Rants, Ramblings and Nothingness

Goodness, this article by Goodin Sensei is really a GEM! I have never thought of this before to be honest. Matching our partner’s or someone else’s timing is a very good practice and very difficult. It is very beneficial for our karate to learn how to time our techniques against the other side, either it is a parry, block, anticipative movement, evasive maneuver or even strikes. It will help a lot in reading opponent’s movement. It might be a simple practice, following someone else, but there’s a lot of meaning in it and furthermore, it is only advantageous for our karate. As human are also competitive in nature, this type of training is also very useful to us to be competitive without the negative side effect of competitiveness. Timing is very important in self defense, specially for life and death situation. This type of training is very typical in karate, simple but yet the concept is very deep.

This blog entry will be in Bahasa Indonesia since I would like to shamelessly advertise my friend’s website, The Caffeinated Angel Boutique.

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Mariiiiiiiiiiiii……..

The first and foremost beginning of the class is not when the class itself started. But it is actually starting when we starts to shift our mind to training, at any time. We might have training tomorrow, but when we think about whether or not to come for the training, it is already started actually. The decision making to attend our training is a very important measure whether our training will be fruitful or not. I have a regular job myself, and sometimes I feel very tired, or running on deadlines, or maybe just plain bad weather. Those reasons are usually becoming our consideration to actually go for the training or not and of course, subsequently, determines whether or not our training for the day is actually a failure or a success.

Maybe we have prepared for the training the day before, the next morning, we bring all the training bag and office apparels to our office. In the afternoon, suddenly the rain pours down heavily and make us thinking if the rain doesn’t stop, we will not go for the training. Eventually one hour before training starts, it still drizzles outside, we want to go to the training, but in the other hand, our comfortable bed feels like a better choice in this cold weather. Or maybe the rain has stopped, but our body feels tired after working for the whole day. These examples show that training doesn’t begin when we bow to the shomen, but it can even begin one day before, when we fold our gi and pack our obi inside our bag. Going for our training is always difficult for everyone, but we have to strive to attend the training. This is also karate training, a mental and spiritual one. I am really impressed with Goodin Sensei’s article about a woman that is recovering from cancer but already very eager to resume her training. Hopefully I can always remember the story whenever my mind roams away from my training. please read the article here.

Fourth beating in French Open by Nadal, the worst ever indeed… 6-1, 6-3, 6-0!!! Maybe one of the worst defeat for Federer since he dominated the Tennis world in 2004. Will he ever win the trophy is the eternal question, will the last defeat makes him crumble is the latest question. He’s so dominant against other players and previous meetings against Nadal never been this shocking. Arguably the best tennis player ever, with only Rolland Garros to confirm him as the BEST, the latest lost will really be a proof of his greatness. Hopefully he can prevail and regain his dominance for at least another two or three years before the physique is going down.

Never written any tennis entry before, but this blog, although martial arts dominated, is still one of my thoughts dumping ground so please don’t be surprised if one or two of other things popping out once in a while. Furthermore, I was still very much shocked by the way Nadal trashed Federer.

The training session was quite different last night, compared to other regular sessions, the theory portion was more than usual. One of the point I pondered most is the ‘feeling’. According to my sensei, the ability to ‘feel’ can be acquired through constant training and thinking. It’s the epitomy of the karate adage ‘bun bu ryo do’ - literally means something like ‘the pen and the sword is in one accordance. This proverb tells us that not only physical training is needed for our karate, but also the ‘book’ or in other words, we need to cultivate our minds also. My sensei said that the word ‘keiko’ or training is formed using two characters: ‘think’ and ‘old/ancient’. It basically says that mind cultivation is also very important in our karate journey, without it, we might not be able to maximise our training and the growth level might be very slow or even stuck in our current level. The ‘feeling’ might be acquired through constant training, but without studying it, we won’t be able to utilise the ‘feeling’ to further enchanced our karate. This ‘feeling’ is internal in our body, although the movement might look the same when we do a technique with or without a feeling, but the result can be very different. Karate growth level is not a linear growth, it’s more like plains and sudden hike like ladder graph or steps. The plains might be very long, but our persistance and perseverance in training are the one who brought us to reach the next level. Most beginners quit karate because of this typical plain in karate. It can be very short, like a couple of months or even days, but it also can be very long, maybe one year or even ten years. That’s why we need to cultivate our mind together with our training in order to minimize the length of the plain we went through in each level. Once we got the ‘feeling’, it will never be lost.

Fear is a natural intuition of every living being. It is very important for their survival. Without fear the ability to survive will be gone, specially for animals in the wild. Since human is actually also an animal, fear is also a natural instinct that will be triggered in situations whereby our sensors detects potential danger. Gavin de Becker’s book “The Gift of Fear” is a great book for us to understand fear and utilize it to live a better life. He emphasizes that fear is not something to be feared, but we must embrace it as a GIFT and use it for our own good and survival. Fear is different from worry, we need to use and acknowledge fear, but we need to remove the worry so we can live a more worry-free life. Imagine if we always have constant worry, we will not be able to actually life a full live. An exceptionally great book for EVERYONE!!

Last Saturday was Tomiyama Sensei’s seminar. My expectation was high, due to his credentials and he is more or less a traditional karateka(although the term ‘traditional karate’ is of course debatable). I was certainly not dissapointed. He is a true traditionalist, at least in my own view. The seminar was about sanchin kata. He covered body mechanics, alignments, techniques and also breathing. There’s some minor differences compared to IOGKF’s sanchin, but the principle concepts is very much the same. He also gave us an unexpected bonus near the end. I was raising a question about Naihanchi kata role in his organization. He told us that it is also the core kata in Kofukan as Sanchin is. His Naihanchi doesn’t have emphasis on the koshi movement, but swift, explosive and rooting. When I asked for him to elaborate more, he actually gave us a bonus by demonstrating the kata. I can only say that it was a great demonstration. Anyone seeing the kata will shiver and think twice to challenge him to fight. It was a practical kata that can be used for fighting, not a posing kata that looks beautiful but can’t be used to fight. In the end, it was a thirst quencher that makes me even more thirsty of karate training.

Another article from Goodin Sensei that actually relates to me, do read it here. I started working for my new company about two months ago. I usually have problem to keep my eyes open when I have to read a lot or maybe do nothing. It’s the case in my new company. I have to read a lot of product references to get a good understanding of the products. As a new guy, I don’t want to be caught asleep in my first few days, so I started drinking coffee again after stopping for quite long. It makes me awake during the day, but the impact was actually very bad to my body and my karate training. I have a bad stomach that can’t really stand absorbing too much coffee. The first two weeks wasn’t that bad, but gradually I started feeling very tired even if I don’t really do anything, I can’t really have a good sleep also, and the worse is my stamina, two weeks ago I almost fainted during the training. I was very much awake, but my breathing was heavy and I was just going through the motion without much energy left. After the incident, I decided to stop drinking gradually. This week I haven’t drink any and I can really feel it in my training. I wasn’t aware that coffee affects my metabolism that much, I was only thinking that it might be because of my new job, but even resting wouldn’t make me recovered. Relating to Goodin Sensei’s article, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Even if we train so hard and regularly, bad diet will not bring us anything. I’m happy that I found the problem, but there’s one thing I found on that day I almost fainted. When I just go through the motion, without power, I was struggling at the beginning when we did sandan-gi. Because I can’t use power to parry the punches coming at me, I have to execute the uke-waza as perfect as I can. In the end, I realized that I tend to do small shortcuts that actually very essential in the technique, but it is actually  something very important not to skip that part and execute it properly. It wasn’t feel great that day, but I gain something important from that experience. I don’t really want to feel it(almost fainting) again, but I definitely will use it as a reminder and reference.

If we compare this article by Goodin Sensei and karate that over-emphasizes on point-sparring tournament style training, it is actually something happening in many dojo. I won’t really go deeper about point-sparring, with its pros and cons. It is good in one way, but it is also bad if the training focused only to win points, tournaments, medals or trophies. Karate is first and foremost a martial art. It’s primary intent is for the practitioner to defend him/herself. The physical, mental, mind, recreational, spiritual, social and some other benefit that results from the training is actually, at least for me, secondary. The ability to pacify the opponent in just a few seconds is essential. When a fight started, it will not last for minutes, hours or even days. It might even take one or two second for it to be finished. A blink of an eye or even a hesitation when we execute the technique in a real confrontation can cost us our life!! That’s why kata and the understanding of the kata itself is very important. Kata is like a deciphered military message, it is meaningless for people that doesn’t know how to intepret it, but the message might contain something that decides winning or losing. Kata is also like a time capsule, all the wisdom of the old about self defense, that was forged and collected during those rough times, is accumulated inside the kata. It contain essential techniques, very efficient, effective, battle tested self defense movements. It’s a treasure for us the newer generation. As Goodin Sensei said in the excellent article, if our technique is not good enough to defend ourself, there must be something wrong, and we have to strive to correct it.

Approaching 6pm but the meeting wasn’t over yet, waited for another 30 minutes and the end of it still couldn’t be seen. Messaged my sensei that I would be late for yesterday’s session. Ten minutes past seven, act like I wasn’t in a rush to leave the office since I just joined the new company for one month Packed my things in an almost graceful manner, chit chat for a bit with my colleague, headed to the exit… empty cab ahead, got in, rest… Late for almost 40 minutes, rushfully climbed the stairs, reached the third floor and realized that it’s the wrong unit!!! Panting and numb legs due to lack of aerobic exercises but still ran down the stairs in a zip just to save some minutes, finally reached the dojo, saw my sensei training kata alone… whoopsss… Changed my clothes, apologized for being late and my sensei asked me to do quick warm up, prepare to work on Saifa. The last one hour I had was doing Saifa only. Working each movements, steps, techniques, body positioning, basically all the details, major and minor. In the end, although I was late, but it was a great session. Although my Saifa got corrected a lot, but I’m happy that I still have a lot of room to grow and improve my kata. Definitely a great kata, I specially like the body shifting principals in it, and  it also incorporate the method to get into opponent’s space. Definitely a fruitful session! Thanks for my current sensei also for being very patient although I came very late yesterday. A great session is a great stress relieve for us working people isn’t it?