My brother asked me a question
Published: Sun, 12/09/12
My brother asked me a question yesterday. He came over to my
mother's house yesterday to help with the move she is making to
a new flat this month. I met up with him, my mother and Venetia
for lunch after I had returned from a martial arts class at a
centre just outside Slough. It was a class in something called
Guided Chaos and I came into the pub full of excitement about it.
I will write more about that tomorrow. My brother's question
was: "Don't you know all there is to know about martial
arts by now? So why do you need to go to classes with new
teachers?" I was a little flattered that my brother has such
a high opinion of my expertise in that particular area but this is
the answer I started to give when my steak and kidney pie arrived
and the conversation moved on.
Firstly, you don't really know what you know unless you test
yourself. It was probably doing a wrestling workshop at the first
Fightcamp I went to that made me realise how little I knew about
grappling and groundwork. Since then I have trained with the
O'Hagans, Geoff Thompson and done other workshops on wrestling
and I am becoming aware of the gaps. There were also a lot of
things I found I was rather good at and worked well, but it is only
by training in a context where no one knows you that you can be
sure. As a teacher you can't be sure that some of your
students are just being polite when something you show them seems
to work. (I do encourage my students to always challenge me if
they are not convinced about something and that has been to my
benefit when I train outside Stav, so my thanks to those of you who
keep me on my toes, you probably know who you are.)
Secondly, of course there is always more to learn. Sometimes I may
just get one thing from a course that I hadn't seen before and
everything else is familiar or of no particular interest. But if I
can come away with just one new technique or idea that I can really
see a use for then I am happy and that is more valuable than just
generally having had a good time but having nothing really to to
take home. It can even be that I come away convinced that a
particular technique or is a bad idea and to not train it or teach
it. But that is fine too if it saves me having to find out the
hard way. As a teacher I am also looking for methods of teaching,
I may be perfectly capable of doing something myself but find it
very difficult to teach the same thing to a beginner, I often
observe ways of teaching that actually get the message across and
these I will happily borrow.
Thirdly, It is always good to network and get to know people who
have a love and enthusiasm for the same general area of knowledge
and practice that you share with them. When I was younger it used
to be more difficult, cross training as we now call it was much
more difficult and you couldn't really just turn up at a class
or course unless you gave the impression you were serious about
devoting yourself to that particular style. Then there was a stage
when no particular style was needed and all training was just mixed
up to try and find some common denominator but but now there is a
recognition that being devoted to a core style and training in that
style but sharing with students and teachers from other styles is
the best way to go. I personally think this is a healthy
development and I am all in favour of it both in terms of receiving
training from other teachers and welcoming people to my training on
the same basis.
Fourthly, its fun, all the more so because I don't feel I have
anything to prove any more.
My programme of training courses for 2013 is
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/forthcoming.html and I am open to
suggestions for teaching if anyone wants to organise a course
locally.