Martial Movement Seminar

Hi everyone!

Most of my seminars are part of the 50 States Challenge, and I teach at them for charity.  But this one is something different.  I've been invited to do a joint seminar with fellow martial arts blogger Pat Bolton of IMOK Karate.

And you're invited, so save the date!

Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 1:00 to 3:00

We'll be at 55 South Gammon Road in Madison, Wisconsin, which is the Lussier Community Education Center gym.

If you'd like to come, drop Pat an email at imokkarate@gmail.com.

We're trying hard to make the seminar style-agnostic, so it doesn't matter what kind of martial art you do--just bring your enthusiasm.  We're going to cover biomechanics, joint health, power generation, applying forms/kata in self defense, and conditioning.  And just because it seems somehow impossible or just morally wrong for me to be involved in a project like this and not introduce a little Martial Journeys weirdness, we're also going to do some of this nonsense.

Here's the official flier, which you're welcome to print out and display if you like:

Please come!  I would love to meet you in person.  Email Pat to register here.

Lock In What You Learned

From Washington to Arkansas:  A teaching technique from Sensei Kris Wilder

One of my favorite things about the 50 States Challenge is passing on what I learned at previous stops.  After taking some time to process everything I've been taught, I pass along a Takeaway Technique that exemplifies the lesson from the previous school.  Then after I pass it along to the next school, I put it on the blog for all to see.  You can blame Iain Abernethy for this, since it was his idea.

When I was in Seattle, I got a lesson in teaching.

Which is kind of like saying this fish got a lesson in static electricity.

I got a lot of good stuff out of Sensei Kris, but it was easy to choose what piece of it should be the takeaway technique.

I had just finished teaching the oldest group of students about kicking mechanics and pivoting theory, with a digression into two-person forms.  Just as we were wrapping up, he asked each student in the class what they had learned.

Each student in the class had an answer, and those answers were diverse.  Some of them mentioned specific techniques that were new to them.  Others mentioned details of techniques that they didn't know before.  Others came up with observations about life.

Whoooo, that was fun.  I wanna go back.

I instantly loved what Sensei Kris did.  By doing that, each student had to reflect on the class and think of something that was useful to them.  That by itself made it far more likely that they would remember it.  It was sort of an on-the-spot personalized mini review session.  I imagined that once a student has been put on the spot with a question like that, in future lessons they might keep it in mind that they might be asked again.

For example, say a student is told to throw a punch for the thousandth time.  As the class gets busy throwing punches, that student might be just going through the motions.  Until someone points out to him that he could get more power if he adjusts his stance.  The student could file that information away for later, thinking, "There's a good thing to mention if I get asked what I learned today."  And by filing it away to be recalled at the end of the class, it could also be recalled later, say, the next time he was throwing punches.  And he would remember it whether he actually got asked at the end of class or not.  It was brilliant.

Later Sensei Kris pointed out an aspect that I hadn't noticed.  He said that while it's really useful to the student, it's equally useful to the instructor.  He said it gives him insight into his students and how they learn.  He said that some students mention very specific mechanical things, while others mention general feelings of techniques, and others cue off of stories or jokes.  As he said this, I remembered examples from the class I taught.

I have incorporated this into my teaching, and I'm so happy with the results.  I've gotten responses from tiny details like, "I should turn my foot more when I throw roundhouse kick," to grander observations like, "The power isn't coming from where I thought it was coming from."  And, not gonna lie, it's pretty cool as the instructor to hear all of your students articulate their learning and how much they got out of your teaching.  Try to trip over nothing on your way off the mats so your head doesn't get too big.

Is it cool with you guys if I just spend the whole blog post bragging on my students?

If you're interested in trying this out yourself, here's how.

For Instructors:

1.  Don't warn the students that you're going to ask them what they learned.
2.  Ask each student individually and give them time to answer.
3.  Everyone has to come up with an answer.  No sitting out.
4.  No one is allowed to repeat someone else's answer.
5.  If a student can't think of an answer, let them think about it and come back to them later.
6.  You may want to ask the least experienced students first.  It's a little harder to answer last because if someone else gives your answer before your turn, you have to quickly think of a new one.

For Students:

This part is me riffing off of what Sensei Kris taught me, so don't hold it against him if you don't like it.

If your instructor doesn't ask you what you learned, you can still ask yourself.  Do it right after the class ends.  Write it down, if you like.  Just reviewing it in your head will be useful, but having a record is even better.

You shouldn't have any trouble thinking of something you've learned in a class.  If you're consistently having a really hard time, it might be time to take a long, hard look at your training and see if anything needs to change.

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Full disclosure:  I kind of messed this up when I was in Arkansas.  When I saw the huge turnout, I realized that there was no way everyone would be able to provide a unique answer.  So instead I asked for a handful of volunteers to give it a try.  Even with the smaller group, I didn't leave enough time for it at the end of the lesson.  It was really rushed trying to get answers out of everyone, and on a couple of them I had to let them slide without providing their own unique answers.

Just my luck that the first time I foul this up, it's at a seminar for the 50 States Challenge.

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Well that was embarrassing!

How to Make and Train With a Jegi

A jegi (roughly pronounced "jay" like the bird and "gi" like the karate uniform) is a traditional Korean toy, similar to a shuttlecock.  It's used to play a game called jegichagi (literally, "jegi kicking").  Legend has it that the game was developed from martial arts training.  No one knows if that is actually true, but there's some evidence for it.  Either way, there's no reason it can't be part of your training today.

Traditionally, the jegi was made with a 100 mun coin and hanji, handmade Korean paper.

100 mun Korean coin (photo credit)

Even though 100 mun might sound like a lot, this coin had so little value that in order to buy anything, you needed a lot of them.  People would thread them onto strings like beads and tie off the ends, then they could drape the strings over their shoulders to carry them around.  So even poor people had a lot of these coins lying around.

To make a jegi, the coin would be placed in the middle of a folded sheet of hanji paper.  By poking a hole though the paper to match the hole in the coin, the paper could be torn into strips and pushed through the hole in the coin, resulting in a paper-wrapped coin with feathered paper strips coming out of the hole.

Making a Jegi

In the spirit of the people who played jegichagi so long ago, we're going to make them out of whatever materials that we have at hand.  I like to use plastic bags, coins and string, but you do you.  Like a Jedi's lightsaber, you will design your jegi to be one-of-a-kind, perfectly in tune with your connection to the Force, from only the purest Kyber crystals... wait, where was I?  Oh, right, making a jegi.

If you don't have a cat but want a similar challenge level, you can toss your plastic bag into the air and cut your squares with a samurai sword before it lands.

1.  Cut squares.

You want two squares of plastic, each about one square foot.  For those who live in parts of the world that use a reasonable system of measurement, you get to make your squares 30 cm x 30 cm.  You don't have to be exact, and in fact I encourage you to experiment with bigger or smaller squares and see what you like.  Bigger squares means longer strips, and more air resistance, so the jegi will move more slowly through the air.

2.  Pick your coin(s).

You can use any coin you like, or really any small object that has a little weight to it.  You can also use multiple coins.  The important thing is that you get the weight right.  Too much weight, and your jegi will fall really fast and be difficult to use.  Too little, and it won't move easily through the air and it will be difficult to kick it high.  You can experiment to find your personal sweet spot.

I'm using a single penny.  I like the weight it gives my jegi, and also we should get rid of pennies whenever we can.  I should mention that this makes for a very light jegi, which will be difficult for traditional play but easier for martial arts training.


3.  Fold everything.

There are easier ways to do this, but if your art is usually practiced barefoot, it's nice to have a little extra padding.  If you want even more, you can wrap your coin in a tissue before following these steps.

a) Fold your squares in half and place the coin in the center.

b) Fold your coin into its own little strip along the folded edge.

c) Fold the strip a second time.

d) Roll it up.

4.  Tie it off.

Take your string and tie the plastic down near the coin, so the coin is secure and can't slide out.

5.  Cut the plastic into strips.

If you've been careful with your folding, it should be easy and quick to cut the plastic into strips, about 1 cm (half an inch for my fellow Americans) wide.  If, like myself, you have the craft skills of a drunk toddler, you'll probably have to cut each strip individually.  But success is a journey not a destination (or something) and eventually you will have a jegi.

Qapla'!

6.  Feather out the strips.

You've got it!  Even if you skip all this arts and crafts nonsense and just buy a jegi, you will have to do this step, which is to separate the strips from each other so that they can catch the air individually.  Wait, you can just buy these things?  And I'm here with my scissors and string like a sucker?

At this point, most humans would also identify this thing as a cat toy.

Let's Play!

So you have your own jegi!  Now what do you do with it?  Traditionally, jegichagi was played by kicking the jegi with the instep of the foot, trying to keep it from touching the ground, with the winner being the player who kicked it the most times before it finally fell.

I play it a little differently.  My method is picking it up, kicking it once, chasing it to wherever it fell, and trying again while some old Korean guy starts laughing on the sidelines, proceeding to demonstrate how easy it is and offering some advice that is beyond my language skills to understand.  Anyway.

Certainly you can play the traditional version of the game and use it to develop your hip muscles (or you can do that without the jegi).

There are also variations where you have to keep the jegi in the air using only a specific kick, or where you can't put your foot down between kicks, or where the jegi is kicked between players in a group.  Have fun with it!

Let's Train!

If you're training barefoot, I recommend doing a few light practice kicks so you know how your jegi feels before you go nuts (or before handing off your jegi to a young student).

Pick a striking technique.  Any punch or kick will work.  Toss your jegi into the air and try to hit it with the technique you chose.  Don't worry about where it lands, just try to make your hand or foot connect with the jegi.  If this is your first time playing with a jegi, you will probably find this plenty challenging.  Experiment with which techniques are easy and which are difficult.

Here are a few ideas, in order of difficulty:

Reverse punch
Front kick
Roundhouse kick
Side kick
Spin hook kick

I've never met a student who can reliably hit a jegi with all of those techniques.  Even so, it's great for developing fast and accurate strikes.

Here are a couple of my younger students working their kicks on a jegi:

Lets Play AND Train!

Ever played a basketball game called Horse?  You can modify the rules to play with a jegi.

One player issues a challenge.  It can be anything from "I am going to punch it and not miss," to "I am going to kick it with a flying spinning roundhouse kick with my eyes closed and make it land perfectly balanced on your head while reciting Funakoshi's 19th precept in Klingon."  The player then attempts whatever challenge they issued.

If they succeed, the jegi goes to the second player, who must attempt the same challenge.

If they fail, the second player does not have to attempt the challenge and instead creates their own challenge.

If you fail a challenge you didn't create, you get a letter.  Your first letter is H, then O, then R, and so forth.  Once you spell HORSE, you are out of the game.  The last player in the game is the winner.

Happy training!

Motivation, Martial Arts and Video Games

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.

Drumming Inspired Martial Arts Drills: Martial arts and Drumming Part III

This is the third and final part in the Martial Arts and Drumming series, which began with How to Teach or Learn Any Physical Skill and 11 Ways Drumming Can Improve Your Training.

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To wrap up the Martial Arts and Drumming series, I'd like to share some training ideas that came out of this project. Some of these have very specific uses, but mostly you'll probably find the most value in them if your regular training starts to feel like a never-ending chore and you need to shake things up. Keep the fighting spirit! No one is holding you back! Train hard and have fun!

If you don't know how to read sheet music, it may be helpful to introduce yourself to the basics before getting too far into this section. As long as you know what quarter notes and eighth notes are, you should be fine for 90% of this. If those are nonsense terms to you, you may want to click here.

And if you're a drummer and not a martial artist, please, for the love of Lingadua, do not try any of these without an instructor who can teach you the proper technique. Injuries happen, and they are much, much more likely without the supervision of a qualified instructor. It is simply not possible for an online article to include everything you need to know to try it safely.

Ready?  Let's hit stuff.

1.  Kick to a Metronome 

Great for: balance, speed, agility, cardio, making your hip flexors cry.

First you will need a metronome app for your smart phone. This is my new favorite training tool. It is so much more useful than I ever would have guessed. If you want to go really old school, you could get an actual physical metronome, but with the quality free options available on any smart phone, I can't really recommend a physical one. I use Tempo Lite, but there are other good options out there.

Once you have a metronome on your phone, you can adjust the settings however you want, but try this to start. If you picked a different app it might not let you do exactly this, but do the best you can: 4/4 time signature, quarter notes, 130 bpm, with the first and third notes accented. Start with roundhouse kicks. On the accented notes, your kicking foot should touch the bag. On the regular notes, your foot should hit the floor. Adding a little hop between kicks can help you maintain your pace, and also help you stay light on your feet. Make sure your technique is correct (especially your pivot, as I have ranted about in the past), and be sure to do both sides.

One student commented that the metronome helped him stay light on his feet—something he has struggled with since white belt. He also seemed to be sweating a lot more than usual, and having a lot of fun.  For me, it's nice to have the metronome keep me honest when I start unconsciously slowing down, as tends to happen when fatigue sets in.

Metronome kicking drill at 130 beats per minute.

Variation #1: Set the metronome exactly the same except slow it down to about 60. Pivot (but don't hop) in between kicks. This is great for working your balance and control because it’s uncomfortably slow. If you just let your foot drop down to the floor, your foot will hit the floor too early and you'll lose the rhythm.

Metronome kicking drill at 60 beats per minute.

Variation #2: If you've got a good solid pad for this, go ahead and blast it. See if you can make the sound of your kick completely drown out the sound of the metronome.

Other variations on this drill—try different kicks, try adjusting the tempo, try going for longer or shorter amounts of time.  You should be able to go faster than 130 and slower than 60 to make it more challenging.  You can play with the settings on your metronome app to facilitate double kicks or kicking combinations. There are lots of possibilities here.

Technically you could instead kick to music, but the metronome is nice because you can set the tempo to be exactly what you need it to be. Then once you have it down, you can push the speed incrementally to make it more challenging. The other benefit is that with fewer sounds, there's less distraction and it's much easier to match your kick to the rhythm.

2.  Balance Work 

Great for: balance, strengthening your hips, making yourself feel better after how badly that last drill went.

If you're like me, the first time you tried that metronome drill at 130 bpm, you could only make it about 30 seconds before drifting off the beat. I was shocked that I was able to iron out my drumming technique and play to a metronome faster than I was able to reliably kick to a metronome. (I'm not really a drummer, I'm a martial artist who likes hitting things enough that it kind of bled over into owning a pair of drum sticks.) It came down to a balance problem. As I was kicking, when the smaller muscles that control balance became even a little bit fatigued, it took just a fraction of a second longer to push myself upright after kicking. It was subtle enough that I had never noticed it before in all my years of training, and in fact I thought my balance was pretty good. However, it wasn't good enough to do that metronome drill for very long. So I supplemented my training with these drills.

Most balance exercises involve just trying not to fall over from some unstable situation. That is certainly valuable for some things, but I needed balance while I was moving. These drills are modified from Loren W. Christensen's excellent Solo Training book, which really should already be in your library.

Balance work is really just picking a fight with gravity.

Start by lifting your leg into a roundhouse kick chambered position. Do it however your style suggests, but make sure your standing foot is pivoted correctly (please!). While in your chambered position, keep your eyes fixed on something that isn't moving. This will get your brain to help keep you steady, and you're going to need all the help you can get. With your leg off the ground chambered for roundhouse kick, shift your weight back and forth between the ball of the foot and the heel. Practice on both sides, and do each leg for 30 seconds to 1 minute at a time.

Variation #1: Lift your leg into a roundhouse kick chamber. Try to keep your raised leg perfectly still and move only your upper body by bending at the waist. Shift your upper body forward, then back to center, backward, then back to center, left, and back to center, right and back to center. Again, do each leg for 30 seconds to a minute at a time.

Variation #2: If these are too challenging, you can make it easier by putting your hand on the back of a chair or some other steady surface. Be sure not to put any weight onto it, just use it to help you keep your balance. Alternatively, you can just try to hold the position without moving your weight around. This is valuable but the goal here is to work the muscles that will pull you upright after you start to fall away from upright. Those muscles don't work as hard if you don't let your center of gravity move.

3. Experiment with Combinations

Great for... well, it depends.  

Go onto Google and search for "drum stick control combinations." You might get better mileage with an image search, but either way you'll get a dizzying number of results with various patterns of L's and R's written over and over again. Many of them are written with specific rhythms, but you can ignore that. Pick some combination of L's and R's, at random if you like. The nice thing about these combinations is they generally have a good balance of working your right and left side. (If you want to go crazy with it, much ado is made of this book, which consists of nothing but this.)

For this example, I'll use this combination:

R L R R    L R L L

I am told this is called a paradiddle, and I'm also told that there are rudiments called pataflafla and flamacue and sometimes even stranger sounding things, but I'm pretty sure this is just a joke that drummers play on the rest of us. I imagine them snickering to each other, "Heh, I got another one! She thinks a chumbly bumkinsteen is a real thing, and she's even going to put it in her blog!" Nice try, guys. Not falling for it.

But for now, we can work with this paradiddle thing. If you wanted to be a technically proficient drummer, you'd try to play those as evenly as possible, and I'd also recommend using drum sticks, but we're not going to do either of those things. Instead you're going to experiment with combinations that match our pattern of L's and R's. Don't try to match the suggested rhythm. Your rhythm needs to be dictated by the flow of whatever combination you choose.

If you're a beginner, any combination will do. If you're intermediate or advanced, try to choose a combination that makes sense for whatever your training focus is. If you're interested in tournament sparring, choose something that would score in the ring. If your focus is self defense, make sure your combination does damage efficiently. If you're practicing for show, choose something that is technically challenging and looks really cool. And so forth.

Variation #1:  Paradiddle for Light Contact Sparring

There are plenty of options here, but in this example, she uses a right punch, left punch, right kick, right kick. That fulfills the requirements of the drill, to use our R L R R stick combination. For bonus points, she's trying to craft a combination that will score in a light contact sparring match.  The first punch goes to the head, hopefully drawing her opponent's hands up and leaving the body open for the second punch. The two kicks go to the body and to the head in quick succession, since that can be difficult to defend against.

Paradiddle (RLRR) for light contact sparring.

Variation #2:  Paradiddle for Self Defense

Now the goal is to do damage.  The combination she opts for is a right hand palm strike to the face, maintaining contact while the left arm comes in with an elbow to the head. Still maintaining contact (this target doesn't have shoulders so you'll have to use your imagination) she drives two knees into the gut with the right leg.

Paradiddle (RLRR) for self defense.

Variation #3:  Paradiddle Just For Fun

This time she built a combination with no larger training goal in mind. The names of those kicks are different depending what style of martial art you practice, but you can see that she uses the same pattern--right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot.

Paradiddle (RLRR) just for fun.

The goal here is to explore outside of your go-to techniques and combinations (let's be honest, we all have our favorites) and to be more creative in your movement. Have fun with it!

4.  Play a Song

Great for: balance, control, speed, accuracy and timing.

Ready to go really nuts? Pick a song, preferably one where the drums are fairly simple. You'll probably have to slow it down a lot.  I don't care who you are, your hip is not going to be as fast as your wrist. And if your hip is as fast as a professional drummer's wrist, congratulations on medalling in every single event in the 2018 Olympics, and good luck with the PED scandals.  

Once you've got a song and a tempo you like, you can try to "play" it on martial arts equipment. Try to find a few things that sound different when you hit them.  I despise xray paper as a training tool, but I bought some for this project after grudgingly admitting that it makes a pretty cool sound when you hit it, and it's a very different sound than that oh-so-satisfying thump that comes from hitting most training pads. If you're hitting anything that was not designed as martial arts equipment, you probably want to wear shoes. Safety first, martial silliness second.

Insufferably silly drum cover! Stop laughing, it's harder than you think.

You will probably get more mileage out of this drill if you keep your contact light, but it will depend a lot on what you are hitting.  Trying to get a similar volume of sound out of your various targets is an excellent way to practice your control, to make sure you have the precision of movement to hit with the exact amount of force you intend.

Variation:  If trying a song is too intimidating, try a few combinations based on simple rhythms. Practically any sheet music will do.  Pick a measure and assign each note to a target, and strike the targets according to the measure's rhythm. (This would be one of those times where if you can't read sheet music, it might be helpful to get a quick and dirty introduction.) Use your metronome app to make sure you're keeping steady.  My students especially enjoyed this one.  Experiment with it and have fun!

5.  Your Turn

Great for: deeply understanding your art, having fun, crossing things off your bucket list.

This project has been incredibly rewarding on many levels. I learned to play the drums a little bit, and that's cool, but it's the smallest benefit of everything that came out of this. I met new people, challenged myself mentally in ways that helped me grow, came up with some drills that will help me be a better martial artist and a better instructor, and my understanding of rhythm as it pertains to martial arts has expanded so much that I can't believe I ever thought I knew anything about it.

So now it's your turn. Go try something. It can be anything, as long as it has nothing to do with martial arts and you've never done it before. Then look for the areas of overlap. Jesse Enkamp, the original Karate Nerd, says, "Sometimes it's important to look outside of karate to improve your karate. I have this philosophy that karate is like a mountain. … If you want to see your own mountain better, sometimes you have to climb the mountain next to your mountain. Looking from over here gives you perspective, meaning you see karate and its relationship to other stuff more clearly. … I try to connect the dots and see how this relates to what I'm doing, to give me new ideas and try to remix them into the karate mindset."

So what have you been meaning to try someday, but never did? Now you have the perfect excuse because it's part of your training. It really can be anything. I once wrote (and subsequently lost) an essay about how teaching martial arts was similar to making video games. How is martial arts like fishing? Writing a novel? Breeding cats? Juggling geese? I look forward to hearing everyone's adventures in bilingual slam poetry, geriatric skateboarding, aerial cello playing, x-treme crocheting, jetpack snorkeling, and whatever else you ever wanted to try.

How is making Internet memes like martial arts? Photo credit.

Seriously, go try something and tell me about it in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

How to Teach or Learn Any Physical Skill: Martial Arts and Drumming Part I

This is Part 1 of 3 in the Martial Arts and Drumming series.

This project started innocently enough.  I thought that in lieu of my 50 States Challenge, I'd try something I've never done before and see what I could learn from it as a martial artist.  My vision was distant and vague, but I thought I'd write a blog post for my students to illustrate the value in being open-minded to new experiences and willing to learn in any situation. 

Four months of drumming lessons, interviews and general pandemonium later, this sure has snowballed.  I'm honored that there has been so much interest in this project.  I have been very far outside of my comfort zone on this project, and it has been one crazy and awesome ride.  I hope you find something of value here, or at least that you enjoy it even half as much as I did.

Being a Terrible Drummer (or a terrible martial artist for that matter)

There is very little about drumming that I can speak to with any degree of authority, but one thing I can say is that being a terrible drummer is awesome.  It is so awesome that I almost feel sorry for people who are actually good at it.

As a beginner, I'm supposed to be a terrible drummer, but more importantly, I'm allowed to be a terrible drummer.  I can sit down to practice some simple rhythm and make a mistake in every single measure, and the worst thing that is going to happen is a big dopey grin.  The stick in my left hand can bounce so chaotically that you might think I have some serious medical condition, but that just makes two consecutive good strokes feel like a real victory.  Move over, Hercules—this legend just played a whole fill!  (Cue the cheers and ticker tape.)

I will never look this cool playing the drums.  Good thing
blogging is the ultimate form of artistic expression.  It is, right?

I don’t have that in martial arts anymore, and haven’t for a long time.  In martial arts, I have expectations on me.  If I do something badly, it reflects poorly on me, my school, and my instructors.  I have students who are counting on me to train them well, provide good information and set a great example.  Don't get me wrong—I love it.  It's still fun, but it's a very different kind of fun. 

As an instructor, I greatly enjoy seeing a struggling white belt who is having fun.  Here's the thing about people who do something badly and are still having fun:  if they're having fun, they're going to practice.  If they practice, they'll get better.  In my experience, the people who are having fun in martial arts go the farthest, regardless of whatever natural talent they may or may not have.  They're the ones who stick with it and persevere when things get tough.

So what that means for me as a terrible drummer is that it's just a matter of time before I'm merely a bad drummer.  If being a bad drummer is as much fun as being a terrible drummer, I'll someday be a mediocre drummer.  And if that's fun, well, by then I'll probably be 150 years old and my interest will probably have waned, but you get the idea.  When I started martial arts, I never thought I'd do any of the crazy things I did.  I was one of those picked-last-in-gym-class kids.  When I was a white belt, I had this lofty goal of being a green belt someday.  People who know me as a 4th degree black belt tend to find that pretty funny, but there's an important lesson there.  Please, if you take nothing else from this blog, just go do something fun.  Don't worry about whether or not you're good at it.

That said, let me set this straight now.  There will never be video evidence of me playing drums.  That would be ceaselessly vain.  (Would you keep reading if you knew that I was lying?)

I have no idea what I'm doing! Photo credit.

One caveat that instructors need to watch out for is that teaching your students to love an activity is a learning goal, not a retention goal.  Especially when it comes to teaching kids, sometimes the students' enjoyment of class is cynically filed under business goals, because if they're having fun their parents will keep paying.  There's some truth to that, but by thinking of fun as a retention mechanism and not a learning mechanism, you're doing your students a disservice.  Likewise, teaching your students to enjoy martial arts is not the same as teaching them to enjoy a class.  You can take a group of kids, play games with them for 90% of a class, and send them home happy.  They might have had fun, but they have not learned to enjoy martial arts.  As an instructor, your challenge is to make the 100th roundhouse kick of the day as fun and engaging as the 10th.  Then your students have learned their roundhouse kick lesson and also have developed a positive attitude toward roundhouse kicks.

Poison for Beginners

Being a beginner is a delicate time when you're deciding whether this new activity is for you.  The best thing a beginner can do is establish a positive relationship with whatever they're trying to learn, whether it's drumming or martial arts or anything else.  If you can love it, you're halfway there at least.  If that means skipping a day when you're not in the mood, that is completely fine for a beginner!  Having the discipline to practice when you're not in the mood comes later, after you have already decided that what you're doing is important enough to endure the grind.

I absolutely hate it when people advise beginners to practice every day.  No one gets good at anything because they decide they will practice every day.  They get good either because they are forced to practice, or because they love doing it.  If they are forced, they will resent the activity and quit as soon as they can.  It's the people who love it who go on to become great.  Look at any great achiever in any field.  They didn't get there without hard work, but the passion always comes first.  It's that passion that allowed them to do all that work.  You're no different, and your students are no different.

Let's not poison this eager learner.

Poison for beginners is anything that can damage the student's relationship with the activity.  It can come in a lot of forms, but the most common forms are frustration and boredom.  If you're the instructor, you need to read your beginners very well and steer them clear.  This is easier said than done of course, but a good teacher can do it by encouraging at the right times, pacing the lesson well, or scaling the difficulty of the practice.

I was very lucky to have a drum instructor who excelled at this, and I'll share a story about that later, but first I need to introduce one more concept...

The Uncomfortable Place of Growth

The "uncomfortable place" is practice that is at the optimal challenge level.  It is right at the very limit of your skill where you are working very hard.  Being there gets you the most efficient growth but is exhausting.  If it's too hard, you'll get very little out of it.  If it's too easy, you'll get even less.  It's that sweet spot in between where the growth happens, but it is by nature uncomfortable.  That's why it's called "being out of your comfort zone."

How much time you should spend in that uncomfortable place depends on a lot of things.  Beginners should keep their time in that zone short.  Too much time in the uncomfortable place can make them learn to dislike the activity because practicing that way is decidedly not fun.  They might approach that place with enthusiasm, but staying there too long without breaks will wear anyone down.  Age matters, but not as much as temperament.  Reading the student(s) is paramount.

Adults often (but not always) have more patience for
the uncomfortable place than young kids do.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are two ways out of the uncomfortable place.  A good teacher knows how and when to manage both of them.  The first is when the student gets better.  Suppose you're working on some detail of your technique--let's say keeping the spine straight and relaxed during a front kick.  Let's say you get it right 10% of the time, so you practice for half an hour until you get it right 90% of the time.  By the end of that half hour, you are no longer in the uncomfortable place.  You are enjoying a high success rate, and you are still improving, but not as much or as quickly as you were before.  If you want to stay in the uncomfortable place, you need to increase the difficulty, for example by increasing the speed.

The second way out of the uncomfortable place is when you dial back the difficulty of the practice.  Let's go back to the front kick spine example.  Let's say the student is getting it right 10% of the time, and after half an hour of practice he's getting it right 15% of the time.  This student is absolutely still in the uncomfortable place.  However, this student is also getting poison.  Veteran martial artists (or substitute any skill you like) have already made a commitment to their art, and can endure a little poison.  But the beginner who is still deciding whether they like this crazy martial arts thing is not likely to respond well to the frustration.  Even if they're not frustrated, they are most likely not having fun.

I've seen instructors who are very good at reading their students, and others who are completely oblivious.  I've seen my drum instructor spin on a dime when he suspected I was getting frustrated, changing gears so fast it was almost comical.  It's exactly what I would have done--it's better to overreact than underreact with beginners.  On the other extreme, I once saw a martial arts instructor bombard a beginner with a dozen details on one movement for a full hour with no breaks from being in the uncomfortable place.  This usually does not end well.

It doesn't always end badly, though.  It all comes down to reading the student, and as promised I have a story about my drum instructor doing this to me successfully.  One day I wondered if my instructor (Kai Andersen, who I will introduce properly in Part II of this series) might be a bit perplexed because most of the music I listen to doesn't lend itself to beginner drum lessons.  So I suggested a song that was slow and repetitive enough that I might be able to play it.  At my next lesson, he listened to the song for the first time.  He penciled some changes to a couple exercises in my lesson book so that I essentially had sheet music for the song.  But since what he had written was still too advanced for me, he scaled it back and built a challenge-appropriate lesson on the fly using that song as a guide, and I spent the entire time in the uncomfortable place, making good progress.  I was mentally exhausted by the end of it, and also really impressed with Kai.

Can You Even Teach Art?

A while back, Barry Eisler did an interview with Kris Wilder (the entire interview is here, and well worth your time) and had this to say on the topic of teaching art:

"There's this stupid meme that goes around in the writing world which is... 'You can't teach writing and you can't teach art.'  This is a dumb thing to say, and here's why.  It's true that you can't teach art directly, but art is built on craft. ... You can't express yourself as an artist if you don't have a deep understanding of craft, and craft can be taught."

This reminded me greatly of something Grandmaster Park used to talk about.  He didn't call it craft; he called it steps.  He would say that learning steps was easy, but making art was very hard.  One day after watching my Jang Kwon he told me that my steps were as technically correct as they could be, and now I have to make art.  He said that only comes after years and years of practice.  Back then I didn't really understand what he was saying, and certainly it's possible that I still don't.  In the wake of this project, I think I understand him better now.  At the time, I was saddened thinking that he didn't want to teach me anymore.  In retrospect, that was ridiculous and I feel awfully foolish even typing that out.  Now I think that he was telling me that he had taught me the craft to the limit of what can be taught, and any improvement from there would have to be my own expression.

The difference between art and craft: Picasso's
Tête was made by cutting and pasting paper, not
because that was the limit of his craft, but
because that was his artistic choice.

Eisler goes on to say, "One of the ways that craft should be and can be taught and learned is pay attention to the art.  Experience it, enjoy it...  If you read a passage in a book and it blows you away for some reason... If you're just a reader, ... why would you want to pause to say 'why did this blow me away so much?'  But if you are a writer and you are trying to become a better writer, you might pause and say, '...this passage had a magical effect on me, but it's not real magic.'  There must be something that the writer is doing that created that effect, and there is.  There always is. ... You can definitely extract certain techniques by watching and thinking about what the other person is doing."  He goes into specific examples like appealing to multiple senses and juxtaposing nearby details against a wider view of the scene.  

He even ties it back specifically to martial arts, saying, "When you start asking yourself those questions, then you can start to see the craft behind the art, and the more conscious you become of craft, the more you can duplicate it yourself.  And it's true for anything.  It's true in martial arts, self defense… The first time someone does something to you, it feels like magic.  Like, 'Oh my God, how did you do that?  I'm on my butt!'"  Of course, it's not magic.  It's applied movement and biomechanics--things that can be learned.

I'm going to take it a step farther than he did, though. I'm going to claim that you can't teach art, and really you can't teach craft either. Even if you're the best martial arts instructor in the world, you can't really teach martial arts. All you can do is make it easy for someone to learn. Kris Wilder once told me that teaching is about helping people find something inside them that was already there, and he was so right. The student is the one who has to make the learning happen. The instructor can and should be a big part of that, but ultimately you can't make students learn, you can only let them learn.

That doesn't mean that if your students aren't learning it's not your fault.  It means that your job is a lot harder than it seems on the surface.

So how do you make something easy to learn? Of course you must have the skill you hope to impart, but mostly it comes down to creating the right experience for the students. A great instructor can optimize your training time, motivate you to push yourself, make it easy to grasp difficult concepts, keep you focused, balance the time you spend in the uncomfortable place, and make practice enjoyable enough to be continued. That is how craft is "taught," by effectively creating experiences that allow the students to learn.

Eisler's idea of analyzing art to learn craft has been at the front of the chaos in my mind over the course of this project. One thing that struck me is the thought that like writers, drummers and martial arts instructors are in the business of creating experiences.

Engaging Crowds, Classes and Individuals

First let's take a little break and watch Casey Grillo do a drum solo.  I interviewed him for this project and I'll introduce him properly in Part II, but for now just enjoy...

That was fun, but why? What exactly was he doing that got the audience to respond the way they did? These questions are perhaps too advanced for me. I'm at the level where any day that I don't hit myself with my sticks is a good day, so some things under the sun just aren't going to be understood. This video was taken at a Kamelot concert, in front of his own fans, and that probably meant the crowd was especially receptive to what he was doing. But I saw him subbing for another drummer in another band, and he got similar reactions out of Scott Rockenfield's fans.

Since I'm so far out of my depth on this one, I'm going to break this down in terms of what I already know about engaging people. I have taught martial art classes of a wide range of ages and experience levels, with students of varying degrees of physical wellness--sometimes all at once. I've also taught English as a second language to all ages and skill levels, and to several different languages of origin. That may seem like it requires a huge set of diverse skills (and in a way, it does) but ultimately it still comes down to reading the class and giving students the right experience so they can learn.

It's only a little different with a single student. Private lessons that are run like group classes tend to be awkward affairs. I like to allow for a more casual back-and-forth experience when I teach a single student, as that tends to be a great opportunity to create a very directed experience for exactly what that student needs. Certainly Kai teaches my drumming lessons that way as well.

When I create experiences, it's with fairly small groups. The biggest class I ever taught had about 45 people in it. That's small enough that I can speak loudly and clearly and be heard just fine. And that's good, because most of the tools in my bag rely on the spoken word. In the video, Casey is creating an experience for a much larger group using only percussive sounds and nonverbal cues. That's practically magic to me because the techniques are so different, but some of the broader ideas are the same.

Looking at these three scenarios, I notice four things in the video that are relevant to creating engaging experiences for crowds, classes and individuals. There may be others, but as I see it, an experience is most engaging when:

1. It is interactive. Getting people involved, whether they're clapping along with your drum solo, or seeing how hard they can kick a target, or bringing in their own songs to a drumming lesson, makes for a more engaging experience.

2. The pacing is good. One thing I notice about that drum solo is that he changes up what he's doing fairly often. It might be more impressive to pick the most challenging part and just do that continuously for four minutes, but that wouldn't be as engaging. Changing up the activity is extremely important in teaching as well. Not only does it keep people from getting bored, but it also makes it easier to learn because lessons sink in better if you break up your explanations with practice and vice versa.

3. It ends when it should. Grandmaster Park told me once that beginners' classes should be no more than 50 minutes. Any longer than that, and the training begins to drain on people and novices can leave with a sour taste in their mouths. But a 50-minute drum solo would probably be too long to be enjoyable. Likewise, a 4-minute martial arts class would be ridiculous.

4. It's about them. This might be my biggest pet peeve in martial arts. I've seen instructors who are incredible martial artists, but they fail as teachers because they don't make the classes about the students. They like being in charge, they like being the center of attention, or they like showing off--all of which are fine to enjoy, but if any one of those things is your priority, you will never be a good instructor. As an instructor, the only measure of your success is your students' success. Their experience. Not yours. I'll bet that a drummer who is focused on his own experience would also fall short of one who puts his audience first.

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This series will be continued with 11 Ways Drumming Can Help Your Training: Martial Arts and Drumming Part II.