Last week I finally updated the blog into the energetic and exciting start to 2011 by talking about the January seminar with Jack and Pedro. Now I am going to skip forward a couple of chapters and talk about our experience in April training with Jack Hoban and Bud Malmstrom.
For those who have never met Bud Malmstrom he has a really great character. He was one of the earliest Americans to study the Bujinkan arts in the 1970's. At some points in the seminar he touched on these experiences, the contrast that stood out to me was that in those days there was almost no information and information technology was nothing compared to what it is now. Printed paper and magnetic tape were the technologies, limited in distribution and scarce to be found. Looking at the overwhelming online data we have in the 21st century we can see that things have switched from not enough to quite frankly too much. It also reminded me of how at a recent Daikomyosai several of the Japanese Shihan and Hastumi sensei were recounting their experiences from the 50's and 60's. Compared to this seminar where Jack and Bud were talking about how things were in the 70's and 80's, and so on it goes, the cycle of training.
Actually this was something of a small cycle for myself. The very first time I trained Bujinkan in the USA was at the last seminar with Bud and Jack in 2005. I can not even remember what the focus of the seminar was back then, but I do remember having a great time training and was excited to have a repeat.
This seminar focused on the Kihon Happo of the Gyokko Ryu, and we were very lucky to have Bud Sensei provide a lot of primary principles based on years of training and most importantly experience. For example, Kamae, of course there is always perfect Kamae and not so perfect Kamae and just terrible Kamae. What Bud was able to show us was what he considers to be the most important parts, so even if we students were far from perfect, at least we had the important bases covered.
Apart from insuring that we had some foundation we also did different methods of attack, more in line with modern styles of combat. Again, it was the basic principles of the space management, the timing and the kamae that was consistent throughout and this seminar did a very good job of highlighting these points in a methodical way.
Bud Sensei also did not mince his words, he said some things that a lot of students needed to hear but probably hurt the ego a little. Things as a teacher you may often wish to say, but don't know how to say, Bud can put into very clear and simple terms so there is no misunderstanding. This was very useful, because it was both a lesson for me as a student, and also set an example of how to tell the truth honestly and plainly for the good of all involved.
At the end of the seminar both teachers were open to questioning and some great questions were asked. You could really see that both these instructors have an ongoing passion for the martial arts, inspired by Hatsumi Sensei and to some extent by us who come to learn from them, so that they just 'keep going'.
