Eye For Detail

A long time ago I learned that the two qualities every successful person has is a good eye for detail and follow through. An eye for detail is knowing where you are right now, recognizing what you are presently doing, and how both are supporting your goals. Follow through is using this knowledge to tweak your approach and refocus your efforts. As it applies to kung fu, an eye for detail and follow through are essential qualities found in every black belt.

At class this week, I asked my students to visualize what kind of black belt they wanted to be. I told them to picture themselves five years in the future as that rank. I then had them complete a couple of drills while they held that vision in front of themselves. At the end of the drill I asked - "How many of you, while picturing yourself as a black belt, envisioned yourself with two artificial hips and requiring the use of a walker?" Not one hand went up. The point I was making was that while they all were picturing themselves as black belt, that vision did not translate to proper foot position when they were throwing their kicks. Improper technique leads to bad hips. My point was eye for detail is exactly that - detail. Having a vision of yourself as a black belt without a vision of the details that go into making yourself a black belt is the difference between having a dream and having a goal. A dream is a vision and only a vision. A goal is a dream with a plan. A plan is the detail that will make a goal an attainable reality.

Following through with what needs to be done to attain a goal is putting your eye for detail into practice. Recognize where you are and stay aware of what you are doing. If your thoughts and actions are in harmony with each other, meaningful progress will be made. Seeing where you want to be and working backwards to where you are, holds the details of success.

"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen." - John Wooden (1910 - 2010)

A Friend In Need

I lost you to suicide a couple of months ago but I only became aware of it yesterday. I knew you had your struggles with depression and I had been keeping you in my thoughts but somehow in the cacophony of my life, I missed your passing and your memorial.

I know you fought to keep the demons that haunted you at bay. The courage you displayed while you fought your battle kept the ferocity of the fight well hidden. You lived your life like it was an adventure. I always found it difficult to correlate your illness with the intensity and zeal in which I saw you live. Logically I understand the issues of mental health are complicated and deep rooted, but emotionally I feel the guilt that comes with such a loss. While you struggled, I lived my life. I worked. I played. My life went on, simple and so, so easy.  I am sorry you suffered so much for so long  in silence.

Goodbye my friend.

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”  - David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008)

Second Guessing

This week I am dealing with the possible reality of my sixth knee surgery.  Going through this five previous times, I am pretty adept at recognizing cartilage problems.  The physical issues are real and disconcerting but the psychological toll this type of things takes on a person is much more significant.

I have no idea what I am doing that is tearing up my knees. The most significant tears came during my hockey years and were the reason I gave up the sport competitively.  I am never aware of an incident that has damaged my knees, I just wake up one day and notice there is something wedging in my joint.  Every time this happens, I find myself second guessing things. Should I have gone roller blading last week? Why am I still doing those stupid flying kicks? Do I really need to spar so aggressively?

The years go by and the body revolts. While I have a few regrets about breaking bricks with my fists in the past, I have no complaints about the active life I continue to be blessed with.  I still feel like I did when I was fourteen, just with more inflammation.

“If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” - Micky Mantle (1931 - 1995)

Goals vs Deadlines and Forest for the Trees

The old advice to work smarter, not harder holds merit in almost every situation including kung fu, in spite of the fact that hard work is essential to succeed in kung fu. I remember Steve Jobs saying that referring to clock frequency to compare the speed of a Mac to a PC was the equivalent of measuring a car’s speed via the tachometer instead of the speedometer. Engine speed is not the same as road speed. One kung fu equivalent would state that effort does not necessarily equate to results.

Logically, one would assume that the more effort you put into something the better the results but that is not always the case. The example I like to use is this - if I want to get to Jasper and I have a jet that flies the speed of sound, the speed of my jet is not as big a factor to my arrival time than the direction I choose to fly the thing. I can get to Jasper by flying east, eventually, but I will get there a lot quicker if I fly west.

We all have goals but not all of us make progress on our goals. The problem for most is that without a deadline to achieve our goals, we tend to never start working toward them. Deadlines motivate. The deadline serves the goal.  The problem that many run into is with perspective. If one is not careful one ends up serving the deadline and forgetting about the goal.

All my training goals come down to one thing - mastery of kung fu. The pushups, the form repetitions, eating healthy, meditating, reading, sleeping - everything I do is to further myself down the path to mastery. If I do not keep that goal in front of me, the deadlines I put on myself start to become my goals instead of tools to achieve my goal, and once that happens my training perspective shifts from serving my mastery goal to serving my deadlines. I do 50,000 pushups/year because I need to keep my shoulders and core strong and healthy for kung fu. If I am only worried about the numbers, I am not mindful of my technique and I actually do damage to my shoulders, ultimately going against my original goal of mastery. Forrest and trees.

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” - Stephen Covey (1932 - 2012)

Canada 150

Another Canada Day is behind us along with another bunch of dragon dances, lion dances, and kung fu demonstrations. Our school had a lot of responsibility this year as we were recruited to perform all day in Spruce Grove and we had also committed to performing in Stony Plain for their celebration.  I got to spend the entire day outside with the majority of my time being spent feeling the earth beneath my bare feet. I can’t complain about that.

My gratitude today extends to the amazing group of people I shared the day with. Of all kung fu has given me in my life, what I value most is what you all bring to my life -  your dedication, your leadership, your commitment to community, and above all, your friendship and laughter.

Consider Canada Day 150 seized.

“Canada, when others build walls, you open doors. When others divide, your arms are open wide. Where you lead, others follow.” - Bono (b. 1960)

Knowledge vs Skill

When training in kung fu, achieving a black belt is difficult, but achieving a high ranking black belt is even more difficult. There are many factors that make achieving a high rank difficult but what I see as holding most people up is their inability to differentiate knowledge from skill. This limitation is evident by how they conduct themselves during class drills and in lower black belt cases, their approach to teaching their students. Students, rather than getting in as many repetitions of a drill as they can, spend too much time discussing the technique with their partner and intellectually analyzing their execution. Some instructors will exasperate this student tendency by spending too much time explaining a technique and not giving the students enough time to practice the application of the technique. I try to address this issue by using the catch phrase “Less yak and more smack”.

Having knowledge of a technique is not the same as having skill with a technique. Understanding how the technique can be applied and the mechanics behind that application goes a long way toward learning an application, but the only way to achieve mastery is through repetitive application of the technique. In a perfect world every student would take what I tell them in class and faithfully apply the lesson during daily practice, getting in thousands of repetitions at home between classes. Unfortunately the common reality for the majority of students tends to be that the full extent of their weekly kung fu practice time is their two hours of weekly classes.

Rule of thumb - if someone is talking, they are not practicing. If the instructor is talking, students are acquiring knowledge but not skill. Skill only comes from consistent application of knowledge.

“We have more information than we have skills to turn it into useful knowledge.” - Mark Rolston

Time Travel

This is another post directed specifically with my black belts in mind but I am sharing it publicly in hopes others may benefit.

In last week's black belt class I introduced the concept of time traveling to my students. The purpose of the lesson was to expand the way they were looking at the six harmonies and how they go about perfecting them within each technique. I made a statement that a good black belt is a time traveler who can manipulate time. Upon further discussion with one of my black belts, I realized that the term time traveler is not totally accurate as it implies certain aspects that are not possible. A better term would be 'time manipulator' but I think I will cater my Doctor Who fetish and use 'Time Lord'.

I assume that we all can agree that time is affected by perception. If you're having a good time, time flies by. If you're reading this post and find it boring, time just crawls by. If we agree that perception can affect time, then we have to agree that time is not linear, perception-wise. It is this lack of linearity that creates the concepts of real speed and apparent speed and colloquial terms like 'flat footed'. It is non-linearity that opens time up to be manipulated by a skilled practitioner. To put it another way, you don't need to actually be fast, you just need to be perceived fast by your opponent. Manipulating time is a skill every black belt must master. As you age and your reflexes slow, you have to find other means to maintain your speed.

As a Time Lord you will have a deeper understanding of the six harmonies, starting with pureness of intent. The method we covered last black belt class was specifically addressing Hung and achieving harmonization of your hips and shoulders when adding the explosive beginning to the form. Rather than starting at the beginning of the technique and trying to time your body based upon the beginning, we practiced starting at the end of the technique, in this case the double block, and working our way backwards to the beginning. If intent is pure, all the points upon the line of application will support the end result. So start with the end result and use it as a trigger to how to begin. Be a Time Lord.

"There is no truth. There is only perception." - Gustavo Flaubert (1821 - 1880)