Cross-training can be extremely valuable, but timing matters. Before we can really benefit from other methods, we need enough experience to understand what we are looking at and why it may differ from what we already know.
Still correcting myself after over fifty years of karate. If that sounds discouraging, it isn’t, it’s the whole point. The day you stop adjusting is the day you stop training.
“I’ll just use my weight.”
That was the answer I got from a student who was regularly running out of breath during training.
Size certainly matters. So does strength.
But what happens when the first thing you try doesn’t work?
We spend a lot of time arguing about what karate is. Perhaps the problem is that we’re no longer talking about the same thing.
Sometimes another martial art doesn’t show us something new. It simply helps us recognize something we had stopped seeing.
Context is the technique. The same movement that’s brilliant in one situation is a great way to get hurt in another.
A black belt only has meaning if everyone agrees on what it represents. I’m no longer convinced we do.
Perhaps the hand position is not always the technique.
Sometimes it may simply be the shape the hand makes while gripping, pressing, clearing, or controlling.
An unrehearsed attack is not necessarily an unexpected one.
When both people know that something is about to happen, the warning has already been given.
The dojo feels different before anyone else is there.
No explanations, no questions and no need to think about what comes next. Just a little time to practice and pay attention.
Sometimes that is where my own training begins.
