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[Hock]

Do people care about learning smarter, easier and better? Or, do they just care about learning what a certain famous personality taught? Exactly and precisely?

If you want only the personality/system material. You are a purist. If you are looking for inspirational and to supplement your knowledge? Make things better through research? Improvement? You are an innovator.

Purists stick still in time. Like walking museums. I am not bad-mouthing them at all. That is just what they do. They love it. And…I am happy for them that they love. People also collect baseball cards. Everybody needs a hobby. Its just if I have to pick one side? Innovation is it.

The greatest inventions of our world have come from innovators-people who think out of the box. Creative. Radical. Everything from the wheel to mapping the genome. Every ancient cathedral, every bridge still standing, non-invasive surgery, everything comes from evolution and innovation. Use these two terns to help define yourself and what you teach. this will help you identify and market to the proper customers.

So, to the student asking the question back in part one of this essay, “will you teach some Remy Presas, Tapi-Tapi at the next seminar?” Well, you now see my dilemma. I can do this, but I think I can do it better, smarter, faster and easier, through innovation. Because Remy inspired and showed me way. It is my job to innovate. I have said for years at seminars, "I am here to inspire, not confine."

What are you? A purist or an innovator? Do you inspire or confine?
Think about some famous instructors.
Classify them as purists or innovators.
Then think about yourself.

Hock

[pmh1nic]

Hock

I think the term innovation is more of a personalized issue when it comes to martial arts. The martial arts have been around for thousands of years. Human anatomy hasn't really changed in thousands of years. There are only some many ways to throw a punch, kick, lock up a joint, swing a stick, etc., etc., etc. Even with respect to relatively recent inventions like the firearm there are only so many ways to holding a gun, shoot, disarm.

I've said that to say I don't view learning and investigating different aspects of the martial arts as innovation in the sense that I'm going to develop something that hasn't been thought of or done before by others. The learning and investigation is more in line with personal discovery (sometimes through watching your tapes and DVD's ) or working freestyle with a partner and "discovering" for myself what someone, somewhere has probably been teaching for fifty years.

[pmh1nic]

P.S.

I received a link to this thread via e-mail and responded to it BEFORE I realized it was for SFC instructors only. While I've enjoyed viewing and learning from some of the SFC teaching materials I'm not an SFC certified instructor. Sorry about the oversight.

[Hock]

I received a link to this thread via e-mail and responded to it BEFORE I realized it was for SFC instructors only. While I've enjoyed viewing and learning from some of the SFC teaching materials I'm not an SFC certified instructor. Sorry about the oversight...

Only this instructor forum!But it is wide-open for all now and for about the next three or four weeks, but eventually it will have a password allowing only the instructors to get on this single section and swap ideas and talk business.

It is something that the 100-plus instructors have wanted, and since it is business strategies for them, the general consensus is not to have the "other neighborhood karate school" read it, get the ad in the newspaper first! That kind of thing.

I will in fact, reveal many tricks of the seminar and business trade I have learned the hard way. And I owe my supportive friends, waving the SFC flag... first crack at them.

Of course the other forums i.e. hand, stick, knife and gun will always remain open for everyone, always...just this one segment. And of course, inariably many of the subjects ih here will pop up on the others too.

Hock

[Hock]

Samples of innovation…

How do some of the sport ground fighting movements apply to street ground fighting?

How does counters to knife quick draws relate to countering pistol quick draws?

Tae Kwon Do studying ground fighting?

Classic karate discovering the one-shot/one-kill doesn’t always work?

Fist on the hip hand and arm positions should be raised higher up?

Medical discoveries that warn against using the head butt?

Adding skill and flow drills to improve spartan WWII Combatives.

How does knife sparring relate to kickboxing.

Is being barefoot really the way to go?

Do we practice in the horse stance too much, compared to its realistic value?

And so on, and on and on……

No, The human body hasn’t changed. But many times the human mind hasn’t changed either. People are stuck in time and training. What is an innovation to some is not to others.

...and, once you make these discoveries are you free to present them? Or are you stuck in a replication system that MANDATES you teach only and exactly a certain way. Are you "in the box?" or "out of the box?"
Innovator to those around you/ or replicator?

Hock

[Chuck Burnett]

I got a Replicator action figure for Christmas. 

Chuck

[seanross]

In traditional Chinese martial arts, only the head instructor gets to change anything and he maintains the illusion that his students forgot what he really taught them.  It's an elaborate cultural bullshit that we all maintain.  It was like that at the Wahlum temple and it is like that to a certain extent at the Taichi school I currently attend.  This is why I really like teaching a CQC group.  I can take various things I learn from the other martial arts and then experiment with them in a live setting against people who don't already know how it is "supposed" to work.  I also learn which techniques are fighting techniques and which are just fluff.  I am continually surprised, though, at how often I come up with great fighting moves from an old form.  For example, there is a Tai Chi move called "snake creeps down".  I had no idea what it was good for until Hock showed us a knife crotch kill starting with a leg sweep.  His technique looked identical to "snake creeps down".

I think there is evidence that there were some very creative people long ago in Chinese and Japanese martial arts.  They came up with fighting methods using all kinds of common implements:  rice flails, hand sickles, ladies fans etc.  They tailored their teachings to individual students abilities and limitations.  It is their martial descendants that have turned it into rigid styles that must not be changed and are still practicing with rice flails (nunchaku) and hand sickles(kama) and insisting on trivial details.  If those same creative people were to live today, they would come up with fighting methods using pens, keys and baseball bats and they would tailor their teachings to their students. 

I think this is one reason for the popularity of Brazilian Ju Jitsu.  It is taught live.  You can instantly understand if your technique works. The techniques are tailored to the students height and weight.  Rank is achieved only by winning.  In this sense, BJJ is more traditional than all the so-called traditional martial arts.

[szorn]

Of course, I have to agree with Hock here.

When I first met Hock I was somewhat of a purist. Although I jumped around from system to system, I always devoted myself to the particlaur system I was involved with at the time. Example, when I trained in kenpo I would only practice kenpo as it was passed to me by my instructors in the way it had been taught to me. When I met Hock, my eyes were opened to the ways of innovation and more importantly they were opened to the concept of "reality-based" training. I came to realize that the majority of martial arts are about doctrine, unconscious brain-washing, and the devotion to history for the sake of history.

No, we are not likley to develop a tool or tactic that has not been discovered, taught , or used somewhere else. However, by striving to be innovators we can develop our personal skills way beyond that which we might aquire through the purist mind-set alone. We might develop a way of presenting the material, that has not been thought of before, or has been overlooked before now. This can be seen over and over again in modern times when someone draws attention to certain tools or techniques that have been around for quite a while but were overlooked before. These tools & techniques are given catchy names and are presented in ways that grab people's attention. Of course, people who have never seen such tools or techniques before think that these are new developments when in fact they are only modern innovations of old material.

As the old saying goes, "there is nothing new under the sun". However, there are new ways to present the same old material or to improve the learning and retention ability of the students. There are new ways to grab the student's interest or to spark their creativity. All of which, leads to better students & better instructors. It creates future innovators rather than mindless drones or robots that just follow commands and then pass those same commands on to their future students.


Steve

[Joe Hubbard]

I think that many misinterpret what Hock is trying to say in regards to purist vs. innovation.  Many people tend to settle in to one particular mindset and then become institutionalised by the beliefs of whatever they have gotten into. This happens in all arts and vocations and reaches out to every tentacle of our society.  We have heard many of our instructors say that Hock has help them to think “outside of the box.” 

When I was a professional jazz musician, this purist vs. innovator reared its’ head all the time.  Thankfully for all the innovators, jazz means more than some dude playing a sax in a smoky nightclub.  Miles Davis was one of the hippest jazz innovators of our time.  He was constantly growing and changing regardless of criticism from his peers. 

Remember that Pasteur was not an M.D.  The Wright Brothers were not aeronautical engineers, but bicycle mechanics.  Einstein, properly speaking, was not a physicist, but a mathematician, yet his findings completely turned all the theories of physics upside down.  Madam Curie was not an M.D., but a physicist, yet she made many contributions to medical science.  Miles Davis gave up his classical studies at Julliard to go deep into the jungles of the Harlem jazz clubs and with the help of Charlie Parker applied a chromatic approach concept (that was taken from the classical impressionists like Ravel and Debussy) to the “jazz of that day” and called it be-bop.  Everybody thought that they were nuts, but it was pure innovation and has shaped where modern jazz has gone.

Hock is the Miles Davis of combatives/survival/martial arts of today.  A true leader and innovator who’s not afraid to rattle anybody’s cage.  Happy New Year Bubba, it’s a pleasure to be onboard.

Cheers

Joe

P.S.  I watched Heartbreak Ridge the other night.  Doesn’t Hock remind you of Gunny Highway?       

[usks1]

Joe,
Happy New Year,
Hope all is well in the U.K.

P.S.  I watched Heartbreak Ridge the other night.  Doesn’t Hock remind you of Gunny Highway?       

Yep,
I never can figure out what shirt he is gonna wear... 

[Boar Man]

Many times the very people that we look to as founders of a particular system and that we "purists" want to keep pure are in fact the very type of inovators that Hock speaks of.  Look into the history of some of the more recent martial arts that were formed in the later 19th and through out the 20th century and the founders were anything but purists.  Instead they combined different techniques, concepts, principles, katas, etc. etc. from different sources and created their own systems.

Then they and their down line students/instructors tend to create ledgends about their systems to give them value by making them appear older than they are.  Or that they came from this culture (Japan) instead of that culture (China) etc. etc.  So than we the students even further down the line think that we are learning something that was passed down through the ages when in fact it (the system) is less than a 100 years old.

I ride the fence on this one, I tend to be both a purist and yet I appreciate the inovation of others.  I want to be a purist in the sense that if someone wants to learn a particular system, drill (from a system) etc. etc. than I can teach and deliver the product to them.  If they want to learn Modern Arnis, Kombaton,  or Hock's Arc. Combatives (or his earlier stuff), or to an lesser extent now TKD, or what I learned from this instructor or that one, then I can produce and teach the material. 

However Hock more than anyone else has helped me to see the inovation that can be found within the particular systems.  When I started with him back in 94 he was teaching Presas Arnis combining both Remy's and Ernesto's material.  Back then he thought up the ways (variations) we did the 12 angles of attack, the statue drills (relating them to the double stick material of Ernesto's), all sorts of stuff.  His newer material (as he has stripped away at various drills i.e. the clock angles instead of the 12 angles of attack) he has further simplfied and made the program easier to teach.  Adding in the knife and gun aspect in the hubud drill was to me a real stroke of genius.  This was realing thinking outside of the box.

Mark

[kamagong]

I agree with Mark on this.  All those people who founded their own systems started in something else, but then began to combine, change, and try new things with what they already had.  It's true that there is nothing new under the sun, but the way to teach those things and the way they are applied should change.  But, it's good to hold on to something in it's origional form for any number of reasons. I like what Hock teaches, I also like the fact that Hock's organization allows instructors the freedom to try new things, even if they are a bit different than what Hock does.  If you want to teach the old stuff you can, or the new, or blend it with your own.  He really does make good on the "inspire not confine" thing, even if he does shake his head at us younger guys from time to time .

 What I hope is, that 50 years from now the SFC is still innovating.  Not little groups saying, " I teach Hock's real stuff".  All of us need to be careful and not fall into the trap the JKD folks have.  That system has come full circle in a short time.  It started out as an innovative breakaway from purist ideas, and now has purists of it's own.

[Boar Man]

kamagong

I couldn't agree more.

In fact the whole JKD mess (politics) was why I wouldn't train in Hock's JKD material when I met him.  I wanted the FMA material and while I thought the JKD was cool, I was turned off by the whole I teach original JKD, or I teach JKDC yada yada yada.

Seeing how the SFC has changed in only the 10 years I've know Hock gives me hope that it will continue to be adapting and changing in the years to come.

mark