Goldendragon7
Grandmaster
Clyde IS mentally illusory! That answers a lot.
:rofl:
:rofl:
Left-Right
- Thread starter tshadowchaser
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I realize I'm just a tadpole in this pond.. 
but as a student and instructor.. I like to train opposite dominate side.. I fight left foot forward and I'm right handed.. I think it's important to develop opposite sides.. we do our teks left and right sided at times.. not only to challenge ourselves but hey. . there's always' the 'what if situations' if someone is attacking with a punch and the Martial Art student is a say a beginner and has only learned a few teks.. are they going to be able to reach into their muscle memory recall for a left handed tek? Probably not as they haven't learned many yet.. so why not instill in them early.. Sword of Destruction .. left sided and right sided.. It sure will come in handy when they are doing Long forms
Just my opinion
Tess
but as a student and instructor.. I like to train opposite dominate side.. I fight left foot forward and I'm right handed.. I think it's important to develop opposite sides.. we do our teks left and right sided at times.. not only to challenge ourselves but hey. . there's always' the 'what if situations' if someone is attacking with a punch and the Martial Art student is a say a beginner and has only learned a few teks.. are they going to be able to reach into their muscle memory recall for a left handed tek? Probably not as they haven't learned many yet.. so why not instill in them early.. Sword of Destruction .. left sided and right sided.. It sure will come in handy when they are doing Long forms
Just my opinion
Tess
My instructor does not require techniques to be learned on both sides, with the reasoning that there are techs for left punches, and techs for right punches, so all the bases are covered.
Personally, just for my own benefit, I do learn them on both sides. I have a little trick for doing so, though. I type up all my technique notes anyway (hehe...I am so much a child of the digital age that I do not even own a pen. I type EVERYTHING), so I just go into my wordprocessing program and tell it to replace left with right, and right with left. That way, I can look at my notes, and switch the techniques around without getting confused.
Personally, just for my own benefit, I do learn them on both sides. I have a little trick for doing so, though. I type up all my technique notes anyway (hehe...I am so much a child of the digital age that I do not even own a pen. I type EVERYTHING), so I just go into my wordprocessing program and tell it to replace left with right, and right with left. That way, I can look at my notes, and switch the techniques around without getting confused.
R
rmcrobertson
Guest
Here's my problem with all this.
Handedness is inherent in kenpo.
It may or may not be hard-wired--but if you think it isn't a cultural and a historical reality, try opening doors with your right hand rather than your left, when the door opens toward you. We have all sorts of cultural assumptions about handedness--what does "sinister," mean?--and these run throughout the kenpo system.
Which side does a male student's knot go on? which side does a woman or girl's? With which foot does one step out into a horse stance, and why? Why do the forms and sets all start with right-sided movement?
And I still haven't seen an explanation for not letting the sets and forms "balance," us out in their own good time. I still haven't seen an explanation of why it's necessary to start teaching students in ways our teachers weren't taught--other than, I am afraid, a comment or two to the effect that if we don't teach the techs on both sides, students will get bored. The mosst interesting thing I noted, in fact, was a suggestion that right-handedness is a hangover from the older Tracy kenpo/Chinese kenpo one-handed days. OK, makes sense to me.
Hate to seem dense, and I am of course speaking out of my own training, but I still don't understand: why do Delayed Sword on both sides, when teaching a student to step back with the left and block with the right--Sword of Destruction--is exactly how the first ten yellow techniques are arranged? Or to put this another way: if the folks who were trained to think on both sides were first trained to think on the right side first, how'd they get to learn to think on the left? And why not teach students that way, since it worked?
Last: what's the best way to get students to develop power--not ambidexterity, but power?
Sorry, I guess I'm a bit thick this week.
Thanks for the commentaries,
Robert
Handedness is inherent in kenpo.
It may or may not be hard-wired--but if you think it isn't a cultural and a historical reality, try opening doors with your right hand rather than your left, when the door opens toward you. We have all sorts of cultural assumptions about handedness--what does "sinister," mean?--and these run throughout the kenpo system.
Which side does a male student's knot go on? which side does a woman or girl's? With which foot does one step out into a horse stance, and why? Why do the forms and sets all start with right-sided movement?
And I still haven't seen an explanation for not letting the sets and forms "balance," us out in their own good time. I still haven't seen an explanation of why it's necessary to start teaching students in ways our teachers weren't taught--other than, I am afraid, a comment or two to the effect that if we don't teach the techs on both sides, students will get bored. The mosst interesting thing I noted, in fact, was a suggestion that right-handedness is a hangover from the older Tracy kenpo/Chinese kenpo one-handed days. OK, makes sense to me.
Hate to seem dense, and I am of course speaking out of my own training, but I still don't understand: why do Delayed Sword on both sides, when teaching a student to step back with the left and block with the right--Sword of Destruction--is exactly how the first ten yellow techniques are arranged? Or to put this another way: if the folks who were trained to think on both sides were first trained to think on the right side first, how'd they get to learn to think on the left? And why not teach students that way, since it worked?
Last: what's the best way to get students to develop power--not ambidexterity, but power?
Sorry, I guess I'm a bit thick this week.
Thanks for the commentaries,
Robert
Clyde:
I object to your consistant use of "weaker side" to describe the left side. YOUR left side may be weaker, but please don't generalize for the rest of us. A decent percentage of the world's population is left handed. And as for me, well, I'm just weird.
I happen to write with my right hand, usually, but if it gets tired, I'll just switch to my left. Writing is just as fast and as legible. I paint with my left hand. I bat left handed because that's just the way I happened to stand my first time in a batter's box, but I throw right handed, but only because my baseball glove is right handed. I've played baseball with a lefty's glove and did just fine. I fence left handed, because the person who taught me sword arts was a lefty, so that's how I learned. I generally spar left handed, for the sole reason that it seems to make my opponent uncomfortable, because the rest of the martial arts world tends to fight righty (my opinion here is that this is a learned thing rather than a "handedness" thing). And for the record, I started out completely right handed.
I'm not sure if it was from growing up in the digital age with video games and the like, or just a desire to be ambidextrous (I really had to work on the small muscle control in my left hand, because when I was little, I thought that being able to do things either handed was cool, so I put a lot of effort into learning. This came in very handy when I had surgery on my right wrist and couldn't write with that hand for two months).
I may be unique, but I don't think so. My cousins are the same way (and I was adopted, so it isn't genetic). I think its from video games like nintendo and such, because kids today are forced to learn small muscle control in both hands if they want to be really good at vid games. We live in a generation that is becoming less and less dependant on writing, and therefore less dependant on "handedness" Whoever it was that wrote that "Training can quickly overcome hemisphere dominance" was very correct, and schools today are seeing more and more students who are left handed or comfortable with either hand because of this small muscle training early in life. (I'm almost finished with a master's in Education...they tell us some wacky facts in those classes ) Soon, left handed attacks may become nearly as common as right hand attacks, and training the techniques on both sides doesn't cause confusion, it gives options.
For example, on one of my belt tests, the attacker was told "one hand shoulder grab" to attack me. The other student, who was bigger than I was, but testing for a lower rank, grabbed me by the left shoulder instead of the right, even though we were doing orange belt stuff.... guess what I did?....you guessed it...obscure wing on the left side. It was instinct, because I'd practiced it, and I practiced it until it was instinct. I wasn't required to practice it; I learned it on my own. However, it did get me a couple of brownie points on the test, because I didn't have to think about it. I felt the attack and reacted, which is how kenpo should be.
Respectfully,
Nightingale
I object to your consistant use of "weaker side" to describe the left side. YOUR left side may be weaker, but please don't generalize for the rest of us.
A decent percentage of the world's population is left handed. And as for me, well, I'm just weird.I happen to write with my right hand, usually, but if it gets tired, I'll just switch to my left. Writing is just as fast and as legible. I paint with my left hand. I bat left handed because that's just the way I happened to stand my first time in a batter's box, but I throw right handed, but only because my baseball glove is right handed. I've played baseball with a lefty's glove and did just fine. I fence left handed, because the person who taught me sword arts was a lefty, so that's how I learned. I generally spar left handed, for the sole reason that it seems to make my opponent uncomfortable, because the rest of the martial arts world tends to fight righty (my opinion here is that this is a learned thing rather than a "handedness" thing). And for the record, I started out completely right handed.
I'm not sure if it was from growing up in the digital age with video games and the like, or just a desire to be ambidextrous (I really had to work on the small muscle control in my left hand, because when I was little, I thought that being able to do things either handed was cool, so I put a lot of effort into learning. This came in very handy when I had surgery on my right wrist and couldn't write with that hand for two months).
I may be unique, but I don't think so. My cousins are the same way (and I was adopted, so it isn't genetic). I think its from video games like nintendo and such, because kids today are forced to learn small muscle control in both hands if they want to be really good at vid games. We live in a generation that is becoming less and less dependant on writing, and therefore less dependant on "handedness" Whoever it was that wrote that "Training can quickly overcome hemisphere dominance" was very correct, and schools today are seeing more and more students who are left handed or comfortable with either hand because of this small muscle training early in life. (I'm almost finished with a master's in Education...they tell us some wacky facts in those classes
) Soon, left handed attacks may become nearly as common as right hand attacks, and training the techniques on both sides doesn't cause confusion, it gives options.For example, on one of my belt tests, the attacker was told "one hand shoulder grab" to attack me. The other student, who was bigger than I was, but testing for a lower rank, grabbed me by the left shoulder instead of the right, even though we were doing orange belt stuff.... guess what I did?....you guessed it...obscure wing on the left side. It was instinct, because I'd practiced it, and I practiced it until it was instinct. I wasn't required to practice it; I learned it on my own. However, it did get me a couple of brownie points on the test, because I didn't have to think about it. I felt the attack and reacted, which is how kenpo should be.
Respectfully,
Nightingale
Goldendragon7
Grandmaster
My point exactly....
:asian:
:asian:
Thank ye, oh golden one. :asian:
satans.barber
Master Black Belt
Exactly, I'm right handed and left legged, so in a left stance I have quick lead roundhouses and stomps, with a strong cross, or in a right stane I have a fast and strong jab and good rear kicks, and a good lead sweep.
I change stances when sparring every 30 seconds or so as it makes me feel comfortable and distracts people, I wouldn't call one side weaker than the other.
Ian.
I change stances when sparring every 30 seconds or so as it makes me feel comfortable and distracts people, I wouldn't call one side weaker than the other.
Ian.
R
rmcrobertson
Guest
Here's my concern.
I realize, of course, that we needn't do everything in kenpo the same way that They did it back when Giants Ruled the Earth (you know--the Sixties), and that change is part of all martial arts and especially part of kenpo. Of course, I recollect the constant injunctions in kenpo about tailoring the art to fit ourselves. I know that I am the product of the way I was taught. And I even see that no two people are alike; I might even be persuaded that I am, personally, a little too committed to rote repetition.
OK.
But here's my issue: teaching. I associate this "ambidexterity," stuff with the repeated assertion in kenpo that we can cut down the techniques per belt level and do no damage to what (and how well) students learn. I associate it with the idea, often advanced by folks who had to learn forms and sets to get good, that we don't need the forms and sets. And, I wonder to what extent we're castrating our students when we jack around too much, too early, with the organized system and the Web of Knowledge.
I'm asking for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that I've observed that when students who teach get to a certain level, they get bored with teaching the same old same old--and they start either a) jacking around with what they were taught, or b) teaching white belts material that's not only above the white belt's head, but which is actively damaging to the white belt's progress. There's a nice article by Ted Mancuso on the Plum Publications web site (started in kenpo and got his BB from Mr. Parker) on the matter: it's called, "Vanilla Kung- Fu." So, for example, we don't wanna teach Short 1 any more because we're bored--usually because we haven't looked deeply enough to be engaged. And we shove students on to Short 2 before they're ready...because we're bored.
My point's probably pathetically clear. But again I want to ask: what's the best way to get students to develop power--not ambidexterity, but power? What's the best way to lay down a good foundation for later study, rather than creating cul-de-sacs in training that students are going to have a hard time navigating out of? One way to see this: all of the posts so far have talked about hand ambidexterity. Have any even mentioned stances--not just switches, but developing confidence in one's stances and stance work?
Or just to bedevil my side of the argument. These techniques weren't handed down from Sinai, you know. How much of this stuff about right sidedness is just rote repetition? Do we have any actual information on the best way to get students to where we'd like to think we are?
Thanks,
Robert
I realize, of course, that we needn't do everything in kenpo the same way that They did it back when Giants Ruled the Earth (you know--the Sixties), and that change is part of all martial arts and especially part of kenpo. Of course, I recollect the constant injunctions in kenpo about tailoring the art to fit ourselves. I know that I am the product of the way I was taught. And I even see that no two people are alike; I might even be persuaded that I am, personally, a little too committed to rote repetition.
OK.
But here's my issue: teaching. I associate this "ambidexterity," stuff with the repeated assertion in kenpo that we can cut down the techniques per belt level and do no damage to what (and how well) students learn. I associate it with the idea, often advanced by folks who had to learn forms and sets to get good, that we don't need the forms and sets. And, I wonder to what extent we're castrating our students when we jack around too much, too early, with the organized system and the Web of Knowledge.
I'm asking for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that I've observed that when students who teach get to a certain level, they get bored with teaching the same old same old--and they start either a) jacking around with what they were taught, or b) teaching white belts material that's not only above the white belt's head, but which is actively damaging to the white belt's progress. There's a nice article by Ted Mancuso on the Plum Publications web site (started in kenpo and got his BB from Mr. Parker) on the matter: it's called, "Vanilla Kung- Fu." So, for example, we don't wanna teach Short 1 any more because we're bored--usually because we haven't looked deeply enough to be engaged. And we shove students on to Short 2 before they're ready...because we're bored.
My point's probably pathetically clear. But again I want to ask: what's the best way to get students to develop power--not ambidexterity, but power? What's the best way to lay down a good foundation for later study, rather than creating cul-de-sacs in training that students are going to have a hard time navigating out of? One way to see this: all of the posts so far have talked about hand ambidexterity. Have any even mentioned stances--not just switches, but developing confidence in one's stances and stance work?
Or just to bedevil my side of the argument. These techniques weren't handed down from Sinai, you know. How much of this stuff about right sidedness is just rote repetition? Do we have any actual information on the best way to get students to where we'd like to think we are?
Thanks,
Robert
Klondike93
Master Black Belt
I had discussed this with my instructor and he was telling me you really don't need to practice both sides because the techniques have all built in. Then what's he do, he's going over a simple technique, Twirling Wings, and tells us to do it from both sides.
Felt a tad awkward at first, then no probs at all. But, now I'm going to go back and work all the techniques from the other side to become familiar with them. But I'd say if you don't do them from both sides, don't worry about it, maybe just try it on your own and see what happens.
Oh and I'm right handed and I always fight with a left lead. I idolized Bill Wallace as a kid so I devloped a good left leg. Plus being right handed that's my power hand so I like to have it back for the KO punch.
:asian:
Felt a tad awkward at first, then no probs at all. But, now I'm going to go back and work all the techniques from the other side to become familiar with them. But I'd say if you don't do them from both sides, don't worry about it, maybe just try it on your own and see what happens.
Oh and I'm right handed and I always fight with a left lead. I idolized Bill Wallace as a kid so I devloped a good left leg. Plus being right handed that's my power hand so I like to have it back for the KO punch.
:asian:
Goldendragon7
Grandmaster
students to develop form, power, or anything else if they commit to my training régime (The Process). First we lay down the basics which encompass all the initial maneuvers stances, blocks, parries, punches, strikes, finger techniques, foot maneuvers, & kicks all the while teaching key principles such as proper body alignment and others that are important at this level.
As they develop with time and a watchful eye they increase in coordination, confidence, and skill.
So I don't have an answer to your question other than what it is that you are doing.
:asian:
As they develop with time and a watchful eye they increase in coordination, confidence, and skill.
So I don't have an answer to your question other than what it is that you are doing.
:asian:
R
Ronin
Guest
In my opinion and being a student of "both sides" I think it makes for a more complete black belt. Think about all we hear on a lot of these forums is people opinions on how to cut things short. Whats the big hurry? There are many top instructors that never were required when they were coming through the ranks to do the opposite sides. But dont you think if you were asked during a seminar to do the opposite side of a technique that it would make you look that much better and more of a complete student. They dont cover those things because most people dont practice the opposite side and therefore the dont want to look awkward. If I was to test for black belt and was asked to do the opposite side I would do it without hesitation and would be to embarassed to say i dont do opposite sides. When i accept my rank i'll be that much prouder and in my opinion a more complete student. In other words I can do far more than the others that accept their black belt knowing only "half " the stuff i know. No offense to anyone. I must bow out of these debates and get back to working out, something I think Mr. Parker would do insteading of bitching on a computer.
P
ProfessorKenpo
Guest
Originally posted by nightingale8472
Clyde:
I object to your consistant use of "weaker side" to describe the left side. YOUR left side may be weaker, but please don't generalize for the rest of us.
Nightingale
Show me where I've been consistent saying weak side, I wrote it once. Yes, there is a percentage of the population that's right hemisphere dominant, and there's a helluva lot less that are true ambidextrious, and I also fight left leg forward, so what? I doesn't change anything.
By the way, Dennis, you never posted the other benefits of training both sides, you know, just being non-illusive.
Have a great Kenpo day
Clyde
Goldendragon7
Grandmaster
Actually I did, but then went back to view them a couple days later only to not find them posted......
Here are several benefits that I have experienced either physically or perceived ...
* Increased reaction time
* Increased physical mobility
* Increased coordination
* Greater understanding of Self Defense Techniques
* Increased confidence
* An arsenal of drills without leaving the system
* Increased focus on movements
* Smoother transitions between movements
* A greater sense of completeness thru knowing
oneself to a greater degree
* An increased understanding of Master Key actions
* A clear increase in ambidextrous movements
and others
Like I said before, I personally see and have for years experienced a marked difference in the students that I have trained, but the base system as someone pointed out does also, in fact, cover many bases but in a more obscure way.
I just merely present my feelings on the matter not knocking others or the path that they choose to train on, some may find no reason to do the training as I have chosen, that is ok there are many roads that may lead to Rome, but I wouldn't consider it a "waste of time" if they are training Kenpo and making progress. I have much more class than to make rude comments like that.
:asian:
eternalwhitebelt
Green Belt
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Ofcourse a good amount of the techniques are done on both sides in long forms 3, 4, 5, and 6. So a black belt who "only" knows half as much as you would be able to do it on both sides anyway. Ofcourse we all know that doing a technique at a seminar and saving face is the most important thing here anyway.
Goldendragon7
Grandmaster
Nooooooo I think you missed the point all together.......
but I can see where some may view it that way.......
there are always different interpretations of the written word without actually seeing an individual perform.......
:asian:
but I can see where some may view it that way.......
there are always different interpretations of the written word without actually seeing an individual perform.......
:asian:
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I personally feel it all comes down to a matter of perception. I have not made a point of making my students do all the techs right vs left side. I see a value in it though. I am naturally left handed and right footed. I used to pick a technique at random and make it solely left handed, as my students saw it, just to mess with them. The truth was, I was trying to break them out of the box. He who stays in the box, winds up in a box.
R
rmcrobertson
Guest
First off, I'm going to try and stay out of the issue of textual criticism--nope, changed my mind. I think the post in regard to certain theories of what's important was right on target. It may not be what was intended to be intended, but once you've said that practicing both sides makes you look, "better and more of a complete student," (it was a rhetorical question, not a real one), once you've said that others do not run the techniques on both sides in public because, "they don't want to look awkward," once you've said, "I can do far more than the others that accept their black belt knowing only 'half,' the stuff that I know," you have made a claim of superiority. (Why the quotes around, 'half?' ) Papering it over with a quick, "No offense to anybody," is mere denegation, and only re-confirms the original assertion of superiority.
Again: is this a matter of what's best for students, or our boredom as instructors? How would we go about proving the case--experience, anecdote, are at best merely indicative, not proofs in and of themselves? Since assertions of authority seem to be in part the issue, why'd the Web of Knowledge and the techniques get laid out the way they are, if ambidexterity is such a consideration? Is developing power an issue in this?
I do not claim to have counterbalancing proofs. I only argue that developing the right first, and moving toward--not arriving at, but moving toward--balance in the normal course of training up through the techs, sets and forms has a simple and elegant rationale.
And again: why is right-handedness built into kenpo at the level of basics, of forms and sets, of ritual and salutation as well as (for some, not all) techniques? I'd argue that it is because this enables a student, from early on, to adapt a tech like Obscure Wing (as one poster remarked) for a left-sided grab.
Or so I'd argue. Thank you all for the interesting and illuminating discussion, about which I will think.
Again: is this a matter of what's best for students, or our boredom as instructors? How would we go about proving the case--experience, anecdote, are at best merely indicative, not proofs in and of themselves? Since assertions of authority seem to be in part the issue, why'd the Web of Knowledge and the techniques get laid out the way they are, if ambidexterity is such a consideration? Is developing power an issue in this?
I do not claim to have counterbalancing proofs. I only argue that developing the right first, and moving toward--not arriving at, but moving toward--balance in the normal course of training up through the techs, sets and forms has a simple and elegant rationale.
And again: why is right-handedness built into kenpo at the level of basics, of forms and sets, of ritual and salutation as well as (for some, not all) techniques? I'd argue that it is because this enables a student, from early on, to adapt a tech like Obscure Wing (as one poster remarked) for a left-sided grab.
Or so I'd argue. Thank you all for the interesting and illuminating discussion, about which I will think.
J
jeffkyle
Guest
If this is your question...then I must ask for clarification...do you mean righthandedness with the attacks in which we defend against? Or in the self defense techniques themselves?
Personally i feel that the execution of basics individually works both sides. For example, when performing basic punches you START with the RIGHT hand, but you actually perform the punches with both hands. So in a sense it is Right handed, but both sides are worked equally. But as for everything else, with the exception of my question about the techniques, they do seem right hand dominant.
As for Why everything starts on the right side, I don't know.
B
brianhunter
Guest
its not whos right, its whos left! But can anyone tell me whos on first?
