Bizarre Bunkai, and Warped Perceptions

  I've mentioned before that I'm on the E-mailing lists for (most of) the “Fad” lecturer's. The most recent one that I've received was from England (from one of the more “popular” Lecture goof's). This one was in regards to “One-Step Sparring” (and his complete disregard for it).

    
 Seeing that the subject is one that I consider to be the MOST preferred method of student practice, I had to download his “pod-cast” on the subject. He began by ranting about how useless, and unrealistic it was (for a good 5-minutes), he then began endorsing “Live” practice (for what-ever that vague description was supposed to represent).

    

  I found it amusing that he felt that 1 through ? (step) sparring was “useless”, yet endorsed “protective-gear” sparring as being productive? (because that manner of “sparring” was realistic? WTF?). The majority of what he considered to be “live” (?), was about as far from reality as you could get (IMO).

   

  Towards the end of the pod-cast, he made (passing) mention of Rory Miller's “new” manner of 1-step sparring. They performed it at “arm's length”(wow!, does that sound familiar?). He then talked about how this guy had “discovered” it by accident (practicing technique performance without stepping rearward into stances), and had only recently (in the past 10 years) been doing it that way.

   

  So now I'm wondering how big is this rock that all of these guy's have been living under? The longer I listened to this guy's Pod-cast, the more out-of-touch I believed him to be.

    

  In our classes, we have practiced all of our technique's at arm's length for the past 30+ years! What this guy described as being “1-Step sparring” was just bizarre, as in the kind of stuff you see the “kiddie” classes do in practice (to make them feel-good, and make sure that no-one get's hurt).

    

  After coming to the realization that these people have no idea how the F*&K to practice technique's, or how to utilize applications, I moved on to see what else I'd been receiving in my E-mail.

    

  One of those notifications was for a “new” book (for “bunkai”). They offered a download of the first chapter,...(IMO) don't waste your time. The book (like most of them seem to, for whatever reason) focused on the Pinan kata (all 5).

   

  Though I don't believe that there's only “1” correct interpretation for the kata motions, I also don't believe that they're all (simplistic) counter-punches for strikes (as this person evidently believes them to be). The concept of “tuite” was one that was presumably too far beyond that author's ability to visualize either (as the section that was included for "free" didn't seem to offer any). 
  
 At a recent "Shihan-Dai", we were discussing the execution of particular kata motions (from Ni Sei shi kata actually). Tashi Lindquist was reiterating the point that when a clarification is made within a motion for one kata, it should (usually) be made within others as well (when the motion occurs again).
    
 Being that my forearm is injured, I couldn't (really) participate too much in that month's class. That class's weapon emphasis was on the "Combat" Tan-Bo kata. As I've stated before (in prior blog's), I'm not a big "weapon's" fan, but this kata has numerous application opportunities for us (seeing that we do a lot of Law Enforcement training as well). 
      
 It's when I'm exposed to these "other" manners of training (that I'm receiving via E-mail), that I really wonder about where these people are acquiring their information from. It's not that what they're doing won't work (although I would be likely to question it quite often), it's just that it is so impractical to either apply, or to use regardless.