• Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Mr. Hayes often reminds us at training seminars that we should have a question we are trying to answer. I have found many people have a difficult time with this. They ask things like, “Can you show me this kamae?” or “I want to learn about this ryu.” or “How do I do this?”. While these are legitimate questions they are very general. Your questions should reflect your training.
To come up with a question that will take your training to a new level you need to do some work. What have you been working on in your own training? What results have you been getting? Are they positive or negative results? Answer these questions for your self then you can format a question for your teacher, the online community, or if you’re lucky enough Mr. Hayes.
If your results are negative and you’re having problems the format would be: “I have been working on X. This is what I have been doing and these are the results I have been getting. Would you have any suggestions to get better results?”
If your results are positive but you don’t know what to do now the format would be: “I have been working on X. This is what I have been doing and these are the results I have been getting. Would you have any suggestions on where I could go next?”
Many times just going through this to get your question you will find your answer. Then you can move on to the next question. This format allows the instructor to know where you are at in your training and what would be best for you next. So before you ask do a little prep work and you will get a much better answer.
• Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Ever have a night when one of your students, who has been around for about six months, is working with the person, who came in for their first class, and they are trying to teach them everything they learned in six months in that moment? They mean well, they’re excited and they want to help but its too much, too fast.
This is a trap that many instructors fall into also. It’s very easy to get carried away with a technique and teach the really “cool stuff” but that’s not what the student needs. When you are responsible for students you need to teach in their time frame not yours.
When my teacher had me start a training group in 1992 I was not a good teacher. My group and I would get together and work on whatever I was working on personally. Its all I knew at the time. We did learn things but it was more experimentation then teaching.
With Mark Davis’s help and lots of practice over the years I have grown to understand that there is a format to teaching our art. Now with Mr. Hayes‘ To-Shin Do curriculum it is easy to stay in time with the student. The lessons are formatted to introduce ideas to the students in the time frame they should see them.
We’ve even gone so far as to identify and write down in our teacher’s manual the taijutstu principles at each elemental level of training. This way any of our instructors can look at a students belt and know what they should be explaining and what they need to wait on. The results from this have been fantastic. Students are progressing much faster in their understanding of taijutsu concepts than ever before.
Yes its fun to do some advanced stuff in class but if you are teaching professionally your job is to help your students move forward not show off what you know. Learn your curriculum, discover the principles and the progression of your art then present it in the right time frame. Your students will appreciate it.
• Thursday, July 16th, 2009
We had a question come up about how to hold a knife for self-defense. In our system we do not grab the handle with a hammer grip that positions the blade at a 90 degree angle to the wrist. We use a cross palm grip that puts it more at a 45 degree angle across the hand. One of the students who had trained in other arts was curious why when he had seen other systems use the 90 degree angle.
My understanding is that the difference is based on our body dynamics. Systems that use a 90 degree grip “tend” to move the knife with the muscles of the arm independently of the body. In taijutsu the body moves with the weapon. The cross palm grip allows the weapon to stay in front of the body and utilize its power without the need for muscular contractions of the arm.
If you hold the knife in a 90 degree position and attempt a simple front hand stab the wrist has difficulty turning to that position. The weapon never really reaches your body’s center line requiring the use of muscles again.
Taijutsu and the cross palm grip allow you to attack and defend at the same time due to the alignment of the body with the knife. Having unfortunately been in a number of altercations involving a knife, the ability to hide behind the weapon is something I greatly appreciate learning from our art.
• Thursday, July 09th, 2009
When practicing kata or techniques very often students rush “to do” the technique without understanding why the kata or technique exists. Kata in our system are reenactments of battles or are drills created to pass on principles of survival. They are answers to situations. They are not things that can be done independently of the situation or the attacker. You have to understand the danger involved in order to learn how to survive.
One of the ways to do this is to lose the simulated fight in order to learn how to win the fight. When practicing a kata try letting the attacker win at first. See what the attack looks like and what the results would be if they succeeded. Obviously you need to do this at a safe speed and have a cooperative training partner so no one gets hurt.
As you do this notice what your body’s natural reaction is to the attack. Many times in our art that first instinctive reaction is the beginning of the actual technique. Which makes sense if you think about it. Trying to do something that is not natural or instinctive in a defense situation probably won’t work (even though you can force it to do so in the dojo).
When you move from piece to piece of the kata and run into difficulties don’t be so fast to force your way by them and “win”. Let yourself fail, explore what is happening and then discover an alternative that you didn’t see before. Learn to lose so you can learn to win.
Enjoy.
• Thursday, July 02nd, 2009
Our school was closed this week for the fourth of July holiday but we were hard at work. There’s new paint, new furniture, a new inventory system, a new automated attendance system, a new student contact system, a new LIVE seminar, a new Kihon Class, new student rank sticks, a new Black Belt Club display, a new Master’s Club display, and a few other surprises.
I want to thank Darryl and Theresa for all their work and both Bob and Bobby for stopping by to help. Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend and we’ll see you Monday for training. This is the start of our push to finish of our first year as Shinobi Martial Arts with a bang.
Dennis
