Secretive Styles

[shuyun]

why are some styles secretive about their moves?

Why are certain moves only taught to guros-masters?

[bultwihud]

Thanks

I have read your topic. What's useful innformation for my job.
I do agree with you. Those are the most effective way
have a blessed day

[Movement]

why are some styles secretive about their moves?

Why are certain moves only taught to guros-masters?

it's well spread over martial arts, secretive moves, secretive styles are nothing more then just a big wank. maybe in days of old when it was only passed down from say father to son but those days are gone and almost everyone has experience in martial arts including these secretive moves and systems

[Crafty Dog]

Woof Movement et al:

That may be so where you live but IMHO it is not necessarily so simple as that.

To cite one of my experiences, I had some wonderful training one day with a Manong Kalimba (my spelling of his name could be wrong-- the introduction was via Grand Tuhon Gaje) in Negros but it was upon the condition that I not share it while he lived.

His staff system was unlike anything I had seen before.

He passed away a few years ago.

(Those of you who have our "DBMA: Kali Tudo (c) 2: The Running Dog Game" DVD will have seen footage of Manong Kalimba demonstrating his empty hand game)

I am now considering whether to release a DBMA Ass'n Vid-lesson containing what we have come to call the Kalimba game. The Kalimba Game is something we use not only in staff, but also in single stick, and empty hand.

Here are some comments from a student concerning its efficacy in the context of a discussion on the DBMAA forum concerning my decision to release the previously available only to instructors DVD "The Bolo Game":

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For those that haven't seen the Bolo Game VL it is an awesome dvd, for me it brough together my understanding of the different 'Games' presented in DBMA. I'd heard whispered mentions of the 'Trident Game' and that is covered here as well, the interplay between the Bolo and Los Triques structures (as applied using the Trident Game) is well covered and left me slapping my forehead in a 'Why didn't I realise that!' gesture (in my defence, I think very few people have figured it out on their own).

If you have the Los Triques dvd, the Bolo dvd is an excellent companian in terms of accompanying technique and in applying strategy. There were a few moments in the BG VL where I realised some things I'd been doing wrong.

Shortly after watching this dvd I was invited to go spar limited armour (WEKAF helmets) with another Stickfighting group in my area. Using some of the strategies presented I was immediately aware of how unpredicated they were, it was with a certain sadness that I forced myself to stop using them before they figured it out (I was dominating some pretty well respected UK fighters!)!

Guro C, does this mean that you'll also be releasing the Kalimba VL as a dvd? Because I have another story about using that material.
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Pray tell!
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At the same sparring meet (with the WEKAF helmets), I dominated in staff sparring the same people with a combination of drift shots, uppercut diagonals and a few Kalimba Dodgers. On the last Kalimba-Dodger I broke the staff over the other guys head! This brought the total damage I did that evening to 3 sparring sticks, one WEKAF helmet (I cracked a chunk off of the grill at the same time as breaking one of the sticks) and a staff (a total value of about £110, so about $170, the __ stuff is overpriced ).

Bearing in mind that these guys are very experienced and the idea was 'anything goes' ... I was told to 'Calm down' and never invited back.

I extended an invite to them for all of our sparring days but they don't even return my calls these days....
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IMHO most people have no idea just how seriously some of the Filipino masters take secrecy-- and just how possible it is for things to exist of which we are not aware.

Is secrecy sometimes used as a smokescreen to cover untested fantasty? Of course. Indeed I suspect that most of the time that such is the case!

That said, I have been in the past and sometimes continue to be a secretive teacher-- though this seems to lessen the further I get from my fighting days. ;-)

Something that is causing me to re-consider my thinking is my experience with Manong Kalimba who taught only a few people. In one day I received things from him of great value.

I wonder how much was lost when he passed , , ,

The Adventure continues,
Crafty Dog/Marc

[Garland]

It's unfortunate that antiquated ideas of secrecy usually end up sacrificing the preservation of culture. It's a catch 22, I suppose, people live and are brought up in a culture of secrecy and in the end, that very thing is what leads to the loss of so many things that make up a people's identity (martial arts, dance, song, religion, folk medicine, oral traditions of any sort).

It's like letting a natural resource go up in smoke through being myopic and stubborn.

In the day and age of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the whole idea of a global village, wouldn't it be more helpful to share and try to proliferate knowledge like those of the old filipino masters? To try and pass on national pride and cultural identity to their kids and grandkids and neighbors, as well as promote their system to others from other cultures?

I don't know...I'll hop off my soap box and make myself a sandwich.

[shuyun]

from what i heard from by friend who's into bujutsu,

several sword styles got lost this way because of insistence in secrecy. the last living masters die out without passing the secret techniques and they are never recovered.

I hope that doesn't happen to FMA.

I also brought it up because I personally know an FMA style (don't ask it's not against the style specifically general I'm writing about but the culture of it) that has the core techniques only taught to high status members.

But one master of the same style and went on to produce an instructional DVD and "Broke the Magician's code" if you will.

And it's funny how once you get the general idea of what the "secret" is supposed to do, you can probably research it hard enough and see it as a "basic" technique somewhere else.

Funny how that works, old masters never thought the day of easy research will come.

[cinusepin]

Great little topic.
And Nice work--thank you for sharing- for me this makes perfect sense though.

[shuyun]

welcome cinusepin

[Crafty Dog]

"In the day and age of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the whole idea of a global village, wouldn't it be more helpful to share and try to proliferate knowledge like those of the old filipino masters? To try and pass on national pride and cultural identity to their kids and grandkids and neighbors, as well as promote their system to others from other cultures?"

True, but I wonder how the martial arts instructor in Florida who taught CQB tactics and techniques to one of the 911 killers feels , , ,

[shuyun]

True, but I wonder how the martial arts instructor in Florida who taught CQB tactics and techniques to one of the 911 killers feels

that's the person though not the art, we can't all be psychics

[tkeplar]

"I make it a point to stick around with people smarter than myself."

....spot on.

tk

[Garland]

True, but I wonder how the martial arts instructor in Florida who taught CQB tactics and techniques to one of the 911 killers feels , , ,

I personally feel that the ethics around teaching things becomes clouded by so many other variables as well. I mean, teaching somebody how to efficiently and effectively hurt another human being is certainly questionable in the first place, but it has it's place within our and every society. The arts themselves are wonderful in that they are codified and structured methods of applying the physical form to overcome adversity, and usually are accompanied by a certain universal warrior ethos and fraternity as well as a means to channel one's energy towards a particular self-bettering (sorry, inarticulate today) goal.

That being said, the way that most people teach the arts in our society and most societies these days is for financial gain, which for the most part means teaching people with the interest and not necessarily (unfortunately) a moral or ethical compass that resonates with the common good. Hence people trying to make a living off of doing what they love sometimes teach things that the worst of us ought not know. I remember Ajarn Chai saying at a seminar how he would teach seminars other places and there would be FBI agents and Hells Angels in the same room.

I think that my (very possibly naive) hope is that the martial arts have the capacity to forge people not just into better fighters, but better human beings and better people. I know that this is a sentimental and romantic way of looking at the topic, but I also know wholeheartedly that bad people who want to do bad things to other people usually don't need or desire any type of training besides the things in their environment that sculpted them into what they are and the willingness to use violence to get what they want. A knife is lethal in anyone's hands, a coward clutching an ice pick in fear, a sniveling coward criminal holding a box cutter, a switchblade or a shank with ill intentions, a cook holding a cleaver, or a martial artist holding a knife all have the same capacity to kill.

I have no idea how the Florida man who taught the individual who was involved in the hijacking of that plane and the subsequent horror feels about having trusted and taught an individual what he did. I can imagine he is either racked with guilt at having made the same judgement call that many if not ALL instructors have about sharing potentially dangerous information do without having something bad happen, or he rationalizes that he isn't to blame.

-how did the man who taught Charles Whitman to shoot in the Marines feel when he climbed that tower in Texas?
-how did the father that teach his son how to use a rifle to hunt feel when his kid shot up the school?

I'd imagine I'd initially blame myself, but eventually I would have to realize that you are ultimately not responsible for the way in which other people misuse information. Who could possibly imagine or foresee somebody taking that knowledge and twisting it to such an end?

I have no answers as to whether or not the lay person should have access to learning how to use a knife or a gun in the same way a military person does. I don't see a whole lot of utility in having the common person memorizing vital templates and learn how to systematically dismember another living thing, but yet again, it may save that person's family someday, or it could help that person gain some sort of mastery over themselves and give them a sort of brotherhood through their training partners...or they could be the Dale Gribble King of the Hill "Soldier of Fortune" person stuck in some sort of morbid fantasy world.

The underlying questions a teacher has to ask are, what am I teaching and who am I teaching it to? Why are the seeking this information out?

Then again, how much of this information is already out there in the public domain? (especially in this information age...)

[shuyun]

teachers can only impose so much discipline. codes or what not. As RPG players know there is such a thing as LAWFUL Evil.

You can be respectable but evil. So as much as we want to impose discipline in the art we really can't do much.

So is that the reason why masters hold back "advanced" techniques so they can't be held responsible for what their students do?

Well again they can find that someone else, from someone who maybe willing to teach it without the moral constraints.

You know constraints from Yoda so learn from the darkside kinda thing.

[shuyun]

can't see how much more secrecy can "protect" the arts, seeing how almost everyone is making a training video and books and stuff

[tkeplar]

at this point in time, secrecy tends to destroy things like martial arts due to the fact that what remains hidden tends to disappear and or be held in the hands of a select few who do very little with it in many cases except boost their ego. there are exceptions of course.

tk