Martial Musing : Learning Sequence On Path To Mastery “Sensei, how is it that I do exactly what you do, and I don’t get the result?” asked my student, who frustrated with not getting results with Sumi Otoshi (upper body drop). I smiled, and said “are you sure?” He stepped back and pondered, before starting to mumbling aloud “angle in at 45 degrees, break the structure as you drop the body weight. I stepped in and demonstrated the technique and repeated the instructions again. I caught him repeating what I was saying and rolling his eyes in frustration. “You have memorized the words. Perhaps have an intellectual understanding of the technique, but you don’t know it yet.” I continued “there is a profound difference between knowing about things and knowing them. And not knowing the distinction between the two can lead to a whole load of trouble. , For now get back to the technique and keep at it. Do not try to force your way into it. It does not help. Aiki In Yo Ho is not about strength, its about internal power which comes from a number of things but not muscular strength. “ It was way past 7 pm, and time to finish the class for the day. As is the norm, we close the class with any questions the students have. This sometimes leads to a whole new class. “how do we learn this right, I feel I will never get this technique sensei?” said K. “Yes you will in due time, you have to persevere. You are quite athletic and you have used sheer muscle strength so far to move through things, now we are moving into a different realm, a realm of what I can best describe as soft power. This new way of being powerful has to be learnt in the body proper, not just as a concept in the mind. For now remember what a good sequence of learning things well goes in 5 steps:- 1. TECHNIQUE -Learn the gross form of the technique 2. PRECISION – Then clean the form with structural alignment and nuances of the technique 3. FLOW – Now add a sense of flowing, and not getting blocked or jerking at any stage of complete movement 4. SPEED – Only then play with speed to move from start to finish 5. POWER – Finally work on generating power, not force in what you do” We wrapped the class and headed home for the night. And on my drive home I remembered how all levels of elite performance, regardless of sport shared some characteristics. They all moved their bodies gracefully, made the technique look effortless, they held/expressed the principles of excellence in their bodies and it was a result of lots of training. There were no shortcuts to this excellence. The only short cuts that existed were in modeling excellence and building on good habits but motor memory had to be built and trained the old fashioned way, with repetition. Doing something a few times was not the way to have efficiency, effectiveness or grace, a few thousand repetitions was just the beginning. Just the beginning... Mahipal Lunia Sensei MountainViewAiki The RenaissancePath
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 06:42:53 +0000
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