Yin-yang
There’s an interesting concept in martial arts in general, the idea that to be good you have to be both soft and hard, or more plainly, strong and weak. This is a concept that’s always fascinated me, but frankly at first I hadn’t seen much of it. It seemed like it was always better to be hard/strong. In training, not performing a technique “hard enough” is the more gentle act, except that it then does a disservice to your training and your partner’s training as well.
Neither of you are fully confident in the technique, the desire to avoid inflicting pain on your training partner and not “doing it too hard”, is that it makes your skills weaker. That’s an interesting concept, somehow cyclic or self-propelling. There’s an ancient Japanese tale about a sword called “The Willow Wand” (I personally recommend Stan Sake’s version, but that’s just me.) In summation, the essence of this sword was a parable for all swords. Strength can’t master everything, flowing around and through something, rather than smashing into it.
Modern Arnis is such a ‘hard’ art, in so many ways, we do a lot of stuff that involves hit very hard, very fast. But I think part of the essence of the ‘flow’ that this blog is named after is the soft side. In order to have flow, to control the fight, to not break ‘beat’, or however you want to phrase it, there has to be that pervasive element of being willing to bend and redirect and re-orientate. Even, at higher levels, one suspects, an ability to change strategies mid-stream, while under endorphin rush pressure.
That really draws an image of heavy rocks swept along in a flood, for me. As a metaphor for those styles that blend the hard and the soft elements in more than token ways it seems to be reasonably accurate. Ramon and I have spoken on the forums about the ways that traditional Asian arts turn everything into a form. Eventually you learn all the forms and then you learn to take them apart and re-piece them together, and that’s how you learn to fight in those styles. Modern Arnis and FMA in general, instead seem to teach principles, structures which can be built into forms, but forms are (somewhat) at the other end of the spectrum. Basic strikes with stick/sword, knife, and empty hand are taught first, because they have to be. And more complex aspects are added on later.
That complexity then builds and builds into something like the 4 Anyos and a student’s ability to express them. As a form of summary, of their ‘mastery’ of the underlying techniques. Whereas, Karate, for instance, seems to use the kata to teach the underlying techniques. The point of this is, both approach the same problem from different directions and both obviously are successful. And this same concept might be seen in the way that soft and hard styles (and those in between) approach a conflict situation. The end goal of both is the destruction of the opponent. As a generality, the style’s goal is to utterly crush the opponent. Even a style like Aikido, as I understand it, feels comfortable allowing their opponents to beat themselves into unconsciousness with their own ‘hard’ side. Most styles of FMA seem to teach a lot of knife, and limb destruction, and other techniques that don’t have any other real outcome.
So all these styles have embraced a philosophy that the way to get to the end result of ‘disabled threat’ is such and such? And while a Muai Thai grand champion and an Aikido grandmaster and a Silat Guru/Pendakar won’t look a lot a like when they fight, but on a certain level, there must be commonalities between their tactics and the manifestation of that idea? Anyway, this was an interesting idea to me, if anybody else has any insight it’d be cool to hear it.
Have a good day!
Joel
