All of movement is connected, it is in some sense one whole, however the field is far too broad for anyone person to master, and the qualities, skills, and concepts behind differnet movement approach are not always easily blended with another. When we seek to learn something new if we rely too heavily on what we already now we take ourselves out of the ability to absorb what is in front of us.
Bruce lee famously said, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless and add what is uniquely your own. The problem with this approach is applying it without going deeply enough into anyone discipline to recognize what is truly useful or useless, and then of applying always the lense of single discipline to everything else you see.
With that caveat that you need a base and the willingness to go deep into a discipline before being sure you know what blends with your movement and goals, blending movement from various disciplines together is a wonderful practice and itself the origin of many specific movement disciplines.
This monday I go the chance to spar with with an old sparring partner who like me is based in Mauy Thai, and I had the chance to experiment with blending some capoeira movement into my approach, the result was some very interesting attacks and opportunities. A more full contact session or a true fight would not have allowed me to find those opportunities and I am not sure yet how robustly I can utilize these connections but blending the movement approaches resulted in some very interesting and fun movement and for me that is primary goal.
My challenge for you today is to find away to add a little bit of another discipline into your primary training paradigm or blend to movement approaches you use in a new way.
For inspiration enjoy this video for Maurice crump who seamlessly blends phillipino martial arts and Capoeira.
