I upset someone!
Published: Tue, 05/05/15
Someone un-subscribed from my list last night. And he left a comment as to why. When someone does that there is always a slight sense of rejection. That is natural but I also take it as a healthy sign in that if I am not saying something to cause an unsubscribe from time to time then I am probably not saying anything at all.
Another reason why it is good to have a critical reaction from someone is that it challenges me to think and reassess my position. We are all on a journey and we need someone to point out when we are going in the wrong direction. Our friends may well be afraid of offending us or too enamoured with us to see our limitations. So sometimes it needs someone who is annoyed with us and has nothing to lose to tell us the truth as they see it. Of course it can be tempting to just argue back or completely ignore the comment. Sometimes one of those options are the best thing to do but if there is any intelligence behind the comment it may well be worth thinking about. Anyway here is the comment from last night.
“l feel if you actually held any recognised grade with a bona fide association,your news letter would carry some weight,but pretending that weapons learnt in Japan by Ivor are Norse folk law and the rubbish about runes is just playing hide and seek with techniques that are pure Japanese and nothing else.”
One problem is that I am writing about something that has to be done physically to make any sense. As far as I know the writer of the comment has never actually trained with me or Ivar (who is Norwegian, not welsh!) for that matter. If someone attended a seminar or course and subsequently felt that what was taught was of no use or that I could not back up what I claimed to be able to do then the criticism may be valid. But that has very rarely happened (certainly not in recent years) and if someone does expose a weakness in anything I do or teach I consider it carefully and will often make changes. If you were to read my notes for a sermon I delivered you might have a reasonable idea of what I said from the pulpit and you could comment accordingly. However I would suggest that the experience of actually training is going to be rather different from reading my description of the training. (I would have thought that this applies to
most martial arts but maybe not always.)
We have never pretended that Stav isn’t massively influenced by traditional Japanese Bugei. A lot of the weapon training especially is based on Jutsu training. But where else can you learn weapon training to the standard that Ivar needed except through Bugei and preferably in Japan? In recent years HEMA has developed massively and I do teach Stav at Fightcamp each year where it gets very well received. But European martial arts is very sport based and I personally do not believe that combat sport actually takes you to the essence of martial arts training.
For me there is a very big difference between learning a technique and what you can learn from really practising a technique on a deep level. I tend to teach a fairly limited range of actual techniques and drills, but I expect, and I expect my students, to learn a great deal from seriously training in the techniques. I can’t see too much point in just doing a routine because that is what you have always done in your style. If you are not able to dig deep and learn a lot about yourself and interacting with others from the training then why bother? It is also worth remembering that high grading in a bona fide association only takes you so far in the real world. The great Geoff Thompson is highly graded in Shotokan Karate. When Geoff began work as a doorman he quickly realised that he had a lot more to learn, often from experienced colleagues who had no formal combat training at all. From these experiences Geoff developed the idea
of the fence, pre-emption and various other valuable real world skills that are rarely found in traditional arts.
As for folk law (lore) and ‘rubbish about runes’, I will deal with that tomorrow.
I hope everyone realises that I have never claimed to be anything I am not. I certainly do not claim to have the last word on martial arts and I am well aware of my own limitations. So the only way you are going to be able to judge the value of my teaching is by actually training with me and seeing how it works for you.
Opportunities this month in Sweden on the 23rd and 24th of May, Salisbury on the 30th and Crewkerne on the 6th June, link at the bottom of the page here http://www.somersetstav.co.uk By the way, the video has also been embedded from Youtube now so it streams properly.
regards
Graham