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Old 10-22-2008, 05:49 PM   #30
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
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Re: Shane, come back

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote: View Post
The one thing I think is important is defining the goals or end state of your training and how you are managing to get there.
I absolutely agree. But if there is no conversation on these 2 things then there is no feel for what the true baseline is. There must be communication or we're back to the problem of everybody's impression of "Oh yeah, I'm already doing that". What I called several years ago the "Oh Yeah" stuff.
Quote:
At some point you simply have to get over it and "shut up and train".
That's true, but even the guys who are doing it wrong think that they're just "shutting up and training". The smart guys are always cross-checking anywhere they can for fresh ideas and pointers. Show me someone who is not pushing and shoving and thinking and I'll show you a guy who is not really getting it. Everytime. My bet.

There is a great discussion sometime about Chinese martial-arts that claim to "mix internal and external". The meaning of that discussion if pretty profound and maybe rates its own thread someday. But the basic thing I'd point to is that most people who think they're doing the equivalent of "internal" martial arts are *at best* doing what is simply mid-level "external" martial-arts in reality. My point is that it helps to have these discussions. Are we even close to those discussions yet? No. But if there are no discussions, even useless ones, nobody goes anywhere. Even wasted discussions and occasional bickering have their uses. If we do as was suggested on Aikido Journal and cut off all discussions that don't conform to a certain level of "aiki", no one ever finds there way. The way is always tricky.

FWIW

Mike Sigman
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