Mad monkey, you are right on the surface - you need a base to understand the technique, however, once you understand the basic technique, then you have to expand it to develop a deeper understanding.
I spent close to 10 years studying bujinkan; mid 90’s until a couple years ago. I had the luxury of training under a guy that started training in the early 80’s. He trained much the way many describe as “the old days”. When you got hit or thrown it was for real – or as close as could be done without losing a training partner. For the first 3-4 years we were a small group 6 to 8 was a big class. Out of this there was typically 3 black belts plus the instructor. We also got together outside of class and trained that much harder because, we had no liability to worry about. Eventually the class died down to me, another guy and the instructor for about 2 years. In the mid 90’s when I’d only been training a year or a bit less I went to my first seminar. My regular training partner and I were quickly chastised by several (some being black belts) of the people we trained with as “being too hard”. We both were doing just what we were taught.
My point to all this is that I’ve only seen a hand full of people within the bujinkan with any real skill. Too many people are doing nothing more than dancing and calling it fighting. I even saw the change in my teacher, when about 4 years or so in for me he started going back to Japan. When I started he had not been to Japan for several years – his last trip maybe late 80’s. He eventually started making yearly trips and the training became more theoretical. More about balance, controlling a non resisting partner, and almost none of the previous hard core training. The more I got out into other training groups, it was to the point of ridiculous. I went to so many seminars where there was more bowing and tea drinking and instructor ass kissing than training.
In short I got to peer in the door of the old school and compare it to the new stuff if you will. What I took away from this was interesting, and very uniformly spread out in the bujinkan ranks. The only people I saw that had real skill had black belt level skills in other arts. I saw very few students of these good artists that became instructors with any skill.
My take on that is they (the instructor – those from the “old school”) had good foundations to start with and were layering icing on top via bujinkan. I also saw it as bujinkan has very little substance (especially in the softer flowery way it’s taught now), so without some type of base – you suck as a fighter. The analogy mentioned earlier of piecing together parts from different cars and calling it a classic is very apt. I see that bujinkan – to use another analogy – is like teaching someone multiplication tables and telling them they are a mathematician. I think that there is a lot of core missing from what is/has been taught simply because it – to use the analogy - touted as being graduate level math but all you are learning is long division, fraction etc – drills taught to elementary school level. I think as mentioned since Takamatsu and later Hatsumi made it up as they went along, there was never a core foundation. Takematsu may have back handedly figured a lot of things out, but could not tech it in a way that was re-producible. Hatsumi may have had enough background in other arts that he could figure the majority out, just like the early foreigners almost all had other martial art skills. They could eventually figure the gist of it out, but not in a manor one could teach someone without a background in something. So many people don’t realize that this is what they are doing, and worse go on to re-teach the same crap once they his shodan and think they are ready to teach.
By doing the techniques slowly, there is a lot of crap that will work that can never be done at full speed. There was always the “people will get hurt” or “you can’t do it perfectly slow how can you do it fast” argument. Anyone who ever questioned the validity of a technique was more than not given a rash or crap and moved to the bad list.This is no different than what the BJJ guys do. They take out eye gouges, groin strikes for example with the idea that if we can both do them removing it makes things still even, but safer. That is a load of crap because you are now free to do techniques you could do if your nads or eyes were exposed. Just like bujinkan, a lot of it works only when done slow. Do it at speed and it simply will not work.
Another very common thing I witnessed was how the greed filtered down. Instructors started charging more for seminars, and simply repackaging the same material from the previous. I started watching the ego’s among the “elite” grow as well. There always seemed to be an air of “here I am, come kiss my ass”. I am not mentioning names – good or bad, but I only know of 1 instructor I saw as immune to all this. In the end, I see bujinkan suffering from its success. It has spiraled into a group of petty bickering among its self, lost any substance it had to commercialism.
I spent close to 10 years studying bujinkan; mid 90’s until a couple years ago. I had the luxury of training under a guy that started training in the early 80’s. He trained much the way many describe as “the old days”. When you got hit or thrown it was for real – or as close as could be done without losing a training partner. For the first 3-4 years we were a small group 6 to 8 was a big class. Out of this there was typically 3 black belts plus the instructor. We also got together outside of class and trained that much harder because, we had no liability to worry about. Eventually the class died down to me, another guy and the instructor for about 2 years. In the mid 90’s when I’d only been training a year or a bit less I went to my first seminar. My regular training partner and I were quickly chastised by several (some being black belts) of the people we trained with as “being too hard”. We both were doing just what we were taught.
My point to all this is that I’ve only seen a hand full of people within the bujinkan with any real skill. Too many people are doing nothing more than dancing and calling it fighting. I even saw the change in my teacher, when about 4 years or so in for me he started going back to Japan. When I started he had not been to Japan for several years – his last trip maybe late 80’s. He eventually started making yearly trips and the training became more theoretical. More about balance, controlling a non resisting partner, and almost none of the previous hard core training. The more I got out into other training groups, it was to the point of ridiculous. I went to so many seminars where there was more bowing and tea drinking and instructor ass kissing than training.
In short I got to peer in the door of the old school and compare it to the new stuff if you will. What I took away from this was interesting, and very uniformly spread out in the bujinkan ranks. The only people I saw that had real skill had black belt level skills in other arts. I saw very few students of these good artists that became instructors with any skill.
My take on that is they (the instructor – those from the “old school”) had good foundations to start with and were layering icing on top via bujinkan. I also saw it as bujinkan has very little substance (especially in the softer flowery way it’s taught now), so without some type of base – you suck as a fighter. The analogy mentioned earlier of piecing together parts from different cars and calling it a classic is very apt. I see that bujinkan – to use another analogy – is like teaching someone multiplication tables and telling them they are a mathematician. I think that there is a lot of core missing from what is/has been taught simply because it – to use the analogy - touted as being graduate level math but all you are learning is long division, fraction etc – drills taught to elementary school level. I think as mentioned since Takamatsu and later Hatsumi made it up as they went along, there was never a core foundation. Takematsu may have back handedly figured a lot of things out, but could not tech it in a way that was re-producible. Hatsumi may have had enough background in other arts that he could figure the majority out, just like the early foreigners almost all had other martial art skills. They could eventually figure the gist of it out, but not in a manor one could teach someone without a background in something. So many people don’t realize that this is what they are doing, and worse go on to re-teach the same crap once they his shodan and think they are ready to teach.
By doing the techniques slowly, there is a lot of crap that will work that can never be done at full speed. There was always the “people will get hurt” or “you can’t do it perfectly slow how can you do it fast” argument. Anyone who ever questioned the validity of a technique was more than not given a rash or crap and moved to the bad list.This is no different than what the BJJ guys do. They take out eye gouges, groin strikes for example with the idea that if we can both do them removing it makes things still even, but safer. That is a load of crap because you are now free to do techniques you could do if your nads or eyes were exposed. Just like bujinkan, a lot of it works only when done slow. Do it at speed and it simply will not work.
Another very common thing I witnessed was how the greed filtered down. Instructors started charging more for seminars, and simply repackaging the same material from the previous. I started watching the ego’s among the “elite” grow as well. There always seemed to be an air of “here I am, come kiss my ass”. I am not mentioning names – good or bad, but I only know of 1 instructor I saw as immune to all this. In the end, I see bujinkan suffering from its success. It has spiraled into a group of petty bickering among its self, lost any substance it had to commercialism.
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