(feel free to move this thread as appropriate)

I started doing martial arts again after not having done them since college (with a brief stint in Shaolin, a Chinese strike-based martial art similar to karate), and my coordination was so poor initially it was almost comical. Anyway, of the 6-week beginner class I did, only 3 people completed it of the 5-6 (?) that did it initially, and only myself and one other still actively train. Why? I don't know.

Anyway, it's Aikido, which is mostly based upon a subset of Daito-ryu jujitsu techniques, with weapon techniques and a very limited number of strikes. It lacks Brazilian Jujitsu and Judo's more extensive groundwork, and mostly focuses on throws, pins, and joint locks.

The ultimate fitness of Aikido as a competitive martial art or whatever is beside the point, however, but I'm sure a lot of people here have experience with BJJ or Judo so I wanted to bring it up to help clarify things.

But, the main thing I wonder about at the moment is the issue of muscle memory, as well as perception when executing techniques.

When I did Shaolin, we would do the same techniques repeatedly, and spent a significant amount of time on repetition, mostly strikes/kicks. While I didn't get too far with it, for a while those strikes and kicks got very ingrained in muscle memory, and became easy for me to execute without thinking about it.

With Aikido however, the way it's taught is quite different. As it's grappling-based, naturally most of it requires someone to grapple with to practice. The local dojo has a very high number of black belts who've been training for a long time, whereas my Shaolin class were exclusively beginners, so for learning purposes it's very nice to always train with an expert.

But therein lies the problem. Due to perhaps the amount of material that needed to be covered, we never spent long on any particular technique in the beginner class, and I never had the feeling I had any sort of mastery or ability to quickly execute one of the techniques from muscle memory. And the techniques are far more complex than the simple strikes in Shaolin, requiring multiple steps, positioning, distance etc that was never particularly emphasized during teaching and difficult to discern in the examples, especially with hakama obfuscating foot movement.

Even yesterday, over two months into it, I found out I was executing the footwork for the most basic technique we started with, tenkan, wrong and it's very frustrating to learn that the little muscle memory I did develop was in fact, the wrong muscle memory. And despite the fact I'm training mostly with very experienced partners, most don't notice mistakes like that, and have a hard time answering specific questions without performing the move themselves and being attentive to what you asked, because they're all relying on muscle memory and simply aren't thinking about it. Some of the stuff such as what foot you place weight on, and shifting your balance, is very subtle and hard to pick up on.

We did start in the beginner class training the footwork for some of the movements, but that's largely been dropped in the intermediate classes, and again, I don't think I ever really got to any particular autopilot stage of movement with it. So we practice moves I haven't seen before which combine some elements of what I have in each session, and then quickly move on, usually before I can even quickly execute the move once.

One conclusion is that I'm retarded. But looking at the other white belts, I'm not sure they're doing any better, even ones that took the previous beginner class and have 2.5 months of experience on me. And I put forth a lot of effort, studying and practicing at home, and attending 2-3x more classes relative to any other white belt. Of the black belts, few have trained exclusively at this dojo, afaik.

I guess it could be a problem of expectations.... I dunno, it's just frustrating on some level to not be able to feel proficient with at least some basic moves or strikes (which were hardly practiced and I'd probably be unable to do at all correctly had I not taken Shaolin), and constantly be moving on to technique after technique. I think any true self-defense potential of what I've learned, because I've learned it so poorly, is about nil. Not that self-defense was why I took the class really, but I'd like to get a feeling of accomplishment for something. (God, how I'd love to use the little Shaolin I still remember to respond to some of the attacks in Aikido, it's just so much more simple/intuitive)

Maybe I'm on crack here, but it seems to me you have to be good at playing the chords before you can play the song. Is this just inherent to how most judo/jujitsu classes are taught? How were you guys taught judo/jujitsu techniques? How long did you take to do them pretty quickly from muscle memory? What did you practice at home?

Anyone have any suggestions? And yeah, I plan to talk to the Sensei...

Edit: oops. the other question I wanted to raise was perception when executing techniques, either offensive or defensive. Ideally, one focuses and centers themselves, and lets their perception expand instead of getting tunnel vision. However, in practicing doing that both in the dojo and outside of it, I find it takes active mental effort and concentration to do such a thing, and due to the high amount of focus and difficult doing moves that aren't in muscle memory takes, I think that's why my perception is so limited while executing moves. But things I can already do well, it seems it's a pretty easy to maintain that state. Is this a valid observation?

Sounds like shoddy teaching to me. At the MMA school I was going to before moving in at my dorm, we had several teachers and I got to analyze and contrast the methods that each used. One of the BJJ instructors would teach 1-2 pretty complex techniques per class and we would drill them 1-3 times apiece before moving on. The other instructor would teach us something more simple/efficient or if the move was complex/involved that would be the only move we learned that day. Then we would 'roll', which is, in my opinion, just as important as drilling technique.

Needless to say, the second instructor helped me 3x more than the first, despite the fact that the first instructor was an excellent student of BJJ and could tap the second at will. If you don't learn how to execute a technique in a dynamic situation with a resisting partner under supervision to advise and correct technique, you are getting second-rate teaching. The martial arts require a large amount of coordination etc. as you have already observed. It takes repeated and correct execution of techniques (drilling a new technique around 20 times at first is optimal) to burn it in to muscle memory, and then you have to learn how to implement it into your 'game' (rolling).


Not to knock on your MA, but that kind of good, solid, teaching is mostly found in Judo, BJJ, Boxing, Thai Boxing and MMA schools in the west.


EDIT: I miss that class so much. It was usually the instructor and 2-4 students, and the instructor liked to stay after and help me because I was the youngest person in the class (most were cops in their 30s) and he wanted to work me into a fighter. I would literally be drilling a technique approx 10-20 times with someone watching every drill closely and correcting form. The last time I went the instructor and one of the better students pretty much spent an hour after class working of my rolling.

Thanks for the reply. That does sound like what I'd think is a bit more solid of a learning approach at least for the fundamentals. We usually get to practice each technique about four times, maybe eight some days, though most techniques involve chaining other techniques together, some of which we've done parts of before. To be fair, the intermediate classes are about 80% black belts, so I suppose they'd get bored as shit drilling things they already have burned into muscle memory every day.

There's no BJJ school in this area (I looked for that first, actually) and the only Judo one seemed a little subpar to me, with like this Aikido dojo, very blackbelt-heavy classes, and only two days a week at that. At least with the Aikido dojo, I have the opportunity to go 13 times/week if I was particularly hardcore (and didn't injure myself as much). There's a Hapkido school about 60 miles away, but that's a bit of a drive.

I did take a little initiative and had a discussion with the sensei, who told me I was progressing just fine, and was trying to overintellectualize and be a perfectionist about things, which is fairly perceptive I suppose Her perspective was that the important thing wasn't the moves themselves, but in grasping the flow of force and movement. Which is actually the first thing I was taught after the strikes in Shaolin, but the approach to dealing with your attacker's force and how it's redirected is quite different and much more complex in Aikido. I dunno, I'd still like to see more drilling of basic techniques for muscle memory, but she does explain the higher-level concepts much better than my Shaolin sifu did. I'm sure every dojo or school has strengths and weaknesses in its teaching.

After class yesterday, I had some black belt students help me with my footing for some techniques and learned quite a bit, then went and had a beer with them. So eh, could be worse I suppose. At least with blackbelt-heavy classes I know quite a few people who'll work with me after class.

And yeah. Rolling is hard and requires a lot of drilling.

Sounds like you need a new school too, imo.

That is a lot of black belts. Usually a lot of black belts is another sign of a subpar school (not saying yours is, for sure). In BJJ, for instance, it takes most students 10 years of consistent effort to get to black belt level. Consequently most people involved in the art are below purple belt range, with very, very few at black. The reason for this is that you must be able to go toe to toe with people of the next belt level, and tap several of them, to be promoted. This is the traditional way belts are handled in BJJ. The reality is this takes about 10 years for most, BJ Penn trained non-stop and did it in 6 I believe.
Kron Gracie, Rickson's son, was tapping black belts when he was a brown belt and like 16 (he is Rickson's son after all...) which is usually a reason for promotion. But he wasn't promoted because he was under 18, and in Gracie BJJ you can't be a black belt until you are at least 18.

So it might be a good idea to inquire about how long it took those black belts to get to that level---because chances are many o them aren't as skilled as you may think.

I found a school down here in Bowling Green taught by a Japanese Shooto fighter. Rock on.

EDIT: Sometimes a school can be hard to find. I would try google a bit more, it took me quite while to find my last school online.

Actually the black belts have put in a lot of time. A lot of the people have been doing it 10-30 years. A brown belt I know has been doing it for 5. It's really kind of an odd situation... though in Aikido, I suppose the belt tests are easier because you demonstrate technique rather than compete per se, though there is a bit of that involving multiple attackers.

Sounds like you need to get back into it, martial arts are a pretty entertaining diversion.

This can be a problem too. Knowing the art expertly is different from knowing how to teach the art to beginners. I agree strongly with Gahan that it is shoddy teaching.

You can find the same thing in some dance schools. Just for laughs, go and audition as a dancer for a moderately professional show. The auditioner exemplifies a bad teacher. Of course, their job is to quickly weed out idiot-level dancers like me. He or she will show you 8 to 12 moves in rapid succession (left step, swivel, right tap, back, ball and change, shift left, shift right, dip) and expect ou to reproduce it immediately. Anyone with 10 years experience can do it because they've encoded those moves in memory as chunks. But a beginner only sees a blur and has no time to learn the proprioception.

Here's how I was taught. The simplest moves need to be repeated, studied and mastered at your level before combining them into sequences.

Consider a forward punch. How much more simple can you get? Yet over 4 years I learned more and more depth and detail.
- is the fist tight, or are the fingers loose
- are the knuckles hitting square on, or is one knuckle pointing out and taking all the initial contact (ouch)
- is the elbow slightly bent or locked into place at the end
- is the beginning motion stiff and over-muscled or lithe and smooth
- is your visualization of the point of contact behind the actual physical object
- are you rotating the fist from its starting position to the end position
- is the timing of the rotation too early/late, or does it contribute to maximum power and distribution of force
- is your intention clear, e.g. to fake out the opponent, to tap lightly ("hey"!), to stun, to maim, to kill
- is your upper body twisting to contribute power?
- are your feet pivoting as your body twists (many levels of detail to be learned about heels, toes, knees, shifting weight)
- as your fist, feet, and shoulders twist do you feel your center of gravity shift and are you stable
- are you physically aware of tradeoffs between speed and power, and instinctively able to change your choice at the last moment
- have you adapted to the psychological shock of contact
- are you able to keep your balance and flow into a new position if your opponent blocks or grabs your hand unexepectedly
- are you able to see openings for a followup strike/move as your opponent reacts
- if you take a counter-strike to the head, are you able to automatically use stepping, arm defences, body movements, spinning pivots, deception, leg strikes, elbow strikes to defend and prepare for the next moment...
- if you get surprised or scared, is your mind practiced at letting go to trust the trained artist in you to carry on
- can you see your opponent's whole body, sense their center of balance, feel their intention and react instinctively
- do you understand what it means to never, ever, ever, ever give up?

If you are rushed through a bunch of steps without studying each one in detail, I don't see how anyone can achieve the latter skills except by accident. Or at all.

I can imagine that rushing someone through complex movements is a good exercise in freaking someone out until they calm down enough to give up the mind and let their body cope. It's exposure therapy. But is it the right way to teach a beginner? Not if it's the only method.

Better to learn a few techniques and learn them well than to learn a whole bunch of things and learn them poorly. Just my 2 cents.

+1.

With regard to belts, time to acquire them, etc. - many schools will promote students who aren't necessarily ready because they charge for belt tests (well, for the actual belt I guess you could say). This is part of the way they make money.

I definitely agree with this. I know dozens of techniques, but I really only have 6-8 that I can pull off effectively. I think it is better to become proficient in a handful of techniques and then build off of this by adding different set-ups or combinations.

Very true. A good example is Elvis Presley who was awarded an 8th dan by his teacher. He gave his instructor a new car every time he got promoted. I wonder if that had any influence on things? The video I saw of him working out led me to believe he'd have a hard time earning a shodan (first degree) without payola.



That's the way I look at it. There is an old saying among many of the martial artists from the east "I have one good technique". They don't mean they only know one thing, they mean they have one or a few that they feel confident with. In the west, the idea is often that the more different things you know the better.

In some ways that may be true. For instance, if you study karate and then study a grappling art like jujitsu, wrestling or judo, you will be more rounded and capable. If you are good at aikido or judo, you may pick up some tips by studying boxing or karate. If you know both distance and close in fighting, you might gain something from learning holds and chokes. But if you have a good punch, I don't see it helping you to learn 10 slight variations on it. Or 10 variations on your favorite kick.

It's not so much a variation, but a new set-up. Deception is a very important part because if you continuously repeat the same tactic, you will have it countered.

Just as in the case of techniques, I think you have to be careful not to overextend the hybridity of your style and approach. Being 'ok' at numerous different martial arts is definitely less advantageous than mastery of one. It's a jack of all trades situation. My personal take is that you are better off really mastering one style and then adapting it as you see fit.

This is an excellent point. Students, fighters, teachers - three very different facets.

I think it depends on which skill you master from various arts, and how you integrate them. That's the basis behind JKD Concepts - use what works, discard what doesn't. I've taken a lot of different martial arts, and there are certainly things I'd never use in an actual fight, but there are several things from each art that would be fairly effective, and there is also a bit of overlapping as well.

Just to clarify, by adaptation I mean once a level of expertise is achieved, you begin weaving in techniques from other disciplines. Being a 50/50 striker/grappler is not going to put you over a pure grappler, for example. Adapting movements from a variety of linear and circular styles, when applied with a fair degree of zanshin, can be really effective.

I tend to agree somewhat with both Ras and Kimbo. On one hand, you don't want to be mediocre in a bunch of things and think you are great overall. It is better to have one thing that is your strength and try to perfect it. However, as Kimbo said, you use what works for you and weave in things from other arts.

When I talk about being well rounded, I don't mean you have to dabble in a little of everything. If you are just starting out you want to pick something that feels right for you and stay with it until you can put it to some practical use. That takes a lot of practice and work. For a beginner to study boxing for a month, aikido for a month, karate for a month, etc is not going to do them all that much good. When they are in a situation where they have to defend themselves, they don't know what to do, box, grapple or what not.

When I talk about being well rounded, I'm talking about the boxer who has gotten to the point that he has some skill and can defend himself if need be. If he just keeps training in boxing, he will be a chump for someone who can box a little but also is good on the inside and on the ground. Jujitsu and related arts are good on the inside and on the ground but when they go against someone who is OK at that but is good at a distance, they could be in trouble. The jujitsu guy has to get inside first to do his stuff. Against someone who fights at a distance of 6 to 8', he may take so much damage trying to get in that he never gets in. The distance fighter will be moving in and out throwing kicks and punches. Your jujitsu (or wrestling etc) guy will not only have to defend against that but have to fade a barrage when he tries to get in and get a hold on the person.

If you are a distance guy and can't deal with the inside person, they will likely win but if you are good at distance and know what to do when someone is trying for the clinch, you can defeat them. The inside guy who doesn't know how to fight at a distance is helpless until he gets really close and can grab the opponent. If he keeps getting hit when he lunges in, he may be knocked out before he ever gets into his comfort zone.

I saw on TV a while back a match between a boxer and wrestler. Supposedly it wasn't fixed. They made the boxer wear boxing gloves and the wrestler did not. Naturally the boxer had no chance and lost right away. His only hope was to land a knockout blow or damaging blow and with gloves its very very hard to do. Wrestler had the edge anyway and with gloves it was a joke. Lasted less than a minute.

I think that this is the most important point. It's not enough to have some exposure - you have to actually become relatively proficient. I've played around with a little bit of Aikido, Kenpo, etc., but not enough to feel comfortable using anything I learned from them in a fight.

Never replied to this, whoops. Anyone, wanted to thank everyone for their comments-- yes, I also agree that it seems to me the best way to learn these things is drilling simple movements into muscle memory.

I was watching Human Weapon the other day, and it was their episode on ninjitsu (which was kind of ridiculous in a way-- a bunch of white guys teaching ninjitsu in Japan? But I digress...) Anyway, they got to the point where they were drilling rolling, which appeared identical to the rolls of Aikido. Their comments, after fucking up a few times, were "wow, rolling is hard!" Kind of funny. But, they drilled it repeatedly, with one of the training methods used being some guy slashing at them with a ninja-to sword (a real, sharp one) in order to get them to evade with a roll. Now that's training incentive.

Not long after making the initial post in this thread, I had to stop doing martial arts as my knee injuries (which I initially got before starting martial arts) were catching up to me, and also had incurred a head injury, and I suspect a back injury as well. Since then, I had a period of rest, followed by a period of emo depression when I couldn't walk without significant knee pain (a little functionally limiting), but now after strength training, stretching, and regular swimming I think I've actually recovered to a position where I'm physically better off than when I started Aikido.

I still think I need to do some strength training, coordination, and flexibility work (not to mention weight loss from what I gained during the whole very limited movement thing) to improve to the point where I'm not so likely to get injured in the future. So, after that I've been wanting to start a martial art again, and I was probably going to go with Aikido (yet again).

Aside from weapon techniques, I had exposure to pretty much every Aikido technique there was, which isn't to say I'm a master or even can execute them all correctly, but somewhere in the mess of exposure training I did improve and learn. So going in now, I'd be more familiar and already have muscle memory for Aikido stuff vs. another martial art. I also have books and some Aikido videos, so I can brush up on my own. Perhaps spending time drilling stuff on my own would be a worthwhile investment.

So yeah. I remain convinced that you really do need to drill simple movements to burn them into muscle memory and also learn to refine them, and nothing can really change that. But somewhere in the mess of technique chains and almost overexposure therapy, there is learning occurring.

It's been awhile but maybe I can add my own experience, having taken both bjj/grappling and aikido.

For aikido, one of the most dominant ideas I learned, and in stark contrast to bjj was "learning the technique to forget it". So, we had learned specific techniques yes but simply to realize the movement of the individual we are fighting.

Well that didn't help at all with grappling. As far as self defense I feel confident that I am pretty proficient in it. As for grappling, which I have been studying formally for the past 1.5 years, there is still virtually nothing that I can say is integrated well enough to do by second nature. I might use techniques quickly, but I still have to think/process the information in a more rigid way than I do with aikido techniques/movements.

Or maybe I suck at grappling?