What makes a system?

[puunui]

Starting a new thread:

a method built upon a set of principles that drive how everything is done. There must be consistency in the method, those principles must be identifiable throughout the curriculum. A collection of techniques could represent a system if they are consistently built upon those principles. But throwing together any group of techniques, especially if they are adopted from many different sources, is no guarantee that it will be a system.

What about kenpo? Not degrading the art, but a lot of times people add all kinds of stuff from all kinds of arts when developing their own kenpo style or system.

 

[WC_lun]

If there is a common thread of principles and concepts that drive the training, then yeah, its a system. Doesn't matter if its Kenpo or any other art.

You can use techniques from other arts as long as they follow within the guidelines of the particular system. If they do not follow the guidlines, then they would not be part of the system. Technique is not what makes a system. If there are no princiles and concepts to the training then you have no system anyway.

An example would be some art using tan sau from Wing Chun. If the elbow is out it is not a correct Wing Chun tan sau. The incorrect tan sau might work within another system, falling within its' concepts and principles. However, it would be incorrect to say that system had Wing Chun in it because they trained a tan sau that did not follow the precepts of a good Wing Chun tan sau.

 

[Flying Crane]

Starting a new thread:



What about kenpo? Not degrading the art, but a lot of times people add all kinds of stuff from all kinds of arts when developing their own kenpo style or system.

a lot of what I have seen in that arena tells me that it is not a system. That's just from my experiences with it, I don't claim to know all about it, nor be familiar with all branches and variations of it.

 

[Flying Crane]

I think a big problem is when people adopt material from other systems. They often do not even know if the adopted material follows the same principles, in a similar way, to the parent system that is adopting it. People simply see something different and they decide, "i need to have that, it's different so I need to have it because it MUST be valuable". But the question that often is never considered is, "Is that material even something that would do me any good? Is it so different conceptually from my parent system, that it just doesn't fit with what I am already doing?" That's an important issue that needs to be considered.