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On the subject of specialization
Master Li's correct body method is a direct result of specialization.
Specialization, cross training, styles. In the world of the Chinese martial arts, these words carry great meaning and weight. Yet, most martial artists will not agree on their meaning and importance. Over the years, I have written about the subjects but I think it is time to give a “fresher” look into the matter and write something more definitive.
When the words specialization, styles and cross-training or on the table, it seems that one of the main possible discussions is the one that focus on specializing in one martial art as opposed to practicing more than one martial art at the same time (practicing what is now known as “cross training”). The matter is, in fact, a simple one and the answer should be quite evident to anyone who is not too lazy to make use of his logical skills (although I must admit that being logical is not humanity’s forte).
True skill in any field of knowledge can happen only after specialization. That one needs to spend a great amount of time learning something to the point where serious skill can be attained goes without saying.
True skill in any field of knowledge can happen only after specialization. That one needs to spend a great amount of time learning something to the point where serious skill can be attained goes without saying. Your level of skill will always be proportional to the training you put into it, therefore the more you train the better you get. This basic formula has many variants and by applying it in different ways, you can power up the formula so that people can train less and attain more, but this goes into the area of how to maximize your training and I will not talk about it in this essay. Continuing to develop my line of thought, If we refer to a certain field of knowledge, specialization is one of the reasons why some know so much while others know so little (even though they might, at times, believe they know more than they actually do). Specialization is paramount in attaining the higher levels of any martial art. By specializing you will be able to reach that which is hidden for most people. You will be able to go deeper into your martial art and to unite with it in a very powerful manner.
Imagine for a moment a powerful spacecraft that is designed to leave Earth’s orbit and go into space. The rockets that power the spacecraft need to have a certain amount of power for it to have enough momentum to leave Earth’s orbit. Nothing less than that specific amount of power will generate that kind of momentum, thus allowing the craft to leave orbit, but once the power is reached the craft leaves orbit and space itself is revealed. All that before was hidden to the astronaut, is now evident. The same applies to Xingyiquan.
As a martial art, XYQ is very deep, but its true deepness reveals itself only for those that spend the necessary time into training. Just as the craft must achieve a certain momentum to leave orbit, so the XYQ practitioner needs to put a certain amount of training into it, in order for him to begin to understand its intricacies. Nothing less than that kind of training will suffice and if that standard is not reached, a person might very well practice the art for a life time and still have no clear idea of its intricacies., in which case he will probably mistake shallowness for deepness, the unimportant for the important.
We do have to be clear though, that putting the time into physical training is not the only thing to it. If that was the case one needed only to have enough time to specialize in two or three martial arts and voila. It isn’t that simple. Over the past years I have been hinting how XYQ is not only physical but also mental, and that one needs to spend as much time thinking about it as he spends on practicing it. Again, let us be logical about it (do not lose me now) – Half of the art’s name is composed of a “mental” element, represented by the character “Yi”. Moreover, if you know your theory well you will remember that the mind comes before the form. A correct understanding of the art is gold. Again, I will tell you: do not be fooled by learning this or that technique, this or that movement. You go to a seminar, attend a class, learn 10.000 applications and you feel good, “God that was an amazing class, well worth the money I paid for it!” you think. Well then, think again, because you are wrong. Therefore, thinking about the art is as important as training it. Any teacher can teach you XYQ’s whole content. You can learn the basic forms (the 5 fists), the animals, the longer forms etc., but the “mental” part, this is what you might never find. When you combine the time you need to spend training and the time you need to spend thinking about it, analyzing it, understanding it and creating correlations with it, then it is clear you won’t have time to do the same for another martial art (not if you want to learn a martial art the way it is supposed to be learned, that is). In XYQ, only this combined effort, this union between the physical and mental elements will take you to the point where you are going to be able to reach deep enough into the art. When you get to that point, a world of possibilities will present itself. Naturally, when that happens, you and other practitioners will “see” the same but “perceive” things in very different levels.
The correct attitude, that people who do not specialize miss is, that when you are taught something, when you train something, you train it, you analyze it, you think about it, you develop it, you live it. Nothing less than this gets a student deep enough to begin to perceive …
This kind of training is in accordance with the traditional Chinese method of teaching. In this method, very differently from what a westerner is used to, the teacher will not give all the necessary information at once. This method of teaching is based on a kind of guidance, almost as if the teacher, the holder of knowledge, leads the student through the intricate particularities of a martial art. Following this method, the teacher will probably explain a key concept and its basic usage in fighting, as well as the basic method for training it, but he will fully expect three things to happen: he will expect the student to “master” the movements, to understand its concept and applications and to further develop on the basis of what he has learned. These expectations demonstrate how a level of specialization is not only more than necessary for a student to begin to understand the art on a deeper level, but also expected from the part of the serious teacher. The correct attitude, that people who do not specialize miss is, that when you are taught something, when you train something, you train it, you analyze it, you think about it, you develop it, you live it. Nothing less than this gets a student deep enough to begin to perceive what is behind the veil that separates the shallowness of the uncommitted from the deepness of the specialist. The veil is there for a reason, and the great masters were very aware of its existence. I have heard, many times, several teachers referring to their students and saying, “I will not teach them this. They do not commit enough and it is not necessary for them to study it or for me to waste my time in teaching them”. True, true indeed.
Cross-trainers will argue that by studying a different martial art you might be able to better understand your main martial art. This logic presupposes that by making contact with a foreign element, you will perceive what you already have from a different perspective, thus gaining additional insight and a more complete knowledge about it. I will not say that this is not correct, but I will most definitely say that it is incorrect in the way most people do it. In terms of traditional Chinese martial arts, what we can often see is people training in different arts at the same time. Concomitantly training in different martial arts can be good, or it can be terribly detrimental to you.
On a very basic level, when someone is making initial contact with a certain martial art, it is a good thing to have a basic idea of its particularities, about other martial arts’ particularities and of how they differ from the one you are mainly interested in. Humans learn by comparison, by putting things together and analyzing them to gain an understanding of how they conform and differ from what they already know, constantly building new blocks of knowledge and comparing them to the ones previously “stored” in their brains. This process happens for any kind of knowledge we learn and it happens involuntarily. This is a very interesting subject and I will probably write about it in an essay that has a more direct relation with the cognitive sciences. Let us get back on track then.
I established that, on a very basic approach, comparing martial arts is beneficial so that a person makes an informed decision on what martial art better suits his needs. Even though I am not going to indicate this course of action, I can still understand that, even after choosing a certain martial art and starting training on it, a person might still cross-train to “better understand” his main choice of a martial art. However, after a certain point, cross training is extremely detrimental for the practitioner. After the very basic stages of practice occur, a student is supposed to begin training in different skills and this is the moment where the deep training starts. This is the moment when a student has to put the other martial arts behind, so that he can absolutely commit to the training of the art he has chosen (Please do notice I wrote “put behind” and not “throw away”). Finding commonalities and differences between your art and others is beneficial in the basic stages, but as you proceed into deeper stages of training you really need to concentrate on what is important, and that is the skills that make your art unique. People are not doing that and this is not just me thinking, it is a fact. There are many signs to that effect but an evident one is to perceive how most people discuss about the CMAs saying how “my art has this too” or “this is very similar to what we do!”. They are comparing “A” (what they practiced originally) and “B” (the second art they are training), even though that have no real knowledge on the essence of “A”. These kinds of statements clearly show that people are not going as deep as they were supposed to, for if they were, comments such as these would not be so common. When you never go pass the basic level, all you can see are the commonalities between martial arts, and therefore you say “we have this too” or “we do it almost in the same way”. No, my friend, you do not have it and we do not do it in almost the same way. It is only your lack of knowledge (a direct result of your lack of specialization) that makes you think this way. How can you find out commonalities between Xingyiquan and (for example) Tongbeiquan when you have no solid knowledge on XYQ? Acquire the knowledge first and compare afterwards, this is the correct approach. If you have only basic knowledge and try to compare, then you will get sidetracked and most probably stagnate on the level of understanding you already have. By doing so your knowledge will increase horizontally but not vertically. It will become broader, but not deeper. You will have basic knowledge in XYQ, Tongbeiquan and whatever other arts you choose to practice, but you will never get deep enough in XYQ to actually understand it pass the basic level. This is what the Chinese call “Pimao”. By insisting in the “Pimao” course of action, you will probably fool yourself into believing you are getting deeper into XYQ. You will feel you are beginning to see the differences and you say “Hey, look! This movement exists in both XYQ and TBQ, but it is executed in a different way, with different power!”. Really? Did you have to practice other martial arts to figure that out? Interesting.
You might also think that training the same movement in TBQ helps your understanding of it in XYQ. All that you need to correctly understand XYQ is contained in your practice. If you have not been taught, it means only that your teacher is holding back on you or he simply does not know. Masters and teachers, they were all students once and many of them have holes in what they teach. There is a tendency to believe that teachers know everything and at times, it is hard to face the fact that a certain teacher does not know a part of the system he teaches. Now, once you have actually acquired and mastered the higher levels of a martial art, when your skills have “solidified” and are already a part of you, then cross training becomes beneficial again.
Have you ever seen a neurosurgeon who is also an ophthalmologist? Or perhaps a neonatal surgeon who is also a vascular surgeon? Maybe a different question. Supposing there was such a thing as a neurosurgeon who is also a neonatal surgeon being a vascular surgeon as well. If you had to go through brain surgery, would you go for the neuro/neonatal/vascular surgeon or for the best neurosurgeon in the country? He does not do neonatal surgery or vascular surgery. All he does, all he has been doing for the last 30 years is neurosurgery. He operates, teaches, and attends seminars, all about neurosurgery.
Surgery is a heavy subject. Let us chose something lighter. You are taking your girlfriend to a restaurant and she likes Italian. Are you going to take her to the fancy new restaurant that does Italian, Brazilian, Japanese, Korean and Mexican or to the old Italian restaurant that has had the best Italian food in town for the last 50 years?
Specializing on a certain martial art requires many years of constant effort and self-sacrifice. It is not easy and it is certainly not for everyone. Few westerners had done it but I am sure as few as they are they will speak and demonstrate with authority (about) the benefits of it.
When I was starting in Xingyiquan I hated the veil, but now that I can see pass it, I like it. It keeps the knowledge safe and intact for those that are actually willing to train a martial art the way it was supposed to be trained.
Xingyiquan coming from a non-specialist never looks quite right. The difference might never be very evident for the people that do not make the effort to specialize. How could they see the differences when they do not understand them themselves? Instead, they will take the easier approach, which is to criticize the specialist for not understanding the benefits of training in different martial arts. It is interesting, indeed. When I was starting in Xingyiquan I hated the veil, but now that I can see pass it, I like it. It keeps the knowledge safe and intact for those that are actually willing to train a martial art the way it was supposed to be trained. I will never lift the veil for others. Even if I did, most people would not understand what they would see, because others cannot lift the veil; it has to be lifted by the practitioner himself, by means of countless hours of training and thinking, and by doing what specializing is all about: living the martial art he chose to learn.
I agree with most of what you say but your comparison to a neurosurgeon and optho etc can be looked at in a different way also. All Doctors or surgeons first must go through pre med and then med school before specializing, they learn common things in all medicine and then also things that are not common, then go on to choose a specialization. so for people cross training it can be same and can be beneficial. People can learn basic skill sets across the board that help them defend themselves in all ranges against the average threat, then can later choose to specialize after much exposure to different approaches and move to greater skills and deeper knowledge in one art to be used against the most skilled of adversaries etc, If you remember the rpide that Brazilians had in jiu jitsu only a decade ago saying they dont need a striking art, now from day one of training , most bjj guys are also training a striking art at same time. I think specializing is the way to go but I also think theirs different roads to lead to it. I think without my personal exposure to so many arts in the past, I would have never appreciated the depth of XY and I hope to be able to get deep with it as you know.
Dan,
Note that I wrote:
“On a very basic level, when someone is making initial contact with a certain martial art, it is a good thing to have a basic idea of its particularities, about other martial arts’ particularities and of how they differ from the one you are mainly interested in. Humans learn by comparison, by putting things together and analyzing them to gain an understanding of how they conform and differ from what they already know, constantly building new blocks of knowledge and comparing them to the ones previously “stored” in their brains.”.
I mean that, like in medicine, there is an initial period when learning by cross training (or cross studying) is fine. This is exactly what happens in medicine, only the time spending doing it in medicine is longer than the initial period I was talking about in the essay. A reason for that is that medical specialties address only a part of the “disease” spectrum, but a martial art based on concepts like XYQ is a small universe in itself. To better understand it we could say that XYQ is “medicine” in the sense that it addresses all the different situations that might arise in combat, and your medical specialization would be your specialty withing XYQ.
As for your last points, of course I agree that there are other roads. Any way we choose will have its pros and cons. BJJ is also a concept art but not to the level of XYQ , BGZ or TJQ, but yes, I understand your point.
Good article Tadzio, I have been reflecting a lot on specialization recently and came to the same conclusion as you, If one is training for mastery then there is really no choice. Please keep up your good work.
i wish americans had more access to teachers who have the skills and time to teach a specialization, unfortunately that in itself is hard as few people are really commited and teacher must keep their doors open by teaching what is in demand in many cases. Neijia is at bottom of list for things in demand here. which really sucks because it is deepest of subjects for sure. Hopefuly you can be one that starts changing that and i think your seminar is a start!
Thanks for the support Shane.
I know. martial art as business is a tricky game and by far not my favorite one…
You have a well round system Dan, hope you can make it work for your benefit too.