Form follows function

No, not biology. That's not even a debate, where I'm from. But human enterprises, if they are functional, make their form adapt to their goals. Trying to hammer a nail down with a typewriter is doable, but...

So... How does function affect form in martial arts? Well... Remember MacYoung's focuses? If your martial arts are for health, they'll work different that if they're trying to assassinate sentries. Even in the same branch. Tai chi, for example, is very different depending on how you use it. Karate for grade school physical fitness is very different from classical Okinawan karate. There are variations in kendo techniques that will help you win a championship but mess with you martial understanding of it and, also, your health (wrist hyperextension, for one). I do recall an olympic competitor in judo who had his elbow relocated thrice in the Olympics in 1992. Do you think he still practices? A local sub-21 champion had quit judo because his shoulder got dislocated if you shook hands with him. He didn't seem to mind, back then.

So... What is your focus? What is you instructor's focus? And your branch's? What are they not transmitting? What are they changing? Or negelcting. Or...

Take care.

[Actually written Sept 14th, 2018]

Still alive... after a thousand years

Not me. I'm alive, obviously, or you wouldn't be reading this. These last years have been... sort of interesting. I've managed to hold to some of my MA practice by the tips of my nails, though.

But... Okay, some background first. There are games that've been with humankind for, literally, thousands of years. Board games. Such games were not played as we understand the word today. The same way martial arts were not a kindergarden, games were something else. Something that was expected to be useful; a good game IS, but they were expected to be.

So... Westerners have Chess. And it's become a certain badge of intellect, and comfortably shelved away once the kid is boeyond that stage. Next to a dusty guitar. But if you look into the history of the variants of Chess, you'll find some interesting ideas. Check Shogi and prisoners, and think... "Hmm... Mercenaries?" Or the wider board ones. Or...

Then check Go, find how it's shaped the history of Asia, of artificial intelligence. The same AI that helps (or doesn't) your packets reach you. Or your internet search. Or...

There's another game, about as old as the oldest of chess variants. But cultivated by a people who had not much use for writing. Some, just not quite as much. Vikings.

It's an interesting game because you don't need six different kinds of elaborately carved pieces. Two colors of pebbles will do, a single on of those pebbles slightly larger, or redder, or with some peculiar shape.

Tafl.

And it's interesting for another reason. It's assymetrical. The attacher has twice your pieces. And you have to protect a single one of them, have it run away. It's, actually, a self-defense scenario. You can think of several scenes where, whichever player you are, the parallels with real life are downright chilling. And the advantage of the abstract nature of it is that you can make your brain work without having it go into denial: "this would never happen", "there's no way I can flee that!"... and so on and so forth.

Game on. Take care.

What's a samurai like?

This is going to be a tad unmartial, but it relates. It's just that I'm going to send to different people from different subsets of mailing lists and I don't want to neither repeat myself too much nor presume I can share their mails with each other.

What's your first image of a samurai? The sober man standing guard near his lords's castle? That lord paying a "courtesy" compulsory visit to the shogun? That same lord at his state? Their attire, their swords, are not going to be the same.

And yet, they are but a small, specific subset, of samurai history. Edo's shogunate. A government system set up by an upstart minor samurai of humble origins that destroyed the martial prowess of the samurai. Yes, I'm serious. The next time the samurai are at war they loose to peasant conscripts, hugely. And he does it willingly, to subdue a threat.

And that's the samurai we know. Martial artists put on a hakama, because it's "traditional", not really knowing when that tradition starts, or what was worn before. The katana becomes "THE" sword of the samurai... never mind that katana had different standards in time, different mountings, different... But the 2+ shaku katana of the Edo period, in compulsory (that word, again) black becomes the one and only. Maybe, if you're lucky, the daimyo's heritage mounting when he wants to impress a visitor.


O... kay. Let's check the Edo period. The urbanization of Japan, the pax Tokugawa, leads to an increased emphasis on what we would call police work. And one of the tools, that dubs as a badge of office, is the jutte. The following pics are from Don Cunningham's Samurai Weapons (Tools of the Warrior), at Tuttle. There are more pics, but I don't want to spoil the book.

See how the complexity of the manufacture increases? Simple iron sticks with wrapped rough fibers become samegawa wrapped hilts with some bronzework and tsuba to end up as gilded precious metal status symbols. There are several engraved ones in that book. I'd prefer, in the heat of the moment, a bare iron jutte to an engraved shakudo one, but that's just me being attached to my arm... and wanting to keep it that way.


However, when we study martial arts or Japanese culture in a more general form, we often kind of see one of the last two sets of examples, maybe two, and we forget the rest as if it was never there. And we're not even aware that Musashi's father was already a renowed expert in this very same weapon several decades before the Edo period even started.

My original point with this, and I've veered way of what I intended, is that Japanese MA practitioners talk about their katana, comission their practice blades. And most of those blades are, basically, the equivalent to the second set of pictures. Sometimes, they veer into the third one. But they never leave Edo. Their saya are predictable. Their sageo, almost always single colored. If not, there are basically two variants, always muted. From what I've seen, I suspect that kendoka have something similar going on. And when you talk about real armors, people visualize the great bif colorful ones, in lacquers and embroidery and nifty braids.

I've tried my hands at Japanese braid making. It's a slow process, and it needs many meters of yarn, and "looms". The basic samurai had neither, and yet you can bet his cords broke. Because of a sowrd thrust or a nasty fall, because it rotted, because it w¡had been used to carry a bundle of wood for the campfire... You name it.

This is a rope for tying up criminals, quickly (yes, I've tried similar designs) braided by hand. Wanna bet most swords used something similar? And armors, and pouches, and... A contraption that requires a whole mat to set up and work in it, plus hundreds of meters of silk for a single sageo, or this, done by the campfire?

Take care.

Knowing yourself

In theory, MAs are a path to self knowledge. I seriously doubt it, very seriously.

I fact, I don't much believe the "Do" part in most martial arts. CAN it be used for such? Oh, sure. But if you think that someone who's raced the Dakkar doesn't know himself, hasn't reached a maturity in "Do" that many martial artists only imagine, then you're seriously off track. Marathon runners have more Zen than most high level dans. Solo mountain climbers risk their lives with samurai abandon. And so on. In non physical endeavors, painters, tea masters... And most of those don't add a "Do" to their name and end up with something useful after several hours of practice. Martial artists don't.

Many (both of those espousing "reality training" and those following the "Do") can't even defend themselves from a wet paper bag.

So , neither spiritual neither practical. What's missing?

That self-knowledge, maybe?

I just saw a video of a Kaju instructor. And I kept thinking... "Well, not quite. She doesn't quite decide what principle of movement she wants to use and keeps wandering around... Moves too much... Well, if she polishes that, then she could be..." And then I found an interview. 6th dan, director of two branches in a federation.

She's not going to get better. Not if she's reached all that at that level of practice and shows, smiling and satisfied, in the interview.

Now, she's an easy target, obvious. But... How many times do martial artists fall into that? A senpai commented to me some years ago that some character flaws were easier in the veryest of "Do" schools, because you wouldn't be hit back. In boxing, however, being a cretin had consequences. For starters, most instructors wouldn't risk you.

So, are MA good for self knowledge? Only as good as you allow them to be. As you invest on them to be. It doesn't come for free.

And, sadly, possibly the majority of those who approach the MA want a free lunch. No such thing, guys.

Which is, of course, why most of those go away. Still many remain. And they reach a teaching certificate.

Sigh... You can only guess at the quality of their instruction, and what loops their pupils will have to go through if they want to surpass the master (and they'll better).

Take care.

Circular drills

I was watching a documentary yester night (The Bladed Hand). While the opinions in the doc have some strong pitfalls, it's a worthy one, interesting. Would NOT train under some of these people if they paid me for it, but the rest...? Man, they're good.

Now, I think the teaching value of survival is mostly forgotten, and might help explain why the previous generations is so damn good. And I still think that the teaching proficiency itself of many (some of them legendary) teachers needs some work, but there's one thing FMA have that other arts don't emphasize as much.

The doc, at one point, basically says "FMA training has taken over cinema; if you've seen a fight, it's 90% sure it's FMA". Then it sort of extrapolates from there to MA training. I disagree. If anything's taken over MA it's boxing. But...

But the fact is that FMA have some interesting things in them. People get really attached to FMA drills, for example. You'll find people in every corner doing hubud or sombrada. Sometimes with no sense at all, no matter how you measure it. I think that's often a mistake.

The idea of drills isn't. In fact, a lot of arts have them. I can only speak for Japanese arts, but there are such drills there. Unending, partnered, fluid drills... that most instructors forget as soon as they grab the plane back to the West.

And I've been wondering, of late (since before this particular video), how to use the idea of circular, neverending drills in Kaju. Call it sombrada on techniques or hubud on our own "blocks", the idea is there, and it's really accessible. Why isn't it used? Why is most dynamic training I'm seeing a toeing into Boxing waters or some weird ideas on barroom brawls instead of a way to dynamize what you are already training.

Take care.

Bad boxing

Last week, at training, we put on our gloves.

Most of our system went right off the window.

I hate that. I hate that under the guise of learning how to cope with adrenaline we learn, badly, a system that's not our own (boxing, or kickboxing, depending). In... about 8 years in Kaju, I can count with a single hand how many times we've done some adrenal training on our own techniques (basic, kumite-like adrenaline, nothing fancy). "[the class' got] Not enough level" I was told for several years (until I quit asking). But, apparently, level enough for boxing. So, as I was telling a partner, we associate adrenaline with boxing we can't do while we associate Kajukenbo to a stroll at the gim. Not good, by far. It cheapens both systems.

I find it annoying, and worrisome. And my mind keeps trying o find ways around it. Might be finding some.

Take care

You're an object

At least, you're someone's object. And that reaction you're having right now? Emotional.

We assume, daily, that we're important. That we're not simple widgets. That we matter. Check Eric Flint's 1632 to see how unusual that mindset is.

And it's false. We other people continuously. These days, we live in gatherings far beyond what the human brain can grasp. Multi-million cities and metro areas, electronic relationships, mobility... And yet the mantra "every person is important" remains uncontested.

Despite proof to the contrary. Photoshopping top models to make them even thinner? Othering, both them and their admirers. Selling coffee that endangers lifestyles half way through the world? Othering. Buying it? Too. Almost every single "progressive cause" comes from a response to othering. Terrorism requires othering. So does a certain "progressive" mindset: He's white, ergo he's... (fill in the pet peeve) "All men are rapists". "Bring back our girls"? Othering.

What!? Yes. If someone in your family was kidnapped, would you forget about it when the hashtag faded? Or a friend's child. A coworker's? These events are used to trigger a certain tribal mindset: "we're one and we're good because we all care about this".

How you deal with it is your own choice. BUT if you're not aware of it you'll keep finding people you'll label as enemies when they simply don't care enough about you. That way lies madness (and blog posts and hashtags).

Take care.

Critical thought is just so tacky

I was reading an online essay about Japanese swords, recently. By and large, it was decent. There was an off-the-cuff assertion, however... According to the author --sorry, closed the thing as fast as I could, and lost the bookmark--, tsuba (the handguard) were there, in opposition to European swords, not to protect against your opponents' blades but to protect your hand against slipping.

The dumb is strong on that one.

There are blades with guards designed to keep your hand from slipping into them. Check hunting and fighting knives. Those smallish guards, a bare finger high? Those are made to stop your fingers. European swords' guards? Which? The viking longsword or the schiavona? Because as Odin is my witness you're not going to convince me they work the same way.

And then, the tsuba in katana. Because they only stop the finger they need to be, alone in the whole blasted traditional swords [*], 8 cm circles of steel or hard bronze. Oh, sure, they become softer and flimsier as you get into the Pax Tokugawa... and into dueling.

But no, let's just drop our inverse 5 cents of stupidity debt. Tsuba are only there to avoid slipping into the blade.

Now, this was in a rather clear subject, something with rather obvious comparisons, documentation... Just imagine what you're being sold as Truth in things that are more difficult to see (combat in kata, psychology of the fight...)... and tremble.

Take care.

[*] My apologies: Chinese sabers can and do have something equivalent.

Just do it

I don't follow professional sport. Some of the European league soccer as it deals with local teams, because you can't really avoid it, but that's it. Apparently, though, Nike's put itself in some trouble. And then...

“I’m Gonna Fuckin’ Kill You” --Nike's head of global marketing

The guy just landed his corporation and his personal self in a lot of trouble. He assaulted someone in a public venue, threatened him deadly... Way to go. I wouldn't be all that surprised if he changed jobs soon. Also, that he felt empowered to perform such doesn't speak well at all of Nike's culture.

However, the event gets a passing remark later:

Telling someone in anger that you’re going to kill him is really fucking weird. Part of adulthood is learning that it’s never an appropriate response to tell someone you’re going to kill him or her.

True. But I feel the article is trying to say "there are better ways than verbal violence to solve things, we must speak these things like adults...", where quite a set of society (using the term widely) would read "there are better ways than verbal violence... and who's the idiot that gives warning."

Be aware that when something like this happens, there's a modern Western midclass way of dealing with it... and there are a bunch of others. Modern. Western. Midclass. That's a lot of subsets that HAVE to come along. If your opponent is not ANY ONE of those, you can get skewered.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't try. I'm ust saying you absolutely need to be aware.

Take care.

Holes

Some months ago, we were training a KJKB technique at a seminar. I think it's the one against baton for brown. If this was jujutsu, it'd be a rather classical technique, locking the attacking arm and performing Nage waza. It is not. Done our way, the trick is finding the moment the attacker has the most forward momentum but the least adherence and then strike his head backwards. He flips.

I find it extremely difficult, done that way. And you need to practice it with a certain intent, or there's not enough forward momentum to work with. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that way. At the seminar, a regional instructor suggested me to, basically, perform Ippon seoi. No, I told him. I already know how to do that. I'm here for learning (then, obviously, I tried Ippon seoi... and failed).

But it got me thinking... And it's mixing up with Rory's ideas against joint locks and with old school paradigms. Very old school.

Old schools say there's a 'front' of you attacker and a 'back' (omote and ura). Front is the short distance between your attacker's arms, back is the long one along his shoulderblades. That includes things we would call sides and such, yes.

Rory sort of advocates that it's more effective to get to his back and attack from there, but also that it goes against the grain, that our monkey wants to go up front.

Then, there are martial arts that are pretty good defending against frontal attack. Boxing and fencing, for instance, or Wing Chun; or Ittô ryû, in classical Japanese fencing. They control the centre, good luck using it. However, their very effectiveness come from having a very narrow 'front' that no one in his right mind wants to face. It's much more intuitive to try something else against them, say along the sides, than it is against, for example, a Tae Kwon Do competitor; or even a Muay Thai practitioner.

Competition Tae Kwon Do has much wider front. Even Muay Thai's is wider than Western boxing's. This also means that it takes a longer trip to get 'in their back'; it's a tradeoff (not that I'd like to go "straight up the middle" against a Muay guy).

Too long for background, I'm afraid. My point is that, besides the obvious differences, their classical principles, the difference in that earlier technique between the jujutsu approach and the KJKB one is in the front/back exploitation of vulnerabilities. The attack usually seen in demos, the lunge with a bat of the angry hooligan, has a rather large front, mostly open. It's rather 'easy' to get in there and act. The technique from KJKB opens the barrier between front and back, slides there into the back and uses it for the takedown.

Both are looking for a hole. The standard judo move exploits a circle in Omote it widens as it proceeds. The technique in Kajukenbo "erases" one of the limits between Omote and Ura and, doing so, leaks the bigger "Ura" hole into Omote. The wide hoolingan arch does the same itself. Advanced Wing Chun travels slightly into Ura while tightening the opponent's hole. Kajukenbo does something equivalent, although not exactly the same. Aikido travels wider into Ura for most Irimi (technique is a weird mix, from where I stand; while Tori is clearly rooted in Ura, the force travels straight from Omote). A slap into Uke's nape is as Ura as you can get.

But all of these are looking for holes. Wing Chun and Ittô ryû know perfectly well that you need a hole, and are masters creating it right into Uke's guard. The rest of us look for easier ways. The more artistic variants of Aikido illustrate the holes from where to create joint locks. Still, all of those are holes.With practice, you can create holes in tighter situations, and use smaller ones. But you need a hole.

Now, get this idea ad watch most martial artists discard it.

Take care.

The martial tax

Wing Chun 12" circle, cane. 25$, plus shipping.

Embroidery 12" circle, wood. 7€, shipping included.

I have seen similar discrepancies in other sports, but they're usually Spain-specific. You need, for example, quite a budget to sail in Spain. It's a luxury sport, "and so it should be, damnit!" Or kendo, where a local shop asked routinely for about twice what it asked practitioners. Not even long-term practitioners. And twice the price of a bogu or a sword is quite a price indeed.

It's silly, and it conditions us. It sets us apart and it kills our critical mindset.

And our traditions. It's as if karate needed special oars for its eku techniques. Or specific stones for its chi-ishi. Or special footwear, or...

It makes used, basically, to be scammed, to turn our training into a social construct instead of turning to the easiest, most effective method. And most effective is not that with the best result, but that with the best investment-result ratio.

If we fail seeing that in such basic, easy things, how are we supposed to realize that warmup is punishing our bones, that one contracting our spine and that other group is turning into a cult? Because there's not so much difference between 'this rattan circle is more authentic and using that is not Wing Chun' and 'our master's own tools are special and the rest are not properly done'.

From tools to mindset. Shouldn't it be the other way?

Take care.

Mistranslations... still there

We've known for a while, those who wanted to hear, that a lot of problems with "traditional" Western understanding of martial arts (very specially karate, but also kendo, Chinese systems...) was a matter of translation, of trying to explain very intimate sensations to people with a different language paradigm. As long as this has been known, it's annoying that it's still there.

For example, Jesse Enkamp's article on the Pinan kata. Or the translation of the 20 precepts of Shotokan. Check both versions.

We've had people fluent in Chinese in most of the West for decades. And yet, no "traditional" karateka thought of digging into that source? Respect to tradition, my ass! Then we have the Nijû kun... My fight with that meaning of sente's been boiling for a while. As a recap, there are two mistakes: one, that sente is no "first strike" but more similar to initiative; the other that if you never have the initiative in an assault, you die. No ifs, no buts. And the way it's become almost a religious mantra (you'll find woodcarvings of that precept far more often than any of the others) is disgusting and dangerous.

But it's not the only one. "Do not think you have to win. Think that you do not have to lose." Bullshit. Wiki translates the second part as "Think, rather, of not losing", which is completely different. The difference between "I will NOT lose!" [ie, I'll reach home safe and sound] and "No one's asking me to lose, after all".

The list of precepts is not wrong. The translations are. The interpretations are a damn disgrace. The blind obedience to that all is sickening.

We have people labelling themselves as "warriors", "fighters", and yet they get all huffy when you point to them that, well, they're demostrably wrong and, even more, wrong in such a way that it cripples them.

We should do skeet shooting with photographs of several scores of MA pioneers.

Take care.

Good ol' trusty monkey dance... and cults

Saw a couple of MDs [*] some days ago; nice examples, each on their own. Once of them was, basically, an extremely tired parent who was physically hurt by his also tired child and burst. Reigned it very fast, but there was certainly a point of "status" fight in the answer. And that person loves the kid dearly, but being tired robs us of empathy... and lots other things. The more tired you are, the less person; do you take that into account when training for night troubles?

The other was on a website. An industry with a lot of freelancing got shown the main points of a 10-year contract. It escalated quickly. And, besides the escalation itself, it was interesting to watch the behaviour of both sides. In Spain, right wing is usually more boisterous, way more, when "defending" from "attack", while the left tends to go "whatever" and go its own way. That "whatever" IS still an MD: you're dismissing your opponent. For some reason, it looks like the opposite is true in the States. The "left" is more boisterous and the (classic) right [+] tends to retreat back to its own values and stay there.

While reading it, however, something else came out. The Bitch Patrol. Suddenly, it appeared like any discussion about the contract was insulting the freelancer, who'd been dissing the discussion... on twitter. Words stopped having their standard meaning and had context-specific meanings. Points were selected and dissected without logical standards... Appeals to authority, ad hominem attacks... You name it.

But, no. Oh, no! they were not doing it. Perish the thought.

Thing is, the way the original freelancer is behaving is right out of Marc's standards above. I personally think he's falling into a trap of his own unwilling creation, a blowback, surrounding himself by way too many yes-sayers. Still... The example remains.

Take care.

[*] monkey dance, not medicine doctor

[+] I do differentiate between "classic" right (religious, conservative) and "right" (zealots, neo-cons, and such), the same way I differentiate between left (soup kitchen volunteers, grass-roots unions...) and "left" (tenured union "workers" and their mafias, and the equivalent at "social issues" university departments... or parties).

Teenage-level socialization monkeys

I think I've written before about my friends with kid. Watching him grow, I've sort of realized (some more) how basic some... social interactions are. Tantrums, negotiation... Then, something else happened.

You see, that couple was in contact with a team of nurses (registered nurses; early training in Spain and specialization in the UK) to supplement some treatment they were not comfortable with the level the government provided. New tests indicated a glitch in normality (not, according to the MDs, a problem; just something unusual that, not so long ago, wouldn't have been noticed). The whole team of RNs freaked out, lashed away to distance from their customers and cut all ties after a cursory internet search (in two hours they did all that, plus a meeting and dinner). One of the parents is a teacher; if one of her pupils did that kind of research for a high school job, he'd spend the whole semester making up for it.

But they were adult pros. The don't fall into such elementary mistakes, do they?

The other was at a training group. The instructor couldn't come for a couple of days. So the 3rd senpai decided to push for a roll call in social media. No queries, no questions. Roll call, military style. Not even asking if any of his senpai was coming or if it was the right way to do things. I knew he was rigid, this way is the True Way [TM], but I didn't know he rolled this way. Live and learn.

Neither event is any more complex than a kindergarten brawl. Adults or no, professionals or no. But it does look that "adulthood" sort of blinds people to the fact that they can fall in this kind of behaviour, too. Which reinforces Rory's assertions about how often (very little) the human rational part is in charge.

Now, imagine all that under violence.

Take care.

Geometry

External martial arts (because I don't know squat about internal) are all about geometry. No matter if it's karate (Goju-ryû, or Kyokushinkai), or savate, or... Deflection is geometry, footwork is geometry, even punching.

Which is why a lot of discussions on martial arts are plain dumb. Part of it is in the explanation. Martial arts are full of sentences that make no sense. "Do that without any strength, at all" At all? How can I stand upright, then? Yes, yes, obvious... until the example is not quite as clear. "Do X in a straight line" But... er... it's an arch.

And then it starts. And you get people who don't SEE anything beyond the name. People who don't see arches or circles, who watch you warily when you mention those, as if you were trying to mislead them.

Now, granted, some geometries are very small, subtle, difficult to perceive. Others are pretty large. And they could be taught. but teaching geometry goes against the grain of martial artists. Unless they go to structured extremes, where shapes are just this wide and just that size. Which is not, can't be, real: shapes will ultimately depend on the situation, opponent, your own body type and your mechanics. But the commonalities will be there. You'll have an arch, or a triangle. And the arch will be wider or shorter, the triangle will be squat or longish. But the mechanics of an arch don't deliver properly is you use a triangle instead. And counterwise.

And teaching that way would be more universal, less prone to sects and cliques, and...

Which is another reason it's not done, of course.

Take care.

Martial arts are social

They've been for several decades, with some very specific exceptions. This means that they're subject to the same constrains and bumps as other social interactions. Three examples:

The current economical crisis has led several in our group to work in foreign lands. So far, they're going home, but I think that's mostly anecdotic. And you'd have to add a couple of local changes of location that, nonetheless, put people well outside the practical distance to attend training regularly. While it's been sad, the first one to go is now second "in command" of a pretty established dojo. Another is looking for a training gym to start a group. One of the more local ones is also on that path... And so a system grows.

And yesterday, at the end of semester dinner, we were looking at the way quite a bunch of people had left our organization. Specially the last bunch, but in general; those last 40 years. And there were two constants: full time instructors and shelving the past. People who'll not acknowledge who they learned the style with, and will later try to obscure the issue. It's almost as if they were scared people would point at them because of it and, by denying, they manage to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, related to that last, cliquism. Being sure of your own training is good. Disregarding anything else, even nuances... I mentioned it last year in a post that's gone dark, people dissing an instructor and his kali when he'd been invited by the guy doing the seminar AND was better at both styles than those making the fuss. The head instructor wanted them to learn that, but they decided they were above those games. This extends from small things (this way of punching vs. that one, both within the same style) and to bigger ones (the resistance of some people to getting acquainted with Keysi, the local --not as hormonal-- branch, is almost funny).

But learning is social. Teaching is also social. How do you deal with martial arts long term unless you deal with the social part?

Take care.

Don't bring a ... to a gunfight

The sentence is usually parsed "don't bring a knife to a gunfight", but it's not a matter of the specific weapon. In certain ways, also, it can be reversed: don't bring a gun to a knifefight. Every weapon has an optimal range, and below 7m (Tueller dixit), it's easier to reach with a knife, which is also a simpler weapon that kills more reliably than a gun (below 1/3 of hits at around 1.5 m, according to the FBI, plus lesser lethality per hit). Not that you're going to to see the Marines turn their backs to the rifle and become spear throwers.

Every situation has the most adequate weapon. Recognizing that is part of the overarching common theme. The most important weapon you have is between your ears. If you focus in the physical weapon, you go into a talisman thinking mindset that might work for a while (you'll be more confident, and muggers try not to attack confident people, just in case)... until it meets someone who calls your bluff. And who doesn't warn you about it. He does have both weapons: the one in his mind is going to control the situation...

The one in his hand, your life (I suggest you mute it; it's distracting).

Same kind of weapon, already out, but those high school punks didn't even get to point it. The predator met the wannabe, the yappy dog with delusions of wolf. Oops.

Don't bring less than your best to a survival fight. Beware of idiocy turning a stunt into a survival fight while you jerk off.

Take care.

Imperfection and profession

I was doing some cooking and something came to me. I had to slice some onions. I like to waste as little as possible, so I try to use as many layers as possible, and cut as close to the base and the tip as possible. This costs me some extra effort and time.

Something a professional won't do. He won't mind if he rips an extra layer or three while cleaning the skin, or waste a couple of extra slices from each extreme. Instead, he'll slice fast, clean, maybe not quite as regularly as the book says... But he'll have the onion cut in time, the oil ready at the right temperature. He might not spread the onion around the oil, and yet he'll manage to have all bits cooked alike.

The violence professional is the same. Doing several hundreds of reps is the focus of the martial artist. Lots of reps, just the right way. A professional doesn't need as much perfection, he needs adequate performance at just the right moment. Clear mind, good ingrained reflexes.

And then, some people get the worst from both worlds and train barely adequate performance without the proper mind focus. And you get shitty mechanics without focus, that gets worse when it performs under pressure.

Take care.

Mindset

We were doing some basic kali, this week. Snake disarms. Very basic, since kali is not our thing, just a way to get familiar with weapons and their effects.

But I come from classic Japanese fencing. The kali meme of "a stick is a sword is a stick"? I lean towards the sharp, pointy thingie. And yet, it seems I have something that should be more easy to grasp to people who lean "stick". Ie, pommel strikes.

What I'm finding in what little kali I've done is that people tend to strike with the "mono uchi", the last part of the sword when used for slashing. They forget pommel, they forget thrusts... The stick becomes a light baseball bat (or worse; a baseball bat does have a nice pommel, after all).

Now...the point of weapons is to get better offensive options. While it's true that, say, an F-18 isn't much good for a police restrain and yet a useful thing, it's not much good if you take a weapon and discard most of its uses. It would be like getting that F-18 and using it ONLY for dropping dumb bombs. What's the use of its radar, its cannon, its fly by wire? Get another weapon, if you only want that!

So, if you're only using slashing techniques, get a slashing weapon. But, oh, that needs edge angle awareness. So, we better keep a stick.

It's weird. the distance our style works best is close striking, almost grappling distance. With any other attack, we try to close there. And yet, most of us try to keep the distance when we have a stick. Why? The moment you've disarmed him, you do not need to get far away[*]. Use that pommel, use your elbow, use "abanico". There are lots of options, faster options, things that can really mess the other guy. But you need to use the whole of the weapon, for that.

The more I think about it (not only this once), the more I believe that we should train with short sword replicas, the more I see rattan leading to tactical laziness.[+]

Take care.

[*] Yes, if you've disarmed him and still carry your own stick, you're in a legal minefield.

[+] Not that swordwork is immune to that. There are a lot of distances available with a katana that are seldom explored. Even a lot of counter to a disarm attempt that try to control down the guy... when you'd started wanting to cut him down and you still have the damn sword!

Acknowledge the gradient

Human brains are impressive. They adapt, they change, they mold themselves. The smallest changes have profound effects.

So, teaching awareness, self defence, the realities of the dangers "out there" should be easy, right?

You wish. If you've been there, you know that.

Rory explains it as a matter of socialization, mostly. Our social brains not wanting to deviate from our group's normal, its perceptions, its consensus. Because realizing certain truths about violence makes you need to change your behaviour, and that might be contrary to your group's interests and its cohesion.

That's a part, but... bear with me for a while.

I'm trying to think in 3D, of late. It touches several projects of mine I'm trying to delay until another one's ready. But my mind stretches that way nonetheless.

Think in 3D? We're humans, We have stereoscopic vision. Of course you think in 3D!

No, you don't. We mostly think in a sort of 2.5D. Height and width, sure (and even the height part is crappy, if you're city-raised). But, depth? Oh, yes, you can perceive distance. But you don't perceive the other side of an object. And you certainly don't perceive the innards. So you dismiss them, likely.

Now, try to think 3D. Try to think how your pen is in the inside. How the bottom of your keyboard is and how it fits the table. How's your oven from behind? Do that continuously.

Do it continuously, 24/7, with every object that crosses your path, every animal, every person.

That's what you're asking of people who don't think in SD terms.

Take care.