Bujinkan rant

[deralte]

This is mostly going to be a rant about how much I dislike training with the guy I trained with last night, so you have been warned. Unfortunately for me, my choice was either the newbie who gave me the massive bruise on Monday (who now bows to me when he sees me. wtf?) or training with this guy, Ro. Neither was a good option, but J. took the choice from me, much to my annoyance.

J: It looks like you're training with Ro. *sees the expression on my face since I could have trained with J. since Jack was teaching* Hey, Ro., looks like she doesn't want to train with you.
Me: Let me show you a secret ninja sign *gives him the fingers*
J:* laughs and walks away*

See, Ro. is a nice guy when he isn't training. We've had some good conversations. However, as soon as he starts training, it's like a switch flips in his brain and he goes berserk. Nowadays, he gets in a few regular training tries before the switch flips, but it's still largely the same result. He also only does this to people he sees as weaker than him, namely women and shorter, young guys, and anyone who beats him in a fight. Since he's 6+ft tall, stronger than me by a large margin and in his 60s, I fall into at least two of those categories, and I really hate him for it. See, training is about helping your training partner get the most authentic experience of the technique possible. This means throwing your head back when your partner's fist touches your face cause in a real fight your head would go flying back, and that you attack like you mean it, but not at full speed because this is training and in a real fight, everything speeds up due to adrenaline anyway. It means going with your opponents attacks when they're not using full force because you know in a real fight, they would, and it means pretending you don't know where the person will attack you from even though you've seen the attack three times already. Once both of you have mastered the 'technique' you're working on, you may want to play around and have your partner fight back or look for ways to take you down, but Ro. is far from being at the level where he can do that.

Ro., on the other hand, especially as the night progresses, just throws himself into attacking you basically. So for example, the technique was having your partner swing a baseball bat at you, then you step in and catch the arms/hand before the swing can complete, from there, you let the momentum of the person swinging work for you and took them down in various ways. What did Ro. do? He took the swing, I stepped in and caught it, and he took one hand off the bat and tried to punch me in the face. I had a short rope in my hand and threw it in his eyes, and he backed away saying, 'Why did you throw the rope in my face?' 'Because you tried to punch me instead of the technique!' Now, you might be thinking that I should be ready for anything anyway (and oh look, I was), but that's not the fucking point of training. The point is to try out the different scenarios/techniques and plan for what is most likely to happen in real life. In real life, the person swinging the bat at you is going to keep trying to hit you with the bat, not let go to punch you. Nor will they usually be strong enough to pry their hands out of where I was bracing my own hand to stop him from swinging further (the way our techniques work is that you keep your touch very soft so ideally, the person wouldn't even know your hand was there... if I touch your wrist gently, you don't fight, if I grab it, you do, ne?) He did this to me several times over the evening, though most often it was when he attacked that he'd change things and just try to barrel me over with his brute strength and long arms (he likes to envelop people with his arms, then go for their face/head... I was not taking this and drove my elbow into his chest whenever he tried it, but that didn't deter him from continuing to try).

His other annoying thing is that he holds onto anything you're fighting with with all his strength regardless of what you do. Sometimes this can be negated, but unfortunately for me we were training with swords and his had a tiny hilt that his hands completely covered, making it really difficult for me to get any grip on it or the leverage I need. Even worse, whenever Jack came around, Ro.'s grip would loosen and he'd be compliant (and the same with any techniques he'd resisted doing with me). Fortunately, Jack knew about this (cause M. complains of the same thing whenever she's stuck training with Ro.) and showed me an alternate that didn't involve pushing myself against the guy's strength when I complained about it, but since he wasn't always around, I was left to try lots of useless things... It's hard cause I know things that would have gotten him to cooperate, but they would have involved seriously injuring him. It's so frustrating because it's just training. It's not a serious fight, yet nothing short of serious moves will get him to move, and if I did any of those, I'd be worse than him. All I want to do is train, but instead I have to fight with this asshole just to try out a simple move. And Jack's on the side telling me to use my height, and I fucking did, but Ro. hates it when you succeed at something so the minute you try to replicate it, he breaks kamae or technique to try to fight you and since he knows where you'll be, you get to fight off his attack rather than see if your technique will work a second time.

I've decided I'm never training with Ro. again. I'd rather watch other people train, or offend him by trading with someone else then train with him. Putting up with him is not worth it.

Comments

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

I don't blame you. Sounds like the man feels a bit insecure? You don't need to get hurt because of this guy not training properly with you.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it is. I've trained with tons of guys over the years and I've given up trying to figure out why they do certain things. Ro. in particular confuses me because he speaks humbly, but his actions say that he thinks he's got the skills.

The thing is that I'm good enough to walk away with only bruises, but the training is so stressful that I regret not choosing the guy I trained with on monday, despite him hurting me more. I'd rather train with a newbie who doesn't know any better than an asshole who does.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

It's as alien to me as it is to you, but some men seem to respond only to macho bullshit. Doesn't matter if they know, consciously, that you're more talented than them; subconsciously they take everything as a challenge to their manhood. I find competing with such types... tiresome.

Unfortunately, it's not just sports — testosterone-poisoned work environments are still common, and a major cause of the glass ceiling effect.

I've seen a lot of men grow out of it, so there's always hope. But of course you can never force anybody into emotional maturity.   8^P

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tiresome. And since Ro. is in his 60s and has been training for several years now, I have no hopes of him growing out of it.

It must be even worse in a work environment, cause at least I have the option of injuring the guy when he gets too annoying, but what recourse do you have for showing your machoness in the workplace?

[(Anonymous)]

Solution: Release the Bengal Tiger...

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Not that you should put up with this bull (god how annoying), but I wonder if J deliberately pairs Ro with people who can stand up to his shit in an effort to teach him not to do it? Or am I being too hopeful? Has anyone talked to Ro about how he's completely missing the damn point? Grrrrrr, what a twerp.

But yeah, don't put up with it.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

A good theory except people aren't deliberately paired up most of the time (a black belt might be told to train with a newbie for example, but that's about it). Ro. hangs back when people pair off cause he prefers to be the third man out in a pair which gives him more time to rest, so it was just my bad luck that he was hanging back and J. didn't want to train. (J.'s not the teacher, he's sort of like Jack's first officer).

I've heard Ro. get told off lots of time for just strong arming his way through techniques. But I'm not sure if he's been told off too many times about not being a good training partner, because I'm fairly certain he doesn't do this to everyone he trains with - just people who are labelled weak in his brain but can still beat him skills wise. There's a couple of guys he trains with regularly who don't seem to have any problems. And since it doesn't happen all the time, just whenever the switch gets flicked in his brain, and since he relaxes immediately around Jack, I don't really have a way of proving it (M. and I bitching about it has convinced Jack it's true, but Jack has to watch very covertly to catch him at it... I saw him looking amused in the background over Ron's shoulder in the above mentioned incident where I threw the rope in Ro.'s face when he tried to punch me instead of the technique.)

There is another guy who has been training there for over a decade, and yet fights like a green belt most of the time. He's the only non-newbie M. and I have been deliberately paired with before because he'd somehow ended up thrown into a table a week before and Jack didn't want anyone else trying to kill him (or him killing himself)... He still encouraged M. and I to hit him really hard though.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thought J was Jack. Nevermind that then.

And bah. Conscious or unconscious, Ro really needs to change this attitude.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't bother to hide Jack's name since he's a public figure (he's even got a wikipedia page). But out of the four guys who've been there the longest and tend to teach and train right under Jack, all their names start with 'J'. It makes for annoyance in trying to nickname them enough to identify them to myself.

Agreed.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

J1, J2, J3, J4...;) Or JPrime or JOmega!

By the way while I was in a used bookstore in the States I started reading through bits of Saiyuki. Missing watching that with you.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Me too. I own the whole series of Saiyuki Reload on dvd and I've only watched the first three dvds. I feel so ashamed as a Saiyuki fan (and I haven't even been near the next series after that one). We'd both probably have watched it by now if I were living in the area. Le sigh.

[c0d3-w4rri0r.livejournal.com]

I guess with a martial art like your you probably don't do a lot of free training. The thing is occasionally even a novice who knows he doesn't know much has to see if technique x is done that way because its easy to teach and doing it another way might be more effective (if harder to master) or if it's because it really is the most effective way to do x. I think a lot of martial arts are guilty of emphasising techniques early on that are not very applicable in the real world because they want to lay some foundation for more complex techniques in stages early on. People who are aware of this are instinctively trying to 'read ahead' in their training. I guess some people need that more open opportunity just need to develop a sense of where the weaknesses in an opponent are my probing them kinestheneticly and meeting resistance. Other wise until they try it and work out what seems like an opening isn't it'll always be there a distraction to them.

[deralte.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with people who want to try something different, but after they fucking do the taught technique correctly. I find it disrespectful when someone, especially a newbie, comes in and thinks that they've somehow thought of a better way then the hundreds of year old martial art and the teacher with 20+ years of experience has found. You're not going to come up with something better than them until a much higher level, so relax and learn until you reach a point where you can critically examine what's happening and experiment. As for our art, everything from the beginning is very applicable in the real world so that's hardly applicable.

[c0d3-w4rri0r.livejournal.com]

Well that's kind of my point. When I ever I hear you complaining on here about training partners its often ones with previous experience of martial arts. Some martial artists are used to sensei's that over simplify techniques for dumb students. Especially in the kind of classes where people do it for exercise or spiritual focus or what ever weird idea of martial arts they have aside from combat.

I'm sure most of them are not expecting sensei to come up and say 'ah you have discovered something I never heard of'. They might be thinking he'll come over at say 'ah you just used secret technique X we don't teach until you're at least belt Y'. Its human nature to always want to leap frog ahead. It shows drive and ambition. I guess a good teacher needs a way to harness that and correct bad technique with out discouraging them.