I recently had the misfortune to read a rambling essay by an RMA instructor about RMA where Kadochnikov’s system is discussed because it never seems to go fast…it doesn’t have high impact pressure type testing.
Which made me chuckle. Anyone who has been choked out by Victor Zavogordnij, beaten by Sergey Shvets, drilled against Arkadij, or worked against any other legitimate students of Kadochnikov System will quickly tell you that duress testing is alive and well under Kadochnikov System. If it wasn’t, well, it wouldn’t have survived as long as it has in military application.
The point being is that Youtube videos of are misleading at best.
I fought against making videos under K-Sys for years because I knew a few things:
1) It is very difficult to teach someone through video. We have overcome this through our learning modules combining video with clinics and DLP sessions. But, videos are difficult to learn from.
2) Videos get misconstrued – especially Youtube. People are hungry for information – they crave it. They want it, especially when they are unsure of what they are doing and what they should do next. It creates a cycle of reaction and action. Action to analyze, discuss – and reaction to deconstruct and tear things apart for the betterment of your own system at the expense of others.
The truth is – most people have no idea what Kadochnikov System, hell, RMA even is. They live in a bubble where they can comfortably train and when that bubble is burst, they scramble to put the pieces together. I did – when I realized that a lot of what I learned simply didn’t work. I didn’t lash out against what I had learned – I found new learning places, took what worked, what didn’t, separated them, studied them harder, to create something better.
The frustration of the martial art world in the digital age is the spread of information has to be so controlled for image sake that one wrong video and people think you are something you are not – or, that you are.
People begin speeding up videos, making them 1/16 of a frame faster to look quicker.
People do disarms that are uncontrolled and you can see how they would be shot…or how they pay no mind to the background and wouldn’t mind the gun going off into their wife behind them.
People post silly videos to make them seem capable of psychic energy, no-touch knock outs….
And people post videos showing it’s bs.
For that I am grateful.
Or, people post up the Pramek Stanky Leg and make fun of themselves, like we do…because we laugh at ourselves, I laugh at people calling me ‘famous’. We have a confidence that what we are doing has been tested, it is taught properly, and it works and as we roll this out, we pay no mind to the detractors, the hecklers and keep pushing the product to the people who get our message.
The truth is – simply watching someone does not equal instruction. It does not equal the years of experience that can show you where you are moving incorrectly, where that gun should point, the slap on the back of the head as a reminder – a walk back to the drawing board to look at the efficiency as a reminder of why you are there.
Nor does training for 10 minutes with one student and making a decision based off that training make a system good or bad – a style or system must be based on it’s own merits, and if it creates student after student who sucks, then yes – it probably sucks. But one student for 10 minutes, or something seen on Youtube that passes the smell test however unorthodox – these things are what we should look for.
When you watch Youtube, you could be watching an instructional video. When you watch Youtube, you could be doing pushups. When you watch Youtube you could be breathing.
When you watch Youtube – you are doing just that – watching, and not doing, and that is the biggest lesson of all when it comes to Youtube and the land of Youtube instruction.
BRAVO! WELL SAID!