[SannyGlow]

pgsmith, I would unfortunately have to strongly disagree with you in the specifics of your view.

First, I do not believe that a 1001 toolbox approach is at all beneficial. In addition to the purely tactical issues, there is the issue of pedagogy. While 1001 waza sounds impressive and seems to give the impression of "depth" and "sophistication" to the art, a very practical consequence of the approach is that often times you will practice one specific technique once in three years. I mean no exaggeration, I specifically remember saying once that I had last practiced a particular technique three years ago. The direct consequence of that was that I spent a relatively large amount of my college career training (11 hrs/week), and never really getting good at anything.

A direct consequence of "not getting good at anything" was the reverse of building confidence, it actually damaged my confidence, particularly since the response of my sempai and instructors was the very Asian "you're not getting good because you aren't good enough" and that it was a personal failure of dedication on my part. It didn't help that I was a very timid person at that point in my life, and naturally lacked confidence. Naturally because I had low self-confidence and was generally fearful of "the world" I gravitated towards "self-defense", and naturally I expected after spending 11 hrs/wk for 5 years to at least get some handle on this self-defense malarky.

After all, what I was doing was heavily advertised as such, and also advertised as building confidence, discipline, and everything else kendo is associated with. But in reality it was the reverse. It taught me very little about self-defense, perpetuated my timidness in my personality, and made me highly cynical of the type of "discipline" that was taught, which was the "I'm senior to you, you will obey me without question" kind of thing.

After seeing kendo for the first time, I had a crisis where I realized that everything that I had been taught in my previous martial art was a misrepresentation of the truth. I had not been taught self-defense, I was less confident of myself after willingly putting up with a bad environment, I had become completely cynical about the benefits of martial arts, and I had spent so much time training that it had hurt my academics and delayed my chances in my post undergraduate career.

While I understand and generally support your view as an adult and as a kendoist doing kendo, my belief is that there are certainly groups and organizations which advertise these benefits and in reality do not deliver on any of it, and thus it is a mistake to apply all of these qualities across the board to all martial art groups.