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In Search of IT
By the little dojo | March 19, 2010
Go to the best, learn from the best! That concept should guide our path and our choice of coaches, teachers, mentors etc. Fook Yueng stressed to me that one hour with a master is better than 100 hours with anyone else. Why? Even when you are training on your own or practicing with training partners your neural system has felt IT and you can spend the rest of your life chasing IT. If you have only seen technique and emulate it you are an actor. For years after training with Sensei Harris, Fook Yueng, Sid Woodcock, Kyama Sensei, Jesse Glover, Ed Hart, in Quiet Moments, or doing a practice I can still feel their pressures, movement and even relive smells in the room, the feeling of flying through the air effortlessly. It is amazing how many people train at their dojos and never are even aware that Martial Arts are not the same, it is more how you do something than what you do, that is important. Everyone can block or throw or punch but when you see, feel, a master doing it there is a quantum leap difference and it will affect you for the rest of your life. The Bible says as that by beholding we become changed. What you put in your neural system is what will come out. Some time take time learn some. Put quality in. Look for a school and a teacher that will give you rich neural food, not just a school that looks nice, has nice equipment, good looking instructors, clean mirrors, nice uniforms, a well stocked pro shop or what ever. If that is what I looked for I would never have met Ed Hart in his smoked filled living room drinking coffee and really caring if his students got IT! Countless people would not have walked through the alley across broken beer bottles to the black iron grate marked 1 down the stairs into a rich mix of thousands of punches far ranging conversations and sticking with a Master. I trained not in a clean sparkly dojo with people giving high fives, and yelling “You Rock”. There is nothing wrong with training in a positive environment I encourage it, just don’t make it the priority, it is secondary IT is primary. I trained for years in the basement of a community center being Uke (person who survives the gift) taking throws from David Harris one of the best, least well known, martial artists of our time on concrete, hundreds a night. People would come in look and leave saying they were looking for real Karate, a “real dojo”. When we look for training we should look for rich neural food, rather than a pretty dojo. We should be willing to sacrifice, travel take the time to learn some from a Master. Jesse Glover is still traveling and doing limited seminars. Jesse is a living legend not because of who he knew that he was Bruce Lee’s first student, he is a living legend because he saw IT, felt IT, and chased IT for his whole life. People pass around names all the time, saying, “I trained with Jesse Glover, met so and so got my picture taken with them, etc”, and then post that on a web page. Don’t waste your time, money and resources there, seek out the guy himself, there are people out there that are not that well known that have amazing skill find them. They are probably not teaching in a flashy dojo though they might be, they are harder to find but wow how worth IT.
Topics: Steve Smith | No Comments »