Karate

Karate and Self Protection from John Titchen

focus

Keep it fun!

Training in the martial arts can be a serious business.

  • Physical Fitness
  • Personal Discipline
  • Improved Concentration
  • Competition
  • Self Defence

Listing the most common reasons why adults and children join or study a martial art, they all appear to be serious. Despite all the rewards that they bring, training in the martial arts can be difficult, demanding, frustrating and even painful. The rewards themselves are bestowed so incrementally that they are often unnoticed by the practitioner and this can have a detrimental effect on motivation.

The crux of the matter is that if we aren’t enjoying the training then it is hard to stay motivated to continue. The destination will not be reached if the route isn’t travelled, and the act of travelling itself has to be fun. It really is the journey and not the destination that is important.

Skill development requires repetition. It’s easy for that to become routine and boring and I am sure that like many other instructors I have lost students in the past because I failed to utilise enough variety to disguise that repetition in ways that maintained the sense of excitement and fun.

We expect training to stretch us, to be demanding, to be tiring. Even when it is all those things we should also normally expect to leave training with a smile on our face, but not the smile of someone who feels pleased through the self -denial of a diet or having eaten something ‘healthy’ rather than a treat they wanted. We should leave with the smile of a person that has had fun, because no matter how worthy the ‘end goals’ it is the enjoyment of a class that will draw us back to each new lesson and ensure our progress.

There are many different approaches that can help to keep each lesson fresh and fun:

  • training at different speeds
  • trying different combinations
  • setting different challenges
  • playing stimulus games to improve tactile, visual or auditory response time
  • applying techniques in different ways
  • pairing with different people
  • mixing up the order of the class
  • identifying and reinforcing strengths.

There are many reasons why I train and teach, there are SMART goals that I have set myself and my students, but the thing that draws me to each class is that I want to enjoy myself and have fun.

The destination keeps changing, but I’m here for the fun of the journey.

Conscious incompetence

Juji Uke

Conscious incompetence. It could be viewed as a pretty harsh term. After all it sounds pretty nasty. Without the right attitude and support it is a discovery that can end martial arts training for many people. I would argue though that conscious incompetence is the driver that distinguishes between the average, the good and the great.

When we begin training we do so with mixed amount of conscious incompetence and unconscious incompetence. We know there’s a lot that we don’t know and we also don’t know how much we don’t know (known unknowns and unknown unknowns). After a short time most students pass into a state of unconscious incompetence, they continue to progress and refine their skills but they don’t really recognise or understand how imperfect their performance is or how it can be improved.

Conscious incompetence is the personal revelation that whatever you are doing is not ‘right’, that it could be done better. This does not necessarily mean that a person’s skill level is low or bad, simply that they recognise little (and large) flaws and areas for improvement. This is not the same as having flaws identified externally by others which we may or may not understand and which we are often coached through whether we ask for help or not.

Seeing fault in our own skill level in a large part of what we do in the martial arts can be extremely frustrating and demoralising. How we respond can determine whether we continue to enjoy our training, stay training in the same discipline or switch to another believing that we have wasted time, or quit the martial arts completely. Which route is taken depends on both the student and the instructor. In my experience a student that takes responsibility for their own learning, looks to their own effort to improve their own technique rather than relying heavily on their coach, and is prepared to put in the time to refine skills and correct faults is far more likely to see conscious incompetence as an interesting and motivating challenge. A student that relies heavily on their instructor for guidance, or who is used to achieving what they believe or have perceived to be a high skill level with ease, is far more like to be dissatisfied and look to blame the technique, the art or the instructor.

I believe that it is important that instructors continuously make students aware that there are levels within levels of techniques and skill sets, and that while they may be able to ‘do’ something, there is always room for an improvement. In such a learning environment, with students always encouraged to seek to polish their skills, conscious incompetence should be highlighted as a learning stage and a sign of improvement. If students are taught to see it as a sign of achievement and an impetus to develop it is less likely to have a negative effect. As a result students will probably be far more likely to come to their instructors for practical advice on how to improve.

The advice we give or take will depend very much on the problem we believe that we are trying to solve. The most important thing is that whether it is a plan for ourselves or for someone else, we should focus on small steps. Objectives should always be SMART, that is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Rewarding and Time limited.

Specific: We must make clear and unambiguous statements about what it is we are going to achieve.

Measurable: There must be some way to determine when the objective has been met. We therefore make a statement that describes how we will measure success or failure of the objective.

Achievable: It must be possible to reach the objective. It is important to understand in advance whether or not the objective is achievable. It is important to remember, however, that many tasks when first approached seem insurmountable, so it is important to be optimistic and to take on a challenge.

Rewarding: The objective should bring sufficient reward that it is worth undertaking. There is always a cost / benefit ratio to consider. It is always important to consider what the cost and benefit will be before initiating a task.

Time limited: There should be a clear time frame set out for when the objective will be met. Many things of worth are not achieved quickly and it is important to approach tasks consistently rather than sporadically. Breaking the task down into sub-tasks and estimating time frames is essential if we are to understand the cost of the task.

Unconscious incompetence, conscious competence and conscious incompetence are a continuous cycle in our development. We approach something knowing we don’t know it, we then believe that we do know it and then discover that we don’t know it as well as we could. This engenders training to attempt to regain that feeling of conscious competence, but in doing so we also gain conscious incompetence of related skill sets and a realisation that we had unconscious incompetence of other things, and so our growth continues. It can be overwhelming or it can be seen as an exciting challenge. I like to view it as the latter and that is one of the main reasons why I’m still training.

What’s the rush?

I had some space cleared in my schedule today for some training at home.  Not a particularly unusual thing as I train every day, but rather than grabbing a few minutes here and a few minutes there, today I had one of those nice long stretches of unbroken time.  With that luxury I knew I could work on my strength with some weights and work on my balance with some kicking exercises, but what I really wanted to do was pick a few forms to use as visualization exercises for the delivery of a number of my techniques.  In case anyone wonders why I haven’t mentioned that important training facet impact work,  I’m currently between kick bags and I know I’ll be hitting the pads in class tonight.

While thinking about which particular forms I wanted to train I remembered something interesting regarding two books in my little martial arts library.  In one of my editions of Funakoshi’s Karate Do Kyohan he gives an approximate start to finish time as if the Kata was to be completed in one go as an unbroken exercise.  In another book I own, written in the 1990s, the performance times of three highly ranked UK Karateka were given for the same kata.  Although they varied slightly their times were generally half to two thirds of Funakoshi’s times.

Funakoshi’s times were not those of an old man.  They were the amount of time that it took, in his opinion, to go through the kata.  So why is it common to see modern Karateka go through the forms at a greater speed?

Your focus determines your reality.

Unless you are deliberately moving slowly, when you practice a strike, you do it fast.  When you practice blocking another person’s attack, you also have to move fast.  But wrestling for control against resistance is something that slows us down, and manipulating limbs in grappling even at full speed is a slower form of movement than striking, as is throwing another person.

The modern fast pace of kata is a result of a different vision of the same movements.  The shorter times are a result of more movements being executed as fast as possible, as if each was striking or deflecting a strike.  The longer times given by Funakoshi are a reflection of a different emphasis.

Those of you that have watched some of my bunkai on my youtube channel, or read my first book, will know that I see most Uke receiving techniques in kata as strikes or limb manipulations, and that often I see Tsuki techniques as thrusts used to control, not necessarily punches.  A number of my kata steps are viewed as leg attacks, as are some of my turns.  My kata are close quarter struggles that utlise the movements effectively to escape from habitual acts of violence (haov).

So how fast will I be doing my kata?

It depends.

How fast I go through a kata will depend upon what I am visualizing.  Good Karate allows for multiple applications of the same sequence and the majority of kata are made up of good karate.

There is no set speed for a kata.  I’m not going to rush my practice.  I’ll go through at a pace where I feel I am accurately practicing my application.   That is the luxury of practicing karate at home as well as in the dojo.