Sunday, June 14, 2009

generalist or specialist

In martial arts circles, you run into people who do only one thing, and do it incredibly well. You also run into people who try to do everything. Some of them are even pretty good. I know lots of guys who are great competitive judoka and MMA players. But they don't know anything about spacing or timing farther than they can reach. They know even less about hand held weapons. One question for people in combative disciplines has long been, "How do I train for all the different scenarios I may have to deal with?" I really haven't seen a modern answer to this question. I have my own solution, but it's not very modern.

2 comments:

edge said...

You do remember that Heinlein quote" Specialization is for insects".
;-)

Anonymous said...

I train in bujinkan since 2012. Many people say we are generalist. For many people, everything is separate. But for me, anything is related in martial art. For me Learning budo (ninpo) is learning how to move, being natural, so I can do anythings (anything my body can support...)

Study budo is very close to learning languages! The day you master a language and be able to speak naturaly, you can do anythings right? When you learn a language you don't study only poésie ou propaganda?! how to write novels or a simple article?... These are specialization! Before specialising, it is important to learn the rules! When I describe tai jutsu to my friends, I use this analogy (language/budo).

For exemple kamae (see bujinkan kamae) is equal to japan kana.
Kana+kana+kana+.. form a word.
Same in budo
Kamae + kamae+ kamae +... form a kata.
When you do sparring, you try to get the last words!
difficult if you never learn to speak before that!
This is the job of Budo study.

I writed a text about that (only in french, sory!)
https://lecoinduyamabushi.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/le-tai-jutsu-ou-le-langage-du-corp/