Quote Originally Posted by P. Starr
I understand what you're saying, but...

Every teacher is accustomed to training with his or her particular system. Their forms, including weapons sets and techniques, are based on the fundamental principles of the system that they teach. This is why they won't allow you to skip over the other parts of training and go directly to training with something like a staff.

...
You may never need martial arts for purposes of self-defense. I hope not. In today's world, though, there's more of a need for effective self-defense skills than ever before. ...
I wonder why you say this about needing more effective self-defense than ever before? Because it seems like there's less and less violence in the world than ever before.

Fewer wars, fewer people dying, people living longer, life expectancies at all time highs.

Yeah, I agree with you on the teachers and teaching thing, but that's the problem. I don't want to learn another entirely different way of moving. Martial arts teachers like that are boot camp instructors, so to go through one boot camp, and then to go to an entirely other boot camp where they do everything differently, is a bit purturbing, to say the least. Especially when you just want to spar with their students and you don't really want to learn their way at all.

Anyways, it's no big deal. Poles are harder than bones or faces anyway.