At The Budo Bum, the author explored the question of whether the koryu (old classical) arts carried around with it the teaching of inefficient, ineffective techniques. My own inclination is to answer "no." The principles, strategies, etc; are all at work.
An excerpt is below. The original post may be read here.
The efficacy and use of some techniques in various koryu have been questioned since at least the Meiji Era. Koryu are by definition “old schools.” Two or three hundred years from the founding, how can you be sure the techniques are still effective? How can you be sure they are consistent with what was originally taught? Have things been lost or changed to the point that they are no longer consistent?
My experience is that in well-maintained koryu, the techniques will be consistent, effective, and efficient. If they aren’t all three, then either something is being taught incorrectly, or the student doesn’t understand it well enough yet. I do see koryu that teach things poorly, especially in koryu that have become essentially fossils. These are koryu where the skeleton of the technique and kata have been preserved, but the knowledge that animates them has been lost, so people simply repeat motions without understanding them. There are a few of these around, and if you watch carefully, you can spot some of them at big koryu enbu like the one at Meiji Jingu every year.
Even in well-preserved, well-cared for koryu, things can get lost. Ellis Amdur of Kogen Budo has written extensively about reconstituting bojutsu of Tenshin Buko Ryu. They still had documents, but the practice had been lost. Koryu are living arts, and things are lost and added and rediscovered all the time. Not every teacher is a good teacher, so sometimes the transmission is weak. These things happen. In living koryu, as opposed to fossilized koryu, this isn’t an overwhelming problem. Senior teachers and practitioners should always be testing their understanding, challenging themselves and the art to be sure both are at their best.
Gendai budo practitioners often make the mistake of thinking that because koryu don’t have competitive sparring, there is no pressure testing. They couldn’t be more wrong. Anytime you have a two-person koryu kata, you have the potential for pressure testing. Ideally, each kata represents the optimal way of doing something. If you do everything correctly, the kata works. If your training partners are being honest, they will follow the logic of the kata, and attack where the best opening is. If the best opening they see is one you’ve left that shouldn’t be there, that’s where they will attack. This can make for an unpleasant surprise anytime you don’t do things well. A whack on the kote or do or men when you aren’t expecting it is one of the best ways of learning to close those suki (openings). I’ve collected plenty of small bruises because I left suki that shouldn’t be there.
This is pressure testing. Your partner isn’t breaking the kata when they attack into a suki that you left. You broke the kata when you created the suki. Your partner is following the logic of the kata and attacking the best target. It’s always possible that someone sees an opening that’s not part of the kata. The proper response to this is to talk with your teacher, and arrange to try attacking the opening so it can be tested. I’ve seen many “openings” in kata that I was learning, and I’ve discovered the hard way each time that they aren’t really openings. I just didn’t know enough yet to understand why that attack was a bad idea. Teachers of living koryu aren’t afraid of exploring and experimenting. Before you try something though, it’s useful to remember that the arts you are experimenting with are hundreds of years old, and whatever you think you’re seeing has likely been thoroughly explored during the previous centuries.
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