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Right Practice
By Devildogmrk - Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:38:19 GMT
Originally Posted at: KenpoTalk
====================
This is a re-post of one of the best short articles on why practice is important in martial arts. I can not remember where I orginally saw it or I would give credit where credit is due, but I have saved this article for a while because it was such an inspiration to me.
Today's Kumite competitor needs to understand what practice is and what practice is not. This sounds like a trivial statement but think about the culture in Martial Arts. This is a physical endeavor where simply hanging around often outweighs performance. We hear every day, "why I have trained for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years", as though that, in and of itself, qualifies the speaker to have an opinion. Did you every hear anyone say Michael Jordan was not as good a player as one of the old timers clinging to the end of the bench?
"Right Practice" is when every movement, your posture and focus, in training occupies 100% of your attention. "Right Practice" is performing a known task in a known application with an understanding of the focus and goal. It is actually detrimental to repeat a technique incorrectly. My favorite analogy for "correct practice" is the story of a drop of water falling on a mound of sand. At first the drop hits the mound and runs down in a random manner. After more and more drops hit they begin to carve out a ravine. Those drops that fall a little off the mark cause a new shallower ravine. Those on the mark deepen the ravine and reinforce the pattern for those following. Practice is like this.
You must see, hear, and feel each technique. Do this with volition, by choice. Then you are discovering correct practice. "The mind must be the pre-eminent focus of right practice. And just as the body is trained by a system of practice, so too must the mind be trained through practice. "Right Practice" that trains the processes of mind constitutes a discipline of mind." (Michael Livingston; Mental Discipline).
Think of your mind and body as tape recorders of every single thing you do. And each deviation in training, recorded along with correct training. You need to sum all of the work you do, good and bad. So if takes 7,000 repetitions to create neural memory; you do not want to be subtracting from this number as you go. This is why Master Otsuka said in his book, Karate-Do, "you must practice habitually without developing habit".
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KenpoTalk.com Post Bot - Kenpo Feed
By Devildogmrk - Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:38:19 GMT
Originally Posted at: KenpoTalk
====================
This is a re-post of one of the best short articles on why practice is important in martial arts. I can not remember where I orginally saw it or I would give credit where credit is due, but I have saved this article for a while because it was such an inspiration to me.
Today's Kumite competitor needs to understand what practice is and what practice is not. This sounds like a trivial statement but think about the culture in Martial Arts. This is a physical endeavor where simply hanging around often outweighs performance. We hear every day, "why I have trained for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years", as though that, in and of itself, qualifies the speaker to have an opinion. Did you every hear anyone say Michael Jordan was not as good a player as one of the old timers clinging to the end of the bench?
"Right Practice" is when every movement, your posture and focus, in training occupies 100% of your attention. "Right Practice" is performing a known task in a known application with an understanding of the focus and goal. It is actually detrimental to repeat a technique incorrectly. My favorite analogy for "correct practice" is the story of a drop of water falling on a mound of sand. At first the drop hits the mound and runs down in a random manner. After more and more drops hit they begin to carve out a ravine. Those drops that fall a little off the mark cause a new shallower ravine. Those on the mark deepen the ravine and reinforce the pattern for those following. Practice is like this.
You must see, hear, and feel each technique. Do this with volition, by choice. Then you are discovering correct practice. "The mind must be the pre-eminent focus of right practice. And just as the body is trained by a system of practice, so too must the mind be trained through practice. "Right Practice" that trains the processes of mind constitutes a discipline of mind." (Michael Livingston; Mental Discipline).
Think of your mind and body as tape recorders of every single thing you do. And each deviation in training, recorded along with correct training. You need to sum all of the work you do, good and bad. So if takes 7,000 repetitions to create neural memory; you do not want to be subtracting from this number as you go. This is why Master Otsuka said in his book, Karate-Do, "you must practice habitually without developing habit".
Read More...
------------------------------------
KenpoTalk.com Post Bot - Kenpo Feed
