Go to Rory Miller's blog, "Chiron," and read his post, "Good Question." Near the end of that blog he makes a statement that resonated with me, " ... not being there to see what you see ... He needs to show what to look for, not tell what to do."
The second part reminds me that mostly martial arts instructors tend to make statements, sound bites that sound good, such as, "show me what you can do on the dojo floor," where they prefer to "see" what you can do over time vs. talking of rank and belts and trophies, etc.
In this particular quote Mr. Miller is, I believe, referring to what instructors of "self-defense" should be focusing on vs. "teaching what to do when you encounter this or that particular attacks."
It resonates with me because it expresses the core of self-defense training and instruction, i.e. an instructor should be showing you, teaching you, what to "look for" and leave the actual teaching of "specific technique to specific attacks" alone.
Nothing about self-defense is cut and dry like this teaching of specifics vs specifics.
When you read his entire post it clarifies the intent. I just wanted to pull out this part and express my theory in how I might apply this if I taught self-defense to non-professionals.
I totally agree.
ReplyDeleteMy first experience in martial arts was in Hawaiian Kenpo with a teacher who I would classify as a fighter who would borrow from any style that would give someone an advantage in a self-defense situation.
Very rarely, he would have us do a drill called "wolfing", where the students would stand in a line, and he would assume a personality and antagonize one person, who was expected to "handle" the situation. Then, students would act as the "wolf". This was done very rarely, because it really spooked a lot of the students, and there didn't seem to be clear answers of what to do. We assessed that we shouldn't let someone get in our space and we need get our hands up to create some kind of bridge. We assessed that we should be calm and know where the exits are. The trickiest part though, is that my teacher said that if there's going to be a fight, whoever gets the first strike is going to have a potentially defining advantage.
"So if someone's in our face we should just go for the knockout?" "We should look for an exit and run?" "We should stand strong and never resort to violence?" "What would a good practitioner of Hawaiian Kenpo do?" These were the questions we all had, and the sensei did his best to answer each question, but it always seemed to come down to each situation being different and requiring a different response. A potentially terrifying answer for an aspiring martial artist.
Good teachers should be able to show you what to look for, not tell you what to do.