Modern "Masters"?

[Mike Cartier]

I would just like to say that the preoccupation with this title business, and the assumption that one would need to prove things by fighting someone else with a sword in order for it to have any value, seem a bit self-defeating to me. The best teachers I have had in martial arts were not the best fighters.

this is martial arts, its about fighting skill, to teach you must have some fighting skill. Would you learn accounting of someone with only a theopretical understanding of accounting? or learn to cook from a chef who never cooked but had read all the best cookbooks.

We are never going to be able to reconstruct there deadly arts by treating them like a game, martial arts is a serious business where you learn to both handle sudden violence and learn to deal it out. There is no easy soft way to do this.

You can learn theory of a non-fighter sure but you cannot learn to fight from a teacher who cannot fight. Martial skill IS about fighting.

besides if someone can't fight how do you know they have the theory right, for that matter how do thery know they have the theory right?
and once you have learned this theory how do you test it?

[david welch]

besides if someone can't fight how do you know they have the theory right, for that matter how do thery know they have the theory right?
and once you have learned this theory how do you test it?

"Everyone has a plan... 'till they get punched in the mouth."
~Mike Tyson

[Mike Cartier]

haha too true David

Mike Tyson is a fountain of philosophy sometimes but most of it can't be said publicy

[Francisco Uribe]

Mr. McDonald,
Could you Please show me where has ARMA stated such policy?
Could you show me one official ARMA webpage that states such?

It is inherently funny that you, after all your phony arguments to validate your own fake maestro title, has the lack of wits to argue such nonsense?

Please try to select a little better your arguments.

Why then does this same group now consider that not only a WMA Masters programme is achievable, but that practicing martial artists today might possibly ever achieve the supposed near-legendary calibre required to claim such title?
Macdonald

[Shane Smith]

Mr. McDonald,
Could you Please show me where has ARMA stated such policy?
Could you show me one official ARMA webpage that states such?

It is inherently funny that you, after all your phony arguments to validate your own fake maestro title, has the lack of wits to argue such nonsense?

Please try to select a little better your arguments.

Dear All....

Yours Very Truly,

Macdonald

What in particular are you referring to Francisco?

[AlexCSmith]

Mr. MacDonald has a post on page one.

[Francisco Uribe]

What in particular are you referring to Francisco?

I edited my previous post to include the point in question.
I make reference to Mr. Mcdonald's post on the first page.

[Ciaran Daly]

I would just like to say that the preoccupation with this title business, and the assumption that one would need to prove things by fighting someone else with a sword in order for it to have any value, seem a bit self-defeating to me. The best teachers I have had in martial arts were not the best fighters.

this is martial arts, its about fighting skill, to teach you must have some fighting skill. Would you learn accounting of someone with only a theopretical understanding of accounting? or learn to cook from a chef who never cooked but had read all the best cookbooks.

We are never going to be able to reconstruct there deadly arts by treating them like a game, martial arts is a serious business where you learn to both handle sudden violence and learn to deal it out. There is no easy soft way to do this.

You can learn theory of a non-fighter sure but you cannot learn to fight from a teacher who cannot fight. Martial skill IS about fighting.

besides if someone can't fight how do you know they have the theory right, for that matter how do thery know they have the theory right?
and once you have learned this theory how do you test it?

Please read my post.

[Mike Cartier]

[quote="Ciaran Daly
Please read my post.[/quote]

My post was a direct response to your post Ciaran, so yeah i read it.

[AlexCSmith]

Your best teachers may not have been the best fighters you knew but if they were of any quality they were accomplished fighters with hours of sparring and probably a few (or more) real fights under their belts.

Regardless, to my mind, the title of master belongs only to those with the highest level of skill at whatever activity they are to be considered a "master" of. It truly has little to do with teaching ability.

[Ciaran Daly]

Your best teachers may not have been the best fighters you knew but if they were of any quality they were accomplished fighters with hours of sparring and probably a few (or more) real fights under their belts.

Regardless, to my mind, the title of master belongs only to those with the highest level of skill at whatever activity they are to be considered a "master" of. It truly has little to do with teaching ability.

To me it has everything to do with teaching ability: I guess we have differing views on the meaning the term "master" is freighted with (which it seems is part of the intractability of this issue - lots of folks in the WMA community do seem pretty concerned about what level of teaching ability is implied by the term). To me, there are Masters and there are, for want of a better term, Bad Motherf****ers. Sometimes the two are one and the same. But ability in a fight erodes over time, even as stored lore and technique do not.

I would think it is obvious to anyone who has competed that there are athletically gifted individuals who can break rules of technique most of us cannot and get away with it because of superior attributes. By your lights some of them might be termed "masters" - but you'll excuse me if I'd rather not learn from them.

[Gene Tausk]

Get this back on track to a rational, reasonable discussion, or posters will be banned and/or this thread shut down.

[Jaron Bernstein]

"I would think it is obvious to anyone who has competed that there are athletically gifted individuals who can break rules of technique most of us cannot and get away with it because of superior attributes. By your lights some of them might be termed "masters" - but you'll excuse me if I'd rather not learn from them."

There is the ability to do and the ability to teach. Some people have both, or one or the other. Fiore spent (by his account) 40 years in this art when it was as popular as football or computers are today. This was a guy was both able to do (i.e. 5 unarmored duels!) and teach (read his list of successful students). He speaks on this point:

"I have seen a thousand people calling themselves masters, of which perhaps four were good scholars, of these four scholars not one would be a good teacher."

I interpret this as being a "master" refers mainly to personal skill in the ability to actually do the task. The ability to teach it is nice, and certainly preferable if one is to learn from a person, but was not neccessary for a Fiore or Vadi to call themselves masters. I am reminded of the tale of a famous early Bagua (a Chinese martial art) master who was a fearsome fighter who had certainly mastered that art....and had no meaningful pedagogical skills at all. Yet no one in the Chinese MA community wouldn't consider him a master, despite the man reportedly killing some of his students and being of foul disposition.

We can contrast this Paulus Hector Mair. Mair produced a wonderful training guide (and was hung for the embezzlement to fund the project) in his manual. Yet he was not himself a master, however good his book might be for teaching.

[Mike Cartier]

We can contrast this Paulus Hector Mair. Mair produced a wonderful training guide (and was hung for the embezzlement to fund the project) in his manual. Yet he was not himself a master, however good his book might be for teaching.

yeah that is one of the best stories in HEMA, what a guy. Mair's work is great and to think we only have it because he embezzked money to do it

[Ciaran Daly]

If we are honest, we can admit we are reconstructing a historical art for our recreation. Even those who have made this their life's work will not (one sincerely hopes) duel a man with sharps in their lifetime. In such a setting it is a mistake to overvalue ability in bouting when esteeming people in the art. That is all I am saying, despite some of the inferences drawn upthread. And I'm saying this as a guy who loves to pop in the mouthguard and go at it.

Perhaps there are no modern masters, but there can be master teachers. And that - especially at this early stage - is what we owe to the art to try and develop.