Karate Talk

Re-learning Karate

The basic learning process continues. In addition to my punches, I am now trying to be aware of sloppy habits, lazy habits, any shortcuts I'm taking anywhere in my karate that need to be cleaned up. I'm thinking of what I correct the color belts on, and making sure that I'm doing it properly myself. If I"m not, if I'm being lazy or taking shortcuts, I'm trying to make sure I'm aware of it, and I'm trying to break that habit.

It's been humbling. Just pushing my left knee out that fraction of an inch more in kiba-dachi -- persistent ankle and knee injuries to that leg have gotten me in the habit of favoring it even when it's not hurt. Tucking my draw arm in just that little bit more -- that would be the sore right shoulder. Keeping my shoulders rolled back, not forward -- that's from my back. All of them relatively small changes, you understand. All of them habits that developed as an honest response to a situation, but weren't corrected once the situation had passed. Nothing huge.

But the day after training, I am stiff and sore. Muscles all over my body are reacting to what I'm doing now. This tells me that I had developed a few more bad habits than I'd care to admit. This is a good thing to know, because now that I know, I can work on breaking the bad habits and replacing them with good ones. I can fix what's broken.

But oh boy. There's a lot to fix!!

Back to the Beginning... for the First Time?

I spent over 2 hours last night learning how to punch. And I mean really learning. Starting from the draw arm back, and going through the complete cycle of the punch. How you make the technique, what timing to use, how the rest of the body is behaving. We did straight punches, reverse punches, rising punches, roundhouse punches, hook punches, back punches, tate punches, and nukite (spear hand).

To state the blatently obvious, my arms and shoulders and back are a little tired today.

Sensei Yaguchi felt that though our minds had grown, our physical technique had not grown as he wished. So we are going to spend the next 3 months of Instructor Training doing intensive reviews of all the basics. Starting with punches. Next month will be blocks.

This is indisputably good for me, and probably good for all of us. Going back to basics periodically ensures that you don't get sloppy or lose your foundation.

On another level, though, this isn't really back to the beginning. These are basics that in some ways I've never visited before. When you first are teaching a beginner, you almost certainly do not dissect their punching technique inch by inch and make them do it properly. If you did, you'd end up with a very discouraged student who did nothing but try to learn punching for the first 6 months in the dojo! Instead you stick with "pull your draw arm back", "don't let your elbow escape", etc. You encourage their progress, and fix the big problems first. Sooner or later you will get down to the picky details.

We already know how to punch. Overall, our technique is pretty good. This process is to go back and revisit that which we think we know, and remove the weaknesses. Before last night, I thought I punched pretty well. Now I know how much better it could really be, and have been given the tools to make it so.

This ought to be an interesting 3 months!

Shine the Light

People always say stick with it, don't give up, it will be worth it in the end. Someday, somehow, some way, it will all end up worth the time and effort that you took.

Whether or not that is always true is debatable, but tonight, it is true for me. It started last Saturday, and I can already feel the ripple effect. I see light at the end of a tunnel that I'm not even sure I really knew was blocked up.

To leave the fuzzy generalities and be specific, I had one of those mental breakthroughs which are worth their weight in gold, a new way to think which changes the course of your future.

People have been telling me that my shoulders are raising up on some techniques. People have also mentioned some troubles with hip rotation. I have spent my life doing gymnastics and dance, which require a lot of hip power, and demand that your shoulders stay back and down. At the risk of sounding conceited, I know when my shoulders raise up, thank you very much, and what's more I have a liftime's worth of training ingrained to prevent it. The hip thing was patently ridiculous: All you had to do was watch me in a mirror and you could see that I had strong hip rotation.

So, although it's not like I thought people were lying, I didn't take what they said that seriously, either. I was prepared to believe that there were times when I had some weakness in those areas, but it wasn't that big a deal. I was getting a little tired of hearing it.

The revelation I had Saturday was, it doesn't matter what I think, whether or not I believe I'm having these troubles, or think they aren't important. What matters is that other people, including senseis I respect, including my fiance whose opinion I respect, these people were seeing something wrong. It was time for me to quit protesting, even silently, and start trying to figure out what it was they were seeing.

That was it, my big revelation.

Don't underestimate the power of such a breakthrough though, because it's invaluable. And it's easier said than done, trust me. Saturday, I opened my mind to really hear what was being said, instead of blocking half of it out with my own mental noise. And when I opened myself up to it, something really does feel wrong. Something really is broken, and really does need fixed.

Tonight I went to training with the attitude that I was not going to blame the wrongness on being tired, or stressed, or my knee being sore, or having my ankle taped, or my back hurting. I was going to figure out what it was and fix it, no more excuses. I started to get frustrated about 3/4 of the way through class because there it was again, again, again: Your shoulders are raising up, relax them. From inside me, I promise you they were as relaxed as they're gonna get when I'm punching. So I shut that off, and thought instead, what are they seeing? I tried to feel it from the inside out, and meet them halfway. What I discovered was not so much that my shoulders are raising up, but rather they're rolling forward. When your shoulders roll forward, you look hunched -- or in other words, it looks like your shoulders have raised up. They're relaxed but it doesn't look like it.

So tonight I felt my shoulders roll forward -- REALLY felt it, and acknowledged it as bad. As soon as I felt it, I pulled them back and locked them down. And suddenly, instead of shaking heads and "try it again", I was getting nods, and hearing, "can you feel the difference?"

I can.

The reason why I developed this bad habit traces to a series of accidents when my back muscles were injured, and I'd be willing to bet that whatever is going on with my hips can be traced to my foot, knee and ankle injuries. But "why" is not what's important. What's important is breaking the bad habit and replacing it with a good one. I know that now, and I know that because I finally quit fighting it. After weeks of struggle and resistance and making excuses, an answer was found once I hit the point of frustration where my ego didn't matter, what I thought I knew didn't matter, and even my frustration didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was fixing it.

Shine the light on me...