SPECIALIZING IN ONE ART

Specializing in one art

-SPECIALIZING IN ONE ART
I was reading my friends blog, he lives in China and he had a very interesting article on crosstraining, and I felt I would address the issue from a Western Viewpoint. I will base it on my personal experience and my personal reasons for crosstraining.

In America, for the most part, their are very few REAL Masters of a particular artform. And from that small pool, their is a few that teach openly. So it is very hard for a person to find a place to train under a REAL Master who will share his system. So what often occurs is that we find some teacher who has been training with a legite Master and has to travel, or host seminars to get the info from this Master. One of the groups at the forefront of this method was the JEET KUNE DO group of Dan Inosantos teaching. They kind of cornered the market with Guro Dan's ideas about what arts he felt were practical. They brought in Yori Nakamura who taught their Shooto, they have Ajarn Sirisute who leads the Thai Boxing organization, Salem Assli the Savate, the Machados teach the Brazilian Jiu JItsu, etc, and most followers of these guys have crosstrained in the other available arts. They do seminars all over, and the host usually offers a variety of classes at his school, some teach the Arts seperate, some teach individual classes.

As you should know, all Arts have a specific body method that allows them to function the way they do, as I see, many people who mix the arts believe that no one Art is enough. I felt this way in the past, but after being exposed to Internal Martial Arts, I feel they are close to being complete, however lacking groundfighting. Again, the problem is finding a Real Master to learn from. So what is an American to do? They either are very lucky to have a Master live near them, or they have to move, or just do the seminar thing, which forces them to fill in holes with techniques from other Arts. This is what happened to me, I learned alot of different Arts, and most times I trained under a local Instructor who was very good, and I also did the seminar thing throughout the year, bringing in the Master to test us and give us details.Later I started to travel and train with the head Master of each style whenever time would allow. I see that over the last decade it has been easier in the West to find a high level practicioner of Kali, Grappling and Wing Chun, due to the organizatuions like Gracie Jiu Jitsu,Machados, Leo Gaje and his Pekiti Tirsia, Doce Pares from Diony Canete and Cacoy,Tony Somera and his Bahala Na group, William Cheung, Leung ting, and Gary Lam, Moy Yat, etc for Wing Chun, and many other organizations who have great teachers available here in the West. More of these schools are now available.

In relation to Chinese and Indonesian arts,our situation is very different from those who live in Asia, where they recieve instruction from their Master daily or a few times a week, instruction from a true Master !(If your lucky enough to find one)

If I had the chance to train daily with my Silat teacher, Herman Suwanda, I would have been in my glory! I was lucky enough to train under competent teachers, but not a Master on a daily basis. At this stage of my life, I am lucky to have a Master of an art that I am interested in, and that is my focus for now. I share all the material I learned in the past with different Arts, and I refer my students to the Masters I learned from, and hope they will travel to train with these Masters. I will never abandone the Arts I studied, as I believe all people that have advanced any art, have been unique individuals who brought their past experiences to their present Art and improved it. I have made sacrifices to learn different Arts, I have had to travel coast to coast for Instruction, which is costly and time consuming. The advise I give others is that if you are interested in a certain Arts and have access to a Master, then dive deep into that Art and learn as much as you can.If you are real serious about one art, I will teach you all I know and get you to a high level, then you must sacrifice and go to the people I learned from, and dive deeper into your training.

As far as crosstraining, If you do not have access to a Master or high level teacher of an Art and you cannot relocate, and wish to crosstrain, you can learn to fight pretty quickly and do it well. Also, if you have a solid base in one Art and want to crosstrain, this is also a good idea. In America classes cost money, it is not like it is in China, teachers here have to either teach for a living, or have a fulltime job, and just teach on the side. Many teachers also have a hard time keeping dedicated students, as people here as they get older, need to work one to two jobs just to pay their bills and survive, so they push Martial Arts to the side every now and then.

In relation to similarities in Arts,I have found that some Arts have very similar body methods and are easier to blend, I have seen a similarity in Hebei Xingyi body method and Hong Kong Wing Chun, the Arts are different, but both use straight back power with whole body linking of the joints. I have also seen a big similarity to some Silat methods and Bagua. I see big similarities to many techniques in Wing Chun and Kali, etc. It is ok to mix and crosstrain, but do not believe all things blend easily, some do and some do not, you have to experiment and spar. I also really do advise learning as much concept and theory about each art you train. In this way, you can crosstrain more functionally, by knowing what technique contadicts another principle, or compliments it. So in closing, I would like to say that crosstraining is very good, and you can take a fighter out of his element if you know more than him, that being said, i advise all people to form a base in one art, and then crosstrain. I don't think you need to Master one art first, but at least be proficient in understanding and usage. Their is also the adavantage in crosstraining to get ideas on new drills you havent seen in your art. I have used Wing Chun drills in my Xingyi training,as Wing Chun has a very detailed approach to trapping and gaining the line, I have used the ideas of these drills to form drills for Xingyi techniques. Another example is the Kali and boxing systems using an numbering system when training, each angle has a number, so you can call out an attack number and drill it, I have also used this idea in other arts.

MIXED MARTIAL ARTS AND INJURIES

Mixed Martial Arts and Injuries
After I had put up a video of Grappling at my school from 1999 with James Boran, I had recieved alot of e-mails asking me why I stopped doing BJJ and MMA. I figured I would explain it here in the blog instead of answering more e-mails on this topic.

MMA and even BJJ cause severe stress on the bodies joints, and articulations, whether from positioning or from submissions, etc. I was about purple belt level when I was forced to stop training those Arts,I was a blue belt and was tapping purple belts often enough to move up in rank, I had a few herniations in my neck and back, and had to take a break. The herniation in my neck had caused me to lose function of my left hand for several months! I had what is called drop hand. This led to me getting acupuncture and also led to me studying acupuncture, but that is a whole different story for another time. One thing of course I regret is that I never got into competing back then when I was able to. The school I was at was all about training for combat as opposed to tournaments, but we did use the gi and had people from other schools always come down and roll with us. I am very fond of grappling arts and now they are in the limelight and the arts are in big demand as well. I may still teach what I know, as I did recieve my Shooter certificate in Shooto, and also had a bunch of years in BJJ.

Alot of people feel that MMA is safer then Boxing, I am not quite convinced of this. I believe their are more deaths in boxing, however their are also way more fights in boxing as well. This is changing nowadays as more organizations are having MMA fights and we will see what the future holds. I feel that MMA fighters sustain way more injuries that require surgery, I may be wrong and havent looked at statistics, but every guy I know who does MMA has injuries that can be very serious. I see alot of meniscus tears, alot of acl surgeries, alot of herniated disks in the neck back and lumbar, alot of bulging disks with nerve entrapment, alot of twisted ankles, and of course their are the injuries from submissions which are usually more minor. MMA has more of those inuuries than boxing in my guess, but again I havent done the stats. The most common injuries I had seen in boxing gyms is broken hands and wrists and rib breaks and fractures and nose breaks. We see more of these as well in MMA over the last decade as the stand up skills of guys is getting very very good.

One thing I think causes alot of injuries in MMA and BJJ is one of my favorite positions, THE GUARD! The guard is a great position in the sport, but theirs is alot of pressure placed in the back. I was always lighter than most my opponents and used the guard alot. The thing people do not realize is that back injuries usually happen from micro trauma over period of time. This is what I believe happened to me. I had other injuries that were on the spot like a broken collarbone, and broken ankle, dislocated shoulder, etc, all those injuries happened in the heat of things and you felt it happen right their and then. My back and neck injuries happned more gradual and then when the pain hit worst wasn't at a time of hard training, it was like the straw that broke the camels back, it was just time for something to give.

If people do BJJ or MMA, and it is just in class and a hobby, I seggest training with people near your own weight, as opposed for training against heavier guys. When I was hardcore into the sport, we had no weight classes and just matched up with anyone and went at it. I feel this is asking for trouble with injuries. My advise to guys is to be careful with using guard, when using it often, dont get stacked up and stay contorted for long, as this is where all the pressure is put on your spine and neck. If you compete on an amatuer or pro level, of course you do what you need to do to get paid and be a success, but for hobbyist, I say take it more easy.

I have seen many pro heros of ours have bad back and neck injuries, some names such as John Machado, Rigan Machado, Eddie Bravo, BJ Penn, and a whole slew of top level competitors, along with this, I have seen the hobbyist in gyms I trained at with many surgeries and many injuries that put people out of work for a period of time. So with the hardcore mentality of reality training, comes the hardcore reality of injuries. Many inujuries are minor and part of the game, however the back and neck injuries are lifelong, and when it hurts just to pick up my son, its quite an experience.

So that is why I stopped doing grappling arts for a while. I hope to someday be able to get back into it, as BJJ is the only Art I ever started and didnt make it to blackbelt, that is a sore spot for me, because I like to achive enough experience in any Art I love, and be able to understand it from that level of experience. A belt was never a goal for me, but average is like 8 years for a BJJ blackbelt, so I would have had a good understanding of the Art if rolling on the mat for that long.

I love MMA and BJJ and Sambo and Shooto! The grappling arts can help you gain confidence very quickly, as you can spar very hard and you know exactly what level you are at very easily. I of course do not like the guys who are new at the sport and need to make fun of other arts and put down Traditional Arts, as older Arts are very effective when someone really has a descent skill level. Even if it does not transfer well into the cage, Traditional Arts work very well in the street. I respect all styles and each has it's place, just as all food have their taste, different arts will serve different peoples personalities and body types better than others. So for my situation in an nutshell, I was forced to stop training those styles, and hope that with or without surgery later that I will be able to to train in those Arts again at a high level.

For now, I need to concentrate on what I can do, and get whatever info from the best teachers I can. My Xingyi and Bagua teacher is of the highest caliber,and lives near me, so I am trying to get as much info from him as I can while he and I live here, and I am also doing more Doce Pares while I have a great teacher as well,so that is where my focus is along with building my acupuncture business and supporting my family.