Battledress, Sword Flowers & Having the Guts to Say “No” by Mark Hatmaker

 

Strap in, buckle-up and hang on tight as we’ve got a journey to take.

Scenery along the way…

·        “Mad Dogs” on the English Frontier

·        A Samurai throws shade

·        A BJJ champ & kettlebell pioneer changes his mind.

·        Bruce Lee offers us pruning shears.

·        A French poet gets strategy in one line.

·        A Mafia tactic for cutting to the chase.

All this in in aid of making we Warriors more efficient in our choices of training, drilling and separating the wheat from the chaff.

Let’s begin in 1853, in Burma [presently Myanmar] a notoriously torrid zone, both climate and military-wise, a young subaltern, Garnet Wolseley, made the following observation. [BTW-Wolseley would go on to a storied career, more on him another day.]

“The Queen’s Army took an idiotic pride in dressing in India as nearly as possible in the same clothing they wore at home. Upon this occasion [in Burma], the only difference was in the trousers, which were ordinary Indian drill dyed in blue, and around our regulation forage cap we wore a few yards of puggaree of a similar colour. We wore our ordinary cloth shell jackets buttoned up to the chin, and the usual white buckskin gloves. Could any costume short of steel armour be more absurd in such a latitude? The officers of the East India Company were sensibly dressed in good helmets with ample turbans round them, and in loose jackets of cotton drill. As a great relaxation of the Queen’s regulations, our men were told they need not wear their great stiff leathern stocks. This was a relief to the young recruits, but most of the old soldiers clung to theirs, asserting that the stock protected the back of the neck against the sun, and kept them cool. I would assume it was rather the force of habit that made them think so.”

I wager our martial moral already begins to reveal itself.

How much of what we do in training, tactics, and strategy is actually apt for the present environment—both in locale and time?

Another question to ask is: How much of what we do is less of sound reason than “force of habit that made them think so”?

Let’s allow a single specific question to push limits: Do the passes, meets, and follows of much knife work pass muster, say, under prison “sticking” conditions?

If we answer yes, is our answer by chance a bit of tortured “logic” to justify tradition?

To Our Samurai

Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings is a foundational text in Samurai lore.

[Sidenote: Noted Asian translator and interpreter Thomas Cleary says the title translates more accurately as Book of Five Spheres, which to my mind, holds fascination as much Plains knifework is based on spheres.]

Musashi grouses the opposite side of Wolseley’s complaint, he too, sees danger in blind adherence to “Just because…” tradition that no longer fits combative realities, but he also warns that much “innovation” that comes after “tradition” is equally rife with superfluities.

He places the blame on turning the war arts into commerce, the supplier needs to keep the buyer at the teat, so to speak, so multiplies complexities to keep the milk flowing.

“As I see society, people make the arts into commercial products. They even think of themselves as commodities, and also make implements for their commercial value. This attitude is like flowers compared with seeds: the flowers are more numerous than the seeds, there is more decoration than reality.”

All martial tactics and strategies have an essence, often a thrusting point of simplicity as the chaos of true battle will support nothing more than the Occam’s Razor of stripped-down choice.

The flowers may be beautiful but how many are as useful as the Queen’s Army uniform?

The Ability to See Clearly & Change Gears

BJJ champion and early pioneer of the kettlebell, Steve Maxwell has revealed that he no longer uses kettlebells and sees no utility in their use.

The man does so in choice language, a simple search will allow you to follow his arguments yourself.

His beef does not reside solely against the kettlebell but in all presumptive training practices that either:

A] Require a learning curve to arrive at value.

Or,

B] Have a higher injury rate than other training paths.

We will leave the kettlebell for a moment to highlight his argument.

If we begin running to promote health and fitness and at some point, wind up with a running injury that we must work around, “fix”, or brace, then we are no longer “running for health.”

Indeed, we may be running at our health’s detriment.

We may be pursuing something at cross-purposes to the original intent in the same manner as a member of the Queen’s Army or the “flowers of innovation.”

Whether or not you agree with Mr. Maxwell’s argument after you give it a fair hearing, is less the point here than using him as an exemplar of one who can be a staunch proponent of a practice then see what is to his eye a different light and alter tactics radically in support of what he sees as truth.

For the Record: I agree with Mr. Maxwell’s take. Since I went all Old School Unleaded Conditioning, I have not laid a finger on a kettlebell or indulged in one dynamic lift or…well, see The Unleaded Program for more on this mighty effective apostasy.]

From the Tao to The Poet to The Mafia

“It is not daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away the inessentials.”-Bruce Lee

Here, Mr. Lee hearkens the Tao Te Ching.

Mr. Maxwell hacked away what he saw as inessential, and to his mind detrimental.

The poet Paul Valery offers the idea of skipping even having to hack flowers away and going direct to simple action from the source.

“How many things one should disregard in order to act.”

So, we have advice on paying close attention to our own practices, hell, even down to our martial wardrobe.

Disrobing ourselves of flowery garments and practices.

Being courageous enough to turn our backs quickly and completely on practices that do not promote our progress or that may even harm our efforts.

And we will conclude with an expression used in early 20^th century Mafia circles:

“Rimuovi il sassolino dalla scarpa.”

“Remove the pebble from your shoe.”

Often speeding our way along the martial path is as simple as changing our clothes, trimming ornamental flowers, or dropping harmful or time-eating practices that do not promote the primary goal.

The hardest part of removing the pebble is having the honesty to recognize the pebble for what it is and make no excuses for why you want to keep it in your shoe: Becuase it’s pretty, or it’s always been there, or it robustifies my foot, or “All my ancestors had pebbles in their shoes,” or...

Shhh....

Rimuovi il sassolino dalla scarpa.

If you got something out of this that you can put to use and want to spot this man a cup of coffee, I'd be obliged. The Old Man's Coffee Fund.

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