Empty Your Cup · The Stick & Sword School

Empty Your Cup

I see from the Members tab that we have, like myself, many members from other martial art styles. Those from more classical East styles will recall the story of the know it all student and the Master having tea. The Master offers tea to the student, and upon the student accepting the offer of tea, the Master pours the tea until the student is yelling, "Stop! Stop!" as the tea overflows the cup and runs onto the table burning the students lap. "See?", says the Master, "You must first empty your cup of your tea before you can accept my tea.

In watching the Footwork video today, I am that student thinking of the ways I've been trained: Step & Slide, Push Shuffle, Triangular Jog, Replacement Step, Three Evasive patterns to the Scottish and Irish angles, and so on.

The problem with this thinking is that as a student you don't know where the training will advance to, while your old material may look similar to the new material you are learning, the new material may go off in a new direction that you have no experience in, so you may find yourself lacking later on if you rely too much on your old style and miss a critical link from the basics to the advanced in the new style you are learning.

So Empty Your Cup.

2 comments

Empty Your Cup