But there is also side of customer, average guy or girl who goes to supermarket to buy themselves a bottle of wine to enjoy in a meal with their wife or husband. They can off course buy a RESERVA or GRAN RESERVA and pay a lot of money for one bottle but I ask myself, if they don’t have experience in drinking wine, will they be able to appreciate this wine to fullest? Will they be able to notice different notes and flavours hidden inside? I don’t think so. In my opinion they should get themselves a nice young wine or maybe a crianza and start with this. It will be a nice wine, low cost and easy to drink without headaches afterwards. After having acquired enough experience with younger wines they may start trying RESERVAS and when specialist in wine drinking (drunks ???) only then they will appreciate GRAN RESERVA to fullest.

How can we know as a starting budo practitioner if wine (instructor) we are going to have is any good? As with wine there is a label that guaranties quality. It’s called lineage. Ask your instructor about his lineage. Who is his teacher? Who is teacher of his teacher? How long does his art exist? Who are his colleagues, his co-instructors? Only when he can demonstrate his lineage, reputation and authenticity of his martial art we will have a guaranty of it’s quality.

He will be accredited by his teacher’s reputation and by fact he still is actively training. A teacher who stopped training is like a branch fallen of a tree. It will slowly become a dead branch.

Unfortunately, many people think that they are real wine specialists after having some young wines and therefore can pass judgement on quality of RESERVAS and GRAN RESERVAS. How more wrong can they be?

First find wine guaranty, next start trying young wines and CRIANZA and finally when you are ready you can enjoy RESERVA and GRAN RESERVA.

some masters are very professional and perfect teachers but they feel urge to test affectivity of their techniques. This is very understandable and unfortunately this occurs many times. How ELSE can you know if your techniques are ANY good? The problem is not to be found in fact that they want to test their skills but in fact that they use there students to do this.. The students who are already convinced of affectivity of techniques and impressed by teachers authority usually don't resist techniques. off course this will make techniques work perfect. If they dare to resist than there are 2 possibility's: 1) technique works just fine. 2) technique must be forced.

This is cause of technical quality going done drain. when USinG a lot of physical force most techniques can be forced upon a weaker opponent but onLY by superior technical skill you will be able to EXECUTE your technique on everyone. A perfect technique needs a balanced use of skill, speed and force.There is no need to be a superman to be a great master. The best way to test your techniques is to do this with someone of your same skill LEVEL/grade. This apply's for both students and teachers alike. Both will learn a lot from this type of training.

How can you bring R-factor in your training as a student?

one of problems is great amount of techniques to be found in Genbukan Ninpo Bugei system. We have over 300 techniques from 10th kyu up to 1st dan. How do you cope with this? First of all you must understand that as a kyu grade you are learning to write and read so to speak. ( kyu waza) some of kyu waza are taken out of their context, other look useless in true cases. Other look like old fashion and last group of techniques seem to be very effective. Which one do you train? The answer is very easy:

All techniques must be trained...

Useless and old fashion looking techniques will teach you concepts or moves that will result of highest importance later in your training. Out of effective techniques you can take 15 or 20 techniques and repeat them thousands of times Until they become a reflex. This is what I call your F.H.T.C. box (first help in true cases) Training basic form though is not enough. Try to do your techniques in another form. Against a body grab, wrist grab, attack from different sides, sitting on floor or in a chair,. etc...

Soon you will be very skillfully in defending yourself. But a warning is in place here: This training must only be done under a master instructor with many years of experience. If I have enough with 20 techniques , why must i train hundreds and hundreds of techniques?

Because techniques are not final goal. They are only a way to... We use them in same way we use mathematic formulas to solve complex questions and get to core of technique. Those 20 techniques won't save you when confronted with a specialist. Especially noT if you don't understand underlying principles behind each and every technique. Ma-ai, metsuke, kuzushi, etc... are only a few of them Every technique and kata you learn will teach you a lot about essence of combat. to discover them you need a good teacher and lots and lots of training. 3 hours/week is not enough. You need daily practice to be able to discover secrets within techniques. Every discovery will make R-factor go up and up.

During all these century's way to make war has changed enormous but CLOSE combat, man to man fight is still same. A punch is a punch and a kick a kick. We didn't grow 3 arms or legs suddenly. The same principles and concepts discovered in century's of wa and man to man combat are still actual and highly effective. The world changes but man is still same man he was 2000 years ago.