Sunday, February 6, 2011

Random Flow and Martial "Art"

Here's a quote from Rory Miller's blog:

"Martial Art

There's a question that comes up frequently on MA sites- why martial art? Why not martial science or martial endeavor? Where did this art thing come into it and why?

Honestly, it's not worth the time to read crap like that. It's like the people who are arguing about whether jutsu or jitsu is right... there's no letter 'u' or letter 'i' in Japanese writing so it just doesn't matter. Does red taste like chocolate?

However, I did have a thought the other day. It ties in with things already mentioned here about the messiness of combat, the unpredictability, the fact that there really aren't right answers, just stuff that worked that one time.

Maybe that's why it's called an art and not science, because in art it's accepted that there are no absolutes, no right answers."

The whole post is here: http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2006/01/martial-art.html

By the time I started training with Sonny, pretty much his whole training method revolved around Random Flow, he felt it was the most efficient way to gain meaningful skill. He believed that adding in the unpredictability from the get go, with limited parameters that slowly disappeared as skills improved, was the best way to get comfortable in a chaotic environment. A way to make our senses understand the physical information needed to move with an adversary. A 'holistic' way to "see' and not worry about individual solutions to the infinite variables that exist. A way to gain an intrinsic understanding of physics and possibility, and the patterns inherent in human behavior.

I'm going to post some flow from other arts that are I think are cool - no pre-set patterns. All random flow.

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