An Excellent and Most Fine Method for Creating Your Own Martial Art
Friday, 28 August 2009 13:06 | 
Written by Al Case |
Art is creation. A simple statement with far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old into the new.
Art is creation. A simple statement with far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old into the new.
The funny thing is that most instructors don't encourage new students to come up with anything new, to actually create anything. The most popular method of teaching is to have the student duplicate and mimic, exactly and without deviation, exactly what the teacher is handing down. But once one has actually engaged in a fight one quickly realize that a fight is always new and original, and requires the utmost in creativity to win.
Thus, if you are going to win a fight, it behooves you to learn how to be creative. Interestingly, nobody has ever written a course or book on how to be creative. Isn't that interesting, a whole art that has no creativity in it?
To be creative one has to break down the current patterns of martial arts training one is engaged in. Thus, one method for being creative would be to simply take the specific segments of the forms and interchange them to make new forms. Take a pattern from classical karate, say the fourth set of specific movements in heian five, and then do the first specific set of movements from pinan three, then the fourth set of specific movements from pinan four...and so on.
The first item you will probably learn is that these pieces of art don't always fit together in a pleasing fashion. So, what can you do to make them fit together? How can you adjust the geometry of the arms, and rework the footwork, so that the movements fit together and even make sense?
Another thing you are going to learn is that your art no longer works. Doing the blocks in different pattern would never fit the kinds of attacks you might meet. So tweak your movements until they do fit a normal attack, and explore attacks that are weird and not normal, and so on.
Another thing you will find is the impulse to do different and sometimes bizarre things. Simply, you are going to start to realize how to actually create. Your mind is going to start meandering along pathways that normally would have been closed to you.
AsI said in the first paragraph, art is the fact of creation. Honestly, people should drill you to death, help you make every movement your own, instill art in you. But, even more honestly, if you don't start taking the movements apart and reconfiguring them, all that drilling is going to be about as good as a death knell.
Art is creation. A simple statement with far reaching effects. Art is the break down and synthesis of the old into the new.
The funny thing is that most instructors don't encourage new students to come up with anything new, to actually create anything. The most popular method of teaching is to have the student duplicate and mimic, exactly and without deviation, exactly what the teacher is handing down. But once one has actually engaged in a fight one quickly realize that a fight is always new and original, and requires the utmost in creativity to win.
Thus, if you are going to win a fight, it behooves you to learn how to be creative. Interestingly, nobody has ever written a course or book on how to be creative. Isn't that interesting, a whole art that has no creativity in it?
To be creative one has to break down the current patterns of martial arts training one is engaged in. Thus, one method for being creative would be to simply take the specific segments of the forms and interchange them to make new forms. Take a pattern from classical karate, say the fourth set of specific movements in heian five, and then do the first specific set of movements from pinan three, then the fourth set of specific movements from pinan four...and so on.
The first item you will probably learn is that these pieces of art don't always fit together in a pleasing fashion. So, what can you do to make them fit together? How can you adjust the geometry of the arms, and rework the footwork, so that the movements fit together and even make sense?
Another thing you are going to learn is that your art no longer works. Doing the blocks in different pattern would never fit the kinds of attacks you might meet. So tweak your movements until they do fit a normal attack, and explore attacks that are weird and not normal, and so on.
Another thing you will find is the impulse to do different and sometimes bizarre things. Simply, you are going to start to realize how to actually create. Your mind is going to start meandering along pathways that normally would have been closed to you.
AsI said in the first paragraph, art is the fact of creation. Honestly, people should drill you to death, help you make every movement your own, instill art in you. But, even more honestly, if you don't start taking the movements apart and reconfiguring them, all that drilling is going to be about as good as a death knell.
About the Author:
Al Case has studied the martial arts for forty years. You can find out How to Create Your Own Art at Monster Martial Arts.