Intelligent training: cross training - Dax

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It seems to be a modern fashion in the martial arts community, at the moment, to be cross training. Pick up almost any martial arts magazine and you will most likely find an article or even a regular column on it while in the letters page you will find 'purists' decrying it.
Yet even though the profile of cross training has only come recently to light, it has in fact been going on for many years under one guise or another. Many of the older and more prominent cross trainers took what they learned and created their own style combining their knowledge from older systems to create a new one. Included in this category are pioneers like Bruce Lee, who combined his base art of Wing Chun with Western boxing and many other arts to create the Jeet Kun Do principles. General Choi Hong Hi took various Korean systems and Japanese karate to create Taekwon-Do. Our founder Morihei Ueshiba trained in three different styles of jujutsu as well as spear fighting and fencing, from which he created a new style that he called Aikido.
So what exactly is cross training and why do people do it? To put it simply cross training is training in several arts to become a well rounded martial artist. For example if you solely practice an art like judo you will find that your striking and kicking techniques are either deficient or non-existent. Likewise if you only practice karate your striking and kicking skills may be good but you will have few groundwork skills. However, if you were to practice both, and learn to move from one to the other easily, you would be proficient at striking, kicking and grappling.
This is a simplified example as most arts contain various attack and defence forms surrounding their core mode of operation. However, no system or style is perfect, despite what some people will claim. Therefore to cross train effectively you need to ask some serious questions about your art, starting with what ranges are missing. These ranges are long distance kicking, short kicking/punching, trapping and grappling. (Aikido works primarily although not exclusively in the punching and trapping ranges.)
Also, you need to ask yourself if there are any skills within your familiar range that are not covered by your syllabus. For example a boxer will not be trained to do shiho-nage and likewise an aikidoka will not see a right cross on their training syllabus.
Once you have discovered the areas where gaps exist you will then need to find the right martial art to fill these gaps. But this is not just a case of going down to your local sports centre and going for the first thing that comes along. Spend time looking at the arts practiced in your area and try to decide which are the ones that you could combine with your aikido. This will be different for each individual and is also dependent not just on the style but also how it is taught.
Another thought to bear in mind is your current training schedule. If you are training two nights a week then you have another five nights for something else, but if you are training four or five nights a week then cross training will cut into your aikido training and slow you down. You will have to decide as to whether you want to be a good all round martial artist or an aikido specialist. After all, to become proficient in any martial art requires hard work and dedication; doing two or more is even harder work. You cannot expect to go to a boxing gym twice and come away with a lightning quick jab.
Cross training lets you view other arts and your own in a different light and prevents you slipping into the false belief that a particular art is the best or the perfect system. If there was one perfect system all the other styles and arts would no longer be around!
Cross training will open up new techniques, new ways of doing old techniques and even new positions to do a technique from.
There are literally hundreds of martial arts from all over the world, so don't be afraid to try some and learn something different. There are those who say you should never train in another art as it takes a lifetime to master just one art. However, though a perfect irimi-nage may be devastating in the correct circumstances, in the wrong circumstances you might just be wishing that you could throw a half decent right cross, so do not get put off. After all, if O-Sensei had just stuck to Kito-ryu jujutsu we would not now have Aikido.