Budo

Aikido for me was a way to expand my previous training in Arnis, American Kickboxing and Kumite Point Fighting into a wider range of classic Budo, including footwork for fighting multiple attackers, and fighting with a walking staff or sword (years before I got into K-1 Rules kickboxing.) This was before Aikido was as watered down and it is now, but my instructor was always clear on a number of points:

1. Aikido is an advanced school of martial arts, Aikidoka historically have and always should have a significant level of martial arts competency before doing Aikido.
2. Aikido randori should be done with increasing intensity, until it reaches the level of sparring.
3. Aikido sacrifices effectiveness in order to show mercy to the opponent: the goal is to harm the opponent as little as possible while still effectively defending yourself.

I have suggested before that Aikido can be saved by embracing its Samurai-flavored stick fighting side (including all of the unarmed techniques that go along with many stick fighting styles.) But after having trained along side a 3rd Degree black belt in Ninjitsu in a stick fighting class, I can see point 3 above has seriously negatively impacted Aikido's ability to fill that niche - because of Aikido's pacifism, it will never be the best way to learn a well rounded set of Samurai fighting skills. When it comes to how effective a technique is in Kata, the Bujinkan techniques are far more convincing than their almost identical techniques found in Aikido by the same name. The Ninja secret? The opponent's safety isn't a primary consideration... buy doing Aikido techniques wrong, the Ninja get the Aikido techniques right.

To see what Aikido IS rather than what we wish it was, we now have to go to the most common sparring form of the art. In Aikido, there is one major branch that embraces sparring, Tomiki Aikido (Shodokan):

But does that fulfill the expectations of 1-3 above? YES: if a BJJ purple belt or collegiate wrestler wanted to learn internal skill in order to pull off some Stephen Segal type of moves, studying Tomiki Aikido would probably do the trick. The study of Sumo-as-a-self-defense-system SHOULD be a big part of Aikido considering how much Sumo was involved in the development of Aikido:

Unlike other types of Aikido, a lot of that Sumo technique is alive and well in Shodokan "Tomiki" Aikido:

So considering that Aikido's specific call to consider the opponent's well being, Tomiki/Shodokan must be seen as the "Real Aikido."

But then where are actual Samurai martial arts to be found? Well, what do you call a Samurai that isn't wearing armor, is using all of the street fighting techniques of the Samurai, and isn't trying to advertise to the world who he is? That is a Ninja. There's this myth that the Ninja came from a secret mountain clan, but the truth is the Ninja were simply Samurai who specialized in stealth, often to carry messages, but sometimes to carry on espionage. In the most common form of Ninjitsu, Bujinkan, they openly recognize that their art comes from 9 different schools of traditional Budo.

And there it is... that continuous bokenjitsu sparring I have pleaded with Aikidoka to pursue... in 2008... fully two years before the founding of Tres Espadas! As with Aikido, the future of Ninjitsu will go to the practitioners who spar:

One other thing I would point out about Ninjitsu, is that situational awareness is built into the martial art, it is a core part of their training. This, strangely enough, was also a part of my Aikido training, but which I haven't heard any martial arts trainers in martial arts schools speak of since the 90's. So if in 2020 you want well rounded Budo, find a sparring intensive Bujinkan school. If you want real Aikido, find a Tomiki Aikido school. 

  

Martial Arts Messiah

I am abandoning the "Martial Arts Messiah" moniker, because it offends some people who I am trying to reach with my message on martial arts, aka "my gospel of sparring."

I recently watched "The Messiah" on Netflix. I was surprised by the similarities I noticed between the personality of their maybe-messianic-maybe-not character and what I suspect The Lord's personality might be like. And that's just it, some of these people object to the Martial Arts Messiah moniker on religious grounds, and I never set out to attack anyone's religious beliefs (especially not ones that so closely mirror my own.)

So many people on facebook are into Aikido because of the founder's post-pacifist ideology, that it is difficult to critique the biggest problems in that infamous martial art (lack of sparring) without attacking their own personal spiritual beliefs. Also on facebook, there seems to be a lot of people who should know better promoting Kumite Point Fighting aka Olympic Karate. The problem is that Kumite Point Fighting at least as bad as Aikido Randori. Both are non-sparring practices used to replace free sparring. But what I found was criticizing Olympic Karate was attacking a belief system.

Olympic Karate defenders and Aikidoka alike really like Warrior codes like Bushido. While on one hand some of them have criticized religion in general or specific religions as a form of social mind control, on the other hand the Warrior codes they embrace were specifically just exactly that: rules to keep warriors in line so that the powers that be would not be threatened by them. And you see this the most in Japanese based martial arts: the Bushido code's first and foremost purpose was to swear loyalty to the Daimyo, who had in turn sworn loyalty to the Shogun. That's not patriotism, that's keeping everyone in line, the worst case scenario of religion.

Here's what I think: when a person doesn't have organized religion, martial arts fills that void very quickly, especially when it is rooted in Japanese martial arts originally intended to teach imperial values to youth, or to spurn personal improvement in youth, as was the case in Karate, Aikido, and Judo... and the art closest to Judo as Judo was originally is BJJ. I think that when you have "personal development" ranked, especially by a colored belt system, it very quickly turns into a belief system if there is no other belief system in place already.

A critic or two or several suggested on the Bullshido.net forums that I was trying to "save" martial arts that were beyond repair, at least one suggested I was trying to be a savior or messiah to wayward martial arts. I thought that was somewhat accurate, and came up with this hilarious placard to use as my portrait on Bullshido.net if I some day ever got to the required 1000 posts to use it:

I don't like to make posts void of meaning or content. Since 2004, I have less than 600 posts on Bullshido.net. To pick up that pace, I had two parts to my plan:

1. Complete my current troll campaign, which is based on exploring the holes in MMA and other problems for martial arts consumers in this era of MMA.
2. Take on an effort to clean up Bullshido.net etiquette. I have made a few "tell us how you really feel" comments on there where I started in this direction, but I figured I could get a LOT of posts on it in a short amount of time.

But then I missed my Muay Thai class last Saturday before my Kali class. The day before I had worked on yet another redundant blog post off and on for a 12 hour period of time, and if I had done something less time consuming, I would have made the Muay Thai class. I don't have time for arguing with narrow minded zealots on the internet anymore, nor is it what I set out to do in the first place.

Front Stance vs Side Stance

Here is what I have learned about side vs front stances over the last year (before this year I used an unorthodox side stance in kumite point fighting in the late 80's, and in the 90's moved to a front orthodox stance as I learned K-1 Rules Kickboxing under Vern Miller.) First and most importantly, there are a lot of misunderstandings due to perspective, literally, which lead to a lot of vocabulary problems when it comes to talking about this. To illustrate, here's a screen shot on the basic kickboxing (with leg kicks) fighting stance from a Kwonkicker video:

It looks like two different stances, a longer almost side stance from left and right POV, and a shorter front stance from a front and back POV. BUT IT'S THE SAME STANCE! When watching a fighter and trying to figure out if they are using a long or short stance, you can't just look at it from one POV.

This is a problem when discussing martial arts in general. Most Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) have this stance or something nearly identical. Yet many TMA instead of sparring from this stance in their kata, choose to do other stances to help them win points in foot-fencing competitions (Kumite Point Fighting.) This is a problem when trying to figure out what techniques are found in kata/forms. 

Let's take Tai Chi as an example. Yang Style is the most common style of Tai Chi in the world and varies so much in differences in technique that some Yang Style schools are not recognizable as doing the same kata or forms. Most of the Yang style movements are supposed to be done from a stance similar to what Kwonkicker is showing above. However a lot of Yang Style practitioners have a much narrower stance more similar to a side stance. This is a problem because:

1. It changes the application of the moves in the kata, long stance suggesting more 1890 style bare knuckle boxing technique, short stance suggesting more of a Mongolian Wrestling type of technique.
2. It changes the footwork immensely. When they step in the kata are they keeping their feet apart with a front stance like in Muay Thai, or are they bringing their feet together to cover more distance like in a stepping side kick?

The two most influential Yang Style masters in the West as far as I can tell are Chen Man Ching and Hu Yuen Chou, who would have both had Yang Style lineage directly from the Yang Family before Wu Shu had it's way with Yang Style. Chen Man Ching was bluntly obvious about using a front stance:

But many of Hu Yuen Chou's students intentionally bring their feet together when stepping, and use a long narrow stance more similar to a side stance:

In that 1987 footage from Hong Kong, my original Tai Chi instructor Vern Miller was there. He took very careful notes on this, and Vern was adamant that Hu Yuen Chou insisted on front stance. Why the differences in Hu Yeun Chou's students? Perspective, see the Kwonkicker picture above.

There are many fighters who make the side stance work for them - Bill Wallace and Floyd Mayweather come to mind as undefeated champions. Yet I would argue that short stance fighting is better for self defense partially because it is more focused on the Knock Out, like what you would see with Mike Tyson or Manny Paqcuio. But recently I started watching a long stance fighter who is a KO artist, and he absolutely defies my theory here, Deontay Wilder: 

As I have mentioned before, there is actually a front stance AND a side stance in MANY different martial arts, including the Choy Li Fut I did (my K-1 Rules Kickboxing and Tai Chi training was part of my Choy Li Fut training.) What Deontay Wilder's KO punches look like are side stance Choy Li Fut techniques:

There's lots of people now in MMA using Kumite Point Fighting errors, such as dropping their hands, using a very long sideways stance, using an unorthodox stance, and so on. However, sooner or later, this is going to catch up with you:

 

From a martial arts consumer advocate perspective, the front stance is preferable:

1. Your over all striking habits will be better, in general it is the preferred stance in MMA even if some fighters defy orthodoxy.
2. You will learn to fight faster (Muay Thai because of it's efficient focus on teaching stand up fighting through light-yet-continuous sparring, is the fastest way to pick up actionable self defense skill. Same is generally true of Sanda and Knock Down Karate as well. The tricky high kicks of side stance styles will take longer to learn and be less effective.)
3. You will be better prepared for combining grappling with your striking, because the front stance is far better for sprawling and avoiding leg sweeps than the side stance is.

Creality Ender 3

I am a 3D printing newbie. A Creality Ender 3 might not have been the best choice for a first 3D printer in my case, but I have managed to get it up and running. After a lot of trial and error, here are the videos that were helpful, which if I had when I first got started would have saved me a LOT of time:

First is just putting the Ender 3 together in the first place. The price to pay for getting a $2,000 quality PLA printer for $200 is that assembly is required, AND THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT COME WITH YOUR PRINTER ARE SHOCKINGLY INADEQUATE, YOU MUST GO TO YOUTUBE TO GET ADEQUATE INSTRUCTIONS TO PUT TOGETHER THE ENDER 3:

Yay! Your printer is put together, can't wait to print, right? WRONG. Just leveling the printer bed is more challenging than putting together your printer in the first place. You won't even be able to print mistakes if you don't get this correctly adjusted within a fraction of a millimeter, it's a level of precision so high you can't see it with your naked eye. Ironically there is a somewhat easy way to do this:

(Note: You don't need to use a sticker, a piece of paper will work fine.)

Now, finally you can start printing, with the printer assembled and the bed leveled, right? Yeah, you will be able to print the test models that came with the printer, but everything else is going to be worse than garbage until you get the software side figured out. Some vocabulary for you:

• .blend: Blender is the best value 3D software on the market (like Maya, but instead of costing thousands of dollars per year to rent, it Blender is FREE.) A model being worked on in Blender is saved as a ".blend" file.
• .stl: this is file format the 3D model has to be saved in before it can be printed.
• .gcode: is the file with the exact instructions for the 3D printer to produce the model.
• slicing: is turning an .stl file into a .gcode file.
• Cura: is the most popular slicer software, and it is free.

When you find a file you want to print online, you will usually get the .stl file, and maybe the .blend file. Once you get the .stl file, you need to put it into Cura to slice it into a .gcode file for your printer. That last sentence is where you are going to spend most of your time trying to get models to print out. Coming up with the right .gcode file for the 3D model is the biggest challenge of 3D printing. If you want to get to printing quickly once your printer is assembled and its bed is leveled, this video the best place to start:

Standing Meditation

I have done Tai Chi standing meditation for 30 minutes a day every day for over 15 years. People ask me about how to do it. In general what you are going to do is:

1. Set a timer (or put clock where you can see it,) for how much time you intend to practice standing meditation.
2. Stand with your feet shoulder's width apart. 
3. Get your feet facing forward and parallel to each other, with the toes not pointing towards or away from the toes on the other foot. 
4. Your weight is going to remain evenly distributed on your feet.
5. You are going to stand as tall as you can, pretending a string is pulling up from the top of your head, a little towards the back of your skull so that your jaw is slightly down.
6. Bend your knees.
7. Slightly tuck your hips so that the curve in the small of your back is flat.
8. Bring your arms forward until your hands are a little above your belly button, and make your arms round, with your palms facing your stomach.  
9. Your fingers should be almost straight, but not tense.
10. While continuing to hold the 2-9 posture above, close your eyes and feel your body, paying attention to each inhale and exhale individually. Relax the muscles in your back and shoulders while keeping your spine straight and perpendicular to the ground.

When you are done, stretch. (In my case I usually do the splits and butterfly stretches. You might want to do butterfly and hurdle stretches instead.) In general, the minimum amount of standing time is 15 minutes. The maximum is 45 minutes. My back usually pops a few times when I do standing mediation.

Here's a short video that explains the simplest way to start doing it:

Here's my favorite video of standing meditation that I think shows the most correct posture. Ironically I think it's Chen Ziqiang coaching in this video, who is also one of the foremost experts on Tai Chi push hands. Notice how he is often adjusting the student's hand position to be lower (instead of higher like you may see many people doing on the internet, my hands are actually lower than this,) and most students he has to have them adjust their hips slightly forward:

This is the best over all Standing Meditation tutorial I know of on YouTube:

Caveats:

• The students toes need to be more forward, less outward.
• The students hands are at about the right height.
• The instructor's posture is a LOT better than the student's (though his hands are higher than I would recommend,) his brief examples are more informative than his commenting on his student's posture.
• Do NOT watch TV while doing standing meditation.
• Standing meditation is MUCH MORE significant that anything else in Chi Kung.

I DO NOT LARP!

As I have stated before this blog has become a broken record when it comes to martial arts and I will be soon blogging more about other things. Some of those things are gaming related topics as I am a founding member of the Game Arts Guild, so I want to clarify something here loud and clear: there is no overlap between my gaming and my martial arts, I DO NOT LARP!

LARP refers to a type of game, specifically a type of Role-Playing Game, where people dress up as characters and play the game in a live action sort of way. Sometimes there is overlap between LARP and martial arts, most famously and explicitly in the SCA, where they sometimes simulate large dark ages battles that even include arrows:

But as you may have noticed, that kind of fighting on a massive scale the way the SCA does it involves stop-and-go fighting. It may be a necessary evil to pull off the battles they have safely which sometimes involves thousands of fighters at once, but the over all effect is throughout the organization they simply have no continuous sparring what so ever. There are competent martial artists involved, but the LARP aspect limits the transmission of the martial art skills within the organization.

In general I am unconformable with people dressing up in costumes. Halloween is fine, but when I see adults dressed in costume off stage for any other reason I find it unnerving. The few times I attended SCA events, I was not enthusiastic about the costume element, and it showed. I find PAX uncomfortable and Sakura-Kan unbearable. But it goes much farther than that for me, I don't like to work out in martial arts uniforms - I don't like Gis in Judo, Karate or BJJ, I hate monkey suits in Kung Fu. I don't even like to wear workout clothes with the name of my martial arts school on them - or even  Muay Thai shorts with Thai or Chinese writing on them.

In the mid 90's I had an internet moniker that wasn't my real name, and I was trying to get some business done with people you have heard of before, big names in the 90's gaming industry. I was late on getting a reply, (and this was the difference between getting a product out for Christmas shopping season vs getting it out in January,) and I have always wondered how much me using a moniker complicated that communication, when I could have used my real name instead. Monikers were common back then and internet culture was in its infancy, but in general, I don't like pen names, masks, monikers, costumes, martial arts uniforms, etc.

I am uncomfortable with pretense. I try to slightly understate my martial arts skills, experience, etc. every time I comment about it. This is me in the red in 2019 sparring with a 3rd degree blackbelt in Ninjitsu at the Bremerton Martial Arts Center:
What you don't see in this video is sometimes that guy gets the better of me in sparring, even if he didn't on that day, but do not doubt the modest claims I have made about my martial arts training. I have no plans to make money off of martial arts, but perhaps unlike most martial arts consumers I have needs to actually use martial arts I learn. I am skill oriented, not status oriented. I don't want or need or like belts, rank, recognition, uniforms, etc.

I DO NOT LARP!

Shining Armor

Back in 2013 I wrote about my contempt for swordsmanship in a blog post called "The Pleasantry of the Peasantry," and what an improvement long weapons are over swords, especially when complemented with a good knife. While I generally still hold this opinion, I have learned more about one historical nuance: it's the armor that makes a knight (and I mean knight in the most culturally general sense, to include Samurai) tactically different from fighting a peasant, not the knight's sword, but the knight's armor.

First of all, this idea that "a sword is a symbol of nobility, so only a knight would carry a sword" is not actually historically accurate. Though new, high quality swords in ancient times were always valuable, the vast majority of swords were NOT both new AND high quality:

But considering how many sword-like weapons are out there - such as the cultural ubiquity of the machete for example - this isn't really surprising. The sword is essentially a self-defense weapon, which is why it is still so common in many martial arts. Like many other self-defense weapons, swords have their place on the battlefield, but when advanced armor is involved, swords are often only a back up weapon on the battlefield.

What was universally expensive was armor. It took resources to get armor and fit armor to your body. Armor had to protect you against swords and arrows, reducing deadly sword duels to friendly contests of strength and skill. Heavier weapons with armor piercing potential such as an arbalest, halberd or war hammer were too heavy to be carried around for self defense by people who would only fight unarmored attackers, these heavier weapons were primarily battlefield weapons.

As someone who has done some weapon sparring, I can tell you there is a world of difference between fighting with a safety stick with your hand protection, and sparring with a safety stick when you have forgotten that hand protection. Armor makes an extraordinary difference when being attacked with a weapon. I would go so far as to say that at close range, armor makes more of a difference than a sword does.

Let's say just for example, that a fully armored knight without a sword were to face a brawler with a sword in a pub. That knight is going to close the distance and get close to the swordsman. The swordsman is going to probably only get one stab at the knight, and it's not going to be a precisely aimed stab because of the knight's charge. The knight will then cave in the swordsman's face with his gauntlet. And it would be the same if it were a Samurai in armor against a brawler with a katana.

The cliche hero is not "knight with a razor sharp sword," it is a "knight in shining armor." Armor demonstrates even in today's world that you are a person with responsibility and that it is your job to take charge in that situation, on behalf of the powers that be, as in the case of law enforcement with a bullet proof vest or riot gear, or a soldier geared up for battle. The civilian known to dress up in as much armor was Pheonix Jones, real life superhero (estimated cost for version 2.0 = $250,000 with donations, $10,000 out of pocket to have it assembled.) But he isn't the only one responding to crime by wearing armor:

With emerging technologies such as carbon nanotubes making body armor stronger and lighter, it makes me wonder what roll armor will play in the future.

Update: A few days after this post I heard fight choreography experts Adorea put together a fictional short film to illustrate this point. It is considered to be a fairly realistic fight scene, consider how much armor improves this fictional knight's ability to fight multiple opponents: