Excuses, and Inflicting Pain

Just a quick post, as a kind of addendum to the last post.

Kim Taylor has a martial arts Blog, and he usually says things better, or at least gets to the point quicker, than I do. In his Oct. 20, 2009 edition, he says:

...some folks just can't be taught physically. The student who tells you why
they can't do some movement or other, the one who fixes it while you're looking
at them and then drops right back into the same old habits, the one who looks at
you blankly, as if to say "I'm doing it that way, what's wrong with you?" and
the one who tries, really, really tries but never gets it.

I have been all of the above at one point or another. In fact, I am one or two of them right now.

I have a problem with my cut. I'm trying to make my cuts as large as I can, but in doing so, I have developed a bad habit of moving through "dead hand" when I am making contact with kasso-teki's forehead. In other words, my wrists are over-extended at the point of impact, which is weak. Then, I pull my hands into my belly at the end of the cut, resulting in a kind of wobble. The sword should stop firmly at the end, but mine doesn't. It does a little one-two bounce.

My teacher has tried to get me to fix this problem. When he first mentioned it, I was "the one who looks at you blankly, as if to say 'I'm doing it that way, what's wrong with you?'" I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. When it became obvious that I was, in fact, doing it that way, my next reaction was to think, "But I've seen lots of people do it this way! Iaido champions do it this way!" (Which is true, actually; if you slow down video of many of the frequent iaido taikai winners, they cut the way I do, which is neither here nor there; I had been told to fix something, and I shouldn't be denying the problem, or evading it.)

The next week, I came back and was cutting the same way. I had become "the one who fixes it while you're looking at them and then drops right back into the same old habits". Well, I hadn't really fixed it to begin with, actually. The best I could manage was to do 2 or 3 good cuts out of 10, while my teacher stood there saying, "No ... no ... okay ... no ... nope ... Yes! ... no ... no ..." Eventually he got tired and wandered away, to our mutual relief.

Last week, I went to practice and was still cutting the same way. Sensei was exasperated and said, "Even though I tell you what you're doing wrong, you just keep doing the same thing." My defences rose up and I tried to explain why I couldn't cut properly. I tried to blame the weight of my sword (it's a 2.7, but not all that heavy, really) and the unusually thin tsuka it came with, which is hard to grip firmly with the left hand. I had become "the student who tells you why they can't do some movement or other".

A few days later I was at jodo practice. During a break, I took a bokuto and began doing some swings in front of a mirror. I was doing the same thing with the bokuto! I couldn't blame my strange cutting on the weight of my iaito, or its thin tsuka. (Damn!) I was finally able to fix my cut when swinging the bokuto, but it remains to be seen whether it will translate over into my iai.

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Regarding my last post on self-improvement, my friend Paul had this to say:

One thing that you didn't really talk about in the "Self-Development" training
reason was about partner training, especially when you have to inflict pain
and get it inflicted on you in turn (Aikido is a good example, but there are
many painful techniques, and errors for that matter, in Jodo and Kenjutsu
kata). You talked about the pain of pushing yourself, which is a very
important factor, but I think that partner work teaches a lot about empathy and
compassion and appreciation, things that are very beneficial in life both inside
and outside of the dojo.

And in a later mail:

I have always found that the kids in the Judo clubs at the high schools I've
been at were a lot nicer than the kids in the Kendo Clubs. Not a very
scientific comparison, but there might be something to it. While Kendo
does hurt, it's more because you let yourself get hit, [i.e., failed to prevent
yourself from getting hit, by dodging, blocking, etc.] than you allowed your
partner to inflict pain in order to better understand a technique.

Great points, Paul, and thanks for letting me post them.