Story of Square Barrow

In the distant past, one of the new holders of a teacher’s certificate in a traditional martial art brought a wheel barrow with round wheels for approval to the head of the style and his top two instructors.  Previously, the wheel barrow had square tires and was referred to as a square barrow.

The student waited with expectation as the head of the system and the two head instructors slowly inspected his improvement to the equipment.

The head of the system looked at the new teacher and said, “Who gave you permission to put wheels on that square barrow?”  The first head instructor asserted, “Our Founder, Grandmaster Smith, always used a square barrow when he founded the system 200 years ago.”  The second head instructor accused, “You’re a trouble maker, aren’t you?”

While some will accuse me of absurdity in this example, the reaction of many martial artists to innovation is often absurd.  Instead of embracing change as a natural occurrence, many martial artists bury their heads in the sand and act as if samurai still roam the land.

Throughout my martial arts career, I have been frustrated by this hide bound adherence to tradition while ignoring new trends such as mixed martial arts.

A few years ago when we started our academy I joined several forums but quit after a few months.  Instructors will still arguing over which style was better and looked at everything through the prism of their martial arts.  These questions were answered twenty years ago.  Find the first seven or eight Ultimate Fighting Championship events.  You can learn a lot.

After a number of years of trying to work within the system, I decided to create my own reality based self-defense system.

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