The Moving Target

I was chatting with a friend who was quite frustrated by the influx of newbies at his dojo.  In order to accommodate people who do not even have the most basic Aikido movement vocabulary, their instructor end up spending a lot of time doing basics and simple techniques in class.  

"I know those things already.  I have done them before.  How do we get better if we keep doing the same things all the time?"  He thinks he knows those basics moves already.  To improve, he thinks he needs to do something else -- more complicated moves and techniques.  He thinks the way the instructor runs the classes is unfair to the advanced students.  

I can sympathize, but I disagree.  

I understand the sentiment because I have experienced it before.  I know it can be frustrating.  Things may seem repetitive.  I know people may feel bored.  I have seen that look in the eyes of Aikido students many times.  

If what my friend says is true, I wonder how instructors ever improve and grow.  Day in day out, we keep doing techniques and movements that are tailored for our students.  What is new there for us?  Wouldn't instructors just become stagnant puddles, then?

"You know it?  You have done them before.  But do you do them well?  You gotta remember that what makes your Aikido good is really a matter of how good your basics are." I reminded him.

Reportedly, there was an instructor in Japan who only taught one single technique in his classes -- Ikkyo.  Year after year, if you attend his class, you know what he would be showing.  When asked, he said Ikkyo is the most basic technique but also the ultimate technique.  "After so many years, I still haven't gotten it.  So, I want us all to practice together."

Very often, particularly during warmup exercises, more experienced students just take one look at the instructor to identify what the exercise is, then mentally drift off and just do a version of the exercise that they think they know.  

This behavior, sometimes, gets carried over to the actual practice.  

The instructor, suddenly, get reduced to a "technique announcer".  However he does the technique, whatever emphases or subtlties he is trying to show does not matter.  He could have been replaced with a stack of flip cards with technique names without making any difference.  

I have seen similar behavior at seminars, too.  

If all we want to do is to do the same things that we already know and do at home, why should we even bother to attend a seminar?  What is the point???

If you really care to grow and improve, treat every practice as the first time and the last time.

Watch attentively what is being shown in front of you and diligently reproduce it -- both in form and in spirit.  Even if you have seen this instructor many times for years, and it is an exercise he has demonstrated before, you may still find something new, if you watch carefully.  Unless the instructor has stopped growing and changing, every time you see him, he should have evolved into a different version of himself.  Similarly, if you have been truly studying, you should keep becoming a better, more advanced student who can perceive things differently every time you step on the mat.  If you go to the dojo today and think that everything is the same as yesterday, you must have not been paying attention.

At seminars, again, watch attentively what is being shown in front of you and diligently reproduce it.  What the instructor shows may feel foreign to you.  It may feel strange.  It may feel awkward.  It may make you feel clumsy.  You feel uncomfortable.  It may be totally outside of your comfort zone, and you feel the urge to return to something familiar and self-affirming . . .  

"Why on Earth would anybody do a technique this way?" you wonder.  Try your best to imitate the instructor.  Try to feel what he feels, and you may have your question answered.  This may become your new favorite way of doing a technique.  You will never know unless you try it.  Even if you end up not liking it at all, now you know that this approach does not work for you.  You still would have learnt something valuable.

An egg looks so perfect and beautiful until the baby chick inside pecks it open.  Then, we marvel at how perfect and beautiful this lovely new life is . . .   🐣