The information age gave us a lot of opportunity for the expansion of knowledge. With the advent of social media and other platforms, knowledge can be shared anywhere and at any time. Indeed, if a martial artist would want to learn about a martial art technique, even without an instructor, he/she can find the technique he/she wants if he will just log on to YouTube and voila! He/she can find all the techniques he wants. It is like finding a cave of wonders if one just knows how to look and where.
However, will a collection of martial arts techniques taken from videos and social media platforms suffice? As we all know the martial arts have many aspects to it. First and foremost, we have the spiritual side of martial arts which has become the reason why many people from different walks of life engage in martial arts. Usually, the spiritual side of martial arts is emphasized in styles like Aikido, Tai Chi Chuan, and other so called “internal” martial arts where the development of the inner self is given primary focus instead of struggling to brace the odds of bodily pain.
There is also the socio-cultural aspect of martial arts where it brings people together. Martial arts as we all know, can be practiced individually. Nevertheless, the tradition of the martial arts come from military training and the establishment of institutions of martial arts will not be done if it doesn’t have a cultural aspect to it. Organizations which bear the idea of an identity in martial arts provide a branding of the group which spawned it. This branding becomes a symbol which typically emanates a sense of power and commercial authority.
However, with all the above aspects, probably the most important is the psychological-physical side of it. I chose to combine these two aspects because I believe that they are inseparable. All military and fitness trainings espouse the idea of mind over body. Because it should be noted that the body can influence the mind when it comes to training. The mind is necessary to process all the information that is given to it while the body is the primary actor of martial art techniques. The application of techniques and even the progression of movements require a trained mind and also a trained body. Therefore, we go back to answer our question – even if we know a lot of techniques and wherever these techniques may come from, it will not suffice without doing, in a martial arts sense: training.
Why the training? Because it seems perhaps that the whole idea of training is to bridge a huge gap between the psychological and the physical. It is like there is a huge abyss between this two which can only be crossed through training. I remember a scene from the kung fu movie “The Two Warriors” produced by Golden Harvest (if my memory serves me right) where the Wing Chun master Leung Jan teaches his student a valuable lesson on perception and reaction. The way that Leung Jan taught his student is by letting the student look at a leaf that he was about to drop from his fingers. The task then for the student is to catch the leaf with his own fingers. Whenever the teacher drops the leaf, that was only about an inch higher that the student’s fingers, the student misses to catch the leaf, no matter how hard he tries. Leung Jan then explains that information travels from the mind to the limbs then the fingers and that this information does not travel fast enough. Even if the eyes look with utmost attention at what was happening, and the mind was prepared to command the response, time was still a factor at the speed of the reaction because in theory, there was still a gap between mind and body and that this should be bridged. Therefore, other than what Leung Jan meant in the story, we could also imply that he was saying that the student still lacks this connection of mind and body – developing the right intuition.
Moreover, connecting this to teacher transfer of information to student, serious training also and should solidify a student's overall development. Educational theories and practices suggest that not all students learn from one single mode of learning. This means that not all students really "get" what the teacher teaches. Some students might be stubborn, again some could have other reasons for that but the point is, even if the teacher will slowly and systematically teach a technique, there will always be students that won't get it. Therefore, training, repetitive training should be done. Even masters who can perform incredible feats already still repeat and repeat and repeat training. Much like a myriad of hammering is needed to forge a sword.
However, this is not the only whole point of training. If we will go philosophical, we can see that this also applies to all aspects of one’s life. Who among us have had the knowledge of something but then fails to act based on that knowledge? I think almost everyone. In today’s world, a significant part of the population are graduates from universities. But I would say that not all who have graduated from universities are truly educated and have truly felt deeply about the things that they have learned. In the Philippines, there is a situation where the employees’ degrees are not appropriate/aligned to the job that they are in. On the other hand, there are also people who know that they could do a thing that they wished to do but are hindered by social and economic constraints. If we apply the idea of how training bridge the gap between the psychological and the physical, we could say that there is a gap between our dreams and what we are doing at this point in time of our life. And therefore, by training (or by the continued pursuit of what we truly desire – or what we feel purposeful about) we can hopefully bridge this gap in order for us to achieve the potential that we have imagined in the depths of our dreams.
So, as a martial artist, I say:
Apply what you know, and do it now.
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