Do you believe in them?
The reason I ask is this, and you will have to excuse the ramblings of a relative ‘youngin’ to MA.
Alot of people claim to know “secret Techniques” most of these are obvious marketing scams, but the idea is pretty prevalent in MA world. After doing some thinking about it, I have come to the personal conclusion that there are no “secret techniques”. Your body can only do so much, granted that is a lot, but it is still finite. If you applied yourself to finding those so called techniques, especially within a system, it shouldnt really take you long to discover them?
Am I way off here?
i personally hate the term “secret techniques.” nothing is really a secret – you either know it or you don’t. should i consider the bart jaam do (wing tsun’s butterfly knife form) secret because sigung leung ting hasn’t taught me it yet?
nah. i’ll just work my bum off until he does. if a master is willing to share something, regardless of how hard you have to work to get it, it’s not really a secret. it’d only be a secret if the master didn’t share it with anyone and died without ever doing so.
Here’s a quote from one of my teachers. Take it how you want.
There are no secrets in Martial Arts. But sometimes you’re just not ready for some things
kaching!
SSSHHHHHH
I hit really hard.
Its a secret
LOL Darkknight!
Thanks for the input guys, just wanted to know if I was on the right track here or not.
It comes from learning Wing chun I guess. They say Sil Lim Tau is the most important part of wing chun practice, they say it holds all the keys you need. If you pay attention long enough to it, it will show you the way.
Originally posted by red5angel
[B]LOL Darkknight!
Thanks for the input guys, just wanted to know if I was on the right track here or not.
It comes from learning Wing chun I guess. They say Sil Lim Tau is the most important part of wing chun practice, they say it holds all the keys you need. If you pay attention long enough to it, it will show you the way. [/B]
That’s probably very true. Remember this, Sil Lum Tao may mean something EXTREMELY different to you in 10 years than it does today. But you need to go through the whole system, train hard, and come back to it periodically to get to that point 
yupper. sure, you know the techniques. the question is, do you understand them completely? as in, how they work in all those myriad ways?
i don’t even come close.
Exactly what Water Dragon said.
There are techniques that would be useless or dangerous for a beginner to practice. So, the teacher holds them back until the student has the necessary experience to apply them fully.
Almost forgot. There actually is one secret to Martial Arts:
Do what your teacher tells you to. He really does know better than you do.
Until you acknowledge that, you wont learn anything.
Water Dragon has a good one regarding the teacher knowing
more than you, but if you want to know the real secret technique,
the one that the better students all use and the worse students
keep searching for, but never find, it is this:
Practice.
It’s the one and only secret technique. It shouldn’t be a secret,
and those who know it tell just about everybody, but those who
don’t know it ignore it just as if it were a secret kept from them.
Often they’re looking for the secret technique so intently, that
they can’t see what the others are doing that makes them so
good.
Yes, there are other things that you may not be ready to learn,
but that just means you’re not there yet. It’s not a secret.
Practice practice practice, and when you cant do it no more, do it anyway!
SLT teaches you the way, but you must practice to understand it, and to do it.
As I always say, the only secret is that you have to figure out all of the secrets for yourself.
One of my training partners (while we were seeing who would puke first as we drilled footwork) told me this line from one of his teachers:
Train this until you lose your mind
Wierd subject
It’s funny, but my WC teachers have told me that certain techniques are secret, that I shouldn’t casually reveal them. Just a few techniques so far. I’m not sure why, I think it’s just tradition. You don’t want the knowledge to end up in the hands of your enemy, for one. For instance, if non-WC people are in the room, we don’t do the same kicking drill. Also, someone brought this up before, and I mentioned that I was speaking to the Praying Mantis master, who owns our Kwoon, who’s been in Kung Fu movies and trained in the top HK and taiwan praying mantis school, and he had the following to say: You always keep two techniques for yourself, this is so the student does not kill the master and take over the school. Only a family member gets the whole system. I find it hard to believe he’s still thinking that way, after all this is western society and he is a police psycholgist. He also said, “Oh, I don’t let anyone see my kicks.” (The Praying Mantis Guy). Also I have read that Yip Man held back a lot from his students students because he didn’t want them opening up competing schools. Now THAT makes some sense. Anyway I said the subject is wierd because you really hear a lot about secret techniques, footwork, kicks, etc. in the kung fu world, and it just doesn’t make much sense to us as westerners, especially when they already reveal alot with no problem. I mean, there was an article in Inside Kung Fu magazine not too long ago about the “10 killing hands” of Hung Gar. You’d figure if they are revealing that, the system is an open book, right? Yet I’m sure you’ll find someone saying, oh no, there’s lots more techniques in Hung Gar that are secret, no way you can see them. So it seems rather contradictory.
-FJ
Personally, I don’t buy into this “secret technique” thingy myself.
1.) If those techniques would be secret nobody would know that they are there, unless somebody squealed in which they are no longer secret.
2.) Too many peope know exactly what those secret techniques are and can recognise them if they are shown.
I think they are simply techniques I have not been taught yet, or not been judged worthy to study yet.
Either way same thing.
I see secret techniques as hiding in plain view. They are there for you to discover, but only when you are ready for it. You can spend years practicing a form and never realise the ‘secret’ techniques you have been practicing. Then one day you suddenly see the technique.
It is all about practice (as others have said) and your own development. Sometimes it is just a matter of finding the key to unlocking the secret. That is where your sifu should come in.
people say there is no such thing as secret techniques. but if you aren’t being taught something by a teacher, not because you can’t handle it, but for any other reason, then isn’t he hiding it? if you’re hiding something, doesn’t that make it a secret?
that aside, you’d be amazed by how little people (including me/us) actually examine the application of things - further than what they are show.how they are shown to use it.
Hey Snarky.
Just because somebody hid your marbles doesn’t make them a secret.
There is a difference there.
are you trying to say i’ve lost my marbles?