John Noonan wrote:Yeah, MMA people follow the "use what works" train of thought.
I think everyone wants to use what works, what has value. I differ in opinion from the established MMA thought in that I think traditional arts have the strongest and longest-running proven effectiveness.
Even the founder of the MMA theorems, Bruce Lee, first mastered Wing Chun.
Without a firm grounded foundation there's no basis to accept or reject anything else you learn. To use the language analogy, you won't make a great poet if you gain only a 4th-grader's knowledge of five different languages.
When I write that there's only one art, it's because the techniques of each art overlap. I have a copy of
The Essence of Shaolin White Crane: Martial Power and Qigong in front of me. I'm looking at p.283, grabbing jin (Kou Jin).
When I see the grab and strike in figure 8-65, I don't see 'kou jin' but a 'croise' from fencing where I take the opponent's lunge and 'grab' it with my blade, sweeping and pressing it down and away and simultaneously allowing my own blade the counter. That's because I spent more than 10 years fencing before getting involved in any other arts. Now that I know a little karate (4 years) and a smattering of Kali, western boxing, and some other things, I also see elements of this technique in some other arts.
However, I wouldn't use a fencing stance to try and do a 'kou jin' grab and hit with a karate punch; the shoulders and the hips and the legs would all be doing the wrong things relative to each other even if the fencing 'croise' is like the Shaolin 'kou jin' is like a trap and reverse-punch in karate.
I would agree with Mr. Noonan's implied statement: stick with one thing and get to know it thoroughly. Not every technique works fluidly with every other technique. If YMAA is teaching a type of block one way, it's probably because later you will find that their block fits into the overall system.