Over the years you have heard
many senior instructors talk about making the art form your own. For me, this concept of making the art form
my own applies to several aspects of the art form.
Up front, I want to be clear that
what “Making It Your Own” is NOT is changing the standard or the expectations
of the standard at various ranks. The
standard does not change. For example, a
front kick standard is piston action using the ball of your foot as the
striking surface. If you would prefer to
use swing kicks or kick with pointed toes instead, it is NOT making it your
own. This is a poor choice that does not
result in effective kicks and can lead to your own injury.
While we allow for students to
not adhere to the standard in the situations where a student has a physical
limitation (structural, flexibility, etc.) or their body types does not really
allow them to perform to standard, I would not call this “Making It Your
Own”. These are agreed-to exceptions
from the standard with the Chief Instructor for a student to adapt the art form
to their physical body while maintaining as much effectiveness of the technique
as possible and keeping a student safe.
I will call this Adaptation of the Art Form. We should always strive to perform the
techniques to the standard as much as practical while working on physical
limitations (like flexibility) to move yourself closer to the standard when
possible. In addition, students
eventually become instructors; meaning they must be able to demonstrate the
standard in front of a class or at least clearly articulate the proper approach.
Some aspects of “Making it Your
Own” include your intention (mind set), cadence, and applications for
techniques within a form. Is a technique
a block or strike? Is the technique
deflecting an incoming strike or damaging an opponent from a grab. Most of our techniques have multiple
applications. Your preference of how to
apply techniques and your intention when applying it is one aspect of “Making
It Your Own”. For example, as a white
belt, we teach students to perform the form with consistent cadence throughout. But as one advances, the cadence can be
different to mimic your intention and interpretation of the form.
Which techniques you choose to
use, and your strategy in using the art form under various scenarios is part of
“Making It Your Own”. For a taller
person with strong kicks, I would expect that in most scenarios they would defend
themselves with kicks. For me, as a shorter
person, my advantage is working inside and using short strikes leveraging off
of a lower center of gravity. Would I
tell every person those are the best Hand Moo Kwan techniques to defend
yourself? No, because they may not be
for someone else and each person must discover for themselves their strengths
and for what scenarios Han Moo Kwan would best serve them to keep them safe.
“Making It Your Own” will depend
on the situation. Sparring in class you
may have a favorite technique that you may never practice in real-life. Some people in class while sparring like to
grab others to see how they react. I
would tell you I would probably never grab someone in a real-life scenario,
giving up a weapon, unless I saw a huge advantage at the time. How I would respond and my go-to techniques if
my life was on the line versus stopping an attacker would be different as
well.
I would also say that as I get
older and some of my strengths change, I adjust how I make the art form my own. Also, as I move more towards energy and less
physical force, this has also changed how I apply the art form.
The idea of and discovering how
to “Make It My Own” is another reason I enjoy the art form so much. There is always something new to discover
about the art form and how I best can apply it for me.
How have you made the art form
your own?
Regards,
Kelly
“Always be
yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for
a successful personality and duplicate it.” ~ Bruce Lee, (1940 –1973) American-born
Chinese Hong Kong martial artist, actor, and founder of Jeet Kune Do
