When Animal mentioned his differentiation between basics and fundamentals years ago, we talked about it and I agreed with him. Nowadays, I don’t think it’s that simple anymore. Long story but that’s for another day. IMO and IME, how well you learn this depends completely on the teacher. I’ve been fortunate to have had teachers who give the goods right up front, explaining everything you need to know from the first class. If you train hard, you advance well enough and get more skilled. Years later, you see the full depth of what they taught during that first class: the basics/fundamentals.
Good teachers will not lead you down a dead end street in your training . They’ll teach you how to drive and then give you a GPS, so to speak.

I don’t practice Goju so I can’t comment. But if you’re looking for good teachers, I can recommend Kris Wilder and Lawrence Kane’s work. Really cool guys with a lot of knowledge.

When Animal mentioned his differentiation between basics and fundamentals years ago, we talked about it and I agreed with him. Nowadays, I don’t think it’s that simple anymore. Long story but that’s for another day. IMO and IME, how well you learn this depends completely on the teacher. I’ve been fortunate to have had teachers who give the goods right up front, explaining everything you need to know from the first class. If you train hard, you advance well enough and get more skilled. Years later, you see the full depth of what they taught during that first class: the basics/fundamentals.
Good teachers will not lead you down a dead end street in your training . They’ll teach you how to drive and then give you a GPS, so to speak.

I don’t practice Goju so I can’t comment. But if you’re looking for good teachers, I can recommend Kris Wilder and Lawrence Kane’s work. Really cool guys with a lot of knowledge.

I like your methodical approach to reinforcement and the basic strategy, tactic, guidline example you give is very sensible, productive way of teaching.

Personally I detest the term basics as it reminds me of a lot of the nonsense I had to put up with when starting to learn. Now don’t get me wrong underlying fundamentals are key to progression, the trouble is that we had far to much emphasis on basic’s over fundamentals.

Sounds like over fussy semantic’s I guess but there is substance in my rambling. We used to practise very basic technique over and over usually with very little reasoning beyond the ‘it was good enough for them’ type. This approach, basic training was reinforced continuously resulting in basic knowledge.

If the emphasis is on the fundamentals underpining a system then you are onto something. If it is based around learning how to repeat a movement ‘just so’ it’s basic and pretty much wasted effort.

For examlpe, in Goju they make you do san dan ge ad infinitum. This teaches you some very basic techniques, blocks and counters with a very basic timing rhythm. Fine for beginners as it’s easy enough to co-ordinate the strange movements. The trouble is that the extended ‘advanced’ versions of these drills while expanding the techniques retain the same 1,2,3 type of timing and distancing. This keeps things basic and provides a poor appreciation of the fundamentals of timing and distancing.

This is harmful later down the line. When learning my nidan kata years later, we still practised san dan ge and my movement timing was ingrained in that basic way. I remember being on a course and being screamed at to do part of the nidan kata faster. But I didn’t know how to move faster and the instructor didn’t know how to teach me, or didn’t want to.

If teaching the fundamentals of timing had included methods of closing distance quickly, I would have been better equipped to move better in the kata.

of course everything we learnt wasn’t 1,2,3 pace and I did learn some great methods from a great Goju teacher later still. but I’m trying to explain something that was wrong with the general training i was getting.

If the san dan ge training had incorporated fundamentals of closing the distance witin a the 1,2,3 timing beat it would have had greater value. As it stands IMO san dan ge has no value beyond the very first few lessons to familiarise students with basic techniques.

Sorry for the ramble, but it’s a bit of a bug bear with me, basics should not be reinforced at the expense of the fundamentals….

Jon Law

PS
Wim whlie you use the term basics I understand that you are referring to fundamentals rather than basic technique. I appreciate that you teach these fundamentals through basic technique execution.

I like your methodical approach to reinforcement and the basic strategy, tactic, guidline example you give is very sensible, productive way of teaching.

Personally I detest the term basics as it reminds me of a lot of the nonsense I had to put up with when starting to learn. Now don’t get me wrong underlying fundamentals are key to progression, the trouble is that we had far to much emphasis on basic’s over fundamentals.

Sounds like over fussy semantic’s I guess but there is substance in my rambling. We used to practise very basic technique over and over usually with very little reasoning beyond the ‘it was good enough for them’ type. This approach, basic training was reinforced continuously resulting in basic knowledge.

If the emphasis is on the fundamentals underpining a system then you are onto something. If it is based around learning how to repeat a movement ‘just so’ it’s basic and pretty much wasted effort.

For examlpe, in Goju they make you do san dan ge ad infinitum. This teaches you some very basic techniques, blocks and counters with a very basic timing rhythm. Fine for beginners as it’s easy enough to co-ordinate the strange movements. The trouble is that the extended ‘advanced’ versions of these drills while expanding the techniques retain the same 1,2,3 type of timing and distancing. This keeps things basic and provides a poor appreciation of the fundamentals of timing and distancing.

This is harmful later down the line. When learning my nidan kata years later, we still practised san dan ge and my movement timing was ingrained in that basic way. I remember being on a course and being screamed at to do part of the nidan kata faster. But I didn’t know how to move faster and the instructor didn’t know how to teach me, or didn’t want to.

If teaching the fundamentals of timing had included methods of closing distance quickly, I would have been better equipped to move better in the kata.

of course everything we learnt wasn’t 1,2,3 pace and I did learn some great methods from a great Goju teacher later still. but I’m trying to explain something that was wrong with the general training i was getting.

If the san dan ge training had incorporated fundamentals of closing the distance witin a the 1,2,3 timing beat it would have had greater value. As it stands IMO san dan ge has no value beyond the very first few lessons to familiarise students with basic techniques.

Sorry for the ramble, but it’s a bit of a bug bear with me, basics should not be reinforced at the expense of the fundamentals….

Jon Law

PS
Wim whlie you use the term basics I understand that you are referring to fundamentals rather than basic technique. I appreciate that you teach these fundamentals through basic technique execution.