Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
Boil it down to a few principles. Look for the commonalities, not the differences. I assure you that someone who really has good ki/kokyu skills *must* be using the same core principles as anyone else who does some variation, but there are levels of purity and there are a lot of ways to use ki-muscle combos that may be harder for the just-starting to catch onto. The devil is in the details.
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Thanks, Mike. In general my experience would agree with your statement. I have encountered some areas in which there seem to be quite different principles at work in different styles. Just as an example, the way I was taught to strike was just a not very sophisticated version of what you do. I see the principles at work in good karate, wing chun, kali, etc. Some folks are far better at it than others but the foundation is the same.
But then you run into folks like the Systema people whose striking methodology is quite different. What I feel from their instructors is distinctly different from what I felt from you, or any other martial artist I have been struck by. Their explanations for what they do are completely different than any I ever had in other arts. So I do think it is possible that there are some fundamental differences in approaches that can be explored.
I get something valuable from all of these investigations so I keep chugging along. But I do have some level of confusion as to why certain folks can do what they do. By the time you get to someone like Michael Ryabko who can drop someone without you seeing any impact, it starts to be fairly mind bending. Certainly humbling.