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Old 09-17-2007, 01:50 PM   #56
DonMagee
Location: Indiana
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Re: Aikido Vs. Jujitsu (brazilian)

Quote:
William Hazen wrote: View Post
I respectfully disagree Don. How can you draw those kinds of broad based conclusions?

What is you methodology?
It's simple really, Look at the overall broad use of a technique in many mma matches (I've seen every pride, ufc, and kotc match ever recorded). Look at how the technique is used at different levels of skill, finally decide on its effectiveness in the context. It's easy to see the patterns. Scientists don't try to cure cancer by just running simulations, they run their sims (kata) then they test promising cures on varying levels of animals (increasing resistance sparing), then when something is promising, they test it on real people (the deadly street!)

Quote:
William Hazen wrote: View Post
Why does everyone think losing or winning a fight has to do soley with technique as opposed to it's use by individual fighters ?
Who said that? However, good point. I would expect there is a single person doing the worst combat art in the world who can win fights, that does not justify his art, but if the majority of his students can't fight their way out of a paper bag, then we can see the flaws in his style. AKA, if almost every Don Ryu student losses his mma fight, obiously my Don Ryu is lacking, even if I win my fights.

Quote:
William Hazen wrote: View Post
How many of the early contestants were masters aka experianced experts???
Well many would claim to be, such as Ron van Cleef, ichikawa, Ettish (take special note he was a expert high dan rank in his own stile), and others all claimed to be masters, some with a lot of fight experience (jason delucia comes to mind). That's just off the top of my head, but my point being, they claim to be high ranking black belts, masters etc.

Yet the tournament showed their skills to be lacking. Those skills might of been age, technique, strength, etc, but they were still lacking and in most cases (especially Ettish) it was technique that was lacking. They would of known this had they been sparing more often under a MMA ruleset (that they probably didn't even know existed at the time.) Also a number of people who challenged the gracies were also self proclaimed masters, almost all of them were shown the weaknesses in their styles (except the great Kimura, who oddly came from a art with a lot of alive sparing and fought basically mma matches as a job).

So how do you know a master. For me, it's watching how he spars. It doesn't take long, I can see a good judo man by the way he walks and grabs, I can see a good boxer by the way he moves and keeps his hands, I can see a good mma fighter by looking at the way they engage. What is true for a good mma fighter, is true for any one on one engagement. One on One is a large component of many martial arts, so this is a good metric for seeing effectiveness, if it's not effective one on one, that is a problem. Of course not all one on one techniques are good when it is multiples, but eventually we will come up with a different metric for that as well.

Quote:
William Hazen wrote: View Post
I do agree it may be a good place to start and that some of the observations over the years can be put into a hypothesis... which may lead to a premise.... which in turn may promote a theory...
I think this has already happened.

Quote:
William Hazen wrote: View Post
The Martial Arts have been around for over a Thousand years. MMA stye combat existed during the Roman Empire for gosh sakes....

One would have to present more factual and solid based evidence backed with tons of data to support any emperical observation about the Martial Arts and keep in mind the hundreds of generations of practical application, tradition, and experiance.
Two words, Chinese Telephone. This is the state of martial arts without sparing. If you played the game in school, then you understand. A quick exploration of the idea follows:

Art with sparing
1) Instructor demo's technique
2) Student repeats demo
3) Student learns holes and mistakes though drills with resistance
4) Student incorporates technique into his whole though sparing and learns how it works, how it doesn't, and how to improve his understanding of it.
5) Repeated a million times, eventually student becomes a teacher and shows a technique he has used countless times to submit a person hell bent on stopping him. He uses this experience to help his students understand the holes, faults, traps, etc of the technique. He shows the things he learned to help it work better, and shows how he actually uses this technique against a person trying to stop him.

Arts without sparing.
1) Instructor demo's technique
2) Students repeats demo
3) Instructor visually looks for signs of what he thinks is poor technique. His only cues are things his instructor told him to lookout for, and comparing it to how he perceives he is doing the technique.
4) Student repeats demo with instructors advice a billion times.
5) Student goes on to teach technique to his students, using his perception of what the teacher was trying to make him do as a guide to give advice to his students.

There are flaws in both systems. The first assumes you can put aside your ego and learn from your mistakes. And that you have the fortitude to not give up and keep trying new ideas. There is a danger of a student being locked into static thinking and just doing what he is taught, this will lead to a lack of skill and stop the cycle of evolution required to keep this model running.

The second has a flaw I find much greater. It assumes the instructor is perfect. If the instructor is not perfect, then you will learn imperfect technique. Then if you are not perfect, the technique you pass down is also flawed further. There is also a grave danger of creativity in this setting. Creativity is bad because there is no testing. Only theoretical testing. There is a chance for complacency as well. I may modify my technique as a teacher to make it easier for my old body to do. Unfortunately, this was not the technique my teacher taught me, and has lost some effectiveness. Of course I will never know this. I have no way of testing if it is better or worse. Of course my students will never know and think this is the proper technique, and maybe they will be even lazier when they teach it, further degrading its ability. Nobody knows.

With most arts, this has happened for countless generations. Sure Don Ryu might of worked on the battlefield of ancient japan, but maybe my students, or their students were horrible teachers, now the art is degrading down a path to ineffectiveness, and without some more ancient battlefield wars, there is no way to shore it up to effective. We now are in a matter of pure faith, a religion, not a martial art.

- Don
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein
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