What Is Martial Arts Rank?

I got involved in the another discussion about the real importance and value of rank again.  This conversation has been around since at least Kano Shihan establishing the now popular system using black belts and ten steps of rank (known as dan 段 in Japanese).  You’d think I’d be over this discussion, but I can’t seem to let it go by without taking another whack at it.  I’m sure there were huge discussions within the Kodokan, because the rank system there evolved over several decades before it was finally settled in the form we are all familiar with.   

The question of what does a particular rank mean can be an interesting one.  People are constantly asking “ What is a black belt?" and “What does rank really mean?”  These questions need to be looked at in connection with a couple of other questions.  Those are “What is a sensei?” and “What is a student?”  

In the world of classical Japanese martial arts, the koryu bugei, these questions don’t seem to exist.  It might be because people are not evaluated in comparison to each other’s level of attainment.  They only give scrolls that correspond with the portion of the system you have learned, and teaching licenses that lay out what you are qualified to teach.  This only leaves one question to ask if you are talking to a possible teacher, and one to ask anyone you are training with.  The question for possible teachers is “Are you licensed to teach?” and the question for training partners is “Can you do this technique or kata?”   

For me, part of the issue is that I’ve been in the iaido and koryu worlds for a long time.  I started in judo, and I still train, but I spend a lot of time in other arts.. The Kendo Federation (where I got my iai and jo dan ranks) has ranks, but there are no symbols of rank. Everyone in the room dresses alike, from the guy who just started, to the 8th dan who's been at it for 80+ years. The koryu dojo I'm in are even less about the ranks and such. Yeah, you get some paper sometimes, maybe a license, but that's pretty much it. There are even fewer signs of rank there than in the Kendo Federation. The fascination with belt colors is only in judo and karate systems, and something that is big outside Japan. In Japan, you get a black belt comparatively quickly, and all it tells people is that you are a real member of the club who can take the ukemi.

This leads back to the initial questions: “What is a sensei?” and “What is a student?”  These seem obvious.  A sensei is someone who teaches, and a student is someone who learns.  Those answers work fine in a standard school classroom setting where most questions have right and wrong answers, the kids sit in the desks and the teacher stands in front of the white board.  They don’t work so well in dojo where everyone mixes, the teacher might be in his 30s or 40s and the students are anywhere from 9 years old to 91, and even the teacher is working to improve her understanding of the art.

The student’s role seems straightforward.  The student is there to learn the art.  To do that, that the student is responsible for showing up healthy and ready to learn, with a good attitude.  The student is responsible for herself.  That was quick and easy to write, but it’s not very satisfying.  Showing up healthy is pretty simple.  Budo is practiced in close contact with other folks, so please take responsibility for yourself and don’t expose your training friends to every illness you get.  Stay on the sidelines when you’re sick.  This might not be a complete answer, but what is a sensei needs to be considered before we can go any further.

So what is a sensei, and what is she responsible for?  I’ll start by disappointing everyone who wants to break down the Japanese word 先生 and define it by it’s parts.  We don’t understand the modern meanings of English words because their original German, Greek or Latin roots meant something a thousand or two thousand years ago.  We define them based on how they are used today, and the same goes for Japanese.  In Japanese today,　”sensei” is used to address a teacher, doctor, lawyer, politician or other important person.  Most commonly, it just means teacher.  Nothing more.  It has no fancy, special, abstract or mystical meanings.  It just means teacher.  The word doesn’t help us.

In a budo dojo though, the sensei doesn’t do a lot of classical talk and chalk teaching.  Keiko in a budo dojo is a different situation from teaching an academic subject in a classroom, with different concerns, conditions and goals.  The teacher has responsibilities to the students and to the art she is teaching.  I’m partial to the modern version of koryu budo instruction rather than the military style instruction that became popular in Japanese and Okinawan during the 1930s and 1940s in militarist Japan, and which continued and was spread worldwide afterwards in gendai budo like karate.  Koryu is generally done in smaller groups, with more personal instruction and less regimentation.  This reflects what sensei is responsible for.

Sensei is responsible for students’ having a safe training environment, that should go without saying, but it doesn’t, so I say it often.  This is koryu bugei, and one significant difference I’ve found between koryu bugei thought and practice and nearly every other teaching situation I’ve seen is that in koryu bugei the sensei has no responsibility for making sure students learn anything.  Sensei is responsible for making sure students can learn if they make the effort.  If someone doesn't make any effort and doesn’t learn anything, that’s the student’s issue.

In both koryu bugei and gendai bugei, the sensei is not only responsible for teaching the student.  The budo sensei is responsible for the art as well.  They are responsible for passing on the entirety of their art to the next generation.  They are not responsible for popularizing the art and teaching to as many people as possible.  In fact, many senior members of koryu bugei systems  view trying to spread an art as being an abdication of their responsibility to the art.  Trying to spread an art quickly risks having poorly or incompletely trained people teaching and not doing a good job of teaching, and worse, corrupting the art because they don’t understand it well enough.

The lessons of any good budo system, koryu or gendai, are far more complex, and deeper than just the movements.  In addition to the physical movements there are strategies and tactics for controlling the spacing between you and your opponent.  There are techniques and concepts for controlling yourself and your mind.  Most of a budo system is beyond the physical movements, and these are the real heart of a system.  WIthout a proper understanding of these aspects, an art cannot truly be taught or learned.  The sensei’s responsibility to the ryuha includes making sure that only students with an adequate understanding of all parts of the system are teaching.  It is better to remain small and obscure and pass along the entire system than to grow into a huge, globe straddling organization that is teaching only the merest shadow of the original art.  The teacher’s responsibility to the art is greater than to any individual student.

Interestingly, it’s strange how quickly most students begin to see and understand this.　The art, the system dates back generations, particularly for koryu bugei ryuha which can be more than 500 years old, but even Kodokan Judo, the exemplar of gendai budo, is over 130 years old.  The ryuha (system, school, art) has it’s own priorities and requirements and benefits. These outweigh the needs of individual students.  As students develop an understanding of the deeper nature of the ryuha’s teachings, they also understand that the ryuha will continue long after them, and that their responsibility is to learn the system to the fullest of their ability so that those who train with them and follow them will get the full system and none of it will be lost or corrupted.  

Students who begin to understand this, also begin to see and take on responsibility for maintaining the system.  Mastering the art is no longer just about gaining personal skill.  It becomes about being part of a larger structure that stretches back into history, and pushes on into the future.  As students move from beginners to experienced students to teachers licensed to teach a portion of the system and occasionally become licensed to teach the entire system, their rank isn’t about status.  It’s about responsibility.  The higher your rank, the more responsibility you have to the system.  Students who are only interested in learning the system for themselves and who don’t take responsibility for the system should be, and usually are, slowly frozen out of the school, and sometimes even simply expelled.

This is the way it should be.  As I’ve been reading more about the early days of the Kodokan and the new rank system that Jigoro Kano Shihan implemented, and it’s evolution, it becomes clear that in the early Kodokan, rank, at least at the early to middle levels, was strictly about how well you could fight.  Students were promoted when they defeated 4 people of the same rank, instead of based on how well they knew the whole of Kodokan Judo.  I suspect that this caused a not so subtle twisting of priorities amongst the growing membership of the Kodokan.  We can see the effects today in the way the International Judo Federation values competition above all else, and downplays or ignores the other 90 percent of the Kodokan syllabus.  What has happened is that in many modern budo, rank has simply become a symbol of competitive accomplishment and not a reflection of system mastery or responsibility.

This leaves me with the sad reflection that we have two different answers to the question of rank.  The first is what should rank mean?  It should be a reflection of student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it.  The second question is what does rank actually mean?  In koryu bugei, rank is still a reflection of a student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it.  In gendai budo sometimes rank is a reflection of a student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it, and sometimes it is a recognition of the student’s competitive accomplishments.  Figuring out which is which usually isn’t too difficult.

A Rant About Budo And Sports

I’m blowing a gasket about budo just now. Dr. Ann Maria DeMars, the first US women's world judo champion reduces the benefits of judo to those of tennis or golf. Steam coming out my ears that the art I love so much has fallen so far even in the eyes of its champions. She wrote on her blog

...I'm not convinced that, in the U.S., competing at the highest level is that positive. It costs a lot of money that most of the students I coach don't have. If we are going to do fundraising, I want it to be for something that is a positive experience for them - not an ego trip for coaches and referees. The benefit of judo should be to meet people from different walks of life, see the country, get exercise, test your skills. Too many tournaments are not focused on that - they're on making sure your belt is tied right, you bow properly and you never violate any of a set of rules that seems to be changed every Thursday.

There are lots of benefits to training martial arts.  Budo, including Kodokan Judo, teaches a lot of things while learning and practicing the principles of conflict, whether armed or unarmed.  In addition to the fundamental principles of conflict, including combative spacing, timing, rhythm, tactics and strategy for dealing with all sorts of conflict, effective self-defense skills, the conscious ability to read peoples posture and movement.  It should also teach discretion about how and when to use those skills, respect, honor and dignity.  

Sadly, when the focus of a martial art becomes competition, those benefits are soon lost.  Dr. DeMars reduces a great budo to little more than a social gathering with health benefits.  Her concern about judo seems to be keeping it a positive experience for the students and not letting coaches’ and referees’ go on ego trips.  Nothing about actual application of the skills learned, nothing about respect, honor and dignity.

On top of the things she has lost, there is the problem of over-specialization. To do well in any competitive field, you have to specialize.  In judo competition you have to specialize in what the rules will allow.  Competitors never waste time on anything that doesn’t apply to competition.  The result is that people only learn judo at very close distances.  They never study anything that can’t be used in competition, and as Dr. DeMars does note, the rules change frequently, often based on what the International Judo Federation thinks will make the Olympic Committee happy, rather than based on what makes good judo.  One result is that most people who’ve started judo since a bunch of rules changes in 2010 are completely unaware of the existence of Kata Garuma, one of the signature techniques of Kodokan Judo’s founder Jigoro Kano.  People who do competitive judo know only what is included in competition, and even there, they often practice a limited set of techniques that they specialize in using in competition.

Even if we only talk technique, Kodokan Judo includes so much more than sport judo that I feel like competitive judoka are voluntarily blinding themselves.  They don’t know anything about controlling spacing and timing for any attack other than a grab.  They never learn about strikes or weapons attacks.  They are completely ignorant of whole classes of techniques, from strikes to joint locks to weapons defences.  They never learn about handling attacks from any angle that isn’t allowed in competition.

Over and above that, the values they learn are only those of the sporting field.  Sports are nice and popular, but the etiquette and behavior are a bit thin.  Good sportsmanship isn’t the same as honor and respect.  Kano Shihan established two fundamental principles of what makes something his Judo; Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort and Mutual Benefit And Welfare.

The first, Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort does get mentioned a lot..  The sports guys seem to like this one because it’s an effective strategy for winning. The problem is that it’s supposed to be a strategy for living, not just a method for judging the effectiveness of techniques.  The techniques of Judo are supposed to be a physical method for learning and experiencing this principle as something that can be applied everywhere, all the time.  Instead it’s reduced to a trick for figuring out how to win trophies.

Then there’s the other foundational principle of Kodokan Judo; Mutual Welfare And Benefit.  The idea is that everyone benefits from training and practice.  Judo practice is a group activity.  To really practice Judo you have to have a partner.  You can do the movements alone, but without a partner you’re not really doing Judo.  When you have a partner, both of you are supposed to progress in your understanding and application of Judo’s principles.  

This is a great lesson.  You get so much more of value out of things when everyone involved benefits.  This is a strategy that can be applied throughout life.  I even manage to apply it regularly in the competitive world of business.  There is a fundamental difference between life, including a competitive are like business, and sport.  Sports like competitive judo are zero sum games.  No matter how many people are involved, there can be only one winner.  By definition, everyone else has to lose.

Life, even in it’s competitive aspects, is not a zero sum game.  I know in America, what I’m about to write is close to heresy, but in life, there don’t have to be losers and winners.  The most effective solutions are the ones where everyone gains something.  When I negotiate something in business, the best strategy, and the one that wins the most agreements, is to make sure my partners in the negotiations benefit as well.  If they aren’t benefitting, why should they agree to what I’m asking for?  Mutual Benefit And Welfare.  Make sure everyone benefits from what you are doing.  Don’t just divide the pie.  See what you can do to make pie bigger, so everyone gets more, regardless of the percentage.

Competitive sports though, are zero sum games, and this drives what I find to be a selfish and thoughtless attitude as the level of competition climbs.  I’ve witnessed too much bad behavior at the highest levels of judo competition, behavior that runs completely counter to the principle of Mutual Benefit And Welfare. I see people who will use questionable techniques that can endanger themselves and their opponents, people who cheer their victory when an opponent loses on a technicality, people who by their behavior show that they have no respect for the human being they are facing and see them as only something to be broken if it gets in their way.  This not to say that I don’t also see good sportsmanship in competitive judo, because I do see it. Good sportsmanship though is a faint shadow of the values I expect from someone who calls himself a judoka.

In Judo there principles and techniques.  The techniques are just expressions of those principles.  They are a means for elucidating high level ideas and making them concrete.  We are always trying to refine and improve our understanding and application of the principles.  The goal is for everyone to benefit and grow.  In budo, including Judo, there is no such thing as perfect. There is only progress.

Dr. DeMars though seems to think that continued progress is not really possible.  If the only measure used is that of competition, she may be right.  In the same blog she writes that “I think far too many people continue teaching judo for too long…..I'm not nearly as fast or strong as I was 30 years ago. What I can do and demonstrate is limited.”    Our bodies don’t perform as well as we age.  If the goal is continuous improvement of our understanding and application of the principles however, there is never a reason to stop.  We’re not trying to win anything.  We’re trying to progress as judoka.  We want to continue learning to be more efficient, more effective, and more beneficial for our partners to work with.  Really, if a technique or application works well for someone who is 50, 60 or 70, than it ought to be amazing when a  20 year old learns to apply it in the same way.  As we age, we have motivation to refine and explore techniques and ideas that we would never bother with when we are young and hale.

Dr. DeMars completely neglects Judo’s ability to empower its students.  I often hear the word “empower” tossed around, but Judo, like all budo, really does give students power.  It gives them the power of conflict and violence.  It’s a power I dearly hope they will never need, but it is a power that means they no longer have to be intimidated by anyone physically.  I have seen how it changes peoples’ relationship with the world, especially women.  They get ownership of the power of violence, and they no longer stand as potential victims of it, but they stand as owners of that power.

Everything I’ve talked about gets lost if Judo is reduced to a mere sport for meeting people from different walks of life, seeing the country, getting exercise, and testing your skills, one where the rules are constantly tweaked to make it more interesting for spectators or to be more photogenic for television.  I’m saddened and furious to see what a small, relatively worthless and easily replaced thing someone like Dr. DeMars views her judo as.  I understand that competition is fun, but just doing competition seems to be to be like eating nothing but fries and ice cream.  There’s not much nutrition for the mind and spirit there, and it can be awful for the body.

I’ve started teaching judo again, but I can’t honestly recommend that my students go anywhere near any place that focuses on competitive judo. 

Laws of Budo

I have a few rules of budo.  Maybe you can add some more.

The Laws Of Budo

1.  Don't be there.  Don't be where the fight starts.  If that fails, don't be where the blow falls.  Just don't be there.

2.  There is no perfect in budo.  There is only progress.

3.  If you find yourself in a fair fight, there is something wrong with your tactics and strategy.

4.  Maximum effectiveness, minimum effort (Kano Shihan was a genius).

5.  Getting hit up side the head with a stick is a great reminder of why you don't want to get hit with a stick.

Outside Training

This started as a quick note I was going to toss off in a couple of minutes.  More than an hour later it had gotten a little out of hand.  Sorry about that.

I spent about 3 hours in the dojo this morning. We warmed up with the Seiza No Bu from Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho, and then I taught Rick a new kata, Ushiro, from the Tachi Waza No Bu.  After that we did some kenjutsu, and suddenly 2 hours were gone and he had to go to.  Then I worked on some kata from Shinto Muso Ryu alone.  It was good dojo practice.  The thing I haven't been doing enough of recently though is the outside training.  I need to be doing more of this.  That’s my plan for this afternoon.

For me, outside training is critical, but it's probably not what most people think of.  This doesn't include things like practicing kata and techniques at home.  That's still training inside the style and the system.  Outside training is training that happens outside the formal definition of the styles that I study, and it include some physical training, but mostly it's mental.

The physical training is the smallest part of outside training.  That’s just going to the gym to make sure all parts of my body are getting the exercise they need to be balanced and healthy and able to support what I do in the dojo.  A little time in the gym can make the dojo time much more productive, and I do mean a little time.  I’m looking to keep my body balanced and strong, so I spend most of my limited gym time making sure that I’m not getting overly strong in one direction.  I also try to stretch regularly.

The biggest part of my outside training though is reading and thinking.  I read stuff that makes me think about my budo and the principles related to it.  There are some books that I come back to time and time to read and ponder, there are others that I only read once, but they are all part of my training.  My favorite book for the philosophical side of budo, and I absolutely recommend it to everyone who trains in any martial art, is “Dueling With O’Sensei” by Ellis Amdur.   Amdur does a fabulous job of taking some of the great budo cliches and ideas, such as katsujinken and really giving them a hard look under some very real conditions.  He works doing crisis intervention, often with extremely violent individuals, so his starting point is always very concrete and practical.  He’s not taking a theoretical approach.

Right now I’m reading an wonderful biography of the man who influenced modern budo far more than anyone else, Kano Jigoro, the founder of Kodokan Judo, creator of the modern budo rank system, member of the International Olympic committee, sponsor who brought karate master Funakoshi Gichin from Okinawa to Tokyo and introduced karate to Japan, the driving force behind making physical education an important part of the Japanese education system and the person who got Judo included in the Japanese education system.  The book, The Way Of Judo, is loaded with information about budo and Japan during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.  Ideas about what the “Way” Kano saw students of Judo treading and what that means for how he envisioned Judo.  It gives me insight into the kinds of lessons that kata and keiko are intended to teach.

I’m reading books about the history of different Do 道, such as tea ceremony and calligraphy to improve my understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of the concept of Do in Japanese culture.  Budo did not have any sort of national network and discussion until Kano Shihan created Judo.  Before that, all budo was local, though there were some interesting conversations started in old Edo.  On the other hand, tea ceremony dates to the 15th century or earlier, started to get organized into schools under Rikyu in 16th century, and had organizations that stretched across much of Japan by the end of the 1600s.   Tea ceremony styles, calligraphy schools, and flower arranging were having discussions about the nature of training and personal development on a national scale centuries before budo achieved anything close to that level of organization and discussion.  Since tea ceremony and calligraphy were considered essential parts of the training of a true gentleman in Japan, the ideas developed there appear to have quickly found their way into the writings of budo teachers, all of whom were certainly learning calligraphy, and many who were learning tea ceremony.  One surprise for me has been how little Buddhist and Taoist thought has to do with these, and how much Confucian ideas do.

I’m also learning things about physiology and the body under stress that change my understanding of training.  I’ve often heard that competition in the martial arts is supposed to teach you how to react and control yourself under the stress of a real conflict.  I believed it too.  The only problem is that the stress of actual physical conflict is orders of magnitude greater than anything going on in competition.  You don’t get anywhere near the dump of adrenalin and other hormones during competition that you do in a threat situation.  In a threat, adrenalin and other hormones drop into your system, you heartbeat flies up over 170 beats per minute, your fine motor control vanishes, and a number of other things happen.  A good place to start learning about this is Dave Grossman’s book On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace.  A lot of things I’d heard in the dojo turned out to be completely wrong at fundamental, physiological levels, so wrong that they could get you in serious trouble.  Grossman does a nice job of pulling a lot of research together, and the bibliography could keep you busy for quite a while.

Of course I’m also reading classics of Chinese thought, especially the ones that have had a significant impact on the ideas and thinking of classical Japan where the arts and ways I’m studying and training in were created and developed.  Be sure to read The Art Of War by Sun Tsu, The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze,  the Chuang Tze, some of the writings of Confucius are essential too (some of Confucius can be difficult.  Start with The Great Learning and some of the Analects.  He seems boring, but he was writing about the essential relationships in life and how to develop as a great human being.  It’s important if you want to understand budo relationships and expectations, especially if you ever travel to Japan).  

I’m going to be reading more about Japanese history as well, so I can place the various ideas within the budo I study in the proper context to be understood.  Things that developed in the Sengoku era of constant war and the early Tokugawa period when people were still afraid that civil war would break out are very different from things developed in the middle Tokugawa era up to about 1850, when the Pax Tokugawa was accepted and expected to continue.  Beyond that, the budo developed at the end of the 1800’s after the fall of the Tokugawa government and the embrace of modern Western technology and the mad dash to overtake the West is very different from all that had come before.  On top of this, if you don’t understand the impact of the US occupation on modern budo, particularly Judo, Kendo and Karatedo, how they are taught and organized, it’s impossible to understand what they really are, and what was jettisoned in the 1950s.  Much was jettisoned, not to make the Americans happy, but rather to please Japanese bureaucrats who were busy crafting a new image for Japan in the international community.

All of this is outside training, but it is vital for my training in the dojo as well.  I admit it, I’m a budo geek, but I believe a basic knowledge of the history of budo, some of its philosophical ideas, and the real physiology of budo and conflict are essential to full growth and development on the Way.  Budo is not just a bunch of movements and techniques.  It absolutely demands a robust philosophical and intellectual framework to give it its proper place in our world.  The only way to get that is through outside training.

Train Every Day, or Everyday Training?

Leading up to the New Year, I ran across a number of proposals for people to make a special effort and do some sort of training every day.  I was a little surprised, because I thought, perhaps naively, that most people do train every day.  Training feels good.  That’s one of the big reasons I’m still studying and practicing and training after all these years.  I really enjoy getting into the dojo and training as often as I can. That’s what most people seem to think of when you talk about training every day.  Everyday training though is what you do all that other time when you’re not in the dojo.  Our training shouldn’t be what we do in the dojo.  That’s where we learn what we have to work on.  The real training is what we do in our everyday life.  

We go into the dojo and we learn and we practice and we refine.  What are we learning and practicing and refining?  If we’re doing karate, we’re learning stances and movements, and how to strike, block and kick from those stances and movements.  In judo we learn to move with good posture so we can throw without being thrown.  In weapons arts, we learn to to handle a sword, staff or other weapon while moving so we are strong and stable and not leaving openings where we can be attacked.  Is there anything common about all of these descriptions?

I’ve said before that the only things I really teach are how to walk and how to breathe.  Once we start learning these fundamentals, there is no reason not to practice them all the time.  How good our budo is depends on how well we master the fundamentals of moving and breathing, so we should be practicing these things every chance we have.   We spend a lot of time in the dojo getting our posture corrected, being told what we are doing wrong with our legs and body.  These corrections aren’t just for the dojo.  Budo practice doesn’t stop when we bow to our teacher, say “Thank you” and leave.  That’s when it begins.

When we walk out the dojo door, we’re walking and breathing.  We are moving.  We should also be practicing applying the lessons about how to stand and walk and breath.  Way back when I started judo in the dark ages, the US Judo Association test requirements included, from the first test, a demonstration of shizen hontai, or natural body posture.  Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?  We had to demonstrate natural body posture.  If it’s natural, why check for it? It turns out that good body posture isn’t really natural. Our natural postures are loaded with problems.  We slouch.  We push our heads out in front of our bodies.  We look at the floor.  We’re stiff.  We don’t balance well, and have all sorts of other problems.

Good shizen hontai really isn’t natural. It’s optimal.  It’s about standing in an optimal manner that is ready without being stiff, relaxed without collapsing, and capable of moving in accord with whatever happens.  There’s nothing natural about this.  Shizen hontai, it turns out, is tough to do right.  Even after a couple of decades of practice, I’m still working on it.  Standing around is one of those everyday things that I do that is practice every time I do it.  It’s just an everyday thing that is part of my everyday practice.  When I’m standing still, I check how I’m holding my head, and make sure it’s floating properly.  I feel how my legs connect to my pelvis and make sure the weight and stress is equal.  I make sure my butt isn’t sticking out in back, that my hips are under my shoulders and above my ankles.  There are always little things to correct.  I won’t even talk about all the things I’m trying to fix in my sitting posture.

Walking is really tough.  I have to pay attention to where I’m going while I try to correct various problems.  When I get too involved with fixing my movement, I’ve been known to walk into doors and walls.  So in addition to making sure I’m moving smoothly, maintaining good balance and posture, keeping my whole body working as a coordinated whole and breathing properly from my diaphragm, I have to pay attention to where I’m going.  I’m nowhere near good enough to try that walking and chewing gum simultaneously thing.  That would be a disaster.   

Standing and walking are everyday activities.  These are activities I do every day.  The are also integral parts of my training.  The more I integrate proper stance and movement into my everyday activities, the less I have to focus on them when I’m in the dojo training.  I practice the fundamentals all the time, because they are fundamental.  In judo and jodo and iaido, good fundamental movement and posture is more powerful than anything else I can do.  

Good movement and posture isn’t just for the moments of the kata, or the 3 minutes between “Hajime!” and “Yame!”  Good posture and movement is for every moment of every day.  It’s great practice for what we do in the dojo.  It makes the practice in the dojo more relaxed, more a part of me and less something that is being imposed upon my body by my mind.  Body and mind are working together.  Even more though, this is the everyday application of what I’m learning in the dojo.  I’m walking casually with good balance, proper, relaxed breaths, and solid, stable movement.  

When I’m under fire in a meeting or a discussion or dealing with one of the many complete jerks the universe seems to have such an abundance of, I’m standing casually with proper balance, relaxed and breathing deeply, with relaxed shoulders and back, nothing showing that the verbal attacks could be upsetting me, relaxed even though the jerk is trying to intimidate me by getting right in my face and trying to steal my personal space.  It’s amazing how powerful a practical application of budo this is.  No matter how intense the attacks and the attempts at intimidation, it’s surprising how quickly they wilt and melt away when they don’t have any visible effect. I’ll admit, it can be almost as stressful as when my teacher decides it’s time for my training to be ramped up to the next level of intensity, but that’s part of the training and the application.  The more I make these fundamental parts of budo fundamental parts of my everyday training, the less effort it takes to stay relaxed and stable and calm regardless of what’s coming at me.

This is budo after all.  Budo is a path that leads through all parts of life, not a single place set apart from everything else and hidden from the rest of life.  It’s supposed to seep out of the kata and dojo and permeate our whole lives, our whole selves.  The first, and perhaps most important part of us that budo should color is how we move and carry ourselves.  This should be something that gets worked on and polished all the time.

Training isn’t something we do every day. There shouldn’t be anything special about training. Just like taking a shower, getting dressed and eating breakfast, training is an everyday activity.  Don’t train every day.  Make the everyday your training.

Mindful training

I write a lot about how to train in kata, and uke's role in pushing and stressing their partner by changing the speed, rhythm, timing and intensity of the kata.  I tell people to never train anything more than once.  My point with all of these is to develop the skill at a higher level than just automatic.  Whenever we do something, we should be fully engaged or we aren't training well, and we aren't learning good budo.  This article is a great discussion of the proper mindset for training and learning anything.  "Going From Good To Great With Complex Tasks"

The Dojo As The World: Learning To Deal With Violence And Power

                                                

“If the aikido training mat is the world, it’s the world under a magnifying glass. Subtle personality quirks are made large and clear. Hidden agendas come quickly to light. Every attempt at overreaching is revealed in sharp relief.”—

George Leonard Sensei

“The Way of Aikido - Life Lessons from an American Sensei”

                   

Budo, like many things, can be seen as a microcosm of life.  The dojo is a lot like the world.  It’s a part of the world so this shouldn’t surprise us.  What is often surprising is how intense experiences in the dojo can be.  Activities in the dojo are a lot like any other place where people gather to participate in a shared interest.  In the dojo though, everything seems more focused and intense.

Why should budo training in the dojo seem so much more intense than other activities?

Maybe it’s because in the dojo we are dealing with essential issues that we sweep under the rug and that polite society tries to avoid or hide rather than face head on.  In the dojo we deal with violence and power and force.  None of these things are even discussed much in polite society, yet we deal with them all the time.  It is considered unseemly to suggest that violence and force  are applied in life, or that people use power in ways that are bad for those around them.

I’ve written about trust in the dojo before.  That trust is built precisely because we are working with these raw building blocks of violence and power and force.  Society works to suppress physical violence and expressions of force and naked power.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I’m pretty sure I don’t want to live place where these are frequently in play.  I like living in a place where violence and physical encounters are rare.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t understand them and be able to deal with them.

We practice actual violence in the dojo.  We train in the purposeful application of force. These things translate into real, physical power.  Regardless of the ways in which society suppresses the use of violence, force, and power, they exist in society and are used in a myriad of subtle and not so subtle ways.  People use the implication of physical power, or the threat of the use of other power, whether economic or social, to get what they want.

In the dojo, violence, force, and power are all out in the open, and we have to learn not only the mechanics of how to do violence and apply power, but how we feel about these things.   Some people come in very timid and unsure of themselves and afraid to use whatever power they do possess.  Others enter the dojo brimming with apparent self-confidence and believing their strength will make them powerful fighters right away.  There are people who have had bad experiences being subjected to violence and sometimes there are people who have been bullies who are looking to enhance their reputation for power.  There all the other folks strung out along the spectrum, each with their own agenda and expectations.

In the dojo we deal with violence, force and power at their most basic level.  If I’m teaching sword or staff work, one of the first things that happens is I tell my student to hit me, and she doesn’t. She pulls the cut or strike. So I tell her to hit me again.  And again she doesn’t hit me.  Consistently new students will pull cuts because they don’t want to hurt anyone. This is the most common reaction the first time I ask a student to hit me. Most students have an admirable hesitation to do things that will hurts another person.  One part of training is learning to trust their partner, and one part is learning to trust themselves.  

Which is harder to do depends on the student.  Some of them have learned to be afraid of their own power, so we have to work together until they can commit to trying to hit me without fear that I will be angry or upset when they do.  Mostly there is no problem here.  As the teacher in a koryu tradition, I’m used to being the beating dummy for new students.  They need someone to attack that can safely handle what they are doing.  They have to invest the time to develop control and precision.  The time this takes varies a lot.

It’s wonderful watching students develop.  Those who are afraid of their power gradually learn that it’s ok to use it in the dojo.  The dojo is a safe place to learn about power.  Students take time developing a new relationship with power and violence.  One goal is for students who are afraid of their power and any sort of violence to establish a relationship with power and violence that contains neither fear nor domination.  Power is a tool, and I want my students to be comfortable with it, but not enthralled with using it.

I do get a few on the other end of the spectrum though, who try wholeheartedly to put me in the hospital with a concussion.  Some of them are already brimming with confidence.  Some assume that if I’m dumb enough to tell them to hit me, I deserve whatever I get.  Some are bringing their own issues to the dojo and are just thrilled to have someone to hit.  Strangely enough, one of the goals for these students is the same as for the students who are afraid of their power: to establish a relationship with power and violence that contains neither fear nor domination nor an excessive reliance on it.

The dojo is a microcosm of life, and it is populated by all the same characters the rest of life is filled with.  What is unique is how raw the interactions in the dojo are.  Dojo etiquette can feel unbelievably stiff and strict, but that’s because it has to mediate the raw power and violence that is the life of a dojo. We see how people handle the etiquette and we see how they relate to power and violence.  We see how they treat their partners and we learn how they respect others.  This is life in a jar.  We get to practice all those encounters we have every day outside the dojo where the power and violence are only implied and suggested in place and manner where the power and violence is overt and literally in your face.

That jerk who insists on intimidating people by standing way too close and leaning into people’s faces?  He’s in the dojo and he’s still trying to push too close and intimidate you.   Don’t worry about it.  Here it’s not only acceptable to push him back, it’s entirely appropriate, and if you combine it with a gentle whack up side the head to remind him to keep safe ma’ai, all the better. The quiet one in the corner cubicle who is always worried about not upsetting anyone and keeps her head ducked down so you can’t see her eyes?  She’s there, and give her all the respect she deserves.  Just coming in the door is one of the toughest things she’s ever done.  That mouthy, arrogant guy who knows he’s better than everyone?  He’s there too, and hide your smile.  Yes, he’s going to get slapped down repeatedly by the seniors until he learns that he’s not better than everyone, but it’s rude to show how much you enjoy seeing it happen.  The guy who seems to like causing pain and problems purely for the pleasure of being able to cause them?  Yes, he’s here too, and the seniors will undoubtedly let him know that unnecessary pain and violence won’t be tolerated here.  They’ll probably let him know this and start ratcheting up the amount of pain and violence he receives until he gets the message. All the types of people that you meet in the world come walking through the dojo door, bow at the side of the training space, enter and take part.

So is there anything different from the dojo that makes putting up with all of these characters worth the bother?  Really, they are bad enough at work or in the gym where they aren’t allowed to act out their issues physically, so why would anyone want to put up with them in the dojo where they can act upon all the implied violence of polite society?  

Perhaps because all of us in the dojo are working on the same things, whether we know it or not.  We are learning to handle our own ability for violence as well as the extent and precision of our own power.  Whatever issues we have outside the dojo will be clear to everyone in the dojo.  It doesn’t matter what issues we bring with us though, in the dojo we all learn to generate and apply power with precision, whether the application is straightforward or subtle.  Some have trouble using power and violence, others are completely comfortable with it. The ones who have issues using power and violence gradually become adept at it.  Eventually I don’t have to tell them to hit me.  They know they can do it, that it’s expected and that it’s okay. They become comfortable with their ability to apply power and not hurt me, because they choose not to.  They get comfortable with being pressured and attacked.  The ones who had learned to pressure and attack people outside the dojo discover that always pressuring and attacking people may not be the best route.  Everyone develops a new relationship with violence and power and force.  

Out there in the world we have to make do applying the lessons we’ve learned.  In the dojo, despite having all the same people and issues are staring back at us, or perhaps because they are there with us, we are actively working to learn new lessons about violence, power and force.  Both the overly aggressive and the overly timid can learn the same lessons about being discriminating as to when and how much force to apply.  We learn to discriminate between when someone is an actual threat and when they are trying to be threatening from what is in truth a weak position.  The timid learn that they have power and how to use it.  The aggressive learn that being overly aggressive is not a successful strategy.  Both are learning when and how to apply force and when not to.  They learn how use the power they possess and not place themselves in weak positions.  

The dojo is the world in microcosm.  All the same people and problems are gathered there.  The interactions in the dojo are intensified because all the issues with power and violence are out in the open and being actively worked with.  The wonderful thing is that in the dojo we are all learning to better understand and appreciate the use of power, force and violence.  We learn when to use it and when not to, what can be successful and what will be ruinous, when to push back and when to just get out of the way.  It’s the world in microcosm, but better, because we are learning what to do in the world instead of just stumbling along with whatever lessons life happened to teach us before.

A Wonderful Dojo

I've seen some impressive dojo in my travels, but never anything like this.  This gentlemen dug out a a 6 meter x 4 meter cave and made a truly impressive dojo!

http://www.shinsokai.com/the_shinsodo.php

What impressive dojo have you seen?

What Kata Isn't

Let’s get this straight.  Classical martial arts kata are not practice fighting.  They are not what fighting is or was. Martial arts kata do not simulate combat conditions.  They do not recreate actual combat scenarios.  If kata aren’t any of these things, then what are they, and why bother with them?

Kata are pre-arranged training sequences.  Kata are training scenarios for learning about essential elements of conflict.  I train in both classical and modern Japanese martial arts, and both use a lot of kata.  Classical arts tend to focus almost entirely on kata training.  Gendai arts like Judo use a combination of formal kata training, randori/sparring, and informal kata.

Kata are not for mimicking combat . Kata are for getting better at combat. They are a training tool for learning the skills necessary for dealing with combat.  They are an exceptional tool that has survived hundreds of years of testing and application. As a training tool, they provide a framework for practicing various aspects of combat, not just repeating techniques or practicing in a sparring situation where much of what is effective is not acceptable because of the risk of injury.  

Kata is not sparring, and with good reason.  All sparring assumes a dueling scenario.  2 people faced off and fighting.  Any equipment is equal.  There are no surprises, no unexpected changes. There is an assumption of fairness.  Kata is not handicapped by any of these of these assumptions.  Kata allows a much broader investigation of conflict conditions.

Classical martial arts kata generally start out simple, but they rarely assume anything is fair or equal.  Araki Ryu Kogusoku is famous for one of the first kata taught to its students.  It assumes asymmetrical armament (tori has a tray, uke has a tanto), and applies surprise to defeat the better armed opponent.  There is nothing fair about this situation.  It is unfair and tricky and applies deception.  Just like a lot of conflict in real life.  Sparring is worthless for learning these lessons.

The kata of Kodokan Judo, unlike the games of Olympic Judo, rarely assume anything is fair or balanced.  The Kime No Kata is a great example.  It is a set of kata of encounters between two people.  One person, always unarmed, is attacked in sequence in a variety of scenarios.  First the two are kneeling facing each other, as if talking, and one, uke, attacks the other in a variety of unprovoked and basically surprise attacks.  Then uke attacks from the rear.  After that a succession of attacks with a knife from the front and side.  Then both stand up and there are unarmed attacks from the front, side and rear, followed by attacks with knife, stick and sword.

Sparring is extremely limited in so many ways that kata is not.  In all of these jujutsu kata, the only thing the person being attacked, nage in Judo terminology, know is what attack is coming.  They don’t know when, or how fast, or from what range, or how strong the attacks will be.  Uke has complete control over these.  

One complaint sparring enthusiasts often make about kata is that you always know what attacks are being made, so it’s never a surprise.  The same is true in sparring.  In sparring a very small set of techniques and attacks are allowed, and the vast majority of possible attacks are excluded under the rules.  On top of that, in sparring the attacks are always coming from the front, eliminating 75% of the directions attacks come from.  With it representing such a tiny fraction of possible encounters, sparring seems quite overrated as a training method for anything except sports encounters.

Another thing kata isn’t is completely prearranged.  Kata leave a lot of room for changes in range, timing and rhythm. In koryu bugei systems, the uke is always supposed to be the senior, more experienced person.  It’s uke’s job to control the speed of the kata so their partner is always learning and being pushed into new territory.  In addition, just because know exactly which attack is coming doesn’t mean handling the attack is easy.  No one tells uke when he has to attack.  Uke gets to decide the exact moment of the attack, its speed and intensity.  I have had uke’s drive me completely helpless just by drawing out the attack a little bit and then drawing me into responding at a different rhythm and speed than they attack with.  This left me wide open with a big stick incoming at speed and completely unable to do anything about it.

Kata isn’t locked into one interpretation.  Uke’s job is to adapt the kata’s speed, intensity and range to the student’s level so they learn as much as possible from the training.  Kata also isn’t locked into just one uke.  If you train with many different uke, each will bring different things to the training, things that make each practice of the kata unique.  Different sizes, heights, strengths, speeds and levels of experience in each uke  all combine to change the kata every time you do it.

Kata doesn't have to work every time you do it.  In fact, when you are learning, it shouldn't work a lot of the time.  You should be making mistakes and your partner should be stopping to show you why that particular way of doing it won't work.  There is abundant room in kata training for failing.   Are you getting bored?  Then uke should ramp up the speed so you are having difficulty doing the kata.  Or get a more powerful uke. Or one who is difficult for your to read. Boredom banished.  If you are practicing kata in such a way that you can always make it work, you're doing it wrong.

Kata isn’t some dead, fossilized thing that you trot out to see how things were done at some time in the past.  Kata are vital and alive and being changed and adapted all the time.  No one says you and your partner can’t decide to try the kata differently and see what an appropriate response would be if you change one element.  For advanced students, that’s a great thing to try.  The creation of kata isn’t over either.  People are creating new kata all the time.  Most new kata don’t end up being preserved and passed on, but sometimes the kata have enough value that they are added to their system.  The history of styles like Eishin Ryu and Shinto Muso Ryu show how things were added to these systems down through the centuries.  Gendai budo do the same.  Kodokan Judo didn’t create the Kodokan Goshin Jutsu until the 1950s.  Over time, kata get tested, and the worthwhile ones are kept and passed on, while the others are dropped and forgotten.

Kata are a teaching method for practicing the most fundamental and important aspects of conflict.  They are a time tested method that allows you to practice all sorts of dangerous attacks and defenses in a controlled manner.  Kata allow attacks from every angle at all sorts of speeds and force levels, and they allow that practice in all sorts of asymmetrical match-ups. Kata give practitioners the opportunity to practice these match-ups at a variety of speeds, strengths and intensities, so they can grow and their skills progress.