It took me near seven years to get my black belt in classical Karate, but it only took my instructor 2 1/2 years to get his black belt. I always wondered at this difference, but it wasn't until I began to take apart martial arts systems that I understood why. It turns out that there are several reasons why it takes people longer and longer to become expert and truly learn anything in the martial arts.
When I took apart the system I had been taught I found there were two systems. I had not only learned the classical system of ten forms that had originally been taught to my instructor, but I was learning an additional system of seven forms that my instructor had made up. I was also learning several other forms that my instructor had thrown into the mix just because he thought they were valuable.
This happens quite often throughout the world of the martial arts. Ed Parker, of Kenpo fame, for instance, began his career teaching simple karate forms. When he ran out of forms to teach he started putting vast amounts of kung fu into what he was teaching.
Now the problem is not one of not enough material, there is endless material out there. The real problem is separating the material of the martial arts into logical slices. Each of the slices must represent a logical look at a style or system.
If we were talking dance, we would be separating ballet from ballroom from whatever. If we were talking music we would be separating jazz from blues from so on. In the martial arts we must actually separate karate from kung fu from aikido from wudan...and so on.
When you separate the martial arts, you must understand the differences between basics and stylistic interpretations. You must understand that the hard blocks of karate, for instance, go outward from the tan tien, and wudan type blocks are rotated off the turning waist, and silat blocks are slipping types of blocks, and so on. If you don't understand these differences the arts will be difficult to absorb and complex.
If you don't understand these things then you are mixing different arts, and different ways of handling the body, and different ways of using energy, and so on. Thus, a peach becomes indistinguishable from a watermelon from a cantaloup, and so on. Thus, the arts become a mush which the mind finds difficult to absorb.
Understanding these differences, the arts become very easy to absorb, and the mind just absorbs and catalogues everything easy as pie. The martial arts, you see, are only illogical because we have made them so. Separate Wudan into Wudan, or karate into karate, or shaolin into shaolin, and the martial arts canbe learned in a matter of months, not years.
Al Case has studied martial arts for forty+ years. He has written dozens of articles for the magazines, and developed Matrixing Technology. You can find out how to separate arts and make them pure by picking up his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.
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