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“The motor skill involved in even a very simple and monotonous movement cannot be a motor formula or a motor cliche, as it was wrongly thought by many, including those who equated motor skill and conditioned reflex.  Therefore, it is wrong to consider a motors skill as an imprint or a trace somewhere in the brain’s motor areas.

“On the other hand, the brain’s sensory areas, which take care of sensory corrections, also do not elaborate some unchangeable cliches of corrections.  External forces and perturbations are volatile, and so corrections, which reflect the influence of these factors, likewise cannot be permanent.

“Finally, the movements of a skill must also have in reserve a degree of adaptive variability, which increases from the lower to the higher levels.  Therefore, the brain sensory systems also accumlate and store, not a permanent cliche, but a peculiar, specific maneuverability.  The brain sensory systems gradually learn to be more and more skillful in making an instantaneous translation from the language of incoming sensations and perceptions reflecting the movement process into the language of corrective motor impulses that need to be sent to one or another muscle.  We shall call this translation from the language of sensations to the language of corrections reciphering of neural impulses.

“…We can observe how a craftsman performs seemingly clear and simple movements, but we cannot see from outside the concealed corrections and recipherings that take place in his brain. The difference [is that] the novice decides how the movements involved in a motor skill look from the outside; [later] the novice learns how these movements and their sensory corrections feel inside.”

from Dexterity and Its Development

& lightsabers!!!

A century ago, if you were white and European and know a smattering of jujitsu, add in a dash of fisticuffs and preference for the gentleman’s cane as your weapon, and a new martial art named after yourself will flourish!

Meet Bartitsu, created by William Barton-Wright, whose railroad work took him to Japan for 3 years, where he studied at the school of Jigoro Kano. Once make in the land of limies, he quit being a railroad engineer and took up his new calling.

In 1899, Barton wrote an article in the London based publication, Pearson’s Magazine, entitled “A New Art of Self Defense.” In it he set out his system of self defense that he called “bartitsu,” an obvious melding of his name and jujitsu. While bartitsu was based mainly on jujitsu, Barton explained in his article that the system included boxing, kickboxing, and stick fighting.

Barton opened a school called the Bartitsu Club. He brought in some of the best martial arts teachers from around the world to teach at his new school. Via correspondence with Professor Jigoro Kano, the founder of Kodokan Judo, and other contacts in Japan, Barton-Wright arranged for Japanese jujutsu practitioners K. Tani, S. Yamamoto and the nineteen year old Yukio Tani to travel to London and serve as instructors at the Bartitsu Club. K. Tani and Yamamoto soon returned to Japan, but Yukio Tani stayed and was shortly joined by another young jujutsuka, Sadakazu Uyenishi. Swiss master-at-arms Pierre Vigny and wrestler Armand Cherpillod were also employed as teachers at the Club. As well as teaching well-to-do Londoners, their duties included performing demonstrations and competing in challenge matches against fighters representing other combat styles. In addition, the Club became the headquarters for a group of fencing antiquarians led by Captain Alfred Hutton and it served as their base for experimenting with historical fencing techniques, which they taught to members of London’s acting elite for use in stage combat.

One journalist described the Bartitsu Club as “… a huge subterranean hall, all glittering, white-tiled walls, and electric light, with ‘champions’ prowling around it like tigers.” Unfortunately by March of 1902 the club was no longer active.

Bartitsu might have been completely forgotten if not for a cryptic reference by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in one of his Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. In 1901 Conan Doyle had revived Holmes for a further story, The Adventure of the Empty House, in which Holmes explained his victory over Professor Moriarty in their struggle at Reichenbach Falls by the use of “baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me”.
MORE of this “Art of Maniliness” & Here


I teased the old Englishness of Sir Barton but his mixing of all sorts of physical arts and physical treatments in a freeform manner is fantastic (though anyone who cares about actually practicing or recreating this in historical verisimilitude is being Anglophilistically arrogant). Its interesting what would have happened to it if he named it not after himself but after a method or principle, like Form Will Fist, 8 Changes, etc.

From http://www.plumpub.com/info/knotebook/boxxingyi.htm (where I buy most of my martial arts DVDs).

Xing Yi spends a lot of time on structural issues often considered quite advanced in other styles. Part of Xing Yi’s overall flavor and strength as a martial art is its reliance on the idea of STRONG SHAPES, that is postural formation which do a great deal of martial work just by the nature of their structure. In this general area Xing Yi starts with an excellent posture appropriate for both Chi Kung and martial training, namely the SAN TI formation.

SAN TI (which means Three Powers, those being Heaven, Earth and Mankind) is a stance with 60 per cent of the weight on the back leg, the front hand lightly extended and the rear hand pulling back toward the Tan Tien. This posture contains a series of animal shapes which act as reminders of general Xing Yi postural principles.

CHICKEN LEG = One firmly planted and the other lighter.
BEAR SHOULDERS = Shoulders rounded but stretched with energy.
EAGLE CLAWS = Fingers throbbing with power.
TIGER EMBRACE = Arms folded and enlivened with potential energy.

Other postural considerations include pressing the head upward, the tongue forward and
the arms forward. Strengthening the shoulders, extremities and teeth. Rounding the back, breast and Tiger Mouth (space between thumb and index finger). Sinking the Ch’I, shoulders and elbows. Curving the knees, shoulders and elbows.
Straightening the neck, spine and joints.
Embracing the chest with the arms, the navel with the ch’I and the body with courage.

Xing Yi also incorporates the famous and fundamental Six Harmonies idea of Chinese Kung Fu. These are simple correspondences that
are useful for proper body alignment and power generation.

SIX OUTSIDE HARMONIES
Shoulder to Hip
Elbow to Knee
Hand to Foot

SIX INSIDE HARMONIES
Heart to Mind
Mind to Ch’i
Ch’i to Strength

Another guide line for Xing Yi practice is San Dian or Three Points. This suggests that nose, fist and foot are always on line with one another. The body and Ch’I interplay subtlely in Xing Yi as the texts say when the body sinks the ch’I rises and vice versa.

The first movements in the Northern Shaolin I teach are superbly designed for responding to the way actual bad guys attack, especially considering that Northern Shaolin is traditionally taught to children. In fact I would say it is the greatest self-defense system ever invented. I know that sounds pompous or something but I was surprised, I mean, I didn’t show up to Rory Miller’s workshop on real world violence thinking or believing that…

Rather than try to get this all in a writing, here is a video I just made!

North Star Martial Arts

OK, so Scott’s pretty stoked here, but pay attention to what he says about the common ways in which women and children are attacked. Everybody should learn to defend these. From what I’ve heard, adult men are more likely to be assaulted by multiple attackers, often with a blunt weapon, so guys, you have a different set of challenges, but still you should learn to defend against these.

Martial arts or self-defense or what-have-you may or may not be something you do for the dangerous parts of the world. It might just be fun. But at very minimum, in my mind, it must be something that you do with and in the world. Otherwise it is fantasy and separation. At best masturbation. At the worst, unpleasant sweaty addictive masturbation that you believe is exactly the same as real sex.

So it’s critical when learning this (whatever this is that I teach) that you play in and with the world. That you study the world. And because you are part of it, that you study yourself. Not the imaginary self that is constant and true and good. The fluid self that changes when you are hungry. The one that you become when you are afraid or elated. The self bleeding on the edge of consciousness and the self in the cold dark places.

Learn to see. Learn your own mental plasticity and how much you can control that: how much you can choose, moment to moment, who you wish to be.

Touch the world, taste it, smell it. If you ever need to break somebody, it will be one of the most real moments of your life.

–Rory Miller