Elements of Our Training Philosophy
In terms of historical arts and of modern self-defense alike, the
primary focus in the SRS remains on what we term ‘civil’ martial arts –
techniques intended for defense and survival in the home and on the
high-road (or the streets). The distinction between this approach to
combat and the mind-set necessary for massed battlefield situations -
where individual strategy is next to meaningless and where success is
measured on a scale of triumph rather than survival - is a distinction
reflected in almost every aspect of the SRS martial system.
This also tends to emphasise the arts practised by commoners rather than
nobility and gentry. Since the upper classes in any country were never
more than a tiny fraction of the whole population, that means that we’re
pursuing the arts our own ancestors were practising. These arts are
historically less well-documented, simply because not all that many
commoners were literate; and what we do know of them suggests a
pragmatism that the nobility, with their niceties of combat manners,
often lacked.
Then again, the nobility often did not extend their niceties to any
opponents of lower class, which raises some question as to just how
honest their rules really were. To a great extent, the chivalric code of
mediaeval Europe, and the bushido of Japan as well, were essentially
large-scale “old-boys’ network” systems, carefully structured patterns
of privilege designed to keep the commoners firmly in their place, on
and off the battlefield.
And yet today, as Americans, our traditions have largely erased the
boundaries of class: so in the SRS there are styles practised which, in
the old days, would only have been available to those of a certain
station in life: daisho, niten-ichi, naginata, rapier, greatsword and
longsword, and jian, for example.
Still, we stay focussed on civilian applications of these weapons. We’re
less interested in fighting to win… than in fighting to stay alive. In
many simulation sparring systems, we see people willing to sacrifice a
limb in order to get a blow in on an opponent’s head. But this is not
practical martial art: in a real fight, a badly wounded limb is likely
to mean nothing more than a slower death… even if we can assume that our
defeated opponent had no friends waiting their turn.
As a bouncer from an L.A. biker bar once put it, “When they say it’s
only a flesh wound… they’ve never had one.” In the Silk Road School, the
only fight you win… is one you come out of uninjured, able to fight
again