Once (or twice) upon a time there was a bulletin board trying to bring together Canadian and American martial artists. I never quite registered – until now. The CanAm Martial Arts board is up again, and it has among many other things, a Shaolin Kempo section. Please go and register and ask intelligent questions (and hopefully give intelligent answers). I think it’s a promising place to address some of the questions I’ve been having, and I think I’ll tend to pose them on their board. I’ll be frequenting it, and I hope to see you there.
Fitness, part of or in support of kempo?
I’ve been on a fitness kick lately. I took a ‘Physiology of Exercise’ course this summer, and really wrapped my head around what I need to do for my own fitness needs. I adjusted my cardio, and picked up some weights. What consideration do you give fitness in your kempo practice, and teachers, what fitness elements do you include in class.
I’ve often thought of conditioning as a separate domain from the skillset that includes ‘the fighting arts’. I include fitness in my classes, but I don’t confuse that with the learned skill of kempo.
How do you see it? How do you do it?
Standardization?
With the advent of the technique archive, talk of ‘standardization’ has begun. Is this a good thing? On one side of the debate, there is the ‘minimum standards’ position, where anyone walking into any SK / SKK school would be able to expect certain things. On the other hand, I have the nagging fear that the ‘ minimum standards’ will emphasize the ‘minimum’ at the expense of the ‘standards’. I feel a small core curriculum is good. I fear that the point of nuance is being missed. I think diversity is healthy, and that not all folks want all things. Once upon a time, I was working with someone at an “instructor’s meeting” on knife defenses, and my ideas (lifted from FMA) freaked them out. Needless to say, most folks there didn’t want my input. The folks there wanted to standardize on the traditional ‘cross block and wristlock’ defenses they had been doing. If we’re going to standardize, let’s let it be a core to develop around.
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