Taido Holiday Wish List 2007

Last year, I com­posed a sort of Christmas list for Taido. It’s been an event­ful year, and some of the things on that list became real­ity. One of the really awe­some things about Taido is that it’s always chang­ing, and I’m pretty excited that most of these changes appear to be hap­pen­ing for the better.

I have a lot of dreams for the next year in Taido. Before I start list­ing off every con­ceiv­able wish I could have for Taido over the next year, I’ll review the items I posted in last year’s list. Here they are:

2006 List Recap

  1. American-flag print, satin karate uni­form — Nope! But I did get an awe­some Gameness grap­pling gi this sum­mer. I guess that’ll have to do for now.
  2. A DVD ref­er­ence video of every hokei in Taido — Nope! But YouTube post­ing by Taidoka has really taken off over the last year, and I believe that this si going to have some really good impacts as more stu­dents see how Taido is trained in other dojo and other countries.
  3. A video of Ohashi win­ning jis­sen at the All-Japan tour­na­ment — Check! DVD gra­ciously pro­vided by Yasu Kato.
  4. Some bet­ter doc­u­men­ta­tion of Saiko Shihan’s life — Nope!
  5. An English trans­la­tion of Taido Gairon — Nope!
  6. A trans­la­tion of Shin Karatedo Kyohan — Nope!
  7. A bet­ter floor at Tech — Check! The new floor is not per­fect, but I think it’s an improve­ment. For some rea­son, nobody thought to order any kind of non-slip mate­r­ial to lie between the mats and the pol­ished wood floor. This is eas­ily cor­rected if a few folks will just get together and order few meters of it.
  8. A bet­ter uni­form supplier — Nope!
  9. More stu­dents at Tech — Check! There are lots of new begin­ners at Tech right now, and I hope they stick with it. We have more black belts than ever now, and there is a lot of poten­tial for Tech Taido to really take off. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see where things go if the club holds up over the next year. I’m really opti­mistic about this.
  10. And a par­tridge in a pear tree — Actually, I don’t think I ever really wanted that anyway.

So some of those things are going to roll over onto this year’s list. I’ve also dis­cov­ered a few other things I’d like to see hap­pen­ing in the Taido world. Here’s some addi­tions to the wish list for this year:

2007 Taido Holiday Wish List

  • Better jis­sen rules. I just came back from vis­it­ing Japan and watch­ing the all-J tour­na­ment. There were a few guys try­ing some really cool stuff, but a lot of the jis­sen I saw was just weak. There were a lot of cheap tac­tics in play too. I’m not sure how the rules could be altered to make play­ers spar cleanly, but after this tour­ney, any expec­ta­tion I have of com­peti­tors fight­ing fairly is gone. I really hope the judges get their act together and start giv­ing more warn­ings before the WC.
  • Better hokei rules. Nakano and all the other guys win­ning hokei tour­na­ments are not bad guys. They prac­tice really hard, and they have an almost robotic pre­ci­sion in addi­tion to amaz­ing gym­nas­tic skills. But watch­ing hokei at the all-Japan bored me. Wow, Nakano did a full twist. But his punches were weak, some of his kicks were off tar­get, and I got tired of all the dra­matic pauses between every sec­tion. How about this: instead of giv­ing so many extra points for flip­ping around like ninja in a bad action movie, let’s require some power. And maybe set a time limit.
  • Better eval­u­a­tion meth­ods. At the World Taido meet­ings in Holland, Tanaka and oth­ers were talk­ing about com­ing up with new and bet­ter train­ing meth­ods to move Taido for­ward. Personally, I don’t think it will work. The rea­son is that the cur­rent train­ing meth­ods are a response to the cur­rent tour­na­ment rules and shinsa eval­u­a­tion meth­ods. Everyone knows that the best way to pass a class is to study the items that will be on the test. Right now, stu­dents prac­tice the things they need to pass rank and win tour­na­ments. No more, no less. If we want to move Taido for­ward, we need to start with how we define quality.

    • And that’s it. If we want Taido to con­tinue to improve, we have to change the way we award rank­ings and offi­ci­ate com­pe­ti­tions. The more I think about what Taido needs most in order to be taken seri­ously in the mar­tial arts world and become the major force it deserves to be, the more con­vinced I am that we need to take a hard look at what we con­sider good Taido.

    Is it enough to have awe­some unshin if you can’t hit worth a damn? If you pre­vent your oppo­nent from mak­ing gen­tai, does his attack hurt you any less? Is wrap­ping your legs around an oppo­nent when you’re already on the ground going to have any chance of being an effec­tive nengi? Of course not, and every­one knows that these things won’t work in real life, but they’re good enough for win­ning tournaments.

    I guess I kind of got on a rant there, but if I could wish for one thing to change in Taido before the next WC, it would be this very fun­da­men­tal issue. How we define qual­ity in Taido is the sin­gle most impor­tant thing upon which we must focus. In Japan, that def­i­n­i­tion is increas­ingly decided as Taido slides down the slope from budo to sport. I hope the next year can see the bal­ance begin to tip in the other direction.

    3 Responses to Taido Holiday Wish List 2007
    1. Eric

      Andy,

      After read­ing your ‘wish list’ for Taido, I have two questions:

      1. Do you feel that Taido isn’t taken seri­ously in the world of mar­tial arts. If so, for what reasons?

      2. What do you think should / could change to bring about bet­ter respect for Taido? Would Georgia Tech Taido (yes, I’m a new guy over there) be a good place to exper­i­ment with new test­ing standards?

      Thanks!

    2. Mikael Jansson

      Hi Andy
      After read­ing your “2007 Taido Holiday Wish List“
      I just want to say; You are right on it!

      Take care
      Mickey

    3. andy

      Mickey:

      Thanks for the note — it’s good to hear from you, and I hope all is well with all my Viking friends in Sweden. It’s always nice to know that I’m not the only one who thinks we can do a bet­ter job with the way we teach and prac­tice Taido. Try to stay warm…

      Eric:

      One of the great things Bryan and I dis­cov­ered about teach­ing at Tech is that the stu­dents there tend to ask dif­fi­cult ques­tions. I’ll do my best to give you an answer, but be fore­warned that this is a very broad topic.

      I think that Taido is not taken seri­ously as a Budo. Articulating why is a lit­tle dif­fi­cult, but let’s just say that I know a lot of peo­ple prac­tic­ing var­i­ous mar­tial arts, and most of them do not under­stand Taido. They think it is inter­est­ing to watch and respect the dif­fi­culty of the tech­nique, but they see lit­tle prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion to the things that most peo­ple asso­ciate with Budo: fight­ing and self-defense.

      I believe that Taido can be applic­a­ble to these venues, but not in the form in which it is usu­ally prac­ticed, which is very much like a sport in most of the world. And in America, Taido is very much like any other fam­ily mar­tial arts” school (Tech being the notable excep­tion). That’s not to say that either one is bad or wrong — but nei­ther approach does much to empha­size the things that make Taido so spe­cial — espe­cially to peo­ple who are not Taido students.

      The thing is, we don’t have to sell Taido to Taidoka. Students have already decided. The peo­ple we need to be try­ing to impress are those who don’t already prac­tice Taido. These peo­ple need to see what we are really all about. But instead, we show them fancy rou­tines filled with imprac­ti­cal tech­niques. That’s not going to win very much support.

      How can we get more respect? Not giv­ing black belts (let alone sec­ond and third degree black belts) to peo­ple who can’t per­form the move­ments would be a step in the right direc­tion. Changing the com­pe­ti­tion rules to reflect more empha­sis on mar­tial­ism rather than on sport would be a big move. Making videos avail­able online that show­case Taido’s appli­ca­tions to real sit­u­a­tions instead of only post­ing tenkai, bad jis­sen, and ten­tai no hokei clips would help improve our per­cep­tion among non-practitioners. Honestly, the best thing we can all do is to remem­ber dur­ing prac­tices that Taido was designed to be a mar­tial art, not sim­ply a sophis­ti­cated game of tag / style of dancing.

      Do I think Tech is a good place to exper­i­ment? Yes. But Mr. Uchida dis­agrees with me, and that is one of the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in my absence from train­ing lately. Historically, Tech has been very exper­i­men­tal, and we’ve seen good results. But Uchida sees Tech as a “satel­lite,” mean­ing that Taido lives in Norcross, so any exper­i­ments bet­ter pro­duce results that look exactly like the stu­dents there (mostly chil­dren and par­ents). I think uni­ver­sity Taido should look dif­fer­ent from fam­ily Taido, but the honbu spe­cial­izes in a cer­tain style of train­ing, and Tech is required to fol­low suit, despite this being far from optimal.

      Anyway, good luck in your prac­tice (and on your exams). Thanks for the ques­tions. I hope we can have a chance to dis­cuss Taido in per­son in the near future.

    Taido's Soul Side - Download Now

    The Rest of Taido/Blog is my collection of essays about Taido that will reconnect you with what it feels like to really think deeply about your training and what it means to you. And maybe even enjoy it more.

    Just right-lick on the image to download.