Learning, perhaps?

Fighters these days have the pleasure of learning backwards. In the day, people would learn by just doing things. Eventually they would find more and more efficient or more and more powerful forms for specific situations, and add that to their pool of abilities. Those powerful forms became techniques. One who could find an extremely effective technique would become feared. Those fearful techniques would be passed on to the next generation, and to the next. We don’t have to spend our time figuring out what the strongest of strikes are, nor would we risk fighting all day to learn it.

Now, we have the current system. People start out learning how to do those specific strong techniques, and start out trying to defend themselves from those strong techniques, before they even know how to move around to get anything at all working. Instead of dealing with "What's something I can hit them with here?", they deal with "This hits them here, how do I make it happen?". Even sillier folk even think "I can do this, so I'm invincible" without batting an eye at the prospect of getting there. Some even think of things systematically, like "If this happens then this will happen and then they'll do this and I'll do that" and all that fun stuff. So, what most people are missing nowadays are the basics of the basics. We know the movements, but we do not understand them. We use them, but we do not know why we use them. We slice through the air with our forms, not knowing what it is truly meant for. We are blind. With this, an art becomes just that, an art; a simple pile of nice moves to deal with other nice moves. Specific answers to specific situations. A natural fighter would learn flow then form; now, we learn form then have to figure out the flow. The art is a weapon to supplement your natural strengths.

This is probably due to the nature of passing things down. Example, perhaps one person is very good at throwing extremely strong hits. Someone else gets good at blocking, evading and countering to respond. A response to this could be to start using quick light shots to avoid being countered or blocked, while throwing a quickly moving person trying to evade off balance. Eventually the style passed down will be that of the quick light hits in their "perfect" form, after being made to respond to evasion in their greatest forms and so on.

The result is a multitude of styles that nobody knows the reason behind. Instead of learning what to do, we know what to do but have to find the reason for them, or when to use them.
We know how to move, but not how to fight. We end up head butting with our hardest hitting attacks. Or even worse, we merely wait for something specific we can take advantage of, and don't understand how to force the advantage ourselves.

When Lee Hsiao Lung came in, nobody knew how to deal with him. Everyone had believed in specific styles, he preached "style with no style" and attacked in a very streamlined manner that was seemingly impossible to deal with.  He would do things people would not think of.  He was feared not because he knew the strongest forms, but because he had an understanding of them, and was not limited to them. He understood how far he could deviate from them and still be effective.  He took control of the fight instead of waiting for the opponent, yet did not blindly charge in.  The crowning piece was that he built himself a fantastic body. 

Then you have the modern prize fighter, they fight in an extremely streamlined manner and will often win by sheer force. The methods of dealing with such a manner have fallen out of favor due to the lack of understanding behind it, and it becomes "useless fancy fluff", so it becomes a contest of head butting with strong techniques, and the winner is the one with better body and reaction. Well, understanding will come eventually perhaps. Eventually it will all run full circle. Let's try hard to push shall we?

-Misu Mikasi