If I may, I'd like to derail for a moment to point out that there are different strains of Bujinkan throughout the world - and the people I know who practice here in Adelaide, Australia tend to look askance at the Americans for a lot of the reasons eosin has mentioned regarding Stav.
Having said that, I have my own issues with how Bujinkan is taught here in Adelaide. Amongst them being that they don't train up their ukes, ukes are just picked from amongst the dan ranks, so the technique is not always demonstrated in the best way to the students - the guy teaching in the video I linked to, for example, usually picks as his uke a dan ranked person who is big enough to make it not look silly (he's 6'6"). But he's very into stuff that works - there's this one technique he told me about a while back which makes no sense in today's world, because it's really only a worthwhile technique if you're wearing traditional Japanese armour. He has taught it, but he taught it as something that works against someone wearing that type of armour, not something that works in today's world.
I stopped training with them for other reasons, though, which I will cheerfully rant about at the drop of a hat - poke me if you want to hear those reasons. They're friends, but I choose to put my energy into something where I learn more.
Bujinkan was the last Asian art I did before finding reconstructed renaissance martial arts. It was also the most comprehensive in approach, including dealing with guns. I remember a long time ago asking the instructor about Western sword technique, and he replied very honestly about it being very different.
Point one: The majority of Bujinkan instructors in Adelaide are martial artists, but not teachers. I learn better from a teacher; I learn (martial arts) best from someone who is both.
Point two: I started Bujinkan training having done no martial art of any kind, ever. I was unprepared for the brain repatterning it would cause. And I got no support whatsoever after the teacher I was learning the most from ceased taking classes. I needed minimal support; instead, I felt abandoned. Prevailing attitude amongst the non-teacher instructors here is that it is the students' fault for not being dedicated if an instructor has no students. I really would have liked, at the time I stopped going to classes, for the instructors to show in any way shape or form that they were happy I was there. I disagree with them that continuing to teach the class shows that they're happy to have students.
Point three: I still don't have it through their (the instructors, not the teachers) heads that if I ask a question (for example) about where my feet should be to make a technique work, I don't want to know where my hands should be, even if the instructor thinks that is the most important part of the technique. As a beginner, I didn't know enough about my body and how it worked to figure out for myself what my body positioning should be; my body could be positioned in many different spots with my hands in the same position. I needed to know about body mechanics before I could get to the level of understanding at which they were answering the questions they thought I ought to be asking instead of the questions I actually was. I knew what I didn't have the faintest clue about, and I knew I needed to ask. I would have liked to have had the courtesy of the person I was asking listening to me as well as themselves.
Point four: The guy teaching in the video I linked to is 6'6". The majority of students I trained with are also over a foot taller than me (albeit not by as much as Ed). No matter how often I asked "how do you modify the technique to get it to work if you're as short as me?" he wouldn't remember that I was asking for a reason. Example: a throw where you use the attacker's arm as a lever and your shoulder as the fulcrum. The person I was practicing the technique with was 6'4" and I'm 5'2". I can walk under his arm without touching it if the arm is held out straight. Ergo, ask for help modifying the technique, as I didn't have enough experience to know how. Ed demonstrated how to do the technique on this person who was shorter than he was. I asked my question again. He demonstrated again. I got my training partner to hold his arm out, demonstrated why it wouldn't work for me the way he was demonstrating, and asked my question again. Then I got an answer. If I went to class today, I would still be the shortest by close to a foot.
Point five: As the only female-bodied person in the class, I had to fumble out for myself how to modify techniques to work with my non-male-bodied physique. The teachers have other females in the class, and will willingly help when necessary. The instructors do not, and in fact view (or give the impression that they do) this as coddling. One spectacular failure of technique/body type mismatch occurred in a (mostly female) class where my fellow female students found that if you had large breasts, you needed a lot of upper body strength to do the technique as described (we were doing counters to being grabbed from behind that day, the idea in this particular technique was to break the hold over the arms and move it upwards). The instructor had never considered that this might be an issue... We went on to a different technique, and never did learn any counter to that particular hold which would work if you had Epic Boobs (not including pain-causing techniques which may cause a hold to loosen).
Point six: Testosterone poisoning. Boring and stupid and widespread. And encouraged by default, because the climate of the class and the mindset of the students is Not Their Problem.
The issues I have are, in general, not with the style, but with the people. And in my experience, people tend to attract people like them, or at least like the image they present, so an atmosphere becomes self-perpetuating. I can enlarge upon these points if you want, and I'm sure that there's more in the back of my head, but that's the major points I can remember right now.
I chose the Bujinkan as an example because it is, where ever I have studied it (including Japan), notoriously guilty of employing the fine art of taking a single lunge punch and then not retracting the arm, leaving it for the tori to manipulate extensively without reply or retaliation from uke or slowly and with great ballet-like beauty tying up three or four completely unresisting, uncommitted attackers who graciously comply with whatever the tori demands of them.
I have a certain respect for some members of the Bujinkan (it was the first martial art I every studied...began in the mid nineties) and I agree that it can be very comprehensive (though I find it utterly lacking in any competent manner of striking).
But I also find it deeply flawed, not so much in what it brings to the table, but rather in teaching methodology it employs to set those things on the table. The efforts of the herd to copy Hatsumi Soke without putting in the decades of harder resistance based training creates well...this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBPMbwgopZg .
If the individuals goal is philosophy, preserving Japanese Budo, physical and spiritual fitness, then I find the Bujinkan a fantastic resource. If the goal is combative self-preservation, I think the seeker would be better served elsewhere. But again, that's simply one man's opinion.
I can definitely understand your point about the teaching methodology there - and the issue of giving non-beginners so much time to play :D
I will add, though, that when I was training, we did multiple attacks as well as single attacks (punch punch kick punch for example), all of which had to be countered (where countering means 'don't get hit'), and when I was training with an experienced partner, I was expected to not leave the attack out there (once I'd been taught to punch straight instead of following at slower (non-realistic) speeds). So we'd run through a couple of times to get the feel of it, then speed up a little, then a little more - certainly with me, this was necessary to prevent instinct taking over which would have resulted in me getting hurt (I found that if my training partner went faster than ultra slow the first few times I did a technique, I'd flinch, forget the technique, and try to hit him in the head; depending on the guy, this could mean their reflexes taking over. Sometimes it took a bit of repetition to get it through the head of a new training partner that I really did mean slooooooooow for me, and whatever speed they wanted for them).
I have seen people who never speed it up past a certain point. I have also seen more experienced students than I got to be learn techniques to use on (for example) the punch they've just dodged which is withdrawing. Or techniques to use on someone who is about to stomp on you where you are lying on the ground. I have seen people who refuse to punch unless they are stepping with the 'correct' foot at the same time, and I have seen techniques taught for when you aren't on the 'correct' foot.
And yes, the efforts to copy without going into the basis for what's there - the Boss recommends doing some kind of dancing and/or soccer for footwork and balance (yours and your partner's) and so forth. There are three people locally I can dance with, out of all the people training. Well, two now that Ed has gone to Japan again. One of those started dancing because he's my partner and he would never get to see me otherwise (dancing having triggered my obsession point), and the other started Bujinkan after having met us at dancing (he was looking for a martial art to cross-train in). There may be other dancers amongst the training people, but they sure don't move like it. Here, we try to ensure some level of basic fitness in our instructors, and encourage it in our students - most of them have to be doing some kind of running training to pass that portion of the testing - and try to encourage strength training and leg flexibility.
If you would like to bring up any other issues you had with your time training with Bujinkan people, please do; I'd like to get my local people to improve over time, if I can.
Having said that, I have my own issues with how Bujinkan is taught here in Adelaide. Amongst them being that they don't train up their ukes, ukes are just picked from amongst the dan ranks, so the technique is not always demonstrated in the best way to the students - the guy teaching in the video I linked to, for example, usually picks as his uke a dan ranked person who is big enough to make it not look silly (he's 6'6"). But he's very into stuff that works - there's this one technique he told me about a while back which makes no sense in today's world, because it's really only a worthwhile technique if you're wearing traditional Japanese armour. He has taught it, but he taught it as something that works against someone wearing that type of armour, not something that works in today's world.
I stopped training with them for other reasons, though, which I will cheerfully rant about at the drop of a hat - poke me if you want to hear those reasons. They're friends, but I choose to put my energy into something where I learn more.
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Bujinkan was the last Asian art I did before finding reconstructed renaissance martial arts. It was also the most comprehensive in approach, including dealing with guns. I remember a long time ago asking the instructor about Western sword technique, and he replied very honestly about it being very different.
Reply
Point one: The majority of Bujinkan instructors in Adelaide are martial artists, but not teachers. I learn better from a teacher; I learn (martial arts) best from someone who is both.
Point two: I started Bujinkan training having done no martial art of any kind, ever. I was unprepared for the brain repatterning it would cause. And I got no support whatsoever after the teacher I was learning the most from ceased taking classes. I needed minimal support; instead, I felt abandoned. Prevailing attitude amongst the non-teacher instructors here is that it is the students' fault for not being dedicated if an instructor has no students. I really would have liked, at the time I stopped going to classes, for the instructors to show in any way shape or form that they were happy I was there. I disagree with them that continuing to teach the class shows that they're happy to have students.
Point three: I still don't have it through their (the instructors, not the teachers) heads that if I ask a question (for example) about where my feet should be to make a technique work, I don't want to know where my hands should be, even if the instructor thinks that is the most important part of the technique. As a beginner, I didn't know enough about my body and how it worked to figure out for myself what my body positioning should be; my body could be positioned in many different spots with my hands in the same position. I needed to know about body mechanics before I could get to the level of understanding at which they were answering the questions they thought I ought to be asking instead of the questions I actually was. I knew what I didn't have the faintest clue about, and I knew I needed to ask. I would have liked to have had the courtesy of the person I was asking listening to me as well as themselves.
Point four: The guy teaching in the video I linked to is 6'6". The majority of students I trained with are also over a foot taller than me (albeit not by as much as Ed). No matter how often I asked "how do you modify the technique to get it to work if you're as short as me?" he wouldn't remember that I was asking for a reason. Example: a throw where you use the attacker's arm as a lever and your shoulder as the fulcrum. The person I was practicing the technique with was 6'4" and I'm 5'2". I can walk under his arm without touching it if the arm is held out straight. Ergo, ask for help modifying the technique, as I didn't have enough experience to know how. Ed demonstrated how to do the technique on this person who was shorter than he was. I asked my question again. He demonstrated again. I got my training partner to hold his arm out, demonstrated why it wouldn't work for me the way he was demonstrating, and asked my question again. Then I got an answer. If I went to class today, I would still be the shortest by close to a foot.
Point five: As the only female-bodied person in the class, I had to fumble out for myself how to modify techniques to work with my non-male-bodied physique. The teachers have other females in the class, and will willingly help when necessary. The instructors do not, and in fact view (or give the impression that they do) this as coddling. One spectacular failure of technique/body type mismatch occurred in a (mostly female) class where my fellow female students found that if you had large breasts, you needed a lot of upper body strength to do the technique as described (we were doing counters to being grabbed from behind that day, the idea in this particular technique was to break the hold over the arms and move it upwards). The instructor had never considered that this might be an issue... We went on to a different technique, and never did learn any counter to that particular hold which would work if you had Epic Boobs (not including pain-causing techniques which may cause a hold to loosen).
Point six: Testosterone poisoning. Boring and stupid and widespread. And encouraged by default, because the climate of the class and the mindset of the students is Not Their Problem.
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And can fit within the character limit :P
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I have a certain respect for some members of the Bujinkan (it was the first martial art I every studied...began in the mid nineties) and I agree that it can be very comprehensive (though I find it utterly lacking in any competent manner of striking).
But I also find it deeply flawed, not so much in what it brings to the table, but rather in teaching methodology it employs to set those things on the table. The efforts of the herd to copy Hatsumi Soke without putting in the decades of harder resistance based training creates well...this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBPMbwgopZg .
If the individuals goal is philosophy, preserving Japanese Budo, physical and spiritual fitness, then I find the Bujinkan a fantastic resource. If the goal is combative self-preservation, I think the seeker would be better served elsewhere. But again, that's simply one man's opinion.
Reply
I will add, though, that when I was training, we did multiple attacks as well as single attacks (punch punch kick punch for example), all of which had to be countered (where countering means 'don't get hit'), and when I was training with an experienced partner, I was expected to not leave the attack out there (once I'd been taught to punch straight instead of following at slower (non-realistic) speeds). So we'd run through a couple of times to get the feel of it, then speed up a little, then a little more - certainly with me, this was necessary to prevent instinct taking over which would have resulted in me getting hurt (I found that if my training partner went faster than ultra slow the first few times I did a technique, I'd flinch, forget the technique, and try to hit him in the head; depending on the guy, this could mean their reflexes taking over. Sometimes it took a bit of repetition to get it through the head of a new training partner that I really did mean slooooooooow for me, and whatever speed they wanted for them).
I have seen people who never speed it up past a certain point. I have also seen more experienced students than I got to be learn techniques to use on (for example) the punch they've just dodged which is withdrawing. Or techniques to use on someone who is about to stomp on you where you are lying on the ground. I have seen people who refuse to punch unless they are stepping with the 'correct' foot at the same time, and I have seen techniques taught for when you aren't on the 'correct' foot.
And yes, the efforts to copy without going into the basis for what's there - the Boss recommends doing some kind of dancing and/or soccer for footwork and balance (yours and your partner's) and so forth. There are three people locally I can dance with, out of all the people training. Well, two now that Ed has gone to Japan again. One of those started dancing because he's my partner and he would never get to see me otherwise (dancing having triggered my obsession point), and the other started Bujinkan after having met us at dancing (he was looking for a martial art to cross-train in). There may be other dancers amongst the training people, but they sure don't move like it. Here, we try to ensure some level of basic fitness in our instructors, and encourage it in our students - most of them have to be doing some kind of running training to pass that portion of the testing - and try to encourage strength training and leg flexibility.
If you would like to bring up any other issues you had with your time training with Bujinkan people, please do; I'd like to get my local people to improve over time, if I can.
Reply
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