Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

been thinking lately about a three tier curriculum for our dojo-- at first was considering the the standard beginner, intermediate, and advanced idea but that seemed a little clumsy, linear and hierarchical -- and would probably lead to folks being unnecessarily typed and excluded from work they might enjoy or benefit from --- now reconsidering along the lines of foundational ( the basic ground of our system, stuff like standard ukemi, walk, 8 release, 17, Owaza) then supplemental ( things that we can add on or plug in to the basic system, stuff like shime waza, ashi waza, sutemi waza, neiwaza, henka of all sorts, koryu kata, tactical/ combative systems, weapons work) and finally transcendental ( things which multiply potential of the system, stuff like renzoku chains, randori, 5 elements work, and also various reinterpretations of principle like the two functions of "off line," bridging /dropping, mechanical/ nervous system oriented kuzushi etc. .)
Clearly everyone needs foundational work but when we see folks only remain in that skill set model the point of view becomes heavily skewed to a black and white - self limiting understanding of aikido-- the supplemental work seems a good curative here and depending on training context different parts of the supplemental work may be most appropriate or necessary but if all of our time is devoted to the interesting supplemental material we fall prey to a never ending "complexification" of the system -- we need a to move into complexity but not be overwhelmed by it, lost in it.
The transcendental includes all that comes before it and simultaneously challenges our basic assumptions and multiplies our potentials -- if the supplemental work basically adds more pieces to play with , the transcendental invites us to take what is well worn stuff and work with it in completely new ways -- the difficulty here is again not to become overwhelmed, this time not so much by complexity, but by active reevaluation/ reinterpretation--- as i look at it all three circles of work are interlinked and self supporting, as one grows in the art over a lifetime of training and practice one may spiral through each of the tiers many times with deeper and deeper appreciation,understanding and realization

Aargh, I thought I'd replied to this one earlier...

I like this paradigm. It sounds like your third, transcendental realm of training is similar to what jack,s been explaining to me about kage - the shadow of omote that completes and provides depth and perspective to the omote.

cool parallel that!

Doing some more thinking about this one...

Your foundation al set of material - ukemi, releases, junana, and owaza...

How long should it really take a student to get good and steeped in this material? We tend to spread this material out between white belt and nidan, and this is ...almost... all we work on during that time. Or at least it is a majority off the kyu material.

But the Brits seem to go ahead and get the 17 over with fairly rapidly, then move right into what you classified as supplemental.
It seems we treat walking and releases as foundation and junana as the meat of the program, while the Brits treat walking and junana as the foundation and then delve into th coomplexificationmuch earlier

I was thinking the other day, we tend to emphasize otoshi up thru shodan, then pick up the guruma concept... but there's really nothing to keep us from breaking owaza up into bite sized pieces and teaching it alongside the junana. From day one.that's how the kodokan syllabus works otoshi and gurummataught together from the beginning

I think you are right Pat-- lots of ways to get from here to there -- i came up training in the just traditional format (ukeme walk release 17 big ten and randori on the side-- occasional adventures in supplemental stuff) just like what you are describing and that was the format from 1983 to 1999 at which point we plunged full tilt into the long chain teaching mode (nothin but chains and randori work -- small doses of kata as needed for demos) from 1999 to 2008 --and from 2008 forward i have been just experimenting with hybrid--alternating/cycling from one mode to another--so far we are seeing damn good results just about any ole which way we structure it all (good results for me are -- folks consistently handling real world self defense situations well and promotion demos that i watch and say to myself "well hell that looked better than when i did it back in the day")

Please forgive me for my late post and I may be getting off topic here a little bit from where you were intending to go, but hopefully not too much. For those of us that study several arts in our system of budo, in the transcendence phase can we not also see this in how each of the arts complement each other and in turn are really the same art our little mind has seperated in the beginning?

yes indeed Jason -- i think the transcendent does indeed include whatever gives rise to and intersects it

So, thinking about this paradigm some more...


Wrt clinics and seminars is it better to plan to do some of each level at any given seminar? Or is it better to try to restrict the material for a given clinic to. Mostly one level or do you think it matters?

dont know -- still just feelin my way around these ideas -- what do yall think?

I like things to be open-ended, comfortable, easy. For example, knife work typically hasn't been a mainstay at seminars/clinics/playdays. But everybody eats it up when Prentis does his thing. Some people like to look at how to apply Judo chokes in an Aikido environment, others don't. I think if the material is accessible, and everybody knows it's cool (and encouraged) to get outside the box then we'll see things go.

So, guys, how would you divide the judo curriculum up into these three domains? What is foundational, what supplemental, and what transcendental?

Especially the newaza - what is the indispensable core of that material, and what is supplementary or transcendental?

What about jo and sword?

Man, nick, this stream of thought is really rich!