Remember in that last post when I said I once wrote and lost an essay about what martial arts has to do with video games? Well, I found it. I wasn't even looking for it. But here it is, cleaned up a bit from its original form. Enjoy!
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Teaching Martial Arts and Making Video Games Aren’t All That Different (2011 Essay)
In 2005, I signed up at a new martial arts school shortly after starting a new job as a scripter and gameplay programmer at a video game company. I spent my days crafting engaging gameplay experiences among young, eccentric and irreverent creative minds, and I spent my evenings sweating in the reserved structure of the taekwondo school. At work I went out of my way to be just as irreverent as my coworkers, making sure use some spicy language for the benefit of a few coworkers who felt it necessary to curb their language and expression in my presence. After work, I had to flip a switch and turn it all off to be respectful of the martial art and the dojang where I trained. In the mornings, everything revolved around creativity and discarding old ideas just because they had been done before, but in the evenings old ideas were revered because they were traditional. I felt like every day I was living in two separate worlds that couldn’t be more different.
Several years later, I find myself thinking the opposite.
The project I was working on at the time.
Despite the many and obvious differences, teaching a martial arts class and scripting a video game level are both done with a goal of providing a fun and rewarding experience.
What most people outside of the game industry don’t realize is that like martial arts classes, video game levels are also learning environments. For each game on the shelves, the rules are slightly different. Those rules need to be taught to the player, or the player cannot enjoy the game. It must be obvious to the player that doing A will result in B. Since lengthy tutorials can be tedious and not fun, game developers find themselves in the same situation as martial arts instructors. Material needs to be taught, and it has to be rewarding or the student/player will not continue.
The first game I ever worked on. Let's just say it would be an example of something.
Immersyve, a consulting company that works with game developers (among other things), explains the psychology of what makes good games so engaging. They point to three key factors: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They argue that when players can direct themselves and make meaningful decisions (autonomy), play the game with a high degree of skill as taught by their earlier experience with the game (competence), and enjoy interaction beyond themselves either socially or within the fictional world (relatedness), the game is engaging and players will return again and again.
In Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Daniel H. Pink argues that whether we are in the workplace, at school, or in a recreational environment, we are most motivated when we have three key components: autonomy, mastery and purpose. He explains that when people are given the freedom to pursue things the way that they see fit (autonomy), can work toward being better at doing it (mastery), and are able to work toward something larger than themselves (purpose), they are most motivated and most productive.
Either that, or maybe it's cheesy corporate posters that motivate us.
While reading Drive, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity. (It was no surprise to me when later I found that the minds behind Immersyve and Daniel Pink both cite the same sources in psychological literature.) Moreover, I couldn’t help but think that it very accurately reflects my martial arts experience.
Autonomy is emphasized with every new open-world game that hits the shelves. But when we think about martial arts, we usually think about discipline and rigid compliance over autonomy. Even so, autonomy is successful in the dojang. Allowing students to choose their own goals, whether it is a rank, or a trophy, or a fitness level, or whatever else, is much more motivating than goals that are imposed by an instructor. (Or a parent! Great example of that here.)
On the other hand, mastery/competence is easy to see in both venues. Doing something well, or even just getting better at doing it, is rewarding. It’s true in practically every recreational activity in the world, but in martial arts, it’s not only true, it’s also often considered a particularly noble goal to do something well purely for the sake of doing it well.
Of course, getting a new belt is usually pretty cool, too.
As for purpose/relatedness, that is equally important to game developers and martial arts instructors. Players and students want to feel like they have gained something for their efforts. They want to be part of a community. They want to believe that their time was well spent and the result has value. This is much, much easier for martial arts instructors than it is for game developers, who are confined to virtual worlds. But the idea is the same.
I find this stuff fascinating. I hope some of you do, too.
About This Project (and introductions for some names you're going to hear a lot in this post)
Before I get into anything else, let me start with Buddy Rich. Depending who you ask, Buddy Rich was either the best drummer who ever lived, or one of the best on a very short list. What is less widely-known is that he was a black belt in Goju Ryu karate. If there was ever any authority in the world to talk about the overlap between drum set and martial arts, he would be it. He once said, "I'm the first guy in this business to take karate seriously as a way to stay in shape." And if he wasn't also the last, I have not been able to track that person down in time for this project.
But I'm pretty sure Buddy Rich is not doing interviews with martial arts bloggers these days. (Although if I managed to interview Zombie Buddy Rich, that would pretty much cement me among the most interesting martial arts bloggers, 'cause you can bet Zombie Bruce Lee would be next.) Fortunately, when you can't interview Buddy Rich, you can interview a Buddy Rich look-alike. I promise this is not quite as crazy as it sounds, so bear with me.
This project started one day when I was mindlessly surfing YouTube being extremely productive while just having YouTube on in the background. I saw a music video with a drummer doing cool stuff. Of course any professional musician making a music video is very likely to sound cool and even look cool, but what caught me off guard was that this guy moved cool. I was professionally intrigued. It was fascinating to watch the economy of movement, the fluidity and intent of his movements.
I had two takeaways from this experience. First (to borrow a phrase from Paul Wilson over at Karate Café) I basically have a "karate crush" on a drummer. That will definitely get me laughed out of some circles.
Laugh all you want, but first tell me you don't wish you
had this guy's fluidity.
Second, it occurred to me very abruptly that drummers and martial artists probably spend about an equal amount of time thinking about hitting things. I thought there must be quirks of biomechanics that are common between the two, and details or ideas that drummers and martial artists could learn from each other.
Drumming and martial arts have been part of the human condition for pretty much as long as there have been humans. There has never been any culture on Earth without music and drumming, and martial arts have been around since the first time a caveman punched another caveman in the face. These are two disciplines that are so intimately connected to who we are as human beings, that it seemed inevitable that there would be some overlap.
Going on that idea and not much else, I signed up for drumming lessons. Opening my school has meant that my "martial journeys" are going to have to be more metaphorical than literal. The sea is calling me, but I can't travel right now. I also took to heart the advice of some martial artists who I greatly respect, especially Master Do Ki Hyun when he said that a martial artist should "read a lot of books" about anything and everything because "the more knowledge you have, the better you can understand your martial art." He even learned two styles of dance to improve his taekyun. Sensei Kris Wilder expressed a similar sentiment when he harped on the importance of exploring outside of your field. He talked about how it can open doors for you, and how at worst it's just going to be an interesting dead end.
This is how Kai Andersen got a really weird student. I'm the last in the line of people who will ever be amazing drummers, but Kai has been more than patient with me. He has been teaching drum set for 15 years and playing since the 7th grade. He has been in bands since then, and still is. He plays just about any style of music, but might give you a dirty look if you mention country music. He also has a degree in journalism, and works for a radio station.
Is this photo in black and white, or are Kai and his drums just covered in that much ice? It's winter in Wisconsin, so you can never tell. Photo credit.
So that just leaves one last introduction—the drummer from the video that inspired this whole project. That was Casey Grillo, who is most famous for his work with Kamelot over the past 20 years, but he can and will play anything. He started touring at the age of 16 with Debra Dejean. He owns a custom drum head company and used to teach drumming. He's also apparently willing to be interviewed for martial arts blogs. I caught up with him when he came to Madison playing for Queensrÿche. Coincidentally, he also bears some physical resemblance to Buddy Rich, which will be important later.
Casey Grillo is almost as blurry in this picture as he is in the pictures I took
myself. Thanks Jon Freeman for rescuing my blog from my terrible
photography. Photo credit.
Turning off all the snark for just a moment, let me say thanks to all the people who helped make this project possible, but especially Kai Andersen, Casey Grillo, Bekah Simmons, Ruth Hansen, Iain Abernethy, and my students.
1. The Intangible Skills, Character Building, and the Pursuit of Excellence.
The first people I interviewed for this project were martial artists who had dabbled in drumming. When I asked them what they felt the overlap was, their answers tended to be along the lines of discipline and patience toward practice, the value of hard work and perseverance, and the like. Originally I hadn't intended to include any of these answers in this post, because to quote Mark Law's excellent judo book, Falling Hard, "We can declaim that self-discipline, initiative, confidence, and courage are all fostered by judo, while we neglect to remind ourselves that these are also the very qualities required to be a successful bank robber." Intangible skills like these are valuable in practically any pursuit, and can be pursued in practically any field. For this project I was more interested in gems that might not be learned elsewhere.
Drumming and martial arts are both harder when cats are involved.
But then again, so is everything. Also, yes, that is where I practice.
Who will trade his hi-hat for my boxes?
I changed my mind when I saw how much the drumming community emphasizes these things. I was a little worried asking an extremely accomplished drummer like Casey Grillo about what he is still learning. That wouldn't be an insult in the martial arts world, but what about drumming? My fears were unfounded and he (like everyone else) emphatically told me that no one ever is so good that they can't get better. My favorite example of this came from something Buddy Rich said at the age of 69, shortly before he died and long after he had first been heralded as "the world's greatest drummer." He said, "This is something that you have to become dedicated to it. ... It is something that you learn constantly. I'm still learning." There are a lot of martial artists (myself included!) who hope to be saying something similar at the age of 69.
In a similar vein, I listened to this list of lessons learned from interviewing hundreds of great drummers. It's worth your time even if you have no interest in drumming, but martial artists will find familiarity in items like "everything takes time" and "hard work and consistency are the differentiators," as will harping on ideas like the importance of being humble and having a great attitude.
2. Broad Physical Skills and Technique Development
The physical overlap between drumming and martial arts seems to come down to who you ask--if it's a drummer who does martial arts or a martial artist who plays the drums.
Buddy Rich was dismissive of the idea that karate could influence drumming technique, because the movements require different muscles. Certainly that makes sense, in the same way that you wouldn't practice punching to improve your kicking. He did say, however, that martial arts training was good for his drumming by improving his overall health, stamina, energy, and his speed. Those are curious points because each item in that list resonates with something he was known for--his back problems and multiple heart attacks, the way he would end a performance being drenched in sweat, and the kind of speed that caused problems for the video technology of the day. He had the same problem as Bruce Lee, where he was just too fast to be recorded well. In Bruce Lee's case, they could slow him down and get a decent result. But a lot of video of Buddy Rich looks very choppy because the frame rate was just too slow to catch what he was doing.
Whoa, there are pictures of Buddy Rich in the public domain? Yay! Photo credit.
Casey Grillo had a similar take on physical activities and their overlap with drumming. He uses long distance running for conditioning "because for being able to play double bass fast for long periods of time, the running definitely helps." He also suggested that activities like kiteboarding can improve balance, which is also helpful to his playing.
At my level, I'm not very physically active when I'm drumming, so I don't think my martial arts experience has had that kind of impact on my playing. The only physical overlap that I have noticed was a fill that was giving me particular trouble. I was getting my hands tangled up together until I associated the fill with a tai chi movement that would get my hands out of each other's way. Then the fill straightened itself out.
Other martial artists who have taken up drumming mentioned similar experiences, saying that drumming was easier to learn because martial arts had already taught them coordination and some measure of limb independence. Kai said that this is consistent with what he's seen in his other students who train in martial arts.
The most fascinating thing about this to me is that anyone who was a martial artist first and a drummer second felt that their martial arts background helped them with their technique and nothing else. Then Buddy Rich, who is the only person in this case study who was a drummer first and a martial artist second, seemed to strongly believe the opposite. It's natural that when people learn a new skill, they take what they already know from elsewhere to help them with it. I wonder very much what Buddy Rich was like as a martial arts student. I'd love to be like a fly on the wall during one of his lessons and try to see how much his drumming influenced his martial arts training.
3. Martial Artists Use Rhythm. A Lot. (No, really a LOT.)
The notion of martial artists using rhythm is not a new one. We usually don't call it rhythm--we call it timing. But if it quacks like an eighth note...
Quacks like an 8th note! I'm HILARIOUS! Or something.
After starting with drums, I've started seeing exactly how prevalent rhythm is in everything we do. It's so much more than just when a technique should land. Every single movement, even just parts of a technique, has a rhythm to it.
One example that shocked me early on was while I was teaching a student who was struggling with a speed drill that every taekwondo practitioner will recognize--hopping in between roundhouse kicks.
This is a common way to build speed for sparring,
later replacing the hop with more advanced footwork.
For my struggling student, I did the normal process of breaking down the drill in different ways to try to find something that clicked for him, but nothing was getting through. The way his feet moved reminded me very much of how my sticks moved when I first tried to play a simple beat. This particular student had played the trumpet for years, so I was sure he could handle a slightly more nuanced rhythm lesson. I had him hop on one foot and count eighth notes (for those not musically inclined, this is usually done by saying "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and") and let his other foot only touch the ground on the "ands" and hit the target on the numbers. It wasn't a magic bullet, but it helped him a lot.
4. Managing Looseness and Tension
In my (granted, limited) experience, pretty much any drummer will tell you that it's important to stay loose and relaxed. But if you press them, a lot of them (including Casey and Kai) will admit that tension has a role to play, too, but they don't put a lot of thought into that tension. That mirrors the martial arts world fairly well, in that looseness has such an important role to play in movement and power generation, but so does tension. We don't usually emphasize tension, though, because tension is easy. It's developing that looseness that's hard.
Fortunately, I got some good advice on this. In drumming, getting that looseness seems to come down to four main pieces: warming up, mentality, breathing, and practice. (Sound familiar? I hope so.)
Warming Up - As far as I can tell, there's no standard way of warming up in the drumming world. Some people do stretches, others work rudiments as quickly as they can, others play simple patterns to a metronome, and so forth. Kai emphasizes the importance of being hydrated. Basically, it's as all-over-the-place as warm ups in the martial arts world. But practically everyone agrees that warming up is essential to playing well, by having that looseness and the fluidity and speed that comes with it.
Mentality - Kai especially had a lot of interesting things to say about "mentally getting into that space where you can stay relaxed." What martial artists might describe as focus or discipline, Kai described like this: "I think it's a serious conversation you have to have with yourself constantly. I always tell everybody ... you constantly have to keep yourself in check. Constantly remind yourself, because otherwise you get excited and just lose your technique. So I think a lot of that is having a real good internal dialogue with yourself pretty much constantly while you're practicing." If you're a martial artist and have never fallen into the trap of tensing up when you're nervous, concentrating, or even just losing your fluidity because you're focusing on something else, you are definitely in the minority. One common pitfall is clenching the jaw--something I've never done in martial arts, but I catch myself doing a lot as a drummer. Weird.
Breathing - Casey told me that some drummers have specific breathing techniques, but the people I talked to didn't. Still, they agreed that breathing was important for staying fluid. They didn't think about their breathing. The important thing is to make sure you're not holding your breath. Unfortunately, it's pretty common to start holding your breath when you're concentrating.
Practice - Of course, a lot of it comes down to repetition. When movements are familiar, they are more efficient and comfortable. When I asked Casey about his fluidity, he told me it came from playing in a Top 40 band, four hours a night, six nights a week, 50 weeks a year, for 15 years. (Casey, if you're reading this, I don't say this very often to people who aren't martial artists, but you are way better at hitting things than I am. I guess this explains why.) Maybe take that thought and throw a few extra kicks today.
15 years x 50 week/year x 6 nights/week x 4 hours/night x 60 minutes/hour x maybe averaging 300 strokes per minute = Maybe I should be getting my own reps in instead of doing math. 300 kicks per minute, though? Photo credit.
5. Being Smarter About Overuse Injuries
One thing that the average martial artist could probably learn from the average drummer is a healthier attitude toward repetitive stress injuries. I'm not talking about the injuries that come from the punch you didn't quite evade or the breakfall that went badly—I'm talking about the joint pain that comes from repeated incorrect movement. This is something I've ranted about in the past, and I will scream it from the rooftops until the day I can't tie my belt anymore: your art should make you stronger, not weaker. There are times to be tough, but a repetitive stress injury is not one of them. I've seen students, usually testosterone-poisoned teenagers, respond to my caution toward injuries with "I ain't scared of nothin'!" To which I reply, "Well, try to develop a mild fear of doing permanent damage to your body." More often, though, students bear it silently and an instructor has to be very attentive to realize anything is wrong. I've seen students, usually older adults who learned their stances from someone else, respond to a correction with an awed, "I don't feel any pain at all when I do it this way!" To which I reply, "You're not supposed to! Your technique shouldn't injure YOU. It should injure the OTHER GUY."
Drummers don't seem to have this problem. If a drummer's back, hip, wrist, or whatever starts hurting, nobody seems to think the solution is to just toughen up and keep doing the same thing. I was told in a very early lesson that if something hurts, even if you're doing it "correctly," you need to change it. We could use more of this attitude in martial arts, where instructors sometimes rigidly adhere to stylistic details that are not healthy or safe for some body types.
6. Thinking Ahead to Optimize Solo Performance
Whenever I do an interview for Martial Journeys, there's no telling what's going to happen. I'm going to relate a somewhat personal story here. At one point Casey said that when he's playing he's thinking not about what he's doing but about what he's about to be doing. When he said that, I had a sudden flashback to when I was training seriously for forms (kata) competition.
Yep, that was me doing my thing.
I took silver at Nationals twice before I grudgingly had to accept that there was no gold at the end of this rainbow and I would never do any better. But back when I was training that seriously and at the top of my game, that's exactly how it was for me, too, all the time. Once a movement was done, it was completely inconsequential. Even when it was in progress, once I was committed to the movement, it was too late to change it, so it was a waste of mental processing power to think about it. I was always thinking at least one movement ahead of where I was.
I don't train that way anymore now that I'm not competing. My limited training time has to be optimized for my current situation and new goals. But remembering it so vividly in the middle of doing an interview was a gut punch. Getting all nostalgic would have been exceedingly unprofessional, so of course I just finished the interview. But if that hasn't haunted me for days weeks… anyway, I'll round out this bullet point by saying that thinking one step ahead is a good way to train for solo performance.
7. Larger Muscles vs. Smaller Muscles
One thing that absolutely floored me over the course of this project was something Casey Grillo said in his instructional DVD. (It's out of print, but my Google-fu is strong and I was able to buy a copy. Tracking that down was no small feat, probably my greatest accomplishment in drumming. But this story ends with Casey finding out I was looking for it and even agreeing to be interviewed, so I can't complain. Anyway, I digress.)
Here's the thing that shocked me in the DVD, where he's talking about playing fast double bass:
"Basically, the feet are floating, and you're using your ankles instead of your legs when you play double bass. What happens with most players is they ... use their whole legs and they are pounding back and forth. ... So what's happening with the floating feet technique is we're not using our leg, the full leg, we're using our ankle, and it's just basically moving back and forth, and it's making a really fast motion. ... This, for me, is the fastest way to play, and I don't get fatigued, ... And what you should do, you should play with this ... and see what muscles it's really working. If it's working your bigger muscles, you probably don't want that."
Wait what?
In martial arts, if you use your smaller muscles to power your movements, you are going to at least have a bad day, and maybe even some significant injuries. My first thought was that he must be conserving energy by moving less of his body. Of course you'll be less fatigued if you move only your feet and not your whole leg. But no, his whole leg moves when he plays. I can't say I understand exactly what he's doing, and I don't have enough bass drums to even try it, let alone learn it.
I can't show Casey's DVD because that's copyrighted
material, so thanks Ryan Alexander Bloom for making this video of similar movement publicly available.
So I ended up approaching this from a very academic direction. Preferring large muscles over small muscles was something that I thought was a universal principle not just in martial arts, but in body movement in general. But here I've seen a glaring exception to that rule, and I wondered if there are any similar exceptions in martial arts that I had overlooked. Maybe there's some weird joint lock or something where you're not displacing much of your own body or the other person's, and it is better to use smaller muscles to drive the technique? For the life of me I can't think of one. Even so, I don't think it was a waste of my time to really think about and analyze the muscles I'm using for various movements. In fact I'd say it's a valuable exercise for anyone to try.
8. Balance and the Importance of the Throne
So a drummer's seat is called a throne, like you're going to rule the world from the center of the universe or something. Martial arts instructors don't get to laugh at this, since we get paid to be called sir or ma'am and have people bow to us while we yell stuff at them.
Snark aside, the way drummers talk about the throne often reminds me of tai chi. The throne is a drummer's connection to the ground, and it's the source of the drummer's balance. Drummer and biomechanics expert Brandon Green says, "Really we should be building our drum set entirely around the drum throne." Casey Grillo hauls his throne all over the world because he won't use any throne other than his own. He also devotes an entire chapter of his DVD to the importance of the throne and how it contributes to very nuanced balance work--such that just moving one arm to a drum on the opposite side of the body can shift the drummer's weight enough to disrupt the balance and pedal work.
You can only train in tai chi for so long before you hear some variation of this blurb from the Tai Chi Classics:
"Tai chi is rooted in the feet, powered in the legs, directed in the hips and expressed in the hands."
In both drumming and martial arts, the untrained eye focuses on the extremity that's doing the hitting. We see a hand doing some intricate work with a drum stick the way people see us twisting our hands around to create a joint lock. What the hands are doing is important, but that movement all starts closer to the core. It's the rest of the body being in the right position that makes that intricate hand work possible. And that body positioning comes from being properly balanced, and the balance comes from being properly rooted to the ground.
9. Using Rhythm to Manipulate an Opponent
Some pretty standard Lesson 1 stuff for learning to play drums.
Some of these are more difficult than others. With my limited musical background (a handful of instruments I played for 1-2 years each as a kid) it was very strange to me that playing the exact same beat but delaying a bass drum hit by a fraction of a second could make such a huge difference in the difficulty. Moreover I learned from Kai that this wasn't just a quirk of my experience, and in fact the ones that were hard for me are hard for most beginners.
I absolutely loved what Casey had to say about this phenomenon (after a quick detour to encourage me just because I mentioned that something was difficult--class act). Basically, he explained that rhythms are more difficult when you put things in between other things. "You're filling in gaps. ... There are these subdivisions." He was pointing to some 8th notes and 16th notes in my lesson book. "And you can divide it way more than that. You can have 32nd notes, 64th notes, basically you have 64 notes in a measure, it's pretty stinking fast. And you can take some away. Like these 8th rests, you can put a little rest in between those, a little bitty gap." Essentially, the difficulty comes from the speed and/or complexity that comes from subdividing and inserting something in between those subdivisions.
This reminded me greatly of something I heard from Ruth Hansen, a martial artist who has dabbled in drumming. She recalled her first tournament sparring experience like this: "She came at me throwing continuous rear leg roundhouse kicks. It was my first tournament, so in the moment I didn't know what to do. Later it was obvious; strike between the rhythm of her kicks. I couldn't, at the time, because I was standing wrong, my feet too far apart to change up my own rhythm."
I like this example because it is simple, but advanced tournament fighters use the same principle. If you can land your scoring technique while your opponent is in the middle of a transition, they are especially vulnerable. This inevitably involves sneaking your technique in between whatever movements your opponent is doing.
So, the way you make a rhythm difficult for a drummer is the same way you make things difficult for your opponent--by getting in between.
10. Establishing and Breaking Rhythm
Taking this idea one step further, it's easier to score your points if you are the one who sets up your opponent's rhythm.
I happened across this fascinating quote by drummer and author John Lamb:
"You should define rhythm according to how the brain and the body changes when you listen to rhythm. And to make a long story short it's actually pretty straightforward and really well studied in the field of music therapy. ... Basically when we listen to rhythm, when we listen to music, our brain synchronizes to the music ... [it's] a bit of a simplification, but we start to think in time with the music. And so rhythm isn't a thing that we have. There's no metronome in the brain that keeps perfect time. Instead, it's something that we're in. It is something that is by definition shared."
This is extremely useful information to competition fighters. If you can synchronize your opponent's brain to your rhythm, how much easier would it be to get your points? A lot.
Bill "Superfoot" Wallace had a very effective way of doing this. It's not a terribly unique strategy, but he was uniquely good at it. (If you go to his seminar, he'll break it down in all the gritty detail, but for our purposes I'll just give you the broad strokes.)
First he would skip in and throw some kick, not intending to score and intentionally coming up short. Then he'd immediately fall back to a comfortable sparring distance.
He would then skip in and throw the exact same kick again, but this time a little deeper so that his opponent would have to move. This is enough to establish the pattern. His opponent is now in this rhythm: watch the skip, watch the kick, evade; watch the skip, watch the kick, evade.
On the third time, he would spring the trap. He would skip in and kick according to the established rhythm, but it would be a different kick. If his opponent was expecting a roundhouse kick to the right side of the head, he might evade by shifting to the left with his hand up on the right side of his face. But if the attack is now a hook kick coming to the left side of his head, his evasion will do him no good and he'll eat the kick.
There are a lot of good fighters who do this, or some variation of it. As a general rule of thumb, if someone reacts the same way twice, there is a very high probability that they will do it a third time. Build your rhythm with your opponent, and once they are in your rhythm, you know what they will do and when they will do it. Hit them where and when they are vulnerable. Easier said than done, of course, but this is the principle of how it works.
11. Another Take on Forms/Patterns/Kata
People practice forms in a lot of different ways for a variety of purposes. Some take it seriously strictly as a self defense textbook, others focus on performing for competition, and some enjoy it just as a solo workout. Others use it as a connection to the great martial artists of the past, in a way that Sensei Iain Abernethy explains far more eloquently than I can:
"When we read a good poem, or listen to a good piece of music, we can connect with the thoughts and emotions of the people who produced those works. It's more than letters on a page or vibrations through the air. Good art can profoundly connect two human beings in a shared experience. Kata is similar. When we move in the way the past masters moved, when we connect with them through their work; we gain the opportunity to feel what they felt and think what they thought. We are walking in the footsteps of the past masters when practicing and studying their kata. It's much deeper than just mimicked motion."
Drummers don't do kata per se. It would be very unusual for a drummer to try to completely copy another drummer's movement, right down to their look and mannerisms. But wouldn't it be interesting if somebody tried it? If a skilled drummer tried to copy a great drummer of the past as perfectly as possible, to "move in the way the past masters moved" and connect with that past artist in a way that martial artists sometimes do but drummers usually don't? Wouldn't it be cool if I could interview someone who did that? I'm just kidding, I totally did. Here's Casey Grillo auditioning to play Buddy Rich in a movie.
What Casey Grillo is doing here seems very kata-like.
Casey wasn't doing this as a learning exercise, but he ended up learning nonetheless. The experience caused permanent changes to his drumming. "That was my first time ever playing traditional grip." He still mostly uses matched grip, but now he has another tool in his toolbox, and it comes out sometimes. But there was a more sweeping change to his playing as well. "Also I tilted my snare like Buddy to try to make it more authentic like him, and that was the first time I ever did that. ... That's the way I do it now. I just did it for the video, but after I did it I thought, 'Wow, this kind of makes sense.' It just stayed like that. I started tilting everything else now, too. ... It's more comfortable. I can be more on top of the kit instead of leaning back."
Seems like there's something to be said for "walking in the footsteps of the past masters."
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This series will be continued with Drumming-Inspired Martial Arts Training: Martial Arts and Drumming Part III.
Master Do Kihyun is the President of the Kyulyun Taekyun Association and a published author on taekyun. He has trained in martial arts for over 40 years including taekwondo, kung fu, kendo, karate, aikido, hapkido, and others. He started taekyun in 1982 and has trained in it continuously ever since. He has a masters degree in Sports and Leisure and is working toward his PhD. He now teaches taekyun in Seoul, Korea, at a small school where people (including myself) come from all over the world to train. Despite his impressive resume, he insists that his most noteworthy accomplishment is having achieved confidence, happiness, and peace of mind through martial arts. I sat down with Master Do to discuss taekyun and his experiences in the martial arts.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 of the interview is here.
Martial Journeys: What prompted you to switch from training in taekwondo to taekyun?
Master Do: I read in taekwondo books that taekwondo came from taekyun, so I wanted to know what taekyun is. I wasn't serious, I was just curious. Fortunately, Master Song lived near my University. I found him and I started to learn taekyun in 1982.
Martial Journeys: How did you find him? Did he run a school?
Master Do: No, I found his address by luck. I read about him in a magazine in a shop. The magazine mentioned the general area where he lived, but not the exact address. So I went there and asked around at the village, "Do you know Master Song?"
Song Deokgi (left) was depicted in taekwondo magazines
well before 1982.
Martial Journeys: Master Song is very famous in taekyun circles. What was it like to train with him?
Master Do: I was happy to learn a new style of martial art. When I visited my master for the first time, I imagined that since taekyun is an old style martial art, taekyun's movement must be very slow and very graceful with deep stances. But my teacher taught me that taekyun doesn't have that kind of technique. When I saw what he showed me, I thought, "What is this?!" I was very surprised the first time. I was very happy to learn something so different. Also, he never said, "practice taekyun." He would just say, "play taekyun," or "enjoy taekyun." Having fun was important. I love that. Also since he was born in 1893, he could tell me what Korea was like 100 years ago. I often asked about the Joseon Dynasty, and he told me many things about that time.
A postcard depicting life in the Joseon Dynasty. Thanks to koreanet for making the
image available for reuse.
Martial Journeys: What was the most difficult thing about switching to taekyun?
Master Do: Taekwondo is a very tense martial art with strong, hard movements. I practiced taekwondo for a long time before starting taekyun, so my body was very tense. My taekyun master taught me soft movements. He would tell me, "You're too tense. Relax."
Martial Journeys: Have you ever learned something outside of martial arts that helped you improve at martial arts?
Master Do: I lived in America from August of 1985 to May of 1988. When I came back to Korea, my teacher, Master Song, had died. At that time I had many questions because when I was in America I would demonstrate taekyun, and Americans often asked me, "Why do you move like that?" I didn't know. I was just doing it the way my teacher taught me. I said when I got back to my country I would ask my teacher, but I was too late. My challenge when I came back to Korea was figuring out how I could understand my movement. I tried to find movement very similar to taekyun so I learned Korean mask dance. I also wanted to have beautiful hand techniques so I learned Korean traditional dance. Mask dance is very dynamic and powerful and Korean dance is beautiful. I gained the confidence to perform a very beautiful martial art. I can do very beautiful forms because I learned so much Korean mask dance and Korean traditional dance. I adapted Korean traditional dance form to Korean martial arts. My teacher didn't teach me these aesthetic details, but I still want to improve my forms' beauty, and I did it through Korean traditional dance.
Martial Journeys: What's the most important thing you've learned in martial arts?
Master Do: I've developed a sound body and sound mind through martial arts. If you have those things you will be happy. That's my entire purpose. If you watch me, I am always very happy and always smiling. I'm always thinking about how I can be happy. Why do I practice? I want to be healthy and happy. It's that simple. I don't have a complicated philosophy.
Martial Journeys: What advice do you have for someone who wants to be good at martial arts?
Master Do: Two things. First, practice very hard. Very hard. Second, you have to study and read a lot of books. Read martial arts books, philosophical books, art books--anything. The more knowledge you have, the better you can understand your martial art. So practice very hard and read.
I forgot to ask if reading blogs counts.
Martial Journeys: How has taekyun changed over time? How is it different today than in the past?
Master Do: Taekyun hasn't changed very much, but there are some differences because of two things. First, people are taller today than they were in the past. Second, today we have too much information. We're exposed to other styles of martial arts, so we can introduce various kicks and hand techniques that weren't originally part of taekyun. This is happening all the time with other styles. For example, even though similar kicks existed before, taekwondo invented the spin hook kick around 1970. Now everybody uses it--Japanese martial artists, Chinese martial artists, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan... Everyone can use it because we've seen it in movies and on the Internet. In taekyun competition, young students incorporate other techniques to their fighting. The rules allow it, so taekyun changes as fighters mix in techniques. It goes both ways. Taekwondo has incorporated some kicking techniques from taekyun.
Martial Journeys: What do you think taekyun will be like in the future?
Master Do: Taekyun techniques are very good, but other martial arts' techniques are just as good, so specific techniques are not important. I just want to give to the other martial arts the philosophy of practicing for the sake of a sound body and a happy mind. We practice taekyun not for fighting, but to be happy. But if I want to be happy, I need the people around me to be happy. So when I practice martial arts, I want everyone to enjoy themselves and be happy, to achieve a sound body and ultimately a happy community. Technique is not important. Any style is okay--just choose for yourself which one you like. You asked me why I switched from taekwondo to taekyun. It's just because I love these techniques! I was happy, so I switched. No special reason, no high-level philosophy, just pursuing happiness.
I expected that over the course of this project, I would learn a lot of physical skills and a few nonphysical ones. I still hope to do exactly that. Certainly there is a lot to be learned in martial arts besides movement, so maybe I should not have been surprised that most of the lessons here were not physical in nature.
I told Kris Wilder what I have told every instructor I've ever trained under: "I am happy to try to learn whatever you try to teach me." He took that more literally than most and spent that training time teaching me about teaching. He is perhaps better known for teaching physical skills, but if you have read Sensei Mentor Teacher Coach, you will understand why I did not feel cheated by this at all. (And if you have not read it, you may want to fix that sooner rather than later.)
It seems that after watching me teach on the first day, he got it in his head (correctly) that I would want to teach martial arts for a living someday. Since he was happy with how I ran class, he focused on the meta-skills of teaching.
Seven Basic Actions instead of kicking for this class.
First he showed me his method for planning a class. He keeps notes for each class in a subtle file on the wall. The template is split into three sections, warm ups, basics, and skill drills. He has pencil markings over a week's worth of pages for what he plans to cover. His lower level classes are just reductions of the main lesson plan. Even though he stressed the importance of planning, he also highlighted the need to stay flexible.
He also talked about how important it is to "read outside of your industry." He said that he learns things outside of martial arts that help him with his martial arts every day, because he has made a habit of exploring other fields. He told stories of making connections overseas as an accidental byproduct of investigating cinematography, and at worst it has been "a neat little dead end," as when he learned the neurology of how the eyes focus while studying magicians' tricks. He cited Malcolm Gladwell as a perfect example of success through exploring other industries, as his books tend to illustrate broad concepts by in-depth excursions into a wide range of fields.
If you have not read Outliers, you should fix that immediately.
Seriously. Stop reading this blog and go do it.
But most of the instruction came through stories and examples. He told me about how he motivated a young student with severe attention difficulties by making sure the kid knew he wasn't in trouble when he heard his name called again and again, but instead it meant that he was about to hear something important that would help him learn and excel. He told me about his rules for managing disruptive behavior. Kids who need a time-out sit at the edge of the mat, but if they leave the mat they have to go home. It draws a concrete line between being in class and not. He even told stories about how to deal with upset parents and how to kick a student out of the school if a severe problem can't be solved any other way.
He also told a story about how he helped an adult student overcome a drug problem and clean up his life after getting out of jail. When I suggested telling this story in detail on the blog, he seemed to think the story was not unique enough to be interesting. While I have to respectfully disagree on that point, what he said next was plenty interesting by itself. He said, "That's not what teaching is about."
Kris Wilder, between classes.
He went on to explain that the goal is not to help people change, but to help them find something inside of them that was already there. This launched us into a discussion about why people sign up for martial arts classes. If you ask them, they will often say they want to learn self defense. But why do they want to learn self defense? Most of them do not face violence on a regular basis, so most new students' desire to learn self defense doesn't come from a fear of what will happen if they don't have those skills. Instead, they often hope that this will be a solution to something that is missing in their lives. For example, everyone has an innate need to feel competence. Someone who does not feel competent at work or feels unappreciated there might seek to fulfill that need through martial arts. In other words, students are already looking for something inside themselves. The instructor's job is just to help them find it.
With kids it's different, of course, since sometimes they join because of the parents' interest and not their own. He suggested a scenario where a kid's parents are "the Charlie Brown teacher," where it becomes the instructor's job to reach the students in a way the parents can't.
But he also pointed out that even though the objective of teaching is to reach students and help them find what is already inside them, reaching more students doesn't necessarily make you a better teacher. Sensei Kris puts his money where his mouth is on this one. He runs a small school, both in square footage and number of students. By keeping it small he hopes to reach his students more deeply. It's also worth pointing out that I never once heard him boast of his students' skill, but he was happy to tell stories of their achievements outside of martial arts. There are no trophies or other tokens of students' karate accomplishments on display, but he does celebrate the students who have left him to go to college by displaying their schools' pennants.
The accomplishments of West Seattle Karate students.
In the end I interviewed Sophal and told his story instead of the one about getting out of jail. It turned out to be another story about finding something within that was always there. That was clever on Sensei Kris's part, but then he went all Mr. Miagi on me. At one point in an unrelated conversation, I told him a story from when I was a kid. One summer I taught a girl in Special Ed how to read, not knowing that everyone else had given up on her. My point was that she obviously didn't deserve to be given up on, if a grade-schooler like myself could help her. Sensei Kris suddenly took a serious tone and reinterpreted the story as evidence that I have always been a good teacher.
Now, please bear with me while I recap:
1. Sensei Kris knew that I was not terribly confident about teaching his students.
2. Sensei Kris was trying to teach me about teaching.
3. Sensei Kris asserts that teaching is really about helping people find something they've always had.
4. After hours of instruction on teaching, Sensei Kris finds a way to suggest that this is a skill I've always had.
