I looked up, and saw the impossibly tall, dreadlocked form of my boss, Eric, toward whom I offered a sheepish smile and a nod. Scrambling for something to say, I remembered overhearing him mentioning training at a school nearby. “Aren’t you training in Brazilian Jiujitsu?” I asked, and he grinned. “Yeah! What do you do?”
A
loaded question, from my perspective. I paused. Since going to college and
temporarily leaving my home dojo, I had received training in Chen Tai Chi, San
Da, Tang Soo Do, Longfist Kung Fu, and wrestling; I sought out any training
opportunity I could find, and wasn’t about to claim ownership of any one style.
“…Whatever I can get, really.” I managed, then continued, feeling as though
that was sort of a cop-out. “I’ve trained in a lot of styles now, but mostly
things like karate and Aikido.”
“Oh,”
Eric boomed, pushing his lips forward in characteristically cool fashion and raising
his eyebrows. “I get it,” he continued, grinning toothily now, and pointing a
long finger at me. “So he’s a Jeet Kune Do man.”
I don’t
remember how the rest of the conversation—or the rest of the day—went after
that; it was that last statement that struck me. Until that point, I had never
really stopped to consider my position on training in so many different arts
and understand what it meant; I was following a doctrine which a friend would
later astutely call a “liberal arts” approach to martial arts: Learn from
everything, integrate from diverse sources to gain new perspectives and deeper
understanding. I would sum this viewpoint up into two primary perspectives: 1)
That there is something to be learned from every martial art, and 2) The more
styles in which one has trained seriously, the broader and more realistic their
total understanding of combat. The latter of these two ideas also implies the
corollary that martial artists who study only one martial art may be limited in
the scope and realism of their training; though my next post will work against
this somewhat, I still believe it somewhat valid.
Bruce
Lee was firmly behind this approach and it is strongly evident in his written
works, not to mention in Jeet Kune Do itself. Just from memory, I can recall
seeing described techniques from Judo, Aikido, Wrestling, Karate, Wing Chun, Boxing,
and Savate in his books. His attitude made a strong impression on me when I had
first begun my training, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts it has remained a
guiding principle in my approach.
Lee,
for example, always urged readers to be “beyond system”, explaining that “the
man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no
style at all.” The idea was that a serious martial artist is not after mastery
of a style, but mastery of fighting itself (and, arguably, mastery of his or
herself). The total knowledge of all fighting could be imagined as a huge
landscape, over which each martial art, is spread in a plane and occupies a
certain area, with more or less overlap with other arts. No one art covers the
entire landscape, though; and focusing on just one art means that only a small
fraction of the “terrain” is ever covered. (One can easily expand this notion
of “breadth” to also include “depth” in training, which is certainly sacrificed
when one studies other styles; this will be mentioned in my next post).
As Lee put it, “If any style
teaches you a method of fighting, then you might be able to fight according to
the limit of that method, but that is not actually fighting.” There is
something more out there to be sought, a sort of “essence” of fighting, and focusing
on only a single art can’t necessarily get you there.
While I
am not nearly as dogmatic about this point as I used to be (as I’ll show in my
next post) I think it still holds plenty of water. I can no longer count the
number of times I’ve seen martial artists practice or talk about techniques and
fighting in a way that exposes their utter naiveté to situations and types of
fighting outside whatever it is we do. I don’t think they are necessarily to
blame if they have never trained outside their own style, but they would gain
much in the way of realism from branching out. For example, I once heard a
fellow Aikidoka ask rhetorically why someone would ever want to throw a kick, “it
just leaves you so off-balance, so vulnerable, what’s the point?”. Dumbstruck,
I kept my mouth shut and decided I wouldn’t be the one responsible for teaching
him the reality of the situation. The situation is equally bad in other martial arts all over the country and probably the world; there is a degree of fearful ego that comes from parochial views and an unfamiliarity with "the other side".
In a
similar vein, it’s well known that dozens of skilled kickboxers, karateka, and
other stand-up martial artists who focused the entirety of their training
around stand-up striking found themselves nearly defenseless against grapplers
and ground-fighters in the early years of mixed martial arts. Likewise, I’ve
seen grapplers whose training has led them to think so myopically about
fighting that their entries and positioning tend to leave huge openings to
strikes and techniques that would be illegal in their realm of practice. Not to
even make mention of weapons; there are countless stories of brilliant fighters
being foiled by knives, clubs, and other unexpected additions that were outside
their preparation.
Miyamoto
Musashi, the legendary Japanese swordsman, complained about this
martial-short-sightedness in The Book of Five Rings, “…martial art is
conventionally viewe in a limited way, as if it consisted only of
swordsmanship.” Contemporary Aikido shihan Mitsugi Saotome explained the
point well in terms of context: “Much can be gained through
specialization, but too much specialization greatly narrows perspective and
understanding. One small part cannot be understood out of context… If you are
narrowly attached to one art, your spirit will become enslaved to that art. For
a full understanding, you must have a vision that expands enough to encompass
all others.”
Beyond
the clear notion that in the martial arts, what you don’t know most certainly
can (and often will) hurt you, studying other arts has tangible and direct benefits
to one’s all around skill, and training in a new art can significantly improve
the depth of one’s training in their original art. I can still recall how my
training in ukemi from Aikido left higher-ranked Tang Soo Do practitioners
clueless when trying to apply joint locks and trapping techniques on me during
exams, or how the spacing and striking awareness generated by sparring in Tang
Soo Do and Karate improved the realism and crispness of my Aikido practice.
Without exception, all of the greatest martial artists I’ve ever known or heard
of have had significant training in more than one martial art.
After
all, this is a large part of the mindset that started the Mixed Martial Arts
movement in the late 80’s and early 90’s, though as I’ve mentioned before the
momentum gained from this once liberal attitude is starting to fade as, for
better or for worse, MMA begins to coagulate into its own unique style.
While I’ll
never insist that anyone can be perfectly trained for any situation, I am
convinced that some inter-disciplinary “breadth” is necessary for a solid
education in the martial arts. Just how “broad” will depend on the needs of the
practitioner, with the implicit understanding that some “depth” is lost with
each addition of other training methods. Regardless of how you distribute your training
among whatever art (or arts) you study, I believe it is essential to maintain
the seriousness and reality that comes with being “beyond system”.
