LGodamus said:
Takyris, you are getting a little too personal and I think you need to calm down.
Actually, I wrote that after a night's sleep to ensure that I was calm when I wrote it.
Edit: And look how well that worked.
If I sound condescending to you it is because you are wanting it to;
Or because you were actually condescending. That's another possibility. Declaring that you weren't does not make it so, and I believe that you were indeed being condescending.
I was definitely more heated in my response, and for that I apologize. I was responding more to your first message, which had the most condescending tone, than your last message, which was actually beginning to feel like a conversation.
I am not ragging on katas, but what I am saying about kata and sparring is this, plain and simple ........repetition of a technique sets it to muscle memory......Kata as in the long showy ones,not the ones using actual tecnique, set these ineffecient and unoptimized techniques and root them into your marital style that you develop from the time you start practicing your art.
"I am not ragging on Bujinkan, but sometimes, if you practice Bujinkan while whacking yourself in the head with a dead fish, you begin to smell bad."
Do you see how the above line contains a logical flaw? Not everyone who practices Bujinkan whacks themselves in the head with a dead fish. And I don't think that you'd go out of your way to defend the dead-fish-whacking practitioners. But the implication is clearly that Bujinkan practitioners are these strange smelly people who hit themselves with dead fish. The conversation was about street effectiveness, and you attacked katas that are designed for tournament-style showiness, and then lumped ALL katas into that category by implication. It's a little rhetorical trick commonly referred to as a Straw Man. Most of the time, I would simply ignore it, but since you are giving someone advice using this somewhat dishonest tactic, I responded. Perhaps you did it unintentionally, and I am ascribing nasty ulterior motives to you. I am always embarrassed to discover that I am ascribing things onto people. This ascription thing is a really bad habit for me. Was it unintentional, then? Are there katas that do teach effective techniques, and you were only attacking the ones that don't, and it was purely unintentional that ALL katas got lumped into the "ineffective" category? If so, then I bow and retract my scurrilous ascription.
Same with sparring.....it has rules and the longer you practice sparring with rules you are training to handicap yourself.....whether you know it or not, you will unconciously shy away from techniques not legal in sparring, even if they are needed in real combat.
Complete and total agreement -- except that I didn't say that you should exclusively spar. I didn't say that sparring taught street-effective moves. I said that sparring taught timing and showed people how fast spontaneous and unscripted combat could feel. Did you read that part?
Takyris , you are taking my words completely out of context , and I wish you would not .
No kidding. Man, it SUCKS when people take your stuff out of context and only reply to the fun bits that they can attack. Just burns my hide! Dang.
I never said anything about other arts being silly or usless
"honestly for street defense ,none of the arts you listed are going to cut it."
-you
, and neither did I say anything about embracing chaos or anyother such nonsense you are accusing me of.
"There arent any forms or kata, it is all about adaptation and maximum damage effectiveness and efficiency."
-you
Embracing the chaos was my fancy way of paraphrasing you. Sorry.
The only person being condescending is you ...with your junk about whippin out ninja to and ninja fu....and all that crap you are saying....
Sorry if the ninja jokes struck a nerve. Again, being overly cute. I was using all that cuteness to move into the section of my post where I accused you of using a Straw Man tactic to dishonestly attack katas.
Heck, I like the idea of Bujinkan! I've seen some good material in some of the actual schools I've been to. I've also, however, seen some good stuff at other schools -- even at schools that use katas.
You say that people like me are "pinheads" as you put it, which is to imply that I dont know what I am talking about...
Well, not necessarily. I only consider you a pinhead if you're the guy that I got stuck with at a party a few months back. He was a pinhead.
I have no idea if you're a pinhead or not. Your initial argument was along the lines of "Some schools do nothing but spar/do katas, and that's bad" -- a statement with which I agree, as far as street effectiveness is concerned. But then you sort of twisted things around to imply that any school that uses sparring or katas fell into that category -- and I consider that either shortsighted or dishonest. Or perhaps you mistyped. Shortsighted, dishonest, or mistyped. You pick.
... then you go on to say all sorts of things about how sparring and kata prepare you for real combat...
Yep. That I did. Did you read them? Did you read the part where I said that sparring helped build timing, and that was more or less it? Did you read the part where I said what katas did for you? "All sorts of things" doesn't really give me a great view of what you're disagreeing with -- because I never said that doing ALL katas ALL the time and NOTHING else would prepare you for the street. I never said that about sparring, either. I basically said "moderation in all things". I made a list. Did you see the list? I used dashes instead of bullets.
Because, again, I'm getting the sense that I'm not entirely being read. Perhaps the witty banter of my post distracted the casual reader from the gems of actual insight contained therein.
...if you had read my above comments at all you will see that I have experience with arts that do kata and sparring , and I have experience on the street as well, and there really isnt much correlation.
If you're asking whether I believe it possible that you went to a school that didn't prepare you for the street, my answer is yes.
But right now, your argument is essentially analogous to saying, "I went out with this blonde once, and then it turned out she was totally psycho. I don't plan on dating any blondes in the future." You are saying that you went to a school that taught kata and sparring, and that you weren't prepared for the street, and then you're saying that ALL schools that teach kata or sparring fail to prepare their students for the street.
(Please note: humorous and unrelated example. I have no experience with blondes, nor do I presume that you have any.)
Just because you can take a punch in the head sparring in protective gear doesnt mean that is gonna help you take a bare knuckle blow to your face......Its not gonna help.
It'll be no help whatsoever? Golly. That's disappointing. Nothing AT ALL about getting hit in sparring by any means will prepare you in any way, shape, or form for getting hit AT ALL in the street? That just totally lets the air out of my sails. I mean, not even the "if you can't block, cushion the blow" stuff? Not even that? Darn. I'd felt really good on that. That's just a bummer. What about distancing? That doesn't work either? Shoot. And here I thought that learning the ranges at which someone could attack me would somehow help me on the street -- that it would be part my balanced fighting breakfast. No? Dang.
I really , take exeption to calling me ignorant and close minded , when I have in fact done all of the methods you have suggested and was merely offering my opinion on them.
I apologize if you interpreted what I said to mean that you were ignorant or close-minded. What I actually wrote was "to declare that there is no value to katas or sparring shows you to be somewhat ignorant and fairly close-minded". As you can see, the choice of whether you are being called ignorant or close-minded is entirely up to you. If you see some value, any value, in sparring or katas, then you are free, FREE of my vicious attacks, for it was only your assertion that there is no value whatsoever in katas or sparring that caused me to slap this label upon you. Since, by your own admission, you were attacking the showy flashy tournament forms and not the ones that actually drilled techniques, it should be extremely easy for you to say, "I did not mean that ALL forms are useless. Some, which drill techniques, can be excellent training, provided that you also practice the individual techniques with a student." Saying that would completely remove the stigma of ignorance and close-mindedness with which I have so callously branded you.
Furthermore, I,unlike yourself, wasnt attacking anything.
"honestly for street defense ,none of the arts you listed are going to cut it."
-you
Just because you put "honestly" in front of it doesn't mean that it's not rude. Unless, of course, it DOES mean that, in which case I'll just start putting "honestly" in front of all my paragraphs.
I was merely pointing out some facts and offering a few opionions based on personal experience .
You are presenting facts that are only tangentially related to the conversation and then using them to make blanket assertions. Perhaps you consider them your opinions, but you are presenting them as facts. That would go to writing style.
With that in mind I must object to your personal attack on me. It shows bad taste on your part. I am not trying to be mean to anyone here , and I expect the same common courtesy....
To reiterate what I said above:
I apologize if my tone was too harsh. I was offended by your first few posts. You eventually took a somewhat less condescending approach, and were I completely enlightened, I would have responded to your later comments alone and ignored the earlier ones. Alas, I am unenlightened, a fact that never fails to disappoint me, thus continuing the circle of unenlightenment.
You, on the other hand, seem to have made a point of responding to my cute little idiomatic sound bites without actually looking at the actual information contained therein. I can only assume that the sheer genius of those aspects of my post rendered them supernatural in some form, such that they could only be read by a martial arts practitioner with a childlike innocence and a pure heart. Or, you know, something like that.
I suspect that we do not disagree as much as we seem to disagree. As I said above, I think that Bujinkan is, in theory, a very nice martial art (in theory, because every art varies from school to school, with both great teachers and lousy teachers). I also believe that there are other very nice martial arts out there, however, and that those arts can be street effective even when they use katas or sparring as part of the overall training regimen. Do you believe the same?
-Tacky
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