7 WAYS GEORGE DILLMAN CHANGED THE WORLD!

Not many figures in the modern martial arts loom larger than — and generate as much controversy as — George Dillman. A member of the Black Belt Hall of Fame, he’s been a significant presence for more than 50 years and has made an indelible impact on the arts. The following are seven ways Dillman has changed the martial arts and why it matters.

1 POPULARIZING BUNKAI

When Bruce Lee exploded on the scene, he roundly criticized the martial arts community’s practice of kata. He demonstrated convincingly that those movements could never work as they were taught. What Dillman did was to argue that the problem wasn’t with the forms but with how they were being interpreted. “There are no blocks in kata,” he insisted over and over again.

Dillman showed practical and realistic applications of those traditional movements. Traveling the world, he demonstrated how kata were practical for self-defense, and in so doing, he made the word bunkai (breakdown) a familiar term in traditional martial arts circles.

The result of this is that an entire generation of practitioners was freed from ineffective practices and given permission to interpret kata in meaningful ways. Ironically, all over the world, contemporary are teaching courses and seminars, as well as generating