Beyond Style

Monday, January 31, 2011 by C. Michial Jones

I was speaking with a friend recently who offered me what he considered sound advice:

“You study too many styles. You practice too much different material.”

My initial response was simple: Karate is karate, and styles are largely a modern notion.

He followed quickly with another question:

“How can you ever become good at one style or another if you practice more than one thing?”

My answer was equally direct. I have continually trained in—and continue to teach—one primary style, but I supplement that study by exposing myself to other systems and methods in the hope of gaining a broader and deeper understanding of karate as a whole.

Needless to say, a lengthy discussion followed, and we eventually parted company agreeing to disagree.

The conversation, however, stayed with me.

I understand fully that the study of any one style is a lifetime pursuit. Mastery is not something that arrives quickly, nor is it something that can be worn lightly. But with that said, I have long believed that karate, at its core, is still simply karate.

What we now call “styles” are, in many ways, modern organizational labels—interpretations passed down through the understanding of a founder. More often than not, that founder trained under one or more teachers, absorbed what was taught, and then codified those lessons into the curriculum of his own dojo. In time, that dojo became recognized as a distinct style.

Yet the human body has not changed, nor have the basic mechanics of striking, blocking, kicking, locking, or throwing. There are only so many fundamental techniques that make up karate. What changes from system to system is often methodology—minor differences in stance, timing, hip rotation, stepping patterns, breathing, or tactical emphasis. One style may rotate a punch at a slightly different angle. Another may step in a straight line where another uses a half-moon motion. But these are refinements of delivery, not entirely separate truths.

My own path into martial arts made this realization almost inevitable.

I began training in my father’s dojo. After two years, my father began sharing space with a friend, and suddenly my training environment included both Goju-ryu and Kobayashi (Shorin) Ryu. Rather than keeping me isolated in one class, my father made the decision that I would attend both. His reasoning was simple: broader exposure would further my education.

Later, when he moved the dojo, I returned to concentrating on one style for a time. But a few years later he sent me to train at the dojo of his own teacher while continuing to train under him as well. Once again, the lesson was clear—there was value in seeing beyond the four walls of one training floor.

In the mid-1980s, when my mother remarried and moved to Arizona, my father encouraged me to use the opportunity to train in still other systems. While there, I studied Shuri-ryu, Uechi-ryu, and additional branches of Shorin-ryu, all while continuing to return home and maintain my training in Goju-ryu.

By 1989 I was back home and once again training in my father’s dojo. Then, in 1990, he made another pivotal decision. He brought in jujutsu teachers for me to learn from, and he told me something that would shape the rest of my martial life:

“You need to go out and study with other teachers on your own. Then come back and show me what you learned.”

That instruction never left me.

From an early age I was exposed to more than one style of karate and more than one martial art. Every time I wanted to go train elsewhere, I asked permission. Eventually my father grew tired of the question and simply reminded me:

“What did I tell you? Go learn from others and bring it back to the dojo.”

So that is what I have continued to do.

I seek out people.
I seek out teachers.
I seek out methods.

Not because I am dissatisfied with my own style, and certainly not because I am chasing novelty, but because every sincere teacher and every legitimate system offers another piece of the larger puzzle.

The older I get, the more similarities I see than differences.

Too many martial artists become trapped inside labels. They defend a style name as though it were an end in itself. They become so busy protecting boundaries that they fail to continue learning. But styles should be vehicles, not cages.

I teach Okinawan Goju-ryu. That is my home, my foundation, and my primary method of transmission. Yet I believe my responsibility as both student and teacher is to continue stepping outside my own circle in order to better understand budo in its broader sense.

The purpose is not to collect styles.

The purpose is understanding.

Because in the end, if our study is honest enough, broad enough, and deep enough, we eventually discover that we were never studying separate things at all.

We were simply studying the martial way.