Progress in Training

Progress in martial arts training is rarely a linear progression as growth comes in spurts. The fastest and steepest learning curve is at the beginning, when all seems new. Even then, everyone has their own rate of learning. Some absorb information like a sponge while others struggle to squeeze in each drop.

Ironically, it’s the latter who most often seem to rise to excellence. Knowledge that is hard fought to acquire has value. Those with great talent sadly seem rarely destined to achieve their potential. Taking their abilities for granted, it’s “easy come, easy go.” What is learned without effort seems of little value, another way of interpreting the phrase “you get what you pay for.”

I sometimes compare learning to building a dam on a river. As the dam rises, the water fills in the reservoir behind it. That filling in takes longer than building the dam. So it is with learning. Acquiring information is one thing; having the knowledge of how to use it is another. The dam represents the structure of your learning; the water is your experience.

The water level rises as it fills in behind the dam, quickly at first where the reservoir is narrowest at the bottom, more slowly as the surface area increases along with depth. When the reservoir has filled, one can then raise the dam, and once again it will take time to fill the volume behind that interface. Thus a new dam may need to be fairly tall, but successive levels might go up in smaller increments.

Similarly, with experience it becomes harder to learn new things because so much is already understood. Eventually any new nugget of information is like a precious jewel, adding some glow to what is already polished.

Our unconscious mind operates like water. We are only aware of what floats or is reflected on the surface, though we may intimate the ripple of currents below or surmise the contours of the bottom.

Knowing how to learn is its own skill set, related to but separate from the actual subject at hand. One’s internal perspective can either help or hinder the learning process. Meditation is helpful because it turns down the volume of self-talk, the dialog we carry on with ourselves. As we learn to tune out distractions, we gain clarity, which helps us become better focused on what is important.

How many people beat themselves up mentally and emotionally when they make a mistake? What a huge waste of energy that is! Such a person is stuck in the past, which cannot change. A feedback loop of negative self-talk is called “stinking thinking.” It’s better to stay focused on the positive. Simply acknowledge the error, recognize what needs to be fixed, and correct it.

One form of negative belief is that it will take a long time to learn something. If that’s what you believe, then that’s what you will get. We program our experience through such internal structures. I use a Huna technique, which is to program new patterns in three repetitions. It works like this:

The first time you do something new, your unconscious mind ignores it. It’s busy thinking about someone on whom you have a crush while digesting lunch, maintaining heart rate and metabolic temperature and balancing a tall vertical structure on the narrow platform of your feet.

You then repeat the behavior (thought or action) immediately and EXACTLY. Not similar, but as close to duplication as possible. Your subconscious mind still hasn’t paid attention to the content of your new behavior, but because it is a repetitive pattern, it rises to a higher level of significance. Your mind is geared towards noticing things like patterns.

Now you repeat the behavior for a third time; your subconscious has been primed to pay attention to the message itself. Add to this the fact that your conscious mind is focused on this exercise, which will increase its attraction to the unconscious.

Programming the basic behavior can be that quick, but without reinforcement it will be forgotten. Each subsequent repetition over time will deepen the channel. We build our neuro-networks to find and access our information. This is why it’s important to learn something correctly the first time, because it is harder to change established patterns of behavior than it is to create new ones.

Some teachers will let students flounder for a long time without correction. Perhaps this is to allow the chance for self-discovery, but then isn’t the function of the teacher to point the right direction? There is plenty of self-discovery to take place even when looking in the right direction. That is why I take pains to establish the foundation with beginners, because then they can go much further on their own. At least this way, if they don’t stay in the art, at least they will understand basic principles, which will be of more benefit in the long run than merely trying to remember sequences of movements.

As martial artists, one of our skills is to become fighters. Even in arts like Tai Chi, to raise energy and focus there should be a sense of an enemy standing before oneself. In arts like FMA, this goal is explicit. Some people are born with a fighting spirit, or acquire it early from their environment. Others have to learn it later, and perhaps more by choice than necessity.

There is a difference between “knowing” and “not knowing” that is irrespective of intellectual content. As Sijo Adriano Emperado has said, “one must turn on the light; once it is turned on, it cannot be turned off.” One obstacle to overcome is equating anger with intensity. Think of the scene early in “Enter the Dragon” when Bruce Lee gives a lesson to his young disciple. Anger clouds judgment; intensity focuses it like a laser.

It is the natural fighter who seems to learn quickly. One of my recent students was an experienced martial artist who learned six angles of escrima in three months and was able to use them fairly proficiently. At the other extreme I have a student who has been with me for half a dozen years, and it took much of that time for him to become actualized, someone in whom the art lives as opposed to “just doing it.”

The first guy is tough, already knows how to fight. Escrima added a new skill set, filling in knowledge not yet acquired. What he learned serves him well as he is proficient with those basics. The question is whether he will deepen that skill or whether he will set aside his training as he goes on to other things. The only way to really become good is, just like tennis or many other sports, to continue to test oneself against better opponents and thus elevate one’s game. As I wrote at the beginning, it is rarely the fastest learner who excels. Hmm, like the tale of the tortoise and the hare.

The second guy is a professional who likes to spend his free time outdoors. Escrima was just an add-on activity, something he found interesting. For a long time he seemed to be sleepwalking through training; my challenge was to find a way to awaken him. The trigger finally turned out to be switching from stick to blade, sparring with the swords I’m now making. That one change injected a higher perception of risk that propelled his skills to a significant level, and suddenly he has become very hard to hit.

To see the light come on is the moment I wait for as a teacher, because I know that now the art lives in this person. When it takes a long time, as it sometimes does, the struggle itself has meaning for it is what gave birth to a new reality.

What difference does this make? For one who has “seen the light” the answers come from within. In practical terms it means this person will perceive and counter attacks even faster than he consciously realizes them. When I spar such a person I can simply attack, knowing that it will take all my skill to find an opening I can exploit. Against someone who is merely proficient, I not only must protect myself against their attacks, but must also take responsibility for protecting them against my own!

At one level, one trains a student to spar by giving them opportunities to succeed; there is a danger that they will see this as ultimate success. It seems particularly true in fencing arts that it is easier to attack than defend, lending credence to “the best defense is a good offense.” Perhaps, though, it is simply harder to learn good defense, as that involves reading the opponent’s intentions accurately rather than leading them, or worse, ignoring those signals. Boxers may be willing to trade blow for blow, but with weapons that is rarely a wise course of action. Those that strike without concern for safety risk getting set up in the worst way.

To quote another saying, “There are bold pilots and there are old pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”

Force vs. Flow

The best classes are those where insight is gained towards resolving blocks to improving our skills. Often we have the information all along but in pieces; insight is making the integrative connections resulting in new perspectives that deepen our understanding.

Recently I had one of those days where I felt particularly attuned in class, able to analyze vividly what both my student and I were doing in sparring. Teaching is like uncovering a mystery, peeling back layers to get to deeper truths in oneself and in others. To share insight one must find the key to another’s understanding. A good teacher has many tools, but as any mechanic knows, it’s having the right tool at the right time that makes a job go smoothly. Being in the flow leads us to our solutions by allowing the unconscious to produce insights.

During sparring I was consistently finding openings to my student’s centerline with a variety of tactics, but always with the strategy of what I call “falling in the gopher hole”. This is based on Bruce Lee’s theories of slight forward pressure to create springy energy. When the opponent creates an opening, we are already there at the threshold; the pressure is released and we automatically fill the gap without time consuming thought. Pressing the opponent’s centerline while guarding ours keeps this energy direct and balanced.

Our conscious awareness being much slower than the unconscious mind, we perceive through our senses what is already done. If we think first how to act, it is two stages, thought then action, the latter most likely inhibited by the weight of processing the former.

Awareness without thought: Our minds should be aware of the dynamics of the fight without excessive micromanagement over movement. Our strategy is our goal; tactics need be executed with instinctive reactions. We do this every day in ordinary life while walking, driving or feeding ourselves. The more stress we can handle in this ordinary manner, the greater the internal resources available for other purposes.

Sometimes we go unconscious in action, our conscious mind simply unable to keep up with the flow of action. At such times we may perform things seemingly beyond our abilities, but evidently not beyond our capacity to imagine. Our unconscious mind of course remembers every detail of the experience, and through methods such as NLP, hypnosis, meditation etc. we can later recall much of this information through accessing our multiple sensory memories. All states of awareness are constructs, hence hypnotic, since we build these on more subtle beliefs that direct our thought. What we cannot rationalize is expressed through emotion, the domain of the unconscious, and revealed in the gross and subtle actions of our physical bodies.

Here’s an example of the mind going unconscious in action. Three decades ago I knew an acquaintance of my older brother, a bear of a man with Aikido and Kendo training. This man fought his way to the kingship of the Society for Creative Anachronisms several times in their rough-and-tumble early days. In his most memorable fight, he felt he had been fouled grievously towards the end of a round and was extremely angry. During the break he centered himself and when he came out for the next and decisive round he knocked out his opponent. All he remembered was how blue the sky was that day, which he described as a Zen-like state of bliss which enabled him to bypass his judgmental conscious mind, giving him complete freedom of action.

Verbal expression is a way to hone in and clarify our thoughts; to get from theory to practice, I needed to communicate my own intuitive impressions. An axiom in hypnotherapy is that in order to create a state within a client, one must access it first within oneself so as to lead another person there. In martial arts, as in NLP, we can do this through mirroring and matching. I was using this on him; my goal was to transmit this skill too, leveling our playing field.

To begin with I could see my student’s movements were too wide and blocky, creating openings and losing timing. He was swinging from the shoulder, using muscular energy rather than finding a more natural internal rhythm. This was isolating the dynamics of his arm motion from the rest of his body, resulting in discordant footwork and poor body alignment. Correcting this one thing would unblock an entire cascade of improvements to his overall technique.

My first step was to get him to pay attention to how he was handling his weapon, changing his technique to make it tighter and smoother. A supple wrist is important to be able to control balance of the weapon. Every weapon has its balance point. We can try to impose our desired movement regardless of this, or we can let the weapon follow its natural trajectory. This lets us guide it by controlling its center of balance, a much more fluid relationship.

Identifying a physical point of resistance was the leverage to understanding its effect in our sparring dynamic, which is where we both were able to see a deeper picture. By using his arm in a muscular way he was relying on force, which by its nature, using the concept of equal and opposite reaction, creates the resistance that it encounters. Most of us have had experiences of struggling to make something happen and getting nowhere, only to stop fighting and suddenly achieve a breakthrough.

In terms of our sparring, his desire to force the action made him stiff because he was overthinking each move, which in turn telegraphed his intention. As long as he projected an attachment to a particular outcome, I could easily see what he was trying to do before he did it, a clear example of how the body responds to the conditions of the mind. Escrima is an art with a lot of deception. It takes fluidity and adaptability to hide one’s intentions.

Connecting his sense of power to the need to force an outcome exposed a rigid dynamic between thought and action. Changing his physical rhythm created a new mental pattern as well, allowing him to experience the process itself rather than the need to focus on a specific tactical goal.

Let me restate that. If force is required for a particular result, then flow is allowing the process to find its own path. This could be the path of least resistance, or it could be the path of greatest understanding, but either way it should give us what we need.

The effect on his sparring was immediate and dramatic, raising it to a level I’d never seen in him before. As soon as he began to flow, the old familiar gaps in his technique were gone. For the first time I felt him nullifying my attacks effortlessly.

I’ll finish with a brief story that illustrates a difference between force and flow. In 1189 King Richard I (Lionheart) met Saladin during the Third Crusade. To demonstrate the strength of his sword and sword arm, he hacked through a bar of iron. Saladin then demonstrated the keenness of his sword by dropping a piece of silk across the edge, slicing the fabric in half by its own weight. Both ways can achieve results, but one requires great effort and the other almost none.