Cross Train Question

Karateka63 · Yellow Belt

alright 2 years ago, I went looking for free trail classes around Columbus because I was that desperate to get back into MA despite the fact I nor my mom could not afford it so I found a close ninjutsu school nearby that my mother was willing to drive to.

I kinda had a bad experience at this dojo because of 2 reasons:

1- I had been so dedicated to Shorin Ryu that, this is going to sound confusing but somewhere along the line of practicing kata and yakusoko drills and overall working on techniques, The Shorin Ryu Style seemed to become apart of my natural reflexes.

My body kinda already goes into Shorin Ryu fighting stance and I throw Shorin Ryu techniques without really thinking about it, it just seems natural to me.

anyway the dojo didn't seem to like this and told me that I had to be learn to be able to forget everything I learned at my old dojo in order to be able to learn a new style and I guess this scared me because I became worried that I would be forcing my body to forget a style I Loved

witch brings me to my second reason:

2-After class the sensia and one of his black belts started to explain to me how defective Shorin Ryu was over Ninjutsu and how Ninjutsu people can beat Shorin Ryu people more efficiently and how there Style Rains Supreme over all other Arts.

I don't know why but my body took this as a threat, my blood was boiling more or less lol, still I stayed respectful and humble and after that I got out of there so my question is:

How do you go about Cross Training without the fear of losing Valued MA Style Knowledge in a specific MA Style???
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Martial Arts is 90% Mental and Only 10% Physical.

Dobbersky · Black Belt

You're going to have to adapt.

The best way to describe it is, Leave your Shorin Ryu at the Door.

Now I can't speak for Shorin Ryu but if its an Okinawan Style it will be full contact and similar to Goju Ryu (I can stand corrected if you want to correct me)
Now Ninjitsu is a Japanese Style, they work more into Jujitsu/Samurai based styling.
The one thing that I find strange is rather that the Sensei and Sempai telling you that you need to forget everything, they SHOULD have said we will work with you to mould what you know into the way we do Ninjitsu, molding the Style around you NOT molding you around the style.
To say Ninja beats Shorin Ryu, how many Ninja are UFC champs!!!!
Ninjitsu is an effective style but its not THE best as we'd all be Ninja if it were.
I'd recommend finding another style to cross train in to "back up your Shorin Ryu, try Filipino Martial Arts or Krav Maga or Judo, The Samurai arts are the best as Samurai always defeated the Ninja when they were caught back in the days of the Samurai, but then are Thai Arts the best as Muay Thai fighters beat other styles, but wait aren't Brazilian Jujitsu Fighters the best as they dominate the Cage fighting arena?

Depending on situation, on the rules, on the fighters themselves depends on who will win NOT which Style is the best!!!
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"Challenge is a Dragon with a Gift in its mouth....Tame the Dragon and the Gift is Yours....." Noela Evans (author)

tsd1592 · Yellow Belt

do not listine to him he says this because he is not confident in his ability's. No one style is Superior to the other just different. Ihave spared guys of all difrent styles some i could kick the tar out of some kicked the tar out of me what i am getting at is its not the style that makes the man it is his heart. I tend to agree look for another school one that will help you in your search not one that is trying to take you backwards. But keep in mind. you will be learning a new art. with comes different applications. you will need to learn to do things that way to even get a proper understanding of that art. the trick is to make it complement your shorin ryu not change it. Also you love shorin ryu with that said i would not compare everything to it. for if you do this you will never be satisfied as the passion will not be there. look for something that will complement it not something Superior or better because no one style is supioror or better just diffrent

Wastelander · KF Sensei

I trained heavily (14 hours per week in the dojo, plus training on my own) in Shuri-Ryu before moving to Arizona. My Shorin-Ryu Sensei tells me that I still look like a Shuri-Ryu guy practicing Shorin-Ryu kata, but my form is very good

.

Your experience would indicate that you should not attend that dojo--you will need to adapt to the differences between styles, but the idea of simply "forgetting" it is ludicrous and no martial art is "the best art" so they seem to be propagandists to me. A style should be molded to the practitioner in the same manner that a practitioner is molded to a style--both have to give a little--but I've found that koryu and koryu-esque arts (I'm including Ninjutsu in that simply because, in my opinion, it is simply a specialized form of Jujutsu) do not believe in the idea that the style should mold to the practitioner at all. You would be better off finding another Okinawan style--even if it isn't a branch of Shorin-Ryu you will still find that a lot of the basics will be the same.
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Karateka63 · Yellow Belt

Yes that is what I've always believed, every style has there own strengths and weaknesses and it's never the style at fault it's the fighter. I know this isn't really cross training but before long before Matsubayashi Ryu I took TKD from age 4 to age 10 and made it all they way up to red belt before my family moved away, my mother grew sick of mine and my brothers abusive environment around my relatives A.K.A as my mother and I like to call them lol (Those People)

Keep in Mind I do not consider my relatives as a part of my Family. They were dead to me long before the move.

Anyway, the point is I did manage when I got into Shorin Ryu by age 15 I found I could add what little knowledge I had left in TKD to Shorin Ryu.

My TKD got rusty by the time I joined Shorin Ryu tho.

(its because I neglected stretching and only concentrated on technique)

and Because I fell into one of those life crisis your everyday 13 year olds aren't supposed to have.

(Heavy Anger over Court Battle with a guy who was a main participant in abusing my mother, me, and my older bro)

but idk how but when you take a style for more then 4 years bits of the style seem like they will never leave you so when I joined Shorin Ryu I only remember the TKD fighting stance, basic blocks and about 3 kicks lol

but I had managed to be able to change Style's mid sparr and throw people off tho sadly lol but I found that my sensia doesn't like it when you don't use the style he is teaching when Sparring.

He told me to save it for tournaments because inside his dojo he is strictly teaches Shorin Ryu even tho some TKD moves are already interbred into alot of styles including Shorin Ryu and added if he let people come in and change style's there would be alot more accident's in his dojo that would get people hurt and that he didn't want that. I understood and listened cuz it was understandable.
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Martial Arts is 90% Mental and Only 10% Physical.

Karateka63 · Yellow Belt

I also have a best friend who I inspired to actually hit up a dojo awhile back and wound up taking Krav Mega and it was like this christian money raising thing anyway

Shortly after the bad economy hit My best friends dojo still stood in place for a 2 months longer then mine did and eventually like my school had to relocate, before the relocation tho I asked my best friend to ask his sensia if I could join a free class,

Best friend gave me the ok so I tagged along and even tho his class was less strict then the dojo's I'm used to attending the sensia did what my sensia did, he never judged my previous arts even complimented them and welcomed me to train and even understood I was going to have a little Shorin Ryu Turrets lol. The only thing he didn't let me do was spar and again I understood.

Had fun there even tho they only had class 2 times a month. so I really only went once but the ironic thing was I was so open minded and Enthusiastic about his class, after class

(I was really just desperate to get back into MA after finding out my dojo had to relocate.)

He gave me a piece of red tap and put it on my white belt, announcing to his class that I had the Highest Fighting Spirit in his class.

(I brought white belt because I was new to that style)

My Best Friends Sensia's Class was about an hour and 20 minuets and the balk of it was just fitness things, push-ups jumping jacks, running around the dojo forward backward side , the usual stuff lol..we didn't get to the Krav Mega Techniques till about 40 minuets in and that lasted about 20 minuets and finally ended in Kata, the last 20 minuets, tho he didn't teach me any Krav Mega Kata's He was however nice enough to let me perform a kata I know from Shorin Ryu.

even tho I was a little weirded out on how the sensia not having the entire class suffer for someone trying to cheat because there were alot of cheaters in that class lol.

In the dojo's I'm used to is if you were caught by the sensia trying to cheat your way to success, the entire class would get double the reps and the idea behind this tactic is to make the entire class want that one person to stop cheating themselves.

despite this fact I still had a great time and learned some new things about Krav Mega.

so I guess a big difference with cross training is:

In order to effectively cross train either the class or 2 or more people have to be accepting of each others style differences and yet at the same time be open to learning ideas the other persons style has to offer. Makes Sense

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Martial Arts is 90% Mental and Only 10% Physical.

Wastelander · KF Sensei

Karateka63 · Yellow Belt

oh yea, and just to let you guys know, sorry for the long posts, this forum kinda took me by surprise because it actually is a forum where people actually log in and are active and 2 other karate forums I went to are or have become dead lol.

so due to the fact of finding noone to talk to about specific MA ideas and decisions aside from my best friend Sam who is far less experienced then I am in MA and whilst training mildly now, that's going to change soon cuz some MA people on this forum gave me some advice that inspired me to go back to how I used to train even tho it was still alone but alot harder then I train now, so if I have long posts just know it's because I haven't talked much about MA in the past couple of years and all the information question's I have been bottling for the past couple of years are now being vomited lol on this awesome forum.

_________________
Martial Arts is 90% Mental and Only 10% Physical.

Wastelander · KF Sensei

bushido_man96 · KF Sensei

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