Old Habits

Last week, another black belt at my club told me he thought I needed to practice my kicks. If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I don't find ushiro-geri and yoko geri kekomi that easy. After what this black belt told me, it occured to me that it was about time I sorted out these 2 kicks, I'd been ignoring them for long enough; it was time to break an old habit.

ushiro-geri from zenkutsu-dachi

Recently, I've been working on training with a less tense body and state of mind. I've done this by practicing slowly, (see my post, 'The Importance of Slow Practice' for more detail), breathing properly with techniques and just going in to practice with a more relaxed mindset. This has meant that I've had more space in my mind to look at techniques in detail and being less physically tense has allowed me to add that detail to my techniques. Increased space in my mind has also allowed me to express myself and engage with techniques on that level more. Less tension generally has meant that I don't physically and mentally exaust myself each time I practice. This has made it more enjoyable and means that even if it's been a long, tiring day, I can still face practicing. I'd advise anyone who, like myself, is prone to stress and is too tense in training, to try to relax more because it can really improve training and it's worth the time it takes to change your level of physical and mental tension.

So was this relatively new approach effective when it came to working on these kicks? When it came to breaking a much older habit? Not in the beginning. I tensed up mentally and physically as I had done before, as if to psyche myself up for it. After I'd done a few of each kick (badly), My mind was telling me to call it a day in terms of practicing, as I'd done the minimum amount and not found it particularly enjoyable- another old habit, I hate to admit.

It took a few days for my approach of being more relaxed in training to become compatible with improving kekomi and ushiro- geri. My aim with kekomi is to be able to execute it with fluidity as my current execution of it is jerky and hesitant. It turns out that, for me, it was breathing properly with the technique that made a change, I'm still not very fluid when it comes to bringing the leg back, but it's a work in progress.Intrestingly, when I did Nijushiho (a kata containing 2 kekomis), they remained very un-fluid. I haven't known this kata for long, but long enough for the way of doing it to become a habit, which, for me, jerky kekomis had become part of: another habit to break!  As for ushiro-geri(from zenkutsu-dachi), it's more about breaking the habit of pausing at the point where I turn to face the back and raisisng my leg before executing the kick. So far, I've managed it with my right leg but not with the left one.

yoko-geri kekomi

I've given this long account of my last few days of practice to try and illustrate how developing habits(certain ways of doing something becoming engraned in your mind) in training isn't always good. To an extent, certain ways of doing something becoming engraned (habits) can be a really positive thing in karate(and also a thing emphsized a great deal, considering the amount of repetition which takes place in training sessions). For example, developing the habit of doing a kata correctly means that you can do it in a pressured situation, like a grading, without having to think about it. The same could apply in terms of self-defense. Because if you ever have the misfortune to have to defend youself, having to think about it too much is the last thing you want to be doing-I'm not an expert and I don't speak from experience but it's a true enough fact. Also, developing the habit of regular training and practice can be a really productive thing. What's not so good is when mistakes or certain (not good) approaches to training among many other things become engraned. This happens to us all, but, certainly in the context of martial arts, we need to address those kinds of issues because, as I've learned, they're not going to go away otherwise. Practice and repetition are about engraning things in our minds, developing habits, the right ones.