a productive attitude to training, and that doesn't help, either.

Just curious - is this the way students normally begin in the Bujinkan, and is it common for new students to feel this way? Sensei did give me a stripe last night, so obviously he thinks I'm doing something right, but it's just a little confusing.
I'm not in the same art, but many of the techniques are similar, so I'll chime in. The fundamentals often require some base for discussion. Your first few techniques may simply be creating that base. That is true in NGA, and students often feel in over their head at first. The firehose of information does seem to slow down after a while.
 

Chris Parker

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Psst, guys... the thread's 2 years old... hopefully Ginsu Warrior is still training, but we haven't heard from him in a while...

Obviously, it's good hearing from other beginners (fatninja), but don't expect the OP to necessarily answer....
 

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