Have you become too big?

[Flying Crane]

Some of us are just perpetually curious and can't help ourselves. We keep looking around and want to give a try to what else we see.

Also, it's certainly possible to simply lose interest in one thing, and find greater interest and fulfillment in another. You might drift from one art to a different one in this way, and it may begin thru simple cross-training.

 

[Flying Crane]

In a rural setting where most of the traditional Arts came from, it was more natural to want to perfect that Art over a lifetime because that society didn't 1000 other things to pull one's attention away.

American society lives life at such a fast pace, it's has it's own built in desire to "outgrow" anything that we do.

Very good point here. If it was the only thing available, and you needed it to save your life, you stayed focused on it. It was done out of a practical need. In the US, probably many of us train out of personal interest, and less out of personal need.

 

[cmassman]

I'm basically a TKD guy, I have recently started to train in other disciplines as a way to enhance TKD not because I feel that I have mastered TKD I can take the things I learn in Kali for example on foot work or disarms and incorporate it into TKD to enhance my knowledge of the art.

 

[zDom]

Too big? Hardly. It feels more like when I was a little kid and put my feet in my father's shoes to clomp around the house. I just hope I can fill them someday.

 

[still learning]

Hello, Every art has it limitations. As we progress and learn about other martial arts? ....Many find they want to expand their knowledge...sometimes this new art motivates us ....!

I too...just stop my Kempo training...difference on how things are NOW run...too many changes...and it does have it limits or range of what is being taught...So this is a factor...that makes many of us MOVE ON!

With so many new arts and styles....Everyone should experience different things.....other side...to master a art...may take a life time!

Each person has more choices today!

Aloha

 

[arnisador]

I cross-train because it's a new way to improve/expand upon my main art (Modern Arnis). JKD has great liveness and range-changing drills that improve my stick sparring. BJJ adds to my ground-grappling game (I add in the stick myself). Balintawak illuminates the base of the technqiues; Dekiti Tirsia Siradas is a very different FMA and the contrast helps me see where things in my art have been made different--designed--for a certain effect (we focus on stick, they focus on the blade). It all improves my art primarily, and augments it secondarily.

I have nothing against someone who trains multiple arts for other reasons--I trained several styles of Karate before finding my place in the FMA--but that's what I'm doing. The JKD in particular has been great and I now have instructor ranking in it, but that's not what was ever my goal.

 

[MJS]

Maybe instead of recognizing the weaknesses I should have said, explore the stregnths of other arts . If you're going to get better, you have to train with people who are better and/or more skilled than yourself, and that number of people should decrease in your chosen style the longer you stay with it because your skill level should increase and because of attrition, so you may have to look elsewhere if you're going to continue to improve.

Nah, I don't think the wording is that big of a deal. The people I was referring to were mostly Kenpo people. Some of those people were ones that no matter what you said, be it weakness, strength, cross train...you'd be met with some resistance.

 

[Hand Sword]

It looks like we're getting crossed signals here. I understand completely SB's interpretation. However, even though it's possible to outgrow your art according to your personal goals, I think HS means "outgrowing" as feeling like you've learned absolutely all you can about the art you train and feel you have to move on solely because of that fact. Is it possible to master every aspect of your art so throughly, that the only way you can continue training martial arts at all is to take up another style?

Looking at it that way, I doubt it. There are masters who train their art until they are physically incapable, or until the day they die. If you don't use it, you lose it.

I think people change styles today for many reasons, this is the West, we have "short" attention spans. We're always looking for something more, or we have reached our goals in training and want something new now.

I don't know of anyone who has said/thought, "Well, I've learned and mastered absolutely every aspect of this art. Guess I need to find something else to train now or be done with it."

Exactly. :asian:

I think that's what HS is getting at regarding the meaning of the comment made to him by that teacher.

HS? Clarify?

10-4 JT. That was the feeling generated. Apparently, the instructor felt that once you've been in for awhile, you can't get anymore out of it. To stay and keep at it would be a waste of time, as advanced stuff is nothing more than longer combinations of basics. Once you got them down, and the styles philosophy of application--you got it. The rest is pointless, and you have to move on due to "outgrowing" it.

In Fact, he said that's why we have all of the styles that we do. All of the founders outgrew, then added and changed via learning other ways.


To the rest of the posts--GREAT STUFF BY ALL!

Thanks for the replys all!! :asian:

 

[Guardian]

Recently I've had a conversation with a teacher. He was under the impression that people cross train or take up another style to study because they "have outgrown their art." I was curious to those of you that do the above. Do/ did you feel like you have outgrown your art? Is it possible to outgrow an art, considering how long it takes to truly become an expert or master the material?

Without even looking at the other responses. I'm going to say that it's not so much that we outgrow our original art, but we want to expand on it, we want to learn new things, it's our quest to better ourselves so we seek what we think is missing (whether it is or is not missing) that is not the question, to us we think it is, so we seek out another art hoping to find that missing link and there is nothing wrong with that at all in my view, nothing at all. To seek, expand, it's the law of nature also, to progress to keep evolving, while never fulling giving up our past, we seek to add to it.

 

[Darth F.Takeda]

The reason, feelings and perspectives differ from person to person, there is no real answer except one's own.

Some people do take a style as far as they want to go with it, or maybe their emphasis no longer is in line with the schools?

If someone doing our art wanted to do an MMA match , they do have a decent base, but they better go train some MMA cause I am not switching a SD dominate enviroment to practice by a set of rules for 1 student.

I am locked into my Jujutsu Ryu and Dojo for life probably, but I still crosstrain for elements either not in my art or a different or complementary way of doing things.

 

[YoungMan]

I will never outgrow Tae Kwon Do, as I am fortunate to have learned under someone whose wealth of information and connections make me realize I always have more to learn and want to be like him.
I'm also at the point now where I pay him back by passing on what I've learned to others. To me, "outgrowing" implies you've reached the limit of what you can do and where you can go in an art. For me, that will never be the case.