The stakes are very high, since whoever loses this duel must commit the great shame of posting a video of how to use hikite to generate power. Astute podcast enthusiasts may note that my enemy has already created such a video. I think we can all agree that this is because the Accidental Podcast has no honor, and not because Les is hilarious. In any case, my sworn enemy has promised that should he lose the duel, he will post something even more ridiculous. And of course, if I lose, I will disgrace my brand new YouTube channel with an appropriately embarrassing video.
How Podcasts Get Into Fights
So, friends, my fate is in your hands. The duel will last for the month of June, at the end of which we will compare the Martial Journeys post against the Accidental Podcast post, and see which has more likes/reactions. So all you have to do is like this post, and stay far, far away from this post.
Recently Iain Abernethy pointed out that some kata names sound like death metal bands. For most martial artists this would elicit a smile and a nod, but this blog is weird and you're weird for reading it. So for all my favorite weirdos, here is a fun little quiz. I'll present two phrases. One is a translation of a form name, and the other is a metal song. Guess which one is which, and see how many you get right!
(Quick side note: Some of these translations are disputed. Don't shoot the messenger, just have fun.)
Which is a form name, and which is a metal song? Click your answer to find out if you were right!
I made a flier for a pressure point seminar taught by a cat.
Why would I do that? I have my reasons. Those reasons aren't as important as the fact that I now have a flier of a pressure point seminar taught by a cat.
But the main reason is because I just finished a podcast about sexual assault. I spent a lot of time being bogged down in very important and very serious subject matter, and it has left me kind of drained. So for this month's blog post, I'm not being serious at all. I'll go back to being helpful next time.
I've been posting rants, training articles, and general weirdness for so long, I figure some (most?) of you forgot that this is actually a martial arts travel blog.
What's the 50 States Challenge? Since most people probably forgot...
The 50 States Challenge boils down to three main pieces.
1. I travel to all 50 states and find a martial arts school in each state to host me.
2. At each host school, I teach something and I learn something to pass on to the next school.
3. We support a charity chosen by the host school.
And then I blog about the experience here, illustrating how much the different styles and philosophies of martial arts have to learn from each other.
If you've been reading my blog for more than a few seconds, you will not be surprised that it was not all seriousness. I wanted to get the full Arkansas experience.
Yelling at Yellville!
Rocking a little at Little Rock!
Wait, what?
This little resident of Toad Suck was still learning how to fly. He (she?) let me get pretty close before squawking a protest and hopping away.
It's okay, little guy. I can't fly either, and I've been training FOREVER in bird years.
One of my first stops was Beaverfork Lake, where I snapped this picture of an old bridge. It was built almost 150 years ago to cross Cadron Creek, where it stood until only a few years ago when it was restored and brought to this park.
<insert tortured analogy about building bridges to the past and future here>
That park was one of many picturesque places where I could have stopped. Arkansas has a lot to offer if you're into the outdoors. In June, it helps if you are not a wimp about the sun trying to kill you. I'm pretty sure at one point I was more sunscreen than person.
It looks like Buffalo River, but it's actually a pool of my sweat after training in the heat.
Buffalo River National Park is especially interesting in that within its boundaries is the Rush ghost town. It was once a thriving city because of its zinc mines, but as the value of zinc waned, so did Rush. There are still some buildings standing, though. Unlike most ghost towns, these buildings are protected by the National Park Service, so they are preserved better than most.
The houses were fenced off with signs everywhere forbidding entry. I'm sure it wouldn't be safe, and certainly the buildings couldn't withstand much foot traffic, but that didn't stop me from wanting to explore. I would really have liked to peek inside.
Then there's Pivot Rock. If you brave enough hairpin turns, you can walk a wooded trail to see these weird rock formations that have been a roadside attraction for over a hundred years.
One of the upside down pyramid formations at Pivot Rock.
In North Little Rock, there is a place called The Old Mill, which is neither old nor a mill. It's a replica built in the 1930's in the style of mills of the 1830's. It has a little fame by being featured in the opening credits of Gone With The Wind.
It might not be real, but it's pretty!
The park around it was picturesque as well, not to mention teeming with wildlife. There were ducks, geese, turtles, birds and fish everywhere.
Also not real: all the wood in this picture. They're sculptures.
Next up in my whirlwind tour of Arkansas parks was the one I was most looking forward to--America's only Taekwondo park.
This looks exactly like every picture I ever took in Korea.
The H.U. Lee International Gate and Garden is in downtown Little Rock, which by no coincidence is also the headquarters of the ATA, which practices Songahm Taekwondo. It is so much like parks in Seoul, that I felt like I was back in Korea, once again running around in oppressively hot weather with a camera, loudly announcing "I AM A TOURIST" in signs that everyone can read.
The park even had haetae sculptures on either side. These mystical dogs are creatures of justice trusted to protect the people from fire and natural disasters. They're also the symbol of Seoul, and you can see statues of them in places of importance throughout Korea.
Haetae! Who's a good boy?
Immediately past the gate, there are statues of taekwondo students bowing to greet visitors.
Students greet visitors to the garden.
I had a lot of busy feelings at this park, when I probably should have been feeling more tranquil. The feelings intensified as I came to the main display in the garden, a bronze bust of Eternal Grand Master Haeng Ung Lee and a giant lineage chart behind him listing the most prominent figures of Songahm Taekwondo.
I'm visiting a park honoring a style of taekwondo that I don't train in. My kwan doesn't have a park, and probably can't afford the $1.4 million dollars that these guys paid to get one. But if we did have a park, I would totally rather go there than here, so I guess I don't belong here. Except that THE WHOLE POINT of me being in Arkansas right now is a project about tearing down the walls between different styles and letting us all help each other. Focus, Carlson! Get some good pictures now, and mull over it later.
Having mulled it over later, it was the laser focus on one style of taekwondo, centering on one particular lineage, excluding figures of other branches whose achievements and contributions were equal to or greater than some of the names that did get listed, that made me feel weirdly unwelcome. By excluding other styles, I felt excluded, too, like this place is only for Songahm people. The cynic in me wonders if that exclusion could have been the intent, to improve the influence of their style by essentially creating a giant ad for it in the form of a downtown park. But I tried to enjoy the place in the spirit that it was probably intended--to honor something they care about and the instructor who made it possible, and welcoming visitors to share in something they love.
The centerpiece of the garden.
Despite my roller coaster of conflicting thoughts, I do recommend this place to any other wandering martial artists who find themselves in Little Rock, especially if the weather is nice and the sun isn't trying to melt you into a quivering puddle of sweat and sunscreen.
Very near the taekwondo park was a restaurant called The Flying Fish. Not to imply that I didn't enjoy my meal there, but the most notable thing was the Billy Bass Adoption Center. Remember those singing fish that were all the rage in the early aughts? Well, I found them. Like, all of them.
Walls and walls of retired singing fish. With no batteries, thankfully.
I left for home early on a Tuesday morning, when there wasn't much traffic on the rural highways, and it wasn't too hot yet.
From a scenic overlook on a deserted road.
Usually when I'm travelling for Martial Journeys, I am busy. I have more things to do than time to do them. I frantically rush from one spot to the next, trying to get the right picture to make a good blog post. But when I got here, I was done and headed home. I took a minute to just enjoy the view. It felt so weird to be on a highway alone, seemingly the only person for miles in any direction. I supposed that people didn't have much reason to be there at that hour. Except for me, and I was there enjoying that view because I do martial arts. It's been a weird journey.
Two down, 48 to go!
Of course sightseeing was not the main purpose of the trip. I'll get to the martial arts in the next post, but if you just can't wait to have more Martial Journeys in your diet, you can check out my podcast. I'll have a new episode out before the next blog post goes live.
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.
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.
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."
-
This series will be continued with Drumming-Inspired Martial Arts Training: Martial Arts and Drumming Part III.
