Learning agenda. Learning with an agenda is predisposing yourself to a conclusion. This type of learning serves a purpose but it also narrows our lives. We create silos of knowledge and the desire to learn and be entertained. We create silos of knowledge. In those silos, we have a predisposition. We have a planned outcome of our learning agenda and it’s also entertaining.
Take a baseball fan and look at the numbers. The statistics about the game come at you in a hail storm. These numbers mean everything to the baseball fan and to you it likely means little. But you should know the basics of the game. If you are going to the park and watch the game, you’ll enjoy it more, if you understand what is happening on the baseball diamond.
Break Out
The suggestion is we break out. That we take our advice about diversity, about social diversity, about biodiversity. This is understood to be indispensable in the health of all endeavors. Learning with an agenda is learning just enough about baseball to ask a runner to hold on 1st with 2 outs in a full count. Yeah, you don’t do that. If you don’t understand baseball, you don’t know the intricacies of what is transpiring out on the baseball field.
How about biodiversity? Famine and soil depletion are the results of one crop planted repeatedly in the same farmland. People die from lack of food because the overuse or the lack of diversity of the land. Learning with an agenda is narrow and it is also important. I need to study for this test it creates a focus. A focus to find what you want and how it can suit your immediate need. An example is, I have to take a driver’s test. But burst out of that in your personal life find a shoulder item to study.
The Shoulder Item & The Learning Agenda
The shoulder item. Here’s the way to think of that. You’ve got your head and that’s your basic endeavor, let’s say martial arts. A shoulder interest might be on one shoulder, yoga and the other weight lifting. Similar but different endeavors. So, find a shoulder industry. Find a shoulder to study and go ahead and learn something about it. Learn for the sake of educating yourself.
Lidia Valentín Pérez is a Spanish weightlifter, Olympic Champion, 2 time World Champion and 4 time European Champion.
Recently I chose to learn more about Olympic style weightlifting. In particular female Olympic style weightlifting. I got an education and a half. Not only about competition, styles, and philosophies but learned some things that I can use in my day-to-day life.
So, learning with an agenda has a purpose but burst out. Find that shoulder, find that thing and learn about it so that you are diverse. Like the biodiversity, the social diversity, and the cultural diversity, because if you don’t you can see the results.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
The best reasons to attend a martial arts seminar. The reasons are four-fold, COVID has taught us, there is no replacement for being on the floor. Zoom classes are a nice bandage or as a banker might say a bridge loan, something to get us over a hard time.
There is no substitution for being on the floor and crossing hands with another. We gain the perspective of another person. We get to meet and work with others we likely would have never met, even in today’s connected world. The renewed motivation and often a confidence build are the result of spending time and effort at a martial arts seminar.
Flow, Anxiety, and Boredom
Martial arts seminars are challenging. Awhile back I was on the floor working with another martial artist and I had to pause. Holding my hand up I uttered, “Give me a second, I have to work this out.” It was a new way of moving to me. A valid way of moving yet different, I had to get it. A few repetitions and observations from my partner and I had it. Then he did the same thing, “Let me see if I got it.” It was challenging, not uncomfortable, just challenging. and if it wasn’t challenging, I would have dismissed the seminar, “As not that valuable.”
Listening is an interactive skill. We are used to having material substantiate our viewpoint. We like to be correct. But just like many things in life, there can be more than one solution to a situation. The experience of listening, attacking the work, and being listened to, these are invaluable. This combination of experience comes from live interaction, hands-on, and in no other way.
The seminar needs to challenge you, but you have to have just enough skill to do it. That keeps you in the flow state.
Too much difficulty without sufficient ability and you have an environment of anxiety.
Too much skill without enough of a challenge leads to boredom.
Further, you get many proof points you can see. “Are others struggling with this?” or the conversation during the pause in the action. The notes, the observations from other perspectives available in real-time in a, “Feel it,” moment. The seminar becomes multidimensional in leu of a flat linear experience. Yes, you should attend a Martial Arts seminar.
Expert Knowledge
Seminars are events of concentrated experience. You get to study deeply and you get to say, “I like that,” or “No thank you.”
I walked up to a participant at a seminar who was sitting at the end of the bleachers. I want to check with him that all was in order and he was doing well. After a brief conversation, I discovered he was fine. The session offered was not fitting with his system. He did Pencak Silat, an Indonesian form, and what the instructor at the moment was offering was not fitting into his methods.
Choices made
He excused himself from the present section and the next session was back out on the floor. Brilliant. This guy had a clarity of vision, he knew himself and knew what he wanted. He was not discounting the expert, he simply said, it’s a mismatch. It is the expert’s responsibility to bring the goods for a fine event, it is on your shoulders to engage the expert knowledge in a manner that is useful to you.
Yes, and No are both valid.
Networking
Along with having access to others and their martial arts, you get to meet other people. Some may not even be martial artists; they could be there for a multitude of reasons. During a break, I walked over to the gentleman who was filming the seminar. I discovered he had worked on the films, Lawrence of Arabia and The Shining. Immediately I began to pick his brain.
The result was a wonderful conversation. I learned about the film industry as well as personalities. He ended the conversation with a calm request. When I spoke, “To please stay away from the windows, they cause problems with the lighting.” Call that one more lesson.
An outlier of a moment?
An outlier of a moment? Possibly, but the gems, the skills, the experiences that you get to avail yourself of are all on the floor for you to simply snatch-up if you choose.
Solutions to difficulties and challenges are also at these seminars. Arriving in town a day early to teach at an event, I was invited to a private school Physical Education class, it was karate.
All students were addressed as, Mr. and Mrs. After class I asked “I see you are doing this, what is the reason behind this.” It wasn’t what I assumed. It was school policy to use formal titles when communicating. The instructor adapted the school policy for continuity. Interesting. I put that lesson away.
Later when I taught at a private school I leaned into the lesson. I learned about that school’s culture integrating their communication policy into the karate class. And I didn’t enjoy the casual first name basis used by the educators and students, but that was the culture.
Connections
The connections made on the floor of a seminar cannot be overlooked or undersold. The ability to pick-up the phone and say to a new acquaintance, “What did you do in this situation?” or be that person with the answer. We all can grow as a result of good connections and new friends. If you are not taking advantage of this moment, you are failing to pick-up diamonds left on the training hall floor. You will be amazed at the number of diamonds left on the floor for you to pick-up and walk away with when you attend a Martial Arts seminar.
Refreshed Enthusiasm
We are creatures of habit; we don’t like it when our world gets disrupted. COVID as serious as it is, we hate the upside-down rattle of the tin can it has created. It was not of our choosing. This can result in anxiety, and much more.
Yet, if we look for a change, we can often get that change on our terms; we like that. This form of change has little anxiety and a truckload of enthusiasm. If you ask a fresh participant from a recent seminar you will hear words of passion, passion renewed. It is that simple.
You chose it. You experienced it on your terms. Because you had a good time you retained more information and new ideas stick. The other great experience is to have your ideas you always knew where correct validated.
Get to a seminar, experience the flow, avail yourself of expert knowledge, get to know people, and get refreshed in your art.
Resources For More Karate Information
Here is an article that you may find helpful also: Karate Tips – 8 Simple Tips To A Better Experience
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
A Martial Artist by a look? You know, can you judge a martial artist by a look?
No.
You know that, but let me share a few stories with you to illustrate the point.
Big and Nasty
In talking with a bouncer. I asked him about his skills, the implication being, “What martial art training have you received, and how do you use it?” His response was, “99% of my job is intimidation.” He is big, stern-looking, tattooed, and goateed. He is on broadcast. He may have no real skills, he could be all thumbs when it comes to a confrontation, but we both know that is unlikely. And he trades on the potential response you may get if you step across the line of acceptable behavior. Like Swayze said in Road House, “Be nice until it’s time not to be nice.”
An Extra Arm
The judoka was pleasant; he was from Brazil and was a guitarist in town doing some music for a Microsoft project. That is the advantage of living on the Pacific Rim. With the world’s largest software company in your backyard, they can and do, draw in diverse and interesting people, and sometimes you get the benefit.
We found ourselves training together on the Judo mat, he was a good 25 pound less than me. I started slowly, no need to be a jerk, and, well he plays guitar for a living. He proved to be more than a match for me. I swear that Brazilian guitarist had a third arm, he was coming from so many directions. I was getting my hat handed to me.
Two examples. One was the potential threat, the display of potential power the other hidden. Both useful in their environments.
So no, you can’t always judge a book by its cover as the old saying goes.
A Beer and Boxing
One last story that made me smile. The television show COPS had an episode that began with a guy bleeding from his face lying on the Las Vegas sidewalk. He had tried to steal another guy’s wallet while in the bar. The wallet he chose to steal belonged to a man in his seventies, who looked like an easy mark.
The old man was a NAVY veteran who had been a professional boxer. He never made the big league as a boxer, but he paid his dues. When he wanted his wallet back the old guy demonstrated his well earn boxing skills. He got his wallet back on that Las Vegas sidewalk. When asked by the attending officer if he wanted to press charges replied with, “Naw, he’s had enough.”
So two examples. Plus one more. Yes, the old saying is true. You know, about knowing a book by its cover. And no you cannot tell how good a martial artist is by looking at them
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Kata comes from a time of illiteracy. Kata served as a tool to communicate to another person, “I have found this works when the bad guy comes.” Let’s look at this idea that kata doesn’t work in fighting through the lens of a boxing technique called, The Liver Shot.
Liver Shot
A liver shot is painful and can stop a modern boxing or MAA contest. Bernard Hopkins (55-8-2) knocked out Oscar De La Hoya (39-6) with a liver shot.
Hopkins (L) and De La Hoya (R)
Like most punches in boxing and MAA striking combinations rule the day. Combinations are a set of strikes in a predesigned pattern to score a strike and/or create an opening for a strike.
The orthodox method of teaching this boxing combination is a left punch to the opponent’s right ribs.
This strike is designed to get the opponent to drop their right arm to protect the ribs, and liver. Followed by an immediate strike with the same hand to the now uncovered side of the opponent’s head.
Take The Head, Or Take The Liver When You Fight
A wonderful and classic combination designed to get the opponent to open the side of their head and jaw. The fastest way to win a boxing match is to get a knockout. To create a circuit overload in the brain and make it shut-off.
The Black Knight from the “Monty Python and The Holy Grail,” proves the point in a bloody and comical way. The sword fight between the Black Knight and King Arthur reaches comical heights. King Arthur doesn’t decapitate the Black Knight to end the fight. King Arthur worked the problem backward. The King was not going for the win.
“Irish” Mickey Ward (38-13) was the subject of the movie, “The Fighter.” Ward used an interesting combination of punches. He reversed the classic pattern that is taught as Liver, Head, to Head, Liver seeking damage and the knockout. Mickey Ward would hit the opponent’s head and get the opponent to lift their hand to cover the side of the head and then go to the Liver.
Ward changed the pattern. He reversed it from the classic way it is taught. Ward used the principle expressed in the tactics to seek a liver shot, and a knock out if possible. Would Ward have been as successful if he had stuck with the classic pattern? He did, he used the classic pattern as well.
The point is looking at kata as a pattern of how people will behave in a combative situation is childlike. Is kata useful in fighting? no, not the way it is usually presented. Here is one method of view that likely will help.
Kata Is No Use In Fighting
The principals, the cluster of techniques are useful in fighting. There are triggers built into kata and there are triggers built into boxing. A trigger may be as simple as when the boxing opponent drops his right shoulder, you left jab to the face. In karate, it may be after a front kick is thrown, charge in with punches.
A way to approach kata is not wholly as a, “How to,” but as a, “Here’s some.” Like a song the movements of kata are strung together, to make them memorable, and useful. The creation of triggers.
Like “Irish” Micky Ward, The World Boxing Union Light Welterweight Champion. Don’t count on a pattern to save you, understand what the pattern is teaching, and apply that insight.
The Face On Mars
The human mind seeks patterns. It is called Apophenia. Apophenia is the tendency to see connections between unrelated items. Think of the face on mars, somehow the human mind can take a massive amount of rocks and the correct shadow and build a face. The human mind wants to make sense of what it experiences.
Kata takes a chaotic moment of fighting and brings order and structure to the moment via the training, and then we make the mental leap, “This is how it’s done.”
The Face on Mars
If you are looking for a kata to be useful in fighting, stop doing that now.
You will progress farther faster and with a greater quality of experience when you do. See the song, understand the song, and see the notes as well.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Karate blocks, let’s make them work. We have all caught a punch in training. I don’t mean reaching out with chopsticks and catching a fly from the air, I mean guiding a punch straight into our chest.
Not only does it hurt our arm or chest but it hurts our ego. “I thought was better than that.” Runs through our mind and then a quick, “Let’s do that again.”
Often the same results.
We try to fix it by being faster, by anticipating or shifting our body. We are trying to do everything in our power to honor the block as it was taught.
A Lesson On A Pacific Ocean Beach
One late summer many years ago I was at a karate club summer camp. It was late afternoon and my teacher tapped me on the shoulder, “Let’s go to the beach and do kata in the sunset.” “Heck yes!” was my reaction. We crossed the dunes and walked onto the hard pack sand left by the receding tide of the Pacific Ocean.
“Let’s do the first kata.” As my teacher pointed to my place beside him on the sand. We did the form; it was a magical moment and place.
He stepped back and pointed to a new smooth patch of sand, “Now you do your most advanced form, I’ll watch.” I did as he asked. The moment retained its magic.
See The Facts
Afterward, he called to where he was standing. “Look at that pattern in the sand,” pointing to the first kata I did. Then casting his hand over to the second form I had done “That kata has the same stances in it, right?” The word, “Absolutely,” fired from my mouth. “Why are they different?” came in response as my teacher pointed to the sand.
He was right, the tracks left in the sand where different. I pondered for a minute. “Look, I’ll help you.” He stepped forward to the kata left in the sand. “You learned that kata when you were a white belt, that one over there as a black belt.”
The Bomb
Then he dropped the bomb, “Why are you still doing that first kata like you are still a white belt?” “All your kata should reflect a higher ability, not held in the past.”
The chest block is a fantastic tool to prove the larger subject. Transferring our knowledge downward into our already trained habits is our goal.
The story I told about training kata in the early evening on a beach looking out over the Pacific Ocean was a great lesson. I wasn’t progressing as I should. Here are a couple of pictures to help illustrate what I am talking about.
Let’s Make Karate Blocks Work
Many kata begin like this picture. Arms crossed, held closely, and then a powerful exhalation while stepping forward into the form. If you do Sanchin kata this position may be familiar. The move elsewhere in other karate systems.
It feels good, It feels powerful, and it is LARPing LARP is an acronym for Live Action Role Play. It is pretending. The arms are close to the body away from the threat. The arms and the hands are moving inward away from the threat. You run away from a predator and it chases you. The movement is not based in reality.
Both arms can be stopped with one of the attacker’s weapons, a hand, or a shield of some form. See the red X.
You can see from the side view the space ceded to the attacker. The green line illustrates the distance from the fingertips to the crossed arms held close to the body. This space should be yours and not the attackers.
The chest lock as taught when you were a beginner served you well, it fails you now.
This is a position or a similar position often taught at the beginning levels of martial arts. Here is how to do a chest block. It serves a purpose and once that purpose is served move on. Alan Watts is quoted, “…if you get the message, hang up the phone.”
When we started our karate journey we learned blocks and strikes. As we grew in time and understanding we were told, “There is no block in karate.” The block is a violent defense. Of course, there are exceptions and they are situational, but that is for you to determine.
Sure, Nothing New Here You Say
Sure, nothing new here you say…
I suspect you’ve done what I have done. Explained that the blocks are not blocks but an attack design to gain the advantage. And then I’ve turned around and said, “OK let’s practice our blocks.”
The Japanese word for a block is “Uke” and it can translate to receive in English. But in karate blocks should be seen as an attack the majority of the time. Jack Dempsey (World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from 1919 to 1926) called it Aggressive Defense in his book.
I choose to think of the block as an attacking weapon. Not new as we know. Here is a brilliantly explained demonstration by German bladed weapon expert Roland Warzecha.
This is a 30-minute video warrant your time.
A Foundation For A New View
Simply put he gives you a foundation for a new view.
Look at how aggressive defense is demonstrated in his video. Consider adapting your movements as he has suggested. Of course, he is using a bladed weapon and that changes distance, timing, and strike, but focus on the shield work. Sit with this link and see you’re dealing with is an Attacking Weapon. These terms are from Roland, they are not original to me, and I use his words now when working with advanced students.
The Way To View The Karate Block
Again, some exceptions, but the majority of the time you should say, “Attacking Weapon,” and “Exploiting Weapon.” instead of block and attack.
As stated earlier in this series, by my old karate instructor on the beach, “Why are you doing your kata the way you did it when you were a white belt?”
Don’t forget to mark your calendar for Roland Warzecha’s Martial Arts and Life Podcast Interview.
His interview is available on November 4th, 2020. You can subscribe here: iTunes
A few links to other podcasts and blogs you will likely enjoy.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Cultivating a life, an excellent life. Are you a cultivating person or are you something other? Seeking change in your life or are you letting it pass by? Are you looking at the small things? The large things? The difference makers or the things on the margins that you can change for the better? Your goal of that change should be to live a better life and help others that are in your orbit live a better life through your acts.
Coach Says
One way to look at this is a coach I heard one time say, “If you’re not coaching it you’re allowing it to happen.”
Is the thing that’s happening that you’re not coaching a good thing? If it is a fine thing then you let it be. But there was a discerning eye placed on the thing, to decide if it fell into that category needed to be coached or not. I’m not going to suggest a way to do this.
To analyze this and make this change there are tons of materials out there. There are programs, books, apps, Pinterest, you can find all sorts of things that will help you. The choice is yours in discerning what you think needs to be changed in your life and how can be done.
So, the quick recommendation is to do an ad hoc, freewheeling analysis and ask a modest question or a version of it. “Is this a good thing?” “The best thing?” “Is this good for me and those around me?” if it’s good allow it, let it happen, if it needs improvement go to that end, make sure you address it.
Comfort and Regularity
As humans, we seek comfort and regularity. Rhythm and regularity are soothing and they are important. The regularity and rhythm of a bad thing, well that’s less than a positive act. And yes, we do less than positive acts. When you look at these acts you should couch them in terms of being a cultivated person.
The Cultivated Person, A Cultivated Life
When you look at things in the cultivated person manner, acts begin to take on a new flavor. Think about that cultivated person. That term implies that it’s not an instant change but change that takes place over time. Here’s another phrase that might help you see this, “Whatever you are not changing you are choosing.”
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
