2017 Hidden Sword Martial Arts Christmas Party

On December 15^th from 6-8:00pm HSMA will have it’s 5^th annual Christmas party in our room upstairs.   We will have a pot lock dinner and the sign-up sheet is available on our Facebook page where we have created an event for the party.

Come join us as we wind down our year of training and relax while meeting with the other families that train at Hidden Sword.  Here are some photos from last year.

Sparring School Culture part 4

School Culture 4

All pictures taken and printed by Mark Lynn for a college photography course project on the Proctor dojo, these are scans of the photos.

Sensei Proctor kicking Joseph

In previous posts in this series on School Culture I was comparing a sparring type school culture in posts 1 and 2 in a commercial school setting, this post is a continuation of my personal experience of training at my instructors home dojo that was a sparring type school as well which was started in post 3 of this series.

As I mentioned in my previous post one of the great things that developed in sensei Proctor’s home dojo was a deep bond between those that trained there.  This attitude was fostered and built into the training by sensei Proctor; for instance we have New Years Day workouts each year to celebrate the New Year and then celebrate lunch afterwards with family and friends.  Even if you didn’t workout people and students would still show up for lunch afterwards to

visit with old friends.  This is one of the great things about the sparring type of a school if it is fostered right is that feeling of family, comradely, that feeling we are special because we all go through this together.  

But there were some negatives as well.

Tony side kicking Meg

Looking back on it from an instructor’s point of view now, I’ve realized that I wasn’t really prepared to teach karate in this type of environment.  Sensei Proctor taught me how to fight which in and of itself was a valuable lesson, but as a young blue belt (early 20’s) being taught in this type of an environment I didn’t have the years of training in a formal class that sensei Proctor and the others had.  By not having the years of training under my belt I didn’t have the experience of practicing nor developing my kata, basic techniques, sparring drills, etc. etc. leaving me with  nothing or very little from which to draw from in order to develop others.  By not going through the type of training my sensei had, or put in the time he had to develop his kicking skills, I couldn’t or wouldn’t really develop the body mechanics or methods to pass on and teach that material later on in years. 

I’m not saying that I wasn’t trained in my basics (i.e. blocking, punching and kicking skills) because I was in the commercial schools and the private lessons when I was at college.  In fact I took over the karate program at the college I was attending because I knew more about the basics, kata and such than the black belt instructor who had gotten his black belt in Korea (when he was younger) and at the time I was a brand new 4^th brown. The next year I ended up teaching the karate program three nights a week at two hours a night for my last year in college.

Sensei Proctor is/was a mentor to me who was and is still instrumental in my growth as a martial artist; he not only taught me karate and how to fight, he also encouraged me to look into the Filipino Martial Arts, Thai Boxing, JKD and other martial arts.  The down side was I had no real way to incorporate what I was learning, because I didn’t have that type of training foundation in the first place.  Also I had no idea how to lay out, design, or structure classes much less a curriculum when I really started teaching on my own in 1994 several years later.  I simply used the kata in our system as a basis to structure things around and went from there but as a curriculum it wasn’t really well thought out.  

While the sparring type school can build that feeling comradely, it can build good fighters, it can be used as an attitude building mechanism.  The big draw back I see in a school that is focused mainly on sparring and teaches kata or basics only as a method of rank progression is that it could be stunting the student’s growth in the martial arts, and in turn for many students of theirs in the future.

School Culture

The sparring school part 2

Libby (red belt) sparring with Kimberly (brown belt)

There are many different aspects about a martial art school's culture; is it inclusive, is it secretive, is it focused around building the community, student or character development etc. etc. and all outside of the scope of this series.  This series has a more narrow focus in relating the culture of the school as it relates to training.  This is a continuation of school culture as it relates to the sparring focused school so please read that post first for context.

As I watched Libby perform her kata, her form was very good, however later in the instructor’s conference, I pointed out some concerns to Mrs Hawkins which she replied was their (the instructors) fault.  Specifically some of Libby's blocks weren’t in the right places, twisting of her hips for power generation was non existent, at times her hands weren’t clenched tight when punching, there was no turning of the head prior to turning (to see where she was going), her stances were off slightly etc. etc.   

At one point during the exam, I asked Libby after watching her run through Chug-Mu where a particular technique was, she replied “to the neck” but she was striking about rib level.  I then had her run back through the kata again with more power and told her to focus her techniques and to her credit she did, although her focus for other techniques were still off. 

When asked later by sensei Hawkins what was the reason that she practiced kata, Libby recited verbatim why you practice kata for belt tests listing out four reasons without hesitation.  But when sensei Hawkins told her “that’s good for why you do it for tests, but what is the purpose of kata or why should you practice it?” Libby didn’t have an answer.

 
In short I believe there was no real thought behind the techniques of the kata other than needing to memorize the movements for her next rank promotion.  Compared to the amount of time devoted to the sparring part of the exam and her skill in sparring, it seemed clear where the focus of the instruction lie.

This isn’t alone to sensei Hawkins’s school by any means.  I’ve talked with many other school owners and instructors and it is common to hear something like the following “We only practiced kata for tests, we mainly spar.”  “My instructor didn’t like katas, so he took out some”.  I’ve seen this not only here in Texas, but also in Oklahoma where I lived and trained for a time.  While in Oklahoma I met a whole group of instructors  who didn’t know any kata or forms above Wha Rang which is our 2^nd brown kata.  A general view on internet forums is that it is more important to spar than to learn kata so I believe that many many schools focus more on sparring and sparring related themes such as prearranged punching and kicking combinations etc. etc. for advancement than kata,  and proper basics (blocks, hand techniques and kicks).

So is this bad?  It depends upon how you look at it .  On the face of it focusing on sparring and fighting can produce really good people who spar, if that is the focus of the school.  Likewise having only a few kata to learn means that the student can really perfect those kata and have really great looking forms.  Having only a few self defense techniques to practice also allows more time to spend on punching and kicking combinations, more time for sparring etc. etc.  So schools with a sparring culture I believe will produce some students who are good at sparring and who can look good at kata as well.  I though see some down sides to the sparring culture school.

Let me be clear here I’m not saying that the sparring culture school is bad, or that Mrs. Hawkin’s school is bad, or Libby didn’t or earn her rank; far from it.  The sparring school culture generally produces a type of student and it is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.  In future posts as I write about  the other types of schools my reservations about the sparring culture type schools, as well as the other cultures, will be brought out in greater detail than trying to discuss them here in this post.   

Next week I’ll discuss my experience coming up in a sparring culture at my sensei’s private dojo.