We are familiar with the cliché of the student needing to pass some type of test to gain admittance or instruction in a school. From fight club to wax on/wax off, the student must prove his seriousness and potential. While dramatic in movies, such clichés are usually grounded in truth. Master Chen talks about having to do each posture thousands of times before being able to move on to the next one. Dr. Yang shared how in Taiwan he put his huge class into a horse stance and left. An hour later he returned and said to come back tomorrow. Only a handful did, so that became his group of students. Guro Dan Inosanto relates a story about wanting to learn from a particular Filipino master when he was much younger. Inosanto’s father had to arrange an introduction. He relates that his dad prepped him many times on the trip over that there was going to be a test, and the master was going to “stroke” him. That meant that while his father and the master went inside to visit and discuss things, Guro Dan was left outside to do the most very basic strikes over and over again. While making it feel as though he was forgotten about by the adults for the afternoon, he was actually being watched intently to determine if he had the discipline and temperament to learn. The master’s reservation about taken Guro Dan on as a student was that he might be too “American.” If the implication is missed, the translation was undisciplined and not a hard worker. My guess it also meant too much asking why and not enough doing.
I recently had the pleasure of working with the polarizing but passionate firearms/combatives instructor Sonny Puzikas. Sonny is former special forces from Russia, and he too had a unique take on the American tendencies. To paraphrase, he talks about everyone over here cites how knowledge is power, but that is poppycock. Knowledge is not power. True skill to apply that knowledge is power. But Americans are prone to confuse the two. As the great theologian Charles Spurgeon but it, “There is no fool a great a fool as the knowing fool.” We tend to think that hearing/learning the concept it is the same as being able to do it if we had to, and we stop there, never drilling it properly, never developing true skill.
As much as I would like to say people are people and that tendency is universal, I can see his point. And as much as I would like to simply say it is “kids these days,” the fact of the matter is this has been an issue for a while. Keep in mind, if Dan Inosanto is relating a story from his childhood, we are still talking 60-70 years ago. Sonny is typically dealing with mostly older adult students, not millennials.
Even belt ranks as we know them today, or on account of being “Western” if not uniquely American. Despite many legends to explain belts, Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, developed the belt system in the 1880’s. Originally there were two belt colors—white belt for the kyu (keup) rank holders, and black for the dan ranks. Sometime later, some people added either a brown or red belt (depending on who you ask) to differentiate the upper kyu (keup) ranks and the lower. (note: this was the case in the Chung Do Kwan as well). But it wasn’t until judo was taught in the West that the rainbow of belt colors we are now accustomed to was actually developed. Mikinosuke Kawaishi is credited to developing colored belts in Paris around 1935, as Western students needed more incentives to keep training.
I know I have had a few students that would have stuck around even if told, “If you work hard for 3 or more years, then you might get a different color belt.” But not that many. And they are getting fewer. In the first half of my 20 years of teaching at DePauw, the core students were dedicated enough that if they missed a single day of practice, especially without apologizing in advance, I would be seriously concerned something was wrong. Nowadays, I am forced to define my core students as the ones who show up to more than half the practices.
Nowadays, lots of people like to walk around with T-shirts of a “Spartan Race.” There was something that could be called a Spartan race–we make passing reference to it in our Eye of the Tiger black belt prep class—it wasn’t much like the race these guys run. Here is another fun fact about Spartans: the young boys of Sparta would endure savage beatings, and to utter even a sound let alone a cry of anguish was considered weakness. Pressfield suggests that people from other city-states would travel on vacation to view the eerie spectacle. I share this fact because I find it ironic that nowadays many of the same people who proudly wear their Spartan swag can’t last five minutes in class without asking “why”, complaining, or making some type of excuse.
I consider myself lucky that I was raised in the martial arts very differently. While I was never “stroked” or had to endure a similar admissions test, I quickly realized the discipline and focus expected of me. If we were told to do something, the answer was “yes, sir” and we did it until we were told to stop. If you stopped early without good cause, this was seen as extremely insulting. You were basically telling the instructor that you already knew this and you were good enough that you didn’t need to practice anymore (remember Sonny’s whole thing about confusing knowledge versus skill). Your instructor could even infer that you were suggesting they were wasting your time. In contrast, I can think of at least two recent seminars I attended, where half the attendees stopped practicing and literally started sitting around, waiting to be shown the next technique. And while I get cultures of various martial arts and even schools within an art are very different, I looked around (while still drilling) mortified. Upon returning to GMA I reminded our students that I never wanted to see them be that lazy and rude.
I am not one to typically bash America and lose sight of how incredibly lucky I am to enjoy my life here. But there are a couple of “trends” in society that I do find troubling that I witness regularly in the martial arts. Obviously I am biased, but I also think martial arts can be the solution. If it is taught properly: if discipline and work ethic is expected in class and laziness or whining is not tolerated. If standards on technique are upheld and people are forced to realize there is a difference between knowing and having skill. If martial arts can spot the “ugly American” in you, then hopefully it can also help take it out.
Gentry Martial Arts--the rants of a martial arts eccentric 