When to specialize

A friend asked about when is it appropriate for a Judo student to start specializing in one technique.  He’d been talking with other instructors who emphasize that students should pick one technique and specialize in it.

I think the defining thing about this discussion is that the other instructors are building their entire discussion around competition.  For competitive judoka, there are really only a few techniques that have been proven overwhelmingly to be the strongest in the competitive arena.  I don’t remember the exact list, so I googled it. http://www.bestjudo.com/article/0924/frequency-judo-techniques

Uchimata

Seoinage

Osotogari

Ouchigari

Harai Goshi

Tai Otoshi

If you are a competitor, based on the evidence, these techniques are clearly the most effective under the rules of judo competition.  For a competitive orientation, I think it would be a fairly simple procedure to introduce these 6 techniques and then let the student discover which one best suits that student.  I don’t really think it is too early to start specializing as a green belt if competition is your goal.  I don’t think you should stop learning other techniques, but those should be part of the variety of training, while you spend some time every practice polishing your primary technique.

If you are learning Kodokan Judo, or you want a more rounded self-defense base, then you will need to learn a variety of techniques that can be used in conditions other than those of the competition mat.  Competitive judo is great at close gripping range, but it teaches nothing about techniques and timing at other ranges.  That’s what kata are for.  Kata teach a lot of things that are useless to the competitor, but vital in self-defense, such as understanding striking ranges and timing, dealing with non-competition standard attacks and assaults, and what the range and distance of a variety of weapons are.  Too much specialization may actually be detrimental to this type of training because you have to have flexibility to change your responses to suit the conditions.

Competition is a very specialized activity and it makes sense to specialize if that is where your focus/interest lies.  If your interest lies elsewhere, heavy specialization may actually interfere with applying the appropriate response.

Thanks Frank.  This was a good question.

What is Budo?

I wrote this in response to a question on an email list about "What is Budo?" and thought it was worth putting out for more public comment.


Shinto Muso Ryu, Shinto Hatakage Ryu, Judo, and Aikido all share combative function and technique as their core practices. This gets them lumped together as “bugei” (literally “martial arts”) or “bujutsu” (martial skill). “Do” or “michi” both written 道 is a much more involved idea. While bugei / bujutsu can refer to just the techniques and skills practiced, anything with the “do” 道 suffix implies a class of not just technical activity, but also a means of polishing and developing the whole self and one’s way of dealing not just with the literal techniques of combat, but with how we approach every action and non-action throughout the day. This is both an elevation of martial activity to philosophical/spiritual and a spreading it out by making it apply to everything thing we do from putting on our shoes to sitting in a chair to drinking tea.  Anything that can be done mindfully should be impacted.
       To me, the first thing that is required for something to be budo is that it must be effective at a technical level. If it’s not effective for what it is trying to teach at the most basic level, it can never hope to reach level of a michi. If you’re not practicing to be martially effective, you’re certainly not doing budo. Any michi has to
be grounded in reality.  It’s clear how ways such as sado (Way of Tea) and kado (Way of Flowers) are grounded in reality. You are making, serving and appreciating tea, or you are arranging and appreciating
flowers. I haven’t figured out a way to fake either one of those. Budo unfortunately is rather dangerous to practice, so it easy to deceive yourself about what you are doing. I do Kodokan Judo, hopefully as budo, but it is very easy to do it as nothing more than a sport by forgetting or ignoring the parts that aren’t comfortable to do or aren’t allowed in the sporting context. In iaido, since it is a solo practice, it is easy to drift away from the martial aspects of the practice and let it become just a series of beautiful movements.
With jodo, if you and your partner are not serious, and don’t practice with strong intent, it too can become a pretty, choreographed dance  sequence. Budo requires that the intent, practice, and practicality.
       Effectiveness is only a necessary component of budo though.  Just because something is effective doesn’t make it a form of budo.  Krav Maga is extremely effective, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that it
is budo.  For something to be budo, it has to have the broader application to all aspects of life, and not be limited in its practice to combative situations.  It needs to have a philosophical bent to it that allows this broader application. It must be bujutsu, but it must have an additional facet that is informed by the threads of Taoism, Confucianism and 1000 years of Japanese thought on the issue of individual development through the mindful practice of mundane activities. This is the tough part, and I suspect there is a PhD dissertation in there somewhere.  I’m not talking about religion, but a concept of what it means to be human and how to perfect one’s self. The practices that effective at a technical level for a narrowly defined practical activity have to applicable beyond that, to all aspects of life. There is in Japanese thought the idea that by developing the body to do practical things perfectly, the mind will be developed as well. This is why people revere masters of flower arranging, tea ceremony, and calligraphy. Through polishing a practical skill, they are polishing their whole being, and when they display outer mastery of a skill, it is seen as confirmation of their
inner development.  I’m not sure it always works, but that’s the idea.  The tales of simple people who have achieved true understanding of the Tao through perfection of a common task abound.  The tale of Cook Ting is a great example.  He has mastered the art of cooking and through that gained insight into the nature of the universe.
       If your art can be do that, and be effective, then it might be a form of budo.

Practice

I have a couple of students who started recently, and teaching them has me focused on fundamentals even more than I usually am.  I often say "All I'm going to do is teach you to walk and to breath."  Having new students reminds me that this is very true.  We are working on fundamentals of posture, how to move, when to inhale and exhale.

Practice seems to focus on the simplest, most common activities.  Lately we're spending a lot of time working on breathing in a sensible way for what we are doing, standing and moving properly.  Practice is like that, even when I'm working on the "advanced" stuff.  Practicing the advanced stuff mostly seems to consist of making sure I'm breathing properly, standing in a relaxed, stable manner, and moving well from my hips without messing up my breathing or my posture.  Practice is always practice.

Iaido and Jodo are both kata based arts. The number of kata is very limited.  You learn the basic patterns and then you continue  practicing them.  After a few years you've "learned" all the kata in the system.   That is to say, you've learned the pattern of movements that make up the kata.  But learning the kata isn't what practice is all about.  Practice is doing the kata, studying it, learning to apply those basic concepts of proper breathing and posture to make the movements stronger, more solid, more unstoppable.  Every time I do a kata I see things that can be improved.  That's just the stuff I become aware of as I practice the kata.  True horror awaits me every time I see a video tape of myself.  Then I'm left with a grocery list of things to address.

Practice is going about the business of addressing those issues.  It's about never being satisfied with where you are, but always trying to move yourself forward.  There is always something to practice.  Breathing seems like such a simple thing.  Even babies do it, right? But breathing properly and fully is difficult.  I think I've gotten pretty good at breathing properly and fully, at least when I'm not moving.  The trick I'm working on now is breathing properly, fully, and at the right moment for each movement.  It's amazing how easy it is to get engrossed in the action of a kata and forget to breath until it's over.  I'm still practicing breathing.

And as for walking, I don't have nearly enough time to talk about practicing walking.  That's really complicated.  I keep practicing it though.

Art, Martial Art, and Life

I'm a martial artist. I train in several different budo. What does it mean to be a martial artist? For me it means that I'm constantly training to become myself. Not that I'm training strikes or cuts or throws or joint locks, but myself. I'm polishing who I am and how I interact with the world around me, and how I am connected to the world. It is training in the art of life.

I'm working on how to move in everyday life. The iaido kata I train aren't really about how I move with a sword. They are about how I move in the world. It's about how I get out of my car and how I move down the hallway. Most importantly, it's about what sort of face and posture I present to people I deal with. In iai, we spend a lot of time focused perfecting our movement. It's very similar to dance in that there are limited number of fundamentals that we drill and drill and drill. We drill until proper movement has become ingrained in our bodies so that we express it with every movement in or out of the dojo. A dancer is graceful on and off the stage, and a martial artist should be too.

In judo and jodo and other arts that emphasize paired practice, the focus shifts from perfect movement, thought this is still critical, to perfect timing and spacing. This is where the art of living in the world is practiced. In the dojo it's all about moving in time and space to be in the right place to dominate and control an opponent. Outside the dojo life is about moving in time and space to be in the right place at the right time for whatever is happening in our lives. The awareness and understanding of when and how people will move that we cultivate in the dojo is something that should be drawn on all the time. Moving through a crowd, dealing with a customer, a coworker, a boss, or a friend, what we can read from their body, and what we can accomplish by maintaining the relaxed, ready state we train for in the dojo makes budo relevant to every encounter, even ones we don't know we've had.

Washing a hakama

This isn't a discussion of great techniques, or esoteric thoughts on budo wisdom, but in the day-to-day life of martial artist, it can be important.  What's the best way to wash your hakama?  This is the method I use.

The first question is, is the hakama cotton or tetron or polyester?
If it's cotton, only wash it in cold water. I only wash mine in cold water and mine is tetron, but it's really important if it's cotton.

To wash the hakama, fold it neatly like you are putting it away, roll up the himo and put rubber bands on them to hold them, and then put the whole package in a delicates bag. Wash it in the delicates bag in cold water. This will help maintain the pleates so they are easy to find when you take it out of the washer.

Hang it up to drip dry. Press in the pleats with your fingers while it is still wet, and clip the bottom of each pleat with a clothes pin to help keep the pleats neat.

After it dries, fold it neatly.

If you have a tetron hakama, you probably won't need to iron it more than once or twice a year to keep the pleats looking nice.  If you have a cotton hakama, this makes the post-washing ironing process MUCH easier, because the pleats don't vanish in the washing machine.


Happy laundry day!

Getting to Black

I ran across the old chestnut about various belt colors from white to black resulting from a white belt that gradually gets dirtier and dirtier over time on a discussion board recently.  There are a couple of problems with this story, the biggest one being that it has no basis in fact.

Let's start with the fact that the traditional, white dogi tied with a belt isn't really traditional clothing for budo training in Japan.  Traditionally hakama were worn for budo practice.  There is no belt visible on the outside of hakama.  The hakama is tied over the top of the obi.  The modern training dogi was invented by Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, over a period of years at the end of the 19th century. It's based on classical Japanese underwear! In other words, it's not really traditional.

Kano Sensei also invented the modern rank system using "dan" ranks instead of the tradition teaching licenses that are issued by schools that predate the creation of Kodokan Judo.  As Kodokan Judo grew into a nationally practiced martial art, he wanted a visible means of telling the difference between beginners and students who had the basics, and so they used white belts for beginners and black belts for experienced students.  Originally there were also only 3 dan ranks, not the 10 that are now used.

As for the belt getting dirty over time, that ignores one great feature of Japanese culture.  The Japanese are fanatically clean as whole, and the idea of letting a piece of your training uniform get so dirty and nasty that it turned black is ridiculous.  No teacher would have let a student train with a belt like that, and no other student would have wanted to train with someone wearing anything close to that dirty.  Students take pride in their uniforms and are expected to make sure they are clean for every practice.  That includes the belt.

So, given the above, can we please put that dirty, smelly, obnoxious old story about dirty belts to rest?  Please.

What makes a good martial art?

So, what do you think makes a good martial art? And how do you judge?

A lot of people try to compare which martial art is better by comparing the very best practitioners each art has produced. This ends up being an argument over whether Bruce Lee could beat Ueshiba Morihei or something equally silly and pointless.  When your comparison involves people of great talent, what you end up comparing is the relative talents, not the martial arts.  I think it may be impossible to compare martial arts in a general sense.

Each martial art is created and practised with a different set of assumptions about timing, spacing, what weapons are being carried and what kind of attacks will be launched.  You can compare the effectiveness of a martial art in a particular scenario, but there are so many potential scenarios that all you are left with is that a particular art is better suited to any one scenario than another.  It still doesn't give you a clear base for comparison, unless you're convinced that potential scenarios come in a very limited set.  Is your scenario based on a confrontation in a bar, a bouncer at a nightclub, a police encounter on the street, a prison guard dealing with inmates, a soldier on the battlefield?  Different skills will be demanded for each of these.  And unless you work in a field where confrontation is part of the job description, the odds are good you won't need combat skills in your day-to-day living.

For me, it comes down to what the art offers me. Does it enhance some set of combat skills? Does the art address more than just the technique aspect of combat? Do the skills taught have some chance of being relevant for something in your life (not a fantasy of conflict, but what you're really liable to encounter)?
Are the skills learned applicable to anything besides actual combat?

So tell me, what makes a good martial art for you?

Effective Sword Arts

Someone asked me about finding effective Japanese sword arts, because they had heard some have been watered down.  I haven't answered them because I'm still trying to figure out what it means for a sword art to be "effective" in the 21st century.  We don't fight with swords anymore, and even if we wanted to, there are far more effective weapons these days.  So what does it mean for a Japanese sword art to be effective?
   
I'm afraid someone may be expecting too much from their idea of practice.  For me, an effective art is one that teaches the fundamentals of how to handle and use the weapon, and spends a lot of time teaching the concepts of maai and seme and sen.  Fancy techniques or "real" fighting scenarios aren't part of my practice. 

"Real" martial arts are pretty well stripped down to the basics.  Not watered down, but stripped down, as in anything extra or not absolutely necessary has removed.  Weapons combat doesn't leave a lot of room for fancy, even archaic weapons like swords.   But beyond that, when I think of effective martial arts, I think about how effective the practice is for refining myself and my understanding, not how effective it will make me in a Saturday night fight.  Training goes on every day.  If you're smart and just a little bit lucky, you'll never be in a fight.  So which is more important, those effective sword techniques, or effective training?

Training while injured

My knee is healing slowly, and I'm getting an education in the value of different kinds of training.  I still can't quite get into seiza, but I am pleasantly surprised to find that I can get into tatehiza.  I've been too a couple of iai seminars in the last few weeks, and I'm learning things about standing etiquette that hadn't really sunk in when I didn't have to use it.  Regular practice is good, and it is very interesting having to work out new kinks in seiza kata by doing them standing.  So much remains the same, breathing and posture are fundamental and some of the simple benefits I carry with every minute I'm not in the dojo.  But the foot work is just a little bit different standing, and that has been a lovely puzzle.

All that said, I really look forward to having a healthy knee again.

Budo and injuries

So, the Tuesday before Christmas, I went to Judo and had a great practice for the first 88 minutes of the 90 minute practice. Then I proceeded to bend my right knee 45 degrees to the right while failing to throw my partner. I discovered that my knee does not like being bent in that direction. In the aftermath, I am having to put into practice some lessons I've picked up over the years of budo training.

The first is RICE. We've all heard it. When injured Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate the injury. It's easy to do all of these right away, when the injury is still agonizing and the knee in question looks more like a grapefruit than a joint. It gets tougher to follow through with the prescribed treatment as the injury improves though. This is where other budo lessons come into play.

The second is LISTEN TO SENSEI. You might not realize it, but in Japan, doctors are addressed as "Sensei" just like teachers. Just as we learn to trust sensei's greater experience and knowledge in the dojo, we have to trust the doctor's greater experience and knowledge about the injury. Actually do what the sensei is telling you to do about your injury, don't just listen and ignore the parts that you find inconvenient. Sensei would not approve.

PATIENCE is the next lesson, and this one is tough. It takes years of training to advance in the martial arts, so you'd think we'd be pretty patient about rehabilitating an injury. Amazingly, I've known a lot of martial artists who's sole focus is getting back to training as soon as possible. What this really means is not "As soon as possible without risking re-injuring or permanently injuring yourself" but rather, "get back to training as soon as I can stand the pain, because I'm too tough for the consequences." I'm a little too familiar with this approach, having been a strong advocate of such stupidity when I was in college. Fortunately, I had teachers who would sit on me to keep me from going out on the mat for judo until after my ribs had finished healing. All that patience we learn as we work to polish our techniques over the years comes in handy while waiting a few weeks for an injury to heal.

Healing injuries need to be rehabbed in the right ways. The basic stretching and strengthening exercises are boring. Really boring. They can make kihon practice look fascinating (which it should be, but that's another post). Be persistent in doing the stretches to keep the muscles loose and healthy. Do them just like the therapist says. Do any exercises too.

But have some DISCRETION. Just because a little stretching and exercise are good for rehabbing an injury, it doesn't follow that a lot of stretching and exercise are better. Listen to your body and do the the exercises that are recommended, but don't overdo them. I know this is tough for a martial artist. Martial artists love to overdo training because it is the macho thing to do. That's part of why we learn so much about being injured. Have the good sense to balance any recommended rehab exercises with lots of rest.

TAKE IT SLOW when you start back. This is more patience, but it's worth repeating. You aren't going to master your art next week, so don't push your body to do things next week that it isn't ready for. Patience, discretion and listening to what your body tells you will carry you a long way without injuring you.

These are all lessons we're supposed to absorb from budo practice. Are you ready to prove that you've grown and developed these parts of yourself in addition to polishing your uchi mata?

Why the fascination with Zen Buddhism and Budo?

I am frequently told, by people who don't practice Zen Buddhism, that there is a special relationship between Zen and Budo. The more I look at it, the less sense this makes, because I can't find any particular characteristic of Zen Buddhism that is not present in other branches of Buddhism. Can someone please tell me what is unique about Zen Buddhism that would indicate it has a special relationship with Budo?

The goals of Zen Buddhism and all the other branches of Buddhism are ultimately the same, that's why they are all forms of Buddhism. The tools they use to get there are different, but they all strive for compassion, mindfulness and an escape from the cycle of rebirth. Zen uses primarily seated meditation, other forms of Buddhism meditate on mandala, or chant sutras, or use a combination of all of these techniques. With all the forms of Buddhism that have been practiced across Japan, what makes people think that only one branch of Buddhism had significant impact on something as organic and disorganized as Budo?

Kashima Gasshuku

I had a wonderful 3 days of training in Shinto Muso Ryu at the gasshuku held by Kaminoda Tsunemori Sensei at the Kashima Shinbuden Dojo in Kashima, Japan. The Shinbuden is a public dojo in Kashima near the Kashima Shrine. It is one of the major shrines in Japan related to the martial arts. The shrine and the Shinbuden are beautiful.

Kaminoda Sensei covered a lot of ground in the 3 days I was at the gasshuku. The training itself was wonderful, and continued for 3 days after I had to leave. The highlight of the gasshuku is always a Hono Enbu held at the dojo on the grounds of Kashima Shrine. Everyone participates, and we get to see excellent demonstrations by Kaminoda Sensei and his top students. This year was no exception.

There were demonstrations of Shinto Ryu Kenjutsu, Isshin Ryu Kusarigama, Ikkaku Ryu Jutte, and Uchida Ryu Tanjo, in addition to many, many demonstrations of Shinto Muso Ryu. This isn’t very interesting to anyone who wasn’t there, but it was really cool to be there.

After the enbu, we paid a visit to the grave of Tsukahara Bokuden, one of the great founders of kenjutsu in Japan. He is remembered as the founder of Kashima Shinto Ryu and a brilliant swordsman. It’s always kind of amazing to that we can connect this way with such a legendary figure.

The training which surrounded the enbu was wonderful. With many shihan available to give instruction, and with a deep pool of senior students to practice with, the training was wonderful. Everyone was doing the same kata together, but each training partner brought individual differences in size and strength, reach and height, timing and maai. All together they made a wonderful stew of training.

Practice

Practice. This is the single most important attribute for becoming good at budo. It doesn’t matter how talented you are. It doesn’t matter how nature gifted you with strength and speed. Without regular, ongoing practice, you won’t be good. Period.

This means getting out and practicing regularly, whether you have a partner or not. It means studying your art. Martial arts are learned through the conscious repetition of fundamentals. It takes a lot of dedication to repeat fundamental drills over and over again, but that’s where progress is made. Deep in the fundamentals.

There is a basic technique in Shinto Muso Ryu called Hikiotoshi Uchi. I may be a slow learner, but I keep learning new things about the technique. I also unlearn things about it very fast. I keep practicing it and discovering new things about the technique, but if I go for a while without practicing for some reason (most likely work), then my technique gets weak and sloppy. Without regular practice, I’m no good. No one is.

This should be obvious, but it doesn’t seem to be. A lot of people have a vision of being a great martial artist. The truth is, being a martial artist is mostly the potentially boring repetition of basic exercises on a regular schedule. I say “potentially boring” because one of the keys to maintaining that regular schedule is to always be looking deeper into your technique to see what needs to be improved. This involves doing a lot of repetitions of basic techniques, which can get boring fast if you only think about it as repeating the basic techniques.

If you are really learning and improving, you should never repeat the same technique. On the theory that no one is ever perfect, each repetition has to be an attempt at perfect technique, and hopefully, every repetition is better than the previous one in some way. I wish mine were like this. Instead the quality of techniques goes up and down on a day to day basis, so I have to aim for general improvement over time, so that what was good last week will qualify as poor next year. Thankfully, there is always room for improvement. Even my teachers keep practicing, although they are so much further up them mountain than I am that I can’t see what they are working on.

This is why bujutsu practice is budo. We are always working on polishing our techniques, and in the process, we should be polishing ourselves as well. We keep practicing, and we keep aiming at perfection, even if we know we’ll never hit it. Hopefully, with a little practice, tomorrow I’ll be a little closer to the target than I was today.

Mindful practice

Kata practice in koryu is tough. Even knowing exactly what your partner will do doesn’t make it easy. Unfortunately, you don’t know precisely when or how fast or how hard or how committed your partner will be when they do the next technique in the kata. Working with a good partner who controls and varies their speed, timing strength and commitment are what bring the two-man kata of koryu bugei alive. A great deal is said about mushin, or “no-mind” as a goal in the martial arts. In order to bring kata alive as above, I think mindful training is critical.

Mushin has been described well by better martial artists and writers then I. It’s a mental state that is a goal of training. What I don’t think I’ve seen enough of is a discussion of the mental state during training. It’s good to know that the goal of training is to achieve the lofty state of mushin, but with what sort of mental state, with what mind-set should we approach training? Most of us, myself included, need more mind in our training, not less.

We need more mindfulness in our training. By this I don’t mean we need to be thinking about all the nuances and possibilities of what we are doing while we are doing it. That’s what the beer session after keiko is for. What I’m talking about is more like the zanshin that one is supposed to show at the end of kata, after the action is concluded but before the kata is officially over. In iaido, we’re always watching to make sure students don’t drop their focus after the last cut, and just saunter through the chiburi, noto, and return to the starting point. This remaining focused on the situation at hand, without letting outside thoughts or distractions move your focus is the mindfulness I’m looking for throughout practice.

It’s a lot easier to grab a students attention in jodo practice and keep them mindful through a whole kata than it is in iaido. All you have to do is change up the timing a little bit when their attention wanders and nearly hit them. Some students, like me, are stubborn about being stupid, and we actually get hit. That surprise when the senior partner comes through your defenses because you were giving him less than 100% of your attention is usually enough to keep you focused until the end of practice. The trick is to have this focus from the start of practice and to not lose it.

When I think of mindfulness, it’s not that one is full of their own mind, but rather one’s mind is full of one thing. That one thing is whatever you’re doing. In koryu bugei training, that one thing is almost always a kata. Focusing on a kata, filling your mind only with the immediate action of the kata is a lot tougher than you would think. Especially considering that the sadistic old men I train with seem to like nothing better than whacking you if your attention wanders and leaves an opening for them. With that kind of motivation, it should be easy to practice mindfully. For some reason, even with the threat of yet another whacking, it’s still difficult to stay focused on just the immediate instant.

One of the dangers of kata practice is that it can become rote. After all, everybody involved knows what’s going to happen next, and after that, and after that until the end of the kata. How much attention does it require to dance through the steps of the kata when everyone knows what those steps are? It doesn’t take much attention at all to dance through the steps of a kata. It can be done while planning dinner and a corporate takeover. To do it right though requires nothing less than your whole mind.

If your partner is good, you can’t have even one corner of your mind off thinking about dinner plans. There is a reason that in koryu bugei the senior partner is always on the losing side. That’s the teaching side. The senior’s job is to control the speed, timing, intensity and other variables of the kata so junior can learn as much as possible and stretch themselves to new levels. When the senior is good, they don’t leave any room for the junior to be anything but mindful.

Mindfulness is another one of those things in any way that can be carried out of practice and into life. The tea ceremony folks are probably the best at bringing mindfulness to ordinary life, because their training is focused on an ordinary activity. They have to learn mindfulness without the threat of getting hit with a big wooden stick. In budo practice, if we are lucky, we have the advantage and disadvantage of training with someone who will hit us if we aren’t mindful. This is useful because it can teach good focus very quickly. I’ve noticed though, that this focus can be very particular, showing up only when someone is liable to be hit, and absent the rest of the time.

Mindfulness shouldn’t require the threat of getting hit to achieve. One of the goals of training is to be able to discipline the mind to mindfulness at any time, regardless of the activity, the location, or the presence of a partner with a big stick. Watch any good budoka, and they show mindfulness from the moment they start in the dojo, not from the moment kata starts. Being mindful throughout practice at the dojo should be practice for being mindful all the time. Great budoka exude this focus all the time, inside and outside the dojo.

Mindfulness is not something that is just for the dojo. It is a skill, a way of approaching things and focusing on one activity that should extend from the dojo into everything we do. Mindfulness is one of the practices, one of the benefits of any way that should permeate our lives. My cooking is better when I’m mindful of what I’m doing in the kitchen. And I know it’s useful in the dojo when that little, old man with the stick tries to whack me.

Mushin, well, that’s a goal I’m still aiming at. Mindfulness is something I can work on right now.

Techniques and Arts

At practice last night, while we were doing iaido, there were some no-gi grappling guys using another piece of the dojo for their practice. Being a judoka, I’ve rolled around with them a little bit, and they are good at what they do. They study individual techniques for take-downs and submissions, and they can apply them in sparring quite well.

They are always talking about which techniques are the hottest, and trying to find the ultimate killer technique. There doesn’t seem to be any discussion of ideas or principles that might bind together groups of techniques, or whole strategies of movement. Watching their training, I’m always looking for the threads that tie their techniques together. Most often, I don’t see any effort to connect the various threads of their training into a few fundamental principles.

This is one of the basic things that differentiate an art form, a way, from a collection of skills. Someone can be a great technician without understanding the principles from which the individual techniques are derived, but without a grasp of the foundations on which the techniques are built, you can never go beyond the level of a technician. You are stuck with collecting techniques. A lot of what I see in the MMA and no-gi grappling fighters are technique collectors, without anything more going on.

An art, a way, has to be something more than a collection of techniques. It has to have some fundamental principles that are expressed through the techniques, but not limited to the techniques. An art, a way, must be more than just a collection of techniques, no matter how cool or effective they are individually. Judo is the easiest example of an art because its fundamental principles were so clearly stated by the founder, Jigoro Kano. The two principles are “Jita Kyoei” (Mutual benefit and welfare) and “Seiryoku Zenyo” (Maximum efficiency, minimum effort). Those are very clear. They are not simple, nor are they easy, but all the techniques of Judo point towards them and practicing the techniques can lead you to an understanding of the principles.

I say “can” because not everyone who practices an art, even for a lifetime, will understand the principles. To reach the level of principles requires a lot of work on them beyond just mastering the techniques of the art. The techniques are just techniques. They are a means to learning the principles, but they aren’t the principles. It’s very easy to get caught up with the beauty and power of the techniques and never go any further in the learning. Studying the techniques of an art does not grant automatic understanding of the principles. Even mastering the techniques of an art does not guarantee that someone will master the principles.

I’ve known very powerful judoka who had no interest in Judo beyond what takes place on the mat. They have studied the techniques of Judo for years, decades, without ever developing the least interest in how the principles of Judo might be applied to something other than competition. To me, they have missed the real beauty of the art, but they are quite satisfied with being technicians. On the other hand, I have met people who diligently practiced the techniques without ever achieving a high level of technical skill, but who were able to grasp the principles of the art and apply them expertly in whatever they were doing.

In order to make something an art, a way, we have to practice it with the idea that there is more to it than just a collection of techniques. We have to pursue the underlying principles and how we might apply them in ways beyond the techniques. This is true no matter what art we are practicing, whether it is Judo or Tea Ceremony or Flower Arranging or any of the dozens of other arts out there. Without conscious search for the principles and a will to apply them to the world, all we have are collections of techniques.