Just received an email from old friend and student, David Finkelstein:
"Memories of Rolf Cahn, one of your first students, and my flamenco guitar teacher, who first told me about you and your prowess
Since I've been practicing a lot of guitar these past years, my thoughts turn occasionally to Rolf Cahn, who several years ago I learned had died in the 90s. But just today I googled him, and found a couple of articles about him, written in or around 1994, the year he died. I think you'd find them interesting if you hadn't checked them out before."
Wow... Rolf Cahn... the person who discovered me teaching at the Boston YMCA in 1958 as a volunteer and offered me $5 to teach him privately at his home in Cambridge. After lessons, Rolf and I would head to one of the local coffee houses where the likes of Joan Baez, Muddy Waters and dozens of now famous entertainers would be performing. Rolf often took center stage where he played Flamenco guitar and told stories of his fascinating life.
He said I was wasting my life going to school and set up a meeting with a visiting officer of the Israeli army who tried to recruit me to train their troops in karate! I was tempted by the money offered, but decided to finish college before making any career moves. I found this clip on the net:
Rolf Cahn
| "Rolf was an outlaw, or rather, he was a lawmaker. It was six months before I was able to understand his lingo and another year before I could follow his craft of coffee making. He was a master of both creation and destruction.
Rolf's thumbnails, his only manicured part, were kept long for two reasons - boogie bass lines and blinding opponents. Within Rolf's words, guitar lines, left hooks, and coffee-making rig lived a mastery of the essential."
Michael Sheppard |
The Forum topic on the value of repetition of TMA movements has evolved into a mostly friendly exchange of viewpoints and finally even I jumped into the Frey.
Before sharing this with the thousands of you who for some reason or other don't venture onto the forums, I wanted to highlight one example of a universally respected senior martial artist who has spent nearly all of his life performing his Uechi-ryu in a highly structured and obviously effective manner. Striving for perfection in being able to reproduce the same quality, power and energy in every movement has become the trademark of Toyama sensei.
I've seen his Sanseiryu both in person and in film at least a hundred times and I would venture to say unless you had the equipment to analyse his movements with a microscope, there hasn't been any deviation in the way he performs it from the mid 50s, when he performed it as a young man to the one he did on film last year.
I don't remember any of the people on the forums questioning his ability to fight or how he would fare against Mike Tyson. Everyone simply acknowledges him as being the finest example of Uechi-ryu and Okinawan Karate living today. He is a really great example of what most Uechi-ryu students today regard as a "role model" and as someone who represents the best of what can be achieved through the dedicated practice of Uechi-ryu. For me, he represents all the fine reasons for studying Uechi-ryu as a Traditional Martial Art (TMA).
When people asked me 50 years ago why I thought karate was a credible method of teaching self defense to people who couldn't fight I explained:
"Karate, through its unique training program, could take average people who are not "natural" athletes and build within them, traits associated with athletes who excel at sports. In karate, those traits' are focused on self-defense techniques instead of hitting a ball or kicking a football."
I also claimed (and later proved) that karate training could take average people who could not make any athletic team and turn them into athletes who could excel at other sports.
This philosophy has guided my martial art career and my classes still turn out athletes who enjoy many types of sports and who are better at self defense techniques than they were when they enrolled. (With Dave Young's help, we can add a component to our TMA that will help with the "mindset" and ability to "use" those self defense tools.)
It is important to note that a coach who is looking to field a baseball team will not use the same recruiting or coaching methods as a teacher in a TMA dojo. The coach is only looking for the "natural" or trained athlete; people who have the qualities to do the job right now! The dojo instructor is looking for people who, regardless of their ability, is willing to spend the time and energy to show up for class and make an effort to meet reasonable and timely goals. A good TMA instructor will, if given the opportunity, turn those who have the desire to achieve their objectives and stick to the program, into credible martial artist.
How many gifted or talented "natural" athletes are there in a random group of 1000 people? 25? 50?
Quite a few prospective students for those of us who teach TMA!
Who are we speaking for????
Who is your dojo audience?
If I believed that anything I was teaching was harmful to my students, I would not be including it in my class.
learned that it was not a plan I could implement on my own.
I think people can over interpret the results. This is just a consequence of the nonlinearity of our makeup. When you have a system capable of displaying mathematical chaos behavior, then you never, ever, ever retrace your steps exactly the same way. 
