Focusing on the Wrong Things

Steven Pressfield is the author of many fine books. At his blog was a very good post by one of his associates which was made in the wake of Amazon's announcement that it was making some experiments with delivery by drones and the subsequent media chatter afterwords.

The gist of the article is that it is all too easy to get hooked into focusing on the minor issues, thereby ignoring the larger ones; the ones that really matter. 

Why the article itself is about the book industry, there are wider implications in our training; what we choose to focus on, and in our larger lives. 

An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Don’t Major in the Minor

By Callie Oettinger | Published: December 6, 2013

“Don’t major in the minor.”
Mellody Hobson said it, but I’ve thought it these last few days, since watching Jeff Bezos on 60 Minutes this past Sunday.

In case you haven’t heard, Bezos unveiled a prototype for package-delivering drones at the end of the interview. Without missing a beat, the character-bashing, Jeff-Bezos hating, Amazon-vilifying tribes descended, with articles and comments from one site to the next.
They majored in the minor.
I’m not saying that the drones weren’t newsworthy. They were—and I saw mentions pop up in everything from Outside Magazine’s site to Waterstones’ blog. And I’m not saying that Amazon isn’t above criticism, but . . .

There was much more to that interview than the last few minutes of drones. And if you are going to go down the drone rabbit hole, there’s a much bigger discussion that needs to take place, outside whether Amazon will or won’t ever be able to use them.
Instead of responding to the bigger ideas, they went for the jugular and the jocular, playing guessing games about why 60 Minutes ran the interview, why the secretive Bezos shared the drones.
...
1) Complaining is not a strategy
When Charlie Rose asked Bezos about worries of small book publishers and traditional retailers, and whether Amazon is ruthless in its pursuit of market share, Bezos replied:

“The internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie. You know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. Amazon is not happening to bookselling. The future is happening to bookselling.” (about the 9:15 mark of the interview)

He’s right. And the future isn’t just happening to booksellers. Look at how the rise of e-mail played into the decline of the U.S. Postal Service’s revenues. After years of struggling, a plan was sent to Congress for approval, to end Saturday delivery. Congress nixed the plan. A few months later,

Amazon stepped in with a different plan—to add Sunday service. Via this partnership, the USPS will deliver Amazon’s packages on the one day of the week that no one else delivers them, thus increasing delivery options for Amazon customers and bringing in revenue to the USPS. A win-win.

The examples of industries sideswiped by the future is long, as is the list of industries that have risen, offering much needed innovation and efficiency.

But . . .

It’s easier to bash Bezos and Amazon than it is to look in the mirror and ask, Why didn’t my publishing house lead the charge to sell books online? Why did we focus on the chains as the future when we saw the indy stores struggling to stay afloat? Why didn’t we recognize the potential for the future?

It’s easier to hate Bezos and Amazon than it is to ask, Why didn’t my bookstore stock backlist, long-tail titles, and books from indy publishers in addition to all those big publisher frontlist titles? 

Why didn’t my bookstore create a model that could be tapped by indy publishers and authors, instead of requiring top co-op dollars that only the big guys could pay for prime placement?


It’s easier to vilify Bezos and Amazon than it is to ask, Why didn’t I keep spending dollars with indy stores instead of spending them at the big chains, which then caused the indys I love to die?

It’s easier to major in the minor.

Katori Shinto Ryu

This is Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu - Japan's oldest and most traditional sword school - considered the pinnacle of classic Japanese martial arts. Features part of a rare interview with Otake Risuke, the school's instructor. See the full clip as part of the feature length movie, Art of the Japanese Sword. Enjoy - Empty Mind Films.

An Explanation of Kata as a Training Tool

Over at The Budo Bum, there appeared a very good article explaining the use of kata as a training tool. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

What Kata Isn't

Let’s get this straight.  Classical martial arts kata are not practice fighting.  They are not what fighting is or was. Martial arts kata do not simulate combat conditions.  They do not recreate actual combat scenarios.  If kata aren’t any of these things, then what are they, and why bother with them?

Kata are pre-arranged training sequences.  Kata are training scenarios for learning about essential elements of conflict.  I train in both classical and modern Japanese martial arts, and both use a lot of kata.  Classical arts tend to focus almost entirely on kata training.  Gendai arts like Judo use a combination of formal kata training, randori/sparring, and informal kata.

Kata are not for mimicking combat . Kata are for getting better at combat. They are a training tool for learning the skills necessary for dealing with combat.  They are an exceptional tool that has survived hundreds of years of testing and application. As a training tool, they provide a framework for practicing various aspects of combat, not just repeating techniques or practicing in a sparring situation where much of what is effective is not acceptable because of the risk of injury.  

Kata is not sparring, and with good reason.  All sparring assumes a dueling scenario.  2 people faced off and fighting.  Any equipment is equal.  There are no surprises, no unexpected changes. There is an assumption of fairness.  Kata is not handicapped by any of these of these assumptions.  Kata allows a much broader investigation of conflict conditions.

Changing Up Your Training

I originally found this article through Tai Chi Nomad.

I find that I have too much material to practice all in the time I have set aside, so I've needed to come up with training strategies which allows me to concentrate on the central stuff, which continuing to work on the peripheral stuff as well. I have sort of a core that I work through, while rotating daily through other material.

According to this article, what I was doing out of necessity make actually be a benefit to one's overall training. An excerpt is below. The full article may be read here.

Why the Progress You Make in the Practice Room Seems to Disappear Overnight

by Dr. Noa Kageyam

Making the most of your hours in the practice room:

One simple change that could drastically increase your productivity

When it comes to practicing, we often think in terms of time: How many hours are necessary to achieve optimal progress? While this is a valid concern, a more important question is how we can make each hour count. What is the most efficient way to work so that what is practiced today actually sticks tomorrow? There is nothing more frustrating than spending a day hard at work only to return the next day at the starting line. Unfortunately, our current practice model is setting us up for this daily disappointment.

Repetition, babies, and brain scans

Early on in our musical training, we are taught the importance of repetition. How often have we been told to “play each passage ten times perfectly before moving on”? The challenge with this well-intentioned advice is that it is not in line with the way our brains work. We are hardwired to pay attention to change, not repetition. This hardwiring can already be observed in preverbal infants. 

Show a baby the same object over and over again and they will gradually stop paying attention through a process called habituation. Change the object, and the attention returns full force. The same goes for adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated that there is progressively less brain activation when stimuli are repeated. The fact is, repeated information does not receive the same amount of processing as new information. And on some level, we all know this. Constant repetition is boring and our boredom is telling us that our brains are not engaged. But instead of listening to this instinctive voice of reason, we blame ourselves for our lack of attention and yell at ourselves to “focus!” Luckily, there is an alternative.

Blocked practice schedules

In the field of sport psychology, the continuous repetition discussed above is called blocked practice. 

In a blocked practice schedule, all repetitions of one activity are completed before moving on to a second activity. For example, a baseball player who must hit fifteen fastballs, fifteen curve balls, and fifteen change-up pitches in practice would complete all of the fastballs before moving on to the curve balls and so on. This most resembles the way the majority of musicians practice, especially when it comes to challenging passages. We work on one excerpt for a given amount of time and then move on to the next excerpt until all tasks for the day are complete. A blocked approach seems logical.  Muscle memory requires repetition and why wouldn’t we do all of the repetitions in a row? 

After all, if we are working on a difficult passage, it feels a lot more comfortable 10 minutes into practice than at the beginning. It is precisely this feeling of comfort and improvement that reinforces our reliance on blocked practice. The problem with this kind of practicing, however, is that the positive results we feel in the practice room today do not lead to the best long-term learning tomorrow. Practicing in a way that optimizes performance in the practice room does not optimize learning.

Random practice schedules

What if we took the blocks of practice on particular tasks and broke them down into smaller segments on each task? In the baseball example above, the players could hit the three different types of pitches in an alternating fashion, instead of doing all of one kind in a row. Two breakdown options are a repeating order (e.g., abc abc abc…) or an arbitrary order (e.g., acb cba bca…). In either, the net result will still be 15 practice hits of each of the three types of serve, exactly the same as the net result in the blocked practice schedule. The only variable that changes is the order in which the pitches are practiced. This type of interspersed schedule is called a random practice schedule (also known as an interleaved practice schedule).

In a random practice schedule, the performer must keep restarting different tasks. Because beginnings are always the hardest part, it will not feel as comfortable as practicing the same thing over and over again. But this challenge lies at the heart of why random practice schedules are more effective. When we come back to a task after an intervening task, our brain must reconstruct the action plan for what we are about to do. And it is at this moment of reconstruction that our brains are the most active. 

More mental activity leads to greater long-term learning. In the blocked schedule above, the baseball players must only construct the action plan for each type of pitch once, at the beginning of each block. In the random schedule, they must construct and later reconstruct an action plan fifteen times for each pitch. Although a blocked schedule may produce superior performance during practice, study after study has shown that a random practice schedule consistently produces superior retention following practice a day or more later (i.e., the amount actually learned). This phenomenon is called the contextual interference effect.
 
How much better is a random practice schedule?

It turns out that the hypothetical baseball example used above is not hypothetical.  In a 1994 study by Hall, Domingues, and Cavazos, elite baseball players were assigned to either the blocked or random practice schedules discussed above. After twelve practice sessions, the baseball players in the random practice schedule hit 57% more of the pitches than when they started. The blocked group only hit 25% more of the pitches, meaning that the random practice schedule was almost twice as effective, even though the two groups hit the same number of practice pitches. Similar results have been found across a wide variety of fields. Most pertinent to our interests as musicians, my preliminary research at the Brain and Mind Institute in Canada provides empirical support for the use of a random practice schedule in music. Not only does this research suggest that a random practice schedule is more effective than a blocked schedule for practicing musical passages, participant interviews also reveal that random practice has positive effects on factors such as goal setting and focus.

Another Funny Bounce

Welcome Spring!

For everyone participating in the Lenten Challenge, how is it going?

I changed jobs about six months ago and am now working from home. I travel about every other week, but when I'm home, I'm home and I really like that.

As I'm home a lot, I find that I need to get out of the house. 

I still do my internal martial arts stuff (learning the Gao style BaguaZhang forms online)  and meet with the Wujifa group  on Sundays for stance corrections and heading towards push hands, etc.; but I wasn't getting a good workout and at 56 my health is always on my mind.

I started kicking around the idea of returning to aikido and perhaps taking up judo along with it.

I located two dojo and looked into it. One went out of business and the other only trains one day a week, in the middle of Saturday, which is probably the worst day of the week for me (projects around the house, long weekends at the cottage, etc.).

As I was mulling over my next move, the Mrs reminded me that one of her friends goes to a kick boxing class at Stars and Strikes MMA gym nearby. She (the friend) really likes it and is always talking about what a great group they have there.

So I went to the free trial conditioning class. Sweet Jesus!

I went back and signed up as a regular student.

My first goal is to make it through the conditioning class without having to stop. Once I do that, I want to start the BJJ class they have which is before the conditioning class twice a week. On the days they don't have BJJ, I'll do the kick boxing class which comes after the conditioning class. One way or another, I should be in pretty good shape pretty quickly.

As an aside, I got some new insights into the 100 Man Kumite some of the Karate and Kendo guys do.

There is an MMA competition coming up later this month and the school is sending 6 guys. It will be the first match for one of them. He sort of "graduated" to being good enough to fight matches. For his graduation and initiation, last night he had to fight four two minute rounds with no break against a fresh opponent every round. It wasn't all out, but they weren't playing patty-cake either.

He showed great spirit. I think he'll do well.

The 300 Tang Dynasty Poems, #52: Returning at Night to Lumen Mountain

The Tang Dynasty was a high point of culture in ancient China. Especially esteemed were poems. 


Some of the best poems of that period have been collected into an anthology known as The 300 Tang Dynasty Poems. A online version of the anthology may be found here.

Meng Haoran

RETURNING AT NIGHT TO LUMEN MOUNTAIN

A bell in the mountain-temple sounds the coming of night.
I hear people at the fishing-town stumble aboard the ferry,
While others follow the sand-bank to their homes along the river.
...I also take a boat and am bound for Lumen Mountain --
And soon the Lumen moonlight is piercing misty trees.
I have come, before I know it, upon an ancient hermitage,
The thatch door, the piney path, the solitude, the quiet,
Where a hermit lives and moves, never needing a companion.

 

Accepting Advice and Having Nothing to Prove

I would like to reference two posts I read that are relevant to anyone studying martial arts as a budo.

Cameron Conaway had a very good post giving advice on how to ... graciously take advice. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here. 

In his post, Cameron makes reference to another good post on Having Nothing to Prove. An excerpt follows the first excerpt and THAT full post may be read here.

Now some advice about advice ...

...This process only lasted an hour, but for that entire hour I carried anger and that “I know” attitude. It wasn’t until months later, and then again upon reflecting on Kendall Ruth’s brilliant article about re-learning titled Nothing to Prove: On Being a 40-Year-Old Man that the monk’s lessons sunk in. That I made a conscious effort to couple the “I know” with action. That the following 6 pieces of advice about advice rose up within me:

(1) When somebody gives you advice you already know, do not say “I know.” Instead, say “thank you.” Life is a practice. We all need reminders.

(2) Do not eliminate the “I know” from your train of thought. If you know it then know it more. And if you know it and fully believe in it then ask yourself: Am I living what I know? Often the greatest advice you’ll ever receive isn’t some new world-revealing insight. It’s something you already know handed to you in a new shape.

(3) Ask for consent. You know the person who seems to interrupt any personal situation you present with their unsolicited advice? Don’t be that person. Listening is its own form of advice. If you really feel strongly about giving then there’s no shame in simply saying something like: I’ve been thinking about this an awful lot. Do you want my advice?

(4) Advice is not hierarchical. There is giving in the receiving and there is receiving in the giving. Advice is often wielded in an attempt to exhibit power. An older sibling, though the younger may be wiser, might give advice as a way to make clear their maturity status. Motive matters.

(5) Advice can follow the writing maxim of “Show don’t tell.” Some of the best information I’ve ever received came through observing the way mentors and role models truly lived their recommendation. They didn’t have to tell me. They showed me.

(6) Past advice need not live in history. Carve out some time to reflect back on the best advice you’ve ever given or received. The advice you need now may very well be the advice you received then.



... and now an excerpt from Kendall Ruth's post ...



...I set out to see if a 40-year old could still make it through absurd endurance. What I rediscovered was the value of living in joy regardless of circumstance, that I have always had this unyielding river in me that flows whether I pay it mind or not.

Men are taught directly or subtly that we have to prove ourselves. We breathe it in like a fish breathes water. There is a time when proving your mettle has context. Why else would the military be filled with men in their 20′s? Where else would adrenaline sports find their junkies? But the lesson that comes with time is that indeed…there is nothing to prove. There is living each day with the choices we make.

It is far too easy to get bogged down in regrets. Life is too short and fragile for those to make up the majority of our story. Nobody else is going to give a damn about your regret. Get over yourself, get up in the morning and live, even if it means burning the very tissue that holds you together.

As for me I have a run to go enjoy, regardless of the outcomes.

This process only lasted an hour, but for that entire hour I carried anger and that “I know” attitude. It wasn’t until months later, and then again upon reflecting on Kendall Ruth’s brilliant article about re-learning titled Nothing to Prove: On Being a 40-Year-Old Man that the monk’s lessons sunk in. That I made a conscious effort to couple the “I know” with action. That the following 6 pieces of advice about advice rose up within me:
(1) When somebody gives you advice you already know, do not say “I know.” Instead, say “thank you.” Life is a practice. We all need reminders.
(2) Do not eliminate the “I know” from your train of thought. If you know it then know it more. And if you know it and fully believe in it then ask yourself: Am I living what I know? Often the greatest advice you’ll ever receive isn’t some new world-revealing insight. It’s something you already know handed to you in a new shape.
(3) Ask for consent. You know the person who seems to interrupt any personal situation you present with their unsolicited advice? Don’t be that person. Listening is its own form of advice. If you really feel strongly about giving then there’s no shame in simply saying something like: I’ve been thinking about this an awful lot. Do you want my advice?
(4) Advice is not hierarchical. There is giving in the receiving and there is receiving in the giving. Advice is often wielded in an attempt to exhibit power. An older sibling, though the younger may be wiser, might give advice as a way to make clear their maturity status. Motive matters.
(5) Advice can follow the writing maxim of “Show don’t tell.” Some of the best information I’ve ever received came through observing the way mentors and role models truly lived their recommendation. They didn’t have to tell me. They showed me.
(6) Past advice need not live in history. Carve out some time to reflect back on the best advice you’ve ever given or received. The advice you need now may very well be the advice you received then.
- See more at: http://cameronconaway.com/6-piece-of-advice-about-advice/#sthash.vFnesh8f.dpuf

This process only lasted an hour, but for that entire hour I carried anger and that “I know” attitude. It wasn’t until months later, and then again upon reflecting on Kendall Ruth’s brilliant article about re-learning titled Nothing to Prove: On Being a 40-Year-Old Man that the monk’s lessons sunk in. That I made a conscious effort to couple the “I know” with action. That the following 6 pieces of advice about advice rose up within me:
(1) When somebody gives you advice you already know, do not say “I know.” Instead, say “thank you.” Life is a practice. We all need reminders.
(2) Do not eliminate the “I know” from your train of thought. If you know it then know it more. And if you know it and fully believe in it then ask yourself: Am I living what I know? Often the greatest advice you’ll ever receive isn’t some new world-revealing insight. It’s something you already know handed to you in a new shape.
(3) Ask for consent. You know the person who seems to interrupt any personal situation you present with their unsolicited advice? Don’t be that person. Listening is its own form of advice. If you really feel strongly about giving then there’s no shame in simply saying something like: I’ve been thinking about this an awful lot. Do you want my advice?
(4) Advice is not hierarchical. There is giving in the receiving and there is receiving in the giving. Advice is often wielded in an attempt to exhibit power. An older sibling, though the younger may be wiser, might give advice as a way to make clear their maturity status. Motive matters.
(5) Advice can follow the writing maxim of “Show don’t tell.” Some of the best information I’ve ever received came through observing the way mentors and role models truly lived their recommendation. They didn’t have to tell me. They showed me.
(6) Past advice need not live in history. Carve out some time to reflect back on the best advice you’ve ever given or received. The advice you need now may very well be the advice you received then.
- See more at: http://cameronconaway.com/6-piece-of-advice-about-advice/#sthash.vFnesh8f.dpuf

Performance Under Stress

It's one thing to practice in your comfort zone. It's quite another to have to perform under stress.

Below is an excerpt from an excellent article by a well known martial artist whose honesty of his short comings and sincerity in overcoming them are striking. The full article may be read here.

Stephan’s note: today I interview Burton Richardson who has spent decades researching the training methods that make martial arts techniques practical, reliable, and functional.  His approach is very applicable to street self defence, but is equally valid for anyone wanting to compete.

Burton: What is that thing? Okay, I’ll give you the brief rundown.

Basically, I was at the Inosanto Academy late at night in mid-80s. One of the guys training there named Marc Denny.  Actually he was a student of mine, I taught him private lessons in Indonesian silat amongst other things. And he was one of the senior students at the Academy.

One night he came up to me and said, “Hey, you like actually stick sparring,” as I would actually go to tournaments and compete in stick fighting with the big head gear.You’d have this giant suit on so you’re protected, along with very, very thin light sticks, big gloves, the whole thing. We need protection and all the deal.

And Marc said, “This friend of mine he likes stick fighting.” He’s somebody he met recently. And he was “Do you want to spar with him?” “Of course, yeah, sure.”

So this guy comes down. His name is Eric Knauss and he’s a big, tall guy, strong. To make the long story short he takes a big, very big, heavy rattan stick and he goes “Do you mind if we use these?”

I’m like “Oh, that’s fine.” We put on the helmet. We only have fencing helmet and hand protection I think, maybe not even knee pads, just that. That’s all.

I figured because we had no protection that we were going to go really, really light especially because these sticks are so big and heavy because, gosh, you could kill somebody with those things. So we started and he just tried to take my head off.  Like swinging so incredibly hard trying to take my head off.

And I found out that night that all I was doing was to block his shots. I just had nothing going. Under that kind of pressure, that kind of fear of actually getting your knee blown out or arm broken or getting knocked out , I just didn’t have anything  there even though I was an instructor and supposedly really good at this art.

So that started a big evolution. And I just want to talk about that a little more later. But the idea was to go in and try it out. This guy, Eric, who is just an amazing stick fighter, after doing Filipino martial arts for years and years, his question – which was brilliant – was “What actually happens when guys really fight for real and hit as hard as they can especially with not much protection so you’re afraid of getting hit? What actually happens then?” So he went and tested it like a scientist.

I had been doing drills and drills and drills and cool techniques and impressing everybody and all that, but that type of training was more reality. So that helped really change my focus.

Stephan: So the elements of pressure and fear were added, that showed you that you needed to train in a different way, and that you needed to test it in a different way?

Burton: What happened after that first night, my mind was racing the whole drive home that night. It just did not compute. I have been doing Filipino martial arts for many, many years and I had a reputation as being a very, very good practitioner of it.

And you go from this environment where you think everything you know you can do – “You can do this. I can do everything.”

And then you get to this thing where like, “woah, I couldn’t do.” The only thing I could do is block and also when he tried to smash me in the knee I was able to move my leg out of the way; fortunately

I had done enough sparring where we just hit at the hand or hit at the leg. I had practiced that, moving my leg, so I had some good defense there. So luckily I didn’t get beaten up but I just was lost basically. I was just totally defensive and just had that “deer in the headlights” sort of feeling.

So over the years I found out that the first thing is that you have to be able to function under that kind of pressure.

Look at jiu-jitsu, which I love of course – I’m coming up on 20 years doing jiu-jitsu – it’s one thing to do jiu-jitsu.  But when you add striking, especially hard striking when the other guy is really trying to hit you hard and you don’t have protection, then it’s a whole other thing.  Now there’s not the fear of losing or getting your guard passed or getting submitted – there’s the fear of physical damage and that’s whole another level.

So full contact stick fighting really helped me to be calm under pressure.  I’ve got to say though that all the times I did that, and I did for many years, I never once wanted to go and do it. When someone said “Oh, Eric is coming tonight,” I was always like “Oh, God…”

But luckily, happily, whatever something inside me just compeled me I have to go and do it and I’m glad I did.

Stephan: But it’s funny because one of my defining memories was watching a couple of guys who have been doing a lot of traditional martial arts spar for contact for the first time with boxing gloves.

And the traditional martial arts stance lasted for about three seconds until the first guy got hit in the face. And within five seconds it degenerated to two guys standing with their hands down at their waists throwing these gigantic right-handed haymakers over and over.

They forgot using both hands. They forgot the “Leaping Monkey Fist Steals the Peaches” or whatever their cool moves were. It was just right hand to face with a straight arm, thrown like they were throwing a baseball from behind the guys body, and they were trading back and forth.

I had done a little bit full-contact sparring at that time. So I was sitting there finding this pretty amusing, but it showed that anybody under enough pressure goes back to the primal instincts. We’re not that much evolved from cavemen.

Burton: It is true.  You know Bruce Lee talked about the truth in combat. That’s the truth in combat. Once you get hit really hard, okay, now we’re talking about the truth in combat. And when we talk about discipline in the martial arts sometimes people have this separation. I think you’re a good example, Stephan, of somebody who doesn’t do this because you have the whole picture.

But there are a lot of people that separate it – “Oh, this fighting and that’s martial arts.” And sometimes people forget those attributes that we look for from traditional martial arts like discipline and such. But it’s so important to really look for that in actual reality-based, actual fighting.

For example, you get hit in the face like you’re talking about, everybody goes back to that haymaker thing until they have developed the discipline to respond well even when they are under that kind of pressure. That’s what it’s all about in our training: if we can develop ourselves to be calm under that kind of pressure, and we can actually implement a well-thought out game plan, and we can then take tha to our everyday life.

You can be calm everyday when everything is great.  When things start going wrong that’s when we have to draw from our martial arts training and all that pressure we’ve been under and say, “No, it’s best to just be calm and do the right thing here. Don’t go off the handle. Don’t start screaming or whatever.” I just think that’s probably the most important thing we can learn out of martial arts.

Stephan: I think that’s a really good point, Burton. I do want to move on to jiu-jitsu and grappling and MMA. But before I do that I want to play the devil’s advocate for a second with the dog brother style sparring where you’re wearing minimal protection and heavy sticks.

The argument has been made that it teaches you bad habits for when it comes to bladed weaponry.

 When I’ve done dog brothers style sparring you’re sometimes willing to take a shot or two if you know you can get a good one in or you can charge into the clinch.

The naysayers say, “Well, you’re just training yourself to get your arm chopped off” if we had machetes or swords or bladed weaponry. So how do you square that circle, and reconcile blades versus blunt weapons, and possibly developing bad patterns and bad habits when you’re going between those two weapon systems?

Burton: Right, exactly. So to me the key question is what are we training for?  If I’m training to go on a sword fight that’s one thing, but chances are that I’m not going to be in a sword against sword fight.  People also say “Well you’re never going to get into a stick fight” but I saw a stick fight in L.A one time.  Living in downtown in L.A. I saw two guys with sticks and they were swinging at each other with that caveman sort of thing. They’re both just swinging like crazy and if either one of them knew how to actually use a stick then they would have been fine.

One thing is that with the helmets on, there are certain techniques that do not work with that helmet, even if it’s a light helmet. You have to hit really hard and generate lots of power to knock somebody out when that helmet is on, whereas a quick jab without the helmet will still give you the stunning effect and then you can follow up. So anytime you add protective equipment it changes the way you can actually implement techniques. Like in MMA with the gloves… Put the gloves on and, wow, getting to the choke is a different thing. Guys can grab on your gloves.

I trained Chris Leben for three years. I was his head coach for three years. He just moved to San Diego and we worked against that all the time, getting that choke. I mean we would reach in and grab the gloves – if the referee doesn’t see it’s okay!  So the point being, when you add equipment it changes everything.

Taiji versus Thai Boxing

Violet Li writes articles on Taijiquan for Examiner.com. Her column may be found here. The excerpt below is an example of her work. The full artice may be read here. Please click through. You'll probably enjoy the photographs.

Muay Thai is a full-contact combat sport of Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. It is known as "the art of eight limbs" because of its utilization of fists, elbows, knees, shins, and feet. Muay Thai Boxing first became popular in the sixteenth century. Today there are millions of practitioners around the world.

Tai Chi (Taiji) was an ancient Chinese martial art as well as healing art. General Chen Wangting (1600 – 1680) first created the modern Tai Chi style approximately 400 years ago. Chen Tai Chi is an extended style. Its movements appear very soft.

On Sept 28, 2013, five Muay Thai champions from Thailand were invited to Jiao Zuo (the closest city to Tai Chi birth place Chen Village), Henan, China to compete with five Chen style Tai Chi competitors. According to Master Chen Ziqiang, the Chief Instructor of Chenjiagou Taiji Academy and organizer of this tournament, explained that the tournament followed the international boxing standard and had five weight divisions: 75 kilograms (165 pounds), 70 (154 pounds), 65 kilograms (143 pounds), 60 kilograms (132 pounds), and 56 kilograms (123 pounds). It was a friendship tournament and consisted of five matches or one match for each weight division.