"Patches"

[JimHawkins]

Sounds like the system used in Iaido.
What if an "older brother" comes back after 5-10 years? How would you know how to line up not knowing him?

Well there's no line up... Sounds like a firing squad, but I know what you mean..

Traditional CMA of this kind are run like a family.. Like you are home with your family except you are training.. Compared to karate it's very unstructured most of the time.. Students work with each other and are often left to decide what to work on themselves. The older brothers are supposed to lead, teacher level folks will assist, but each student is at his own level.

The young students will often mistake a returning older brother for a new student but the more experienced students will know, almost right away--you can tell if you listen and watch closely, how they act and of course how they perform--if working with an older brother you'll know right off. And at some point a returning student would be introduced to the newer students..

[JimHawkins]

Kind of like what we're doing. I'm the senior student, I teach those that come after me, they'll teach those that follow. My goal is to make those I teach better than me (not too hard) which kind of puts a kink in the belt system.

Well this is a surprise.. This is very similar to the old teaching method, as was done in my old school..

This model also has some other very interesting side effects in terms of learning.. Since it creates significant diversity in how the material is taught and expressed. Some feel this is less than ideal and the training should create carbon copies of "form" and "thought" but this was not the goal, rather subtle diversity was and IMO can help grow the creative side of teaching and offer multiple views to the students. The student is also responsible for taking the corrections given and making a less supervised effort to improve more so than in other learning models.

No tests either.. One of the senior folks will just check you out and tell you to move on to the next step...

Lots of other interesting elements, such as younger brothers are not supposed to beat up their older brothers... While at the same time the Kuen Kuit says the true older brother is the brother with better skills..

BTW: This is exactly the same kind of environment Bruce came up in....

[mikemurphy]

Hey Fred,

With all this talk of "casual wear" instead of gis, and getting rid of the calligraphied belts, etc., we might as well bring back the push for the Co-ed Naked Martial Arts tee-shirts and just train in them, huh?

mike

[f.Channell]

I vote for kilts Mike! Although they might be more of a pain than my hakama.

[MikeK]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4KjO6gx ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GzyEAC8 ... re=related

[f.Channell]

Haven't listened to clarence in years. One of my favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVnH39UzI8