We Don't Do Tricks (April 08)

We don’t do tricks!

Whenever I am invited somewhere and people find out that I am involved in self-defence, I am asked to perform some sort of “trick“ to amuse the company.

A well-known Jiu-Jitsu book published in the 50s was entitled “Tricks and new Throws“. Its subject was what to do if you wanted to put someone on the ground, perhaps with an elegant throw or specific pressure applied behind the ear.

A technique performed mechanically and deliberately is a “trick“. Some so-called self-defence styles consist of nothing but such tricks.
A technique performed as an end in itself is a trick.
It is like a successfully executed case of improvised situation comedy. The right word, the right accompanying gesture, everything must happen in the right way and at the right time to produce the effect: the catharsis of laughter. The moment must be just right – and it cannot be repeated. 

A movement that is appropriate and is used as a means to an end is not a trick, it arises from a specific situation and is only appropriate in this context, at that point in time and under the currently prevailing – never to be repeated - circumstances.

I know this, and so does my instructor team, but the hopeful beginner who comes to a WT school to learn tricks with which he can quickly and easily down an attacker without hurting him (!), he does not know this.

So should we give the newbie what he wants?

The traditional teaching method rides roughshod over the student’s ideas of what he should learn, and simply tells him that it knows better.
This is similar to the approach taken by many exquisitely talented (and personally highly appreciated)  Italian chefs, who take the fundamental view that the customer does not know what good food is, and play the tyrant who decides what the customer should therefore find appealing.

An anecdote on the subject:
Since I believe I am better at eating than most people are at cooking, I am often at loggerheads with restaurant chefs on my first visit. On one occasion  – in the Saar area of Germany – a particularly belligerent chef de cuisine even invited me outside to settle matters, as he held the nth black belt in some Bash-Em-Up style or other. And after we had eaten he was relieved that I did not respond to his invitation, when my companions casually let him know who it was that he had challenged to go outside. In fact he was just as pleased as I was, for he was a really first-class cook. But back to business.

If a potential new student wants me to tell him exactly what to do if a bully tries to crush his fingers during a welcoming handshake – as happened to him the day before – he does not want to hear that the problem probably lies elsewhere entirely.
First I must cater to the immediate need of the “customer“. After what we would consider a superficial answer to the problem that has brought him to our door, we can offer this chap our specialised concepts by e.g. building on the hand-crushing incident and perhaps show him how he can avoid being grabbed or crushed in the first place.
We can also get the customer (he is not yet a student or “todai“, this prospect who may make his/her living as a librarian, bank manager, pub landlord, medical student or assistant in a tanning studio) on board from where he currently is. It is not necessary to demean him first, and compel him to empty his cup completely.
But naturally that requires more experience, subtlety and sensitivity than can be expected of the average young instructor. 

The situation is similar with advanced students and Technician grades, however. If a TG comes to me determined to learn the entire sequence of the 7th Chi-Sao section from me in just 2 hours of private instruction, I do not stand there and explain that he would obtain more benefit if I spent the 2 hours instilling 2 or 3 reactions into him, rather than teaching him a 2-man form which a 5th PG could probably show him just as well to suit his needs.
I do the 2-man form with him, and after just one hour his curiosity (!) about the new movements will be satisfied on an intellectual level, so that he begins to concentrate on the effectiveness that comes from the subconscious, and not from what has been learned by rote.