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popupsoldier
12th April 2002, 00:14
It seems more and more the 'way of the future' is to have video references to supplement learning.

In some instances, some traditions are told to follow strictly and study tapes and to be active in class. Others may be told to use video/book as references only.

What are your thoughts?

Is is valuable to study another tradition from video, if you are not going to teach or bragg about it?

___________
Tim Oldham

Rogier
12th April 2002, 07:02
Interesting question...

Well I think it depends on what and how you want to learn something. Video and books can never replace a good teacher. So if you want to learn 'something' about an art and get a general idea of what an art is about then I think you can use tapes and books.

But if you really want to learn something thoroughly then it means you will have to find a teacher (who will correct your movements and such a million times). You can still use the tapes and books as reference, but as I said they can never replace a good teacher

Shitoryu Dude
14th April 2002, 04:06
I have found video tapes a very good tool for when we start to study a kata nobody has performed in a couple of years. It always seems to come down to one of those questions of "what comes after this?" and then somebody will say "didn't soke or shihan change that to this?" and then it just goes downhill from there. Digging up a tape of the last time it was performed ends the arguments and we can then get on to practicing.

:beer:

J. A. Crippen
16th April 2002, 08:42
Videos are a useful study aid, particulary for jogging one's memory of moves in a poorly remembered kata, or when learning a new technique that only gets practiced occasionally.

I think videos are also useful when interested in a style other than your own. If you want to see what some other school does in a similar situation then watch a video. But don't try to learn their style through the video, particularly if you've never trained a similar MA before. However, if you have trained a similar MA and are studying some other school's kata or waza then you will end up with their kata or waza adapted to *your* style, with only the major movements of the original intact. The minutiae that you have practiced time and time again will instantly be filled in with your interpretation of the original.

The problem is sorting out the minutiae of a style, like how deep to bend your knees, when to snap your wrist, or even where you should be looking, all of these saturate everything you do when training. If you practice a style with very deep stances then anytime you practice you will tend to have deep stances. If you practice a style that tends to alternaltely flow and crackle then you will tend to do everything that way, conciously or not. This is the problem with trying to learn other styles without a teacher.

And even if you *do* have a teacher of another style you will find the 'bleedover' rather persistent. This is particularly aggravating to anyone practicing multiple koryu, where preserving even the very tiniest parts of the technique is important, since training in koryu is not only training for oneself, but working for the ryu as well. Ask anyone who's ever trained more than one koryu, particularly if they are similar arts (like two different kenjutsu, or a kenjutsu and a sogo bujutsu which has its own kenjutsu curriculum). They will be perfectly willing to tell you of the many times their teacher gave them a funny look in the middle of a technique, or when they got halfway through a kata only to fall into another kata from the other ryu. ISTR Ellis Amdur having a good talk about this in his article in one of Diane Skoss's two koryu books.

Duh, I'm off topic. In any case, videos are good, even for learning new techniques. But they are *supplementary* and the true learning should come from an experienced teacher who not only knows all the tiny things about the technique that aren't obvious or explained on the video, and that can correct all the non-obvious mistakes that you yourself make through lack of experience.

My particular school is a gendai jujutsu ryu. We have adapated from many different jujutsu and karate sources to form a fairly comprehensive art. But because we are gendai (and hence young) and our primary focus is on unarmed techniques, we have a somewhat sparse weapons curriculum. One student interested in expanding the school's bou waza invested quite a bit of time learning and adapting ten of Shinkage Ryu's rokushakubou kata. He learned them and *adapted* them to our style. They are no longer the kata of Shinkage Ryu, but are now our own. He learned the gross form of the Shinkage Ryu kata from their videos, but instead of training Shinkage Ryu he explicitly adjusted them to fit our particular stances, balance, flow, etc. I imagine someone trained in Shinkage Ryu who knows these kata would probably recognize them, but they would also probably know instantly that they are not Shinkage Ryu, but that's fine since we're not *doing* Shinkage Ryu, we just borrowed from them. (And this is nothing new, just look at your average chart of ryu geneaologies for plenty of examples of borrowing.) So there's nothing wrong with learning from videos of ryu that are not your own, as long as you explicitly realize that you are not doing the same thing as what's on the tape -- you are doing something *like* it adapted to your own style.

Gene Gabel
17th April 2002, 06:33
Originally posted by Shitoryu Dude
I have found video tapes a very good tool for when we start to study a kata nobody has performed in a couple of years. It always seems to come down to one of those questions of "what comes after this?" and then somebody will say "didn't soke or shihan change that to this?" and then it just goes downhill from there. Digging up a tape of the last time it was performed ends the arguments and we can then get on to practicing.

:beer:
.................................................
Harvey, You are on the money as usual.
Since Soke Kuniba passed away it is lucky that we have videos of him doing kata and Iai to check the way "it is supposed to be done".

Any time I think I am looking good I just view a tape and get that "reality check" that I need


Gene Gabel:smilejapa