Accumulating Technique

When do you stop learning new techniques? What happens once you've learned "all the moves?" Do you go on to join another club or system because the teacher has nothing more to offer?

Take Western boxing. There are very few techniques in that. You can learn them in a very short period of time and certainly have a good level of competence after, say, 12 months or less. People are involved in boxing for many years though, much longer than the time required to learn it. Apart from competing, what do they do?

With so few basics they learn to use the art, to make it their own. There is always something to improve. Then there is "just training" to realise the benefits of practice - health, fitness, suppleness, strength, mental training and so on. When you're done with the learning you can get on with the doing. And then it just "is".

It's easy for a karate group to put together a syllabus of technique. Each belt piles on more moves, routines, kata, even weapons. It keeps students coming back for more. It encourages technique collecting, but doesn't really provide any meaningful understanding to the art. When the instructor runs out of moves to teach the students leave, so the instructor keeps piling more stuff on to the extent that the meaning of the art is lost.

Telling your senior students we're doing "beginner techniques" doesn't really motivate them. So lose the "beginner" bit. It's how a senior trains is what sets them apart from the beginners. A good teacher will offer depth of training, not just more technique.

"Finishing" learning the moves should be a cause for celebration because now you can get on with actually doing the art, studying  it  and making  it your own.

Of course if you want to teach eventually you need to learn the whole lot, but if you don't want to teach then take in what's being taught and decide which bits of the art you want to make your own. That way you develop your own personal way of doing things. Even as a teacher you would do that too, the exception is you still have to maintain that broad view. Unless you start to teach your own experience.

There's an interesting thought. Are students now learning some prescribed "syllabus" or style, or are they learning the "teachings" of an individual? It's relatively easy in boxing, everyone learns the same handful of basics then they make it their own - they imprint their own "style" on how they box. Their experience will shine through when they become coaches (if they wish), but the framework is still there.

What's the framework in your system? What's the baseline that everyone works to? Does it require years of technique  accumulation before you can take ownership of the system, to make it your own?

When you get past collecting techniques you can really start to get into the  spirit of the art, and that's where real learning takes place.