... and it was over too soon!
I'm posting this first to thank the instructors who came to the 2007 MartialTalk Meet & Greet in Buffalo this year and shared their broad and deep knowledge with us, along with Bob and the others who helped organize it, and my fellow MTers who showed up, provided such great comraderie and trained with such terrific intensity; and second in the hope of persuading as many members as possible to consider attending next year's M&G.
On the training side, we were given basic introductions to a very wide variety of MAs: Combat Hapkido, Aiki-jutsu, various FMAs including stick and knife applications, Wing Chun, Kenpo, and more (details are available at http://martialtalk.com/camp/buffalo2007/). Each session ran around half an hour, and the instructors packed a remarkable amount into each session. It wasn't just a matter of jamming in as much detail as possible; rather, I had the distinct sense that the instructors had very carefully thought out the basic principle, the `axioms' of their system, and presented these in basic, digestible form to us along with a number of well-chosen implementations—theory and practice, giving us as much of a chance as possible to see the core ideas both in their abstract form and at (hard) work on the mat. One of my cherished memories from this weekend will always be ending one of the sessions with this sense that this was an incredibly good training day, and bumping (probably literally; I was fairly disoriented at the end of some of these sessions... all those circular arts...) into Andy Moynihan, who greeted me by saying `I'm so glad I came to this, this is incredibly good training!', or something very close, echoing my own thoughts exactly... and I'm pretty sure we were all feeling exactly that.
One of the things that emerged, early on, for me anyway, was the remarkable convergence we were seeing amongst the various arts. Everyone is using both linear and circular moves, though the emphasis may differ; everyone is using interpolated strikes to set up diversions and (very painful!) distrctions as preparation for major disruptive techniques; everyone is targeting weak points on the head, neck/throat and a couple of other `high value' target regions; everyone is training very close quarters techs, because in the situations we really worry about—the unsought street attack—that's where the action is; everyone is looking to minimize input (use the lowest-energy-cost moves that can achieve the highest relative impact and forced compliance on the assailant). What I found particularly impressive was that everyone who was teaching had clearly defined the relevant problem as that of self-defense, rather than intra- or inter-art dueling. An extended training day or two such as the one we had on Saturday would, I'm pretty sure, shut down any inclination on anyone's part to speculate along is-art-A-more-street-effective-than-art-B? lines.
Apart from issues of content, I was also struck by the uniformly substance-based approach the instructors took. None of this `I'm a seventh-dan in such and such therefore you must do it this way solely on the basis of my word' sort of hierarchical style. All the presentations were evidence-based: 'if you do this, then this will happen; try it out with your partners and see for yourself', and of course, when you do it, `this' is exactly what happens—whether or not your partner wants it to. It was a great source of empathy, I think, that your instructor for one of the styles was going to be a fellow learner when the next style was presented; the lack of hierarchical posturing in the presentations on Saturday was probably inevitable, given that all the teachers were also learners. Thanks and kudos to all of our M&G instructors! (You'll get to see them at their dignified best when Bob posts the pictures from the weekend...
)
As I say, my one regret was that it ended too soon. I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to so many lovely people—everyone was even more excellent, when I finally got to meet them, than I had been anticipating—so soon. All good things must come to an end, but please not quite as quickly as all that... still, what we did get was great, and I hope that there will be even more (both in the way of people and of MAs represented in the training) next year. Thanks again to all who made it possible!
I'm posting this first to thank the instructors who came to the 2007 MartialTalk Meet & Greet in Buffalo this year and shared their broad and deep knowledge with us, along with Bob and the others who helped organize it, and my fellow MTers who showed up, provided such great comraderie and trained with such terrific intensity; and second in the hope of persuading as many members as possible to consider attending next year's M&G.
On the training side, we were given basic introductions to a very wide variety of MAs: Combat Hapkido, Aiki-jutsu, various FMAs including stick and knife applications, Wing Chun, Kenpo, and more (details are available at http://martialtalk.com/camp/buffalo2007/). Each session ran around half an hour, and the instructors packed a remarkable amount into each session. It wasn't just a matter of jamming in as much detail as possible; rather, I had the distinct sense that the instructors had very carefully thought out the basic principle, the `axioms' of their system, and presented these in basic, digestible form to us along with a number of well-chosen implementations—theory and practice, giving us as much of a chance as possible to see the core ideas both in their abstract form and at (hard) work on the mat. One of my cherished memories from this weekend will always be ending one of the sessions with this sense that this was an incredibly good training day, and bumping (probably literally; I was fairly disoriented at the end of some of these sessions... all those circular arts...) into Andy Moynihan, who greeted me by saying `I'm so glad I came to this, this is incredibly good training!', or something very close, echoing my own thoughts exactly... and I'm pretty sure we were all feeling exactly that.
One of the things that emerged, early on, for me anyway, was the remarkable convergence we were seeing amongst the various arts. Everyone is using both linear and circular moves, though the emphasis may differ; everyone is using interpolated strikes to set up diversions and (very painful!) distrctions as preparation for major disruptive techniques; everyone is targeting weak points on the head, neck/throat and a couple of other `high value' target regions; everyone is training very close quarters techs, because in the situations we really worry about—the unsought street attack—that's where the action is; everyone is looking to minimize input (use the lowest-energy-cost moves that can achieve the highest relative impact and forced compliance on the assailant). What I found particularly impressive was that everyone who was teaching had clearly defined the relevant problem as that of self-defense, rather than intra- or inter-art dueling. An extended training day or two such as the one we had on Saturday would, I'm pretty sure, shut down any inclination on anyone's part to speculate along is-art-A-more-street-effective-than-art-B? lines.
Apart from issues of content, I was also struck by the uniformly substance-based approach the instructors took. None of this `I'm a seventh-dan in such and such therefore you must do it this way solely on the basis of my word' sort of hierarchical style. All the presentations were evidence-based: 'if you do this, then this will happen; try it out with your partners and see for yourself', and of course, when you do it, `this' is exactly what happens—whether or not your partner wants it to. It was a great source of empathy, I think, that your instructor for one of the styles was going to be a fellow learner when the next style was presented; the lack of hierarchical posturing in the presentations on Saturday was probably inevitable, given that all the teachers were also learners. Thanks and kudos to all of our M&G instructors! (You'll get to see them at their dignified best when Bob posts the pictures from the weekend...
)As I say, my one regret was that it ended too soon. I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to so many lovely people—everyone was even more excellent, when I finally got to meet them, than I had been anticipating—so soon. All good things must come to an end, but please not quite as quickly as all that... still, what we did get was great, and I hope that there will be even more (both in the way of people and of MAs represented in the training) next year. Thanks again to all who made it possible!
