2007 IFG/ETC

I recently returned to Atlanta from Leiden, Netherlands, site of the 2007 International Taido Friendship Games and European Taido Championships. The five-day event com­prised two inter­na­tional tour­na­ments and three days of sem­i­nars. There were also plenty of chances to meet new peo­ple and get to know them by eat­ing, drink­ing, and play­ing Taido together. It was crazy good fun.

I landed at Schiphol entirely clue­less as to what the week would have in store for me. This was my first trip to Europe and my first meet­ing with many of the European Taido mem­bers. I“ll say up front that I was not dis­ap­pointed with the qual­ity of char­ac­ter or tech­nique demon­strated by the var­i­ous national del­e­ga­tions. I even man­aged to learn a few things.

Things I learned in Holland:

• Holland is magic. Really. A good bit of the coun­try used to be under­wa­ter, but it isn’t any­more. If that doesn’t con­sti­tute some­thing spe­cial, I do’t know what does.
• The city of Leiden is espe­cially inter­est­ing. When the Spanish were out con­quer­ing most of Europe, they made it as far as the Netherlands. The Spanish army laid siege to Leiden for quite a while. Little did they know, the natives were up to some­thing besides cring­ing in fear. They all moved to high ground (they had to build it first) and waited for the Spaniards to pass through the gates. When the time was upon them, they blew the dikes and drowned the invad­ing army. Afterwards, they pumped the water back out to sea and burned the bod­ies of thou­sands of Spanish invaders. Diabolical. They retained their inde­pen­dence while other town­ships fell.
• Kervers (pres­i­dent of the Dutch Taido Association and orga­nizer of this event) lives in one of only two remain­ing city gates. There were orig­i­nally eight.
• Scandinavian Taidoka love sokuten­geri. I had heard this rumor in the past, but had assumed it was some­what exag­ger­ated; it’s not exag­ger­ated. I saw more sokuten­geri in one week than I had in me pre­vi­ous twenty-something years of Taido. Not that ther’s any­thing wrong with sokuten­geri, espe­cially since they man­age to score with it.
• Now that I think of it, it’s pretty inter­est­ing how dif­fer­ent coun­tries seem to spe­cial­ize in dif­fer­ent tech­niques. In America, our jis­sen was tra­di­tion­ally focused on kai­jogeri and hien­zuki — pretty direct attack and defense stuff. In Japan, I noticed that sengi and man­jigeri were the most com­mon tech­niques in many tour­na­ments. In Europe, it’s appar­ently sokuten­geri. Apparently, every Taido asso­ci­a­tion spe­cial­izes some­what in par­tic­u­lar move­ments. The inter­est­ing thing is that the cham­pi­ons from each asso­ci­a­tion spe­cial­ize in dif­fer­ent move­ments than the other com­peti­tors — that is until every­one starts copy­ing them…
• I won­der why this hap­pens. Since Taido is sup­posed to be adapt­able and evolv­ing, it would appear that the ten­dency to spe­cial­ize runs counter to our phi­los­o­phy. However, spe­cial­iza­tion is appears to be a good way to pre­pare for com­pe­ti­tions because it reduces the num­ber of options from which a player must choose in the midst of jis­sen. This leads to a higher scor­ing ratio, but it may be weak­en­ing us in the long run.
• Taidoka in other coun­tries are very con­fused about American Taido. The most fre­quent ques­tion peo­ple asked me over the course of a week was “Why are there no oth­ers from America?” I found it impos­si­ble to answer.
• Northern European peo­ple gen­er­ally speak really good English. Every time I travel, I’m hum­bled by the fact that so many peo­ple speak my lan­guage. Why is it that so few Americans are mul­ti­lin­gual? I guess the answer has to do with why so few Americans ever travel abroad. A lot of peo­ple tell me they don’t travel because it’s expen­sive, but Europeans for the most part pay incred­i­bly high taxes and still man­age to get out and see the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries at least. I think part of the answer lay in the fear of leav­ing our lit­tle bub­bles and find­ing our­selves to be smaller fish than we had orig­i­nally believed. I’ve dis­cov­ered in the past few months that there is noth­ing wrong with being a small fish.
• Taido peo­ple in any coun­try know how to party.
• The Swedes are hilar­i­ous dancers.
• (Unfortunately) Taido pol­i­tics are not an American inven­tion. In every asso­ci­a­tion, there are wheel-spinners — peo­ple who can’t do very much but bull­shit their way into posi­tions from which they attempt to con­trol what oth­ers do. These peo­ple hide behind a num­ber of excuses for why they don’t prac­tice, but the fact of the mat­ter is that peo­ple who don’t under­stand what they’re talk­ing about should never be put in a lead­er­ship or teach­ing role.
• One of the best rea­sons for hold­ing inter­na­tional events is that every­one is exposed to dif­fer­ent view­points and styles of prac­tice. Even more, it becomes obvi­ous whose ideas work and don’t work. With more points of com­par­i­son, it becomes obvi­ous who knows what they’re doing and who doesn’t . Those schools that have the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice reg­u­larly with stu­dents and teach­ers from dif­fer­ent dojos are lucky indeed.
• I got a great com­pli­ment from the guy who finally beat me in jis­sen . He’s well over six feet tall, and his name is Jarko. After our match one guy asked him how it was spar­ring with me, and he said it was “annoy­ing.” I liked that a lot.
• Not only did Jarko beat me in jis­sen; he also beat Kato Sensei in arm wrestling.
• There hap­pen to be quite a few peo­ple try­ing to develop new Taido tech­niques and appli­ca­tions. Some of it is super­flu­ous and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, but some of it is bril­liant. The later won’t hap­pen with­out the former.
• Leiden is beau­ti­ful. I want to go back there someday.
• There are a lot of Taido clubs in Europe, and many of them invited me to come train with them. I’m really look­ing for­ward to vis­it­ing as many dojo as I can over the next few years. I heartily encour­age every­one to make all efforts to do the same.
• Finland has the world’s high­est per capita inci­dence of both alco­holism and sui­cide. Maybe liv­ing in America isn’t so bad after all.
• I need to prac­tice more before I com­pete in Tournaments. I was pretty out of shape for this event (endurance-wise espe­cially). Of course, some things are like rid­ing a bike, but a lot of phys­i­cal per­for­mance relies on the Specific Adaptation to Implied Demands (SAID) prin­ci­ple. Use it or lose it. My hokei and jis­sen both were good enough to get me into the finals, but with­out con­sis­tent prac­tice, they won’t be good enough to get me a title. Moral: I need to prac­tice with peo­ple more often.
• Most Taido orga­ni­za­tions really, really want to coop­er­ate and col­lab­o­rate on the inter­na­tional level. It’s really heart­en­ing to see that nobody wants com­plete con­trol of the Taido empire for their own group. Everyone I talked to was into the idea of shar­ing and spread­ing Taido in a sus­tain­able and egal­i­tar­ian method of orga­ni­za­tion. I think that’s swell and great. Of course, wher­ever there is power to be wielded over oth­ers, some peo­ple will try to snatch up as much of it as pos­si­ble. But the huge advan­tage of hav­ing an inter­na­tional orga­niz­ing body is that no one per­son or group can ever claim to con­trol too much of the whole.

The biggest thing by far that I got out of this trip was, of course, the chance to meet a whole new bunch of really freak­ing awe­some guys and girls who share my pas­sion for the coolest mar­tial art on the planet. I’m going to see a lot of them again (and again) over the next few years, and I know it’s going to be a blast. I also know that I’ll con­tinue to be learn­ing from all of them for quite a while to come.

So to every­one whom I met in Leiden — Cheers, and thanks!

To those who weren’t able to make this one — save your money and let’s all rock out together in 2009.