In some traditional martial arts, there are secret techniques too deadly to spar with.
There may also be kata or forms, containing such techniques, which must never be shown to anyone outside the particular lineage of the dojo or kwoon. Such techniques are usually reserved for the highest student levels, those who have proven themselves worthy of the secret knowledge through years, or even decades, of training and faithful adherence to the teachings and direction of the instructor.
The Wing Chun Kung Fu system I studied has only three empty hand forms – Sil Lim Tao (small thought), Chum Kil (searching for the bridge), and Bil Jee (thrusting/flying fingers).
Bil Jee, in particular, used to be a highly advanced form only taught to the most serious and faithful of students. Wing Chun’s most famous student, Bruce Lee, was not taught it. Nor was my first instructor David Crook, who parted company with his Wing Chun instructor before the form was taught to him. The form had a mythical and esoteric quality, spoken of as being far beyond the understanding of all but the most diligent students.
Nowadays, you can find many demonstrations of the Bil Jee form performed online. I have made such a contribution myself. Rather than wondering what might be in this legendary form, as we did back in the 1970s, much discussion online today about Bil Jee is bickering over whose versions of it are “authentic”, and which are the productions of charlatans.
The Wing Chun traditional weapons include butterfly swords, or butterfly knives, a pair of short swords with hooks. One Kung Fu movie I saw back in the day had one of the actors performing an intricate and acrobatic form with the knives. He then explained, immediately afterwards to a spectating friend and brother in arms, that the knives were not to be used in real combat unless the practitioner using them also died. Which seems pretty severe and has some issues with practicality. Nevertheless, in the movie the guy was put in a corner where he had no option but to fight a particularly skilled and egregious villain, and under such duress, employed the knives – he killed the villain, but, as obliged, almost immediately succumbed to injuries inflicted during the fight.
Techniques too deadly to spar with are an unlikely proposition. Such techniques cannot be pressure tested against resisting opponents, at least not legally. Nor can techniques only revealed to a select few be subjected to real pressure testing. So their alleged deadliness against a resisting opponent is highly contestable.
What is the value of such techniques in the twenty-first century, when if anyone wants to kill you they can use a firearm, an IED, or run you over with a car? No one requires decades of intense, specialised, arcane training to do that. Why bother?
I was shown a few other “secret” training methods in my Kung Fu career. These are not really arcane or esoteric practices. Most, you could derive yourself with some lateral thinking and looking at training practices used in other physical disciplines or sports. They aren’t really the sort of thing you can brandish unexpectedly in an emergency, train armies of henchmen with, or the like. None of them will work for you if you don’t have a solid foundation in the basic techniques of your style, in any case.
Arguably, this secrecy is a marketing technique for some instructors. Such as this guy.
In Jiu Jitsu, or any other martial art with a sporting component, techniques are constantly and continually pressure tested. There is no room for theoretical arguments. Nor can the even the best competitors afford not to bring their entire arsenal onto the mat or into the cage. And once they do, their secret techniques are no secret any more. Their opponents are going to study that technique over and over on video, and look for and experiment with weaknesses and counters.
Once the first competitor starts having his no-longer secret technique countered, he too will analyse how this happened, plug any holes revealed in his technique, and work out ways to either prevent those counters or to exploit the attempted counter to their advantage. One can have real confidence in a technique – or set of techniques – that can survive such scrutiny and pressure for an extended period.
So, secrecy might work for a single competitor or a small group for a short time. But it will soon run into a speed bump on the road to success. It is not through secrecy, but through exposure, that we actually find the really strong techniques.
In cryptography, the following of a concept of “security through obscurity” in an attempt to apply strong encryption, is the mark of an amateur. The strongest algorithms are public and thoroughly documented. The cleverest minds in the encryption community are encouraged to attack the algorithm from every angle, look for every weakness, and to try to exploit it. An algorithm that still stands unbroken, after several years of being attacked by every encryption expert on the planet from every possible angle, is one in which you can have a high degree of confidence.
I contend that the same is true of martial arts techniques. Individual players’ games, and Jiu Jitsu as a whole, evolve due to pressures akin to natural selection in the natural world.
It’s understandable that if you pick up a new technique, or a non-obvious detail on a technique that reaps benefits for you, you may be reluctant to share it immediately with some of your students or training partners without enjoying the advantage it may give you over your rolling partners. But, in the long term, I would suggest it is in your interest to divulge this “secret” to your training buds, and then all start looking for weaknesses, counters and tweaks. These may take away that short term advantage, but the long term benefit will be an improvement of everyone’s game, yours included.
There are some benefits for the instructor in not sharing some information immediately. The student must develop a foundation in simple basic techniques, before they are exposed to techniques which arguably sacrifice or mitigate some of the advantages provided by the basic technique in favour of a larger potential payoff, or make use of more convoluted strategies or deception.
The old maxim of not allowing white belts to try footlocks until they have developed some competence at guard passing is perhaps less universally accepted than it used to be, but in my opinion still has significant merit.
A similar maxim is never to teach a technique and its counter in the same lesson. If every attempt the student makes to apply the technique results in it being immediately countered, they will become discouraged and abandon the technique. Conversely, because no one in the gym gets really good at the original technique, the students’ counters never need to get particularly good either. The result, if such practices become endemic, is mediocrity.
John Will encourages the coach to only teach the counter once he sees the initial technique being applied successfully in rolling by multiple class members. Then, “whisper the counter” to a few people. Let them use the new technical kryptonite for a short while to arouse curiosity amongst the rest. But then, spill the beans to them all.
It’s often better to wait for intelligent questions rather than spoon-feeding information to the students. But, if you get asked, answer. If the student got that far on their own, at least show them how to navigate the rest of the way.
A coach should be very careful what seeds he plants, and when.
John Will
So share your knowledge. Allow your skills to be scrutinised, tested, and even countered. This will make your grappling life much more challenging and interesting, even if you end up tapping a little more often. Tapping is learning, and learning is what a long career in Jiu Jitsu is all about.