Martial Arts, Well Being, and Sweat.

The only reason I do Martial Arts is because I need a reason to get off my butt and get out the house and move around.  Unlike Jogging or going to the gym and lifting heavy stuff and running on a complicated electronic hamster wheel, it comes with some pleasant problem solving and frustrations that keep you wanting to come back.  But for me its the relaxed feeling I get for a couple of days, the good hangover.  I noticed especially when my boy was small and liked to be picked up every five minutes that the day after a good a Aikido work over( as opposed to a work out) that he was lighter.

Taking the tension out of your muscles makes them stronger, who would have thought?

I  have started doing Brazillian Jujitsu because of that feeling.  Not that I dig MMA, but because it maybe the best martial art that gives you that relaxed feel good.  I'm not doing it to shore up weaknesses in my game,   or because I find Aikido lacking  It just delivers the goods.

Because I always saw the martial arts as a way to exercise I tend to avoid and ignore the common hassles and personality conflicts, and  pyschological needful things that people look for in the martial arts.  I have been around folks who really wish they were born Japanese, as if that were going to make them better. I think Zen is okay, but the more you want a calm mind the more it aint gonna happen for you.  I like that whole shinto there is a spirit in every rock and tree thing.  But I think its a laughable thing that turning Japanese will get you manly respect and more chicks.  It will probably do the opposite.

I have also tended to ignore the self defense side of things.  Rory Miller said it best when he said that folks expect Martial Arts teachers to be experts on violence.  And this is not the case.  Self defense wise, I think that martial arts helps in self  in an indirect way.  Being used to contact and folks being in your bubble,and understanding how the body bends and reacts here and there is a useful thing.  It gives you a 1up, but it doesnt make you an expert.

I don't know how many times I have heard an aikido guy explain to me how to handle a puncher or a kicker, and they have never been punched or kicked in their life.  Head shots you tend to see stars, body shots hurt like hell and make you want to take a step or two back, where you get the head shot. It is an endless deep shizznit cycle from which there is no easy technical solution, except do it to the other guy first.

I also lament the misunderstanding and omission of Tanto Randori in the Geis line Tomiki Aikido.  Karl Geis made a decision for everyone when he decided he wasnt into it.  While technicaly it isnt pretty, it provides an avenue for sweat and struggle.  I think that he had concerns that it wasnt effective way to teach self-defense because it didnt address the cutting function of the blade.  But its always been my opinion that any knife  self defense "expert" is full of crap.

 The knife keeps cropping up over the last several thousand years because it is a hard thing to defend against. Before law and justice, packing a knife was a pretty good  idea.   And at most any one who survives a knife, especially a martial arts person, is probably aligned with the 80/20 principle.  The reason why you get out of a hairy situation is because of 20 percent training and 80 percent dumb luck.

Tanto randori is the fun strength and conditioning tool.  You get stronger by doing it.  Folks tend to forget that Morty Youshiba was a fitness fanatic before people even had a need for fitness.  He liked farm labor, and did Aikido as a "break" between bouts of farm labor.  How much of his "aiki" was that he was a natural athlete that was in incredible shape?  If he truly was as good as folks say, you may be looking at Micheal Jordan type.  A one in ten million type of guy that comes around every 20 years or so.

And because we dont do it, the randori as strength and conditioning, us Geis-ryu folks, I have to get it through BJJ.  Its going to be a fun ride, hopefully.    

Folks tend to forget the place of physical education, physical activity had on society.  To keep people out of trouble you needed some sort of avenue for them to get energy out of their system.  Kano, if I recall it right, was influenced by western educational ideas as was Tomiki.  Randori is a western idea.  Take your kid to soccer practice, or basketball practice. How much of it is drill and skill, and how much is some sort of smaller game that relates to the game?

You never see an athletic team doing a kata to get better at anything.  Kata was a way to supply that 20 percent in the old days. Life, especially in hard times, tends to be 80 percent dumb luck. Kata is a method for preserving a set of techniques and movement principles. Its the slow road to building skill. But it provided a jumping off point for folks to improvise their way out of trouble because they had numerous models of interaction socked away.

But nowadays, people tend to get frozen in kata.  They think that the kata speaks directly to a situation like a recipe for making biscuits.  All a kata provides is the motion of making biscuits in a straight line.  Walk two steps forward, grab imaginary bag of flour, pour it into the imaginary bowl.  In two man kata, the linear situations are the imaginary.  People tend to move all over the damn place in real situations.  And you can also confuse a making the biscuits kata movement with a "knife defense" kata.

Most of Tomiki's weapon kata spoke more to timing than actual make the biscuits application.  Folks who try to fix san kata, especially the tanto parts, run the risk of making a situation worse.  Putting a realistic response to a silly looking attack.  Where the silly looking attack was just a creature of timing and not an actual attack. Its like the kata is saying, " you know that timing is important don't you?"  over and over and over.

I have had folks say that the koryu kata are not neccessary because they were a product of Hideo Ohba.  And they tend to get on me about studying books and film so much, but if they bothered to crack a book and look at these films over and over they would understand that the Tomiki parts of their Aikido besides San Kata are the drills and methodologies that train up to Randori.  Obha was actually the more classical thinker of the two.  Tomiki was of the sweat it out school of thinking.  That making Aikido into a sport would give more folks an avenue to get better at getting along, and going along.

The one thing about BJJ, I dont think there are any kata to slow things down. Not two many points to argue about, justify, explain, or ponder on.  Just shut up and wrestle with a guy for two minutes, and then wrestle with another guy for two minutes.

The physical activity has been replaced with distraction.  Instead of focusing a persons energies on doing, there are numerous ways nowadays for people to get distracted by looking.  I have told young folks that there isnt much difference between cigarette smoking and smartphones.  And if everybody would go back to smoking cigarettes we would get a lot more done, and I wouldnt be afraid to walk accross the parking lot at walmart.  and I really dont know which is worse.

Fast food is killing us. Millions of Cow farts may be the death of us.  Folks try to blame obesity on the lack of willpower.  But you can't blame a fish for swimming in polluted water.  There are less reasons to move, and more reasons to stand still, eat, and look at something.  This is why I get kind of irritated at the folks who think they can master things by moving slow.  Moving slow for an hour is great as long as someone doesnt want to stop and talk about it.

 Moving at a good pace helps you sweat out the crap, and also gives you a reason to want to slow down and talk about it.  The rest is the best part of the hard work. A cold drink and good conversation.  Not I'm going to talk about it to justify it or avoid doing it.

The guys that appear to move slow, and complete techniques with out a lot of hassle are also the ones who have probably done it longer than anyone else.  Its another bone I got to pick with the Geis Methodology.  Its a noble effort to try to teach soft from the get go.  But there is a difference between faking soft and becoming soft.  You become soft by learning the hard way.  Thousands of hours.  Dozens of lesson learned.  hundreds of asskickings.

There are plenty of upper dan's out there who have never even tried to go at it.  They weren't allowed.  So instead of getting a sense of been there and  done that confidence, they look for answers  from stupid human trick peddlers.  Who try to sell the no sweat, move less, approach which goes counter to what Kano or Tomiki wanted.  A wrung out society that wanted to sit down with a cold drink and visit, instead of complain or argue, or look for a a reason to get their feelings tromped on.  

Next time you are about to get into an argument in the 12 items or less line, think about how things would go if both parties were physically wrung out from some good sweat.  Not exhausted, just wrung out real good.  How less of hurry you would be in, how the little things dont matter.  why in the hell do i care if this guy has 14 things in his basket?  That is the lesson of slow and easy.  A stressed out person can't become soft by just rule and philosophy alone.  People become soft, and easy and agreeable.  You can't fake it. Or replace it with distraction.  Its something you get from sweat.