For a while ‘principles’ was a martial arts buzzword. People would say that their martial art had principles rather than techniques, with the implication that a principle based martial art is superior to a technique based one. The reason for this believed superiority is that with a principle you can create many, many techniques. While this is true saying that principles are therefore superior to techniques is a bit like saying that grammar is superior to vocabulary. Really you need both, and probably you have no chance of learning grammar if you do not have some actual words to string into sentences. Principles are generalizations formed through the observation of the similarities between individual situations. The individual situations are often called techniques. You could expect martial arts students to develop skill purely through trial and error practice, from beating each other up and then trying to sift out what worked and why. If you did this it is likely that the students would start to discover tricks which worked and use them repeatedly. The students discover a technique! Some students would then think about how this technique could be adapted to different situations and in doing so might generalize to a principle. As a martial arts students a lot of this trial and error work has already been done for you by previous generations. It will be presented to you in one fashion or another by your teachers. It will still be your job to understand, assimilate and adapt the information to your body and situation. If you work hard, consider and experiment you may extend this body of information in valuable ways. An interesting quality of principles is that they have exceptions. For example keeping your hands on or close to the centreline for security, ease of defence and attack is a commonly taught principle. Exceptions to this can be when leaving a deliberate opening to tempt someone in, when you genuinely think an expression of vulnerability would be more helpful to put someone at ease, when creating a distraction with one or both hands and many more I can think of. You can think of an more advanced practitioner as someone who can not only embody the principles of an art, but also use the exceptions to those principles. No principle does not have an exception, except this one.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 08:46:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015