I’m told language changes over time, the way we use it and the meaning too.
Recently I was invited to share some thoughts on biomechanics and Aikido at a friendship seminar at Aikido Redlands. A friendship seminar is where people from different styles of Aikido (and related arts) might come together to share experiences and learnings. I think there is much to be gained from these great ocean experiences, rather than dwelling on lofty mountain tops. (Check out Redlands Aikido facebook page for some images and reflections on the seminar by my betters.)
Clem Sensei, the host is also experienced in Japanese calligraphy so I asked if he might brush something I could refer to in my session. Happily he indulged. with the Kanji for “Ai’ inside a circle (many thanks Sensei). Its very close to my former dojos logo and for his dojo at one time too.
The topic for the seminar was beginners mind, for which the circle symbolising a continual process of renewal and returning to the beginning is quite a nice reflection.
‘Ai’ in Aikido has usually the meaning of ‘to join’ and so the Kanji for ‘Ai’ was a nice symbol for the practice of the art (the joining with your attackers energy) as well as for the seminar , we we join together with others to learn.
Essentially you need to take a persons tanden (centre of mass) diagonally up and then diagonally down to outside their feet (base of support) accomplish the topple and subsequent throw, Doing this below the threshold of perception and with minimum force is a pretty good first approximation for Aiki I recon, though there is plenty more to it. Its easy to say but hard to do.
‘Ai’ reimagined
I kind of like to think of the Kanji for ‘Ai’ now as mnemonic for a person (the box ) and the diagonal brush strokes above it as the directions for up (aiki age) and down (aiki sage). Its easy to remember, something we can see everytime we are in a dojo, and perhaps not so irreverant that its a worthwhile tool to prompt memory.
My thanks to everyone involved and congratulations to Clem Sensei, a great day out and some good dialogue on and off the mat too!
A top down view of training partner’s (Uke) centre and zones of balance
I dusted off the Dogi the other night (it’s been a while) and paid a visit to Redlands Aikido to share some thoughts on stability (thanks for the invite Clem). Whilst I didn’t go the full toppling biomechanics. We worked on the idea that as long as the Tanden (Centre of Mass) is inside our feet (Base of Support) we are stable. Once it ventures out side this point we stand to fall, if we are lucky we catch our selves with a step…this is calling walking (a repeated practice of controlled falling).
The really interesting thing is as we explore this by moving our centre of mass around until we feel unbalanced is that we discover we start to lose our balance before we get outside the limits of our stance, and if we gently move our partner through the same thing we can feel their balance is lost slightly before they feel it. This is true for high level athletes as well…but sensitivity to it can be trained (if we are not to stiff or focused on power). The next step is putting it into technique, by moving their CoM to very precise points outside their perimeter we can help Uke find which foot they need to move to take the tumble.
Thus we find that its possible to take someones balance and not have them even be aware of it…maybe this in part explains how little old Japanese men seem to be able to chuck our westerners around with such aplomb?
There is a lot of value in tradition, sometimes using modern tools can help us uncover them, and the long lost meaning behind the practice as well. This is an article I wrote sometime back for Aikido Journal, its dropped off the feed now so reposting because there is interest.
Aikido as an Elite Sport
To help improve his golf swing Tiger Woods reputedly used to hit hundreds of golf balls a night into the dark without seeing where they went . This is called ‘error free learning’ and is just one of the many
techniques used by elite athletes to help improve their performance. Today sports teams and institutes routinely employ specialist coaches for specific activities and increasingly a skill acquisition specialist is often part of the team. How to learn a new skill and how that skill performs under the stress of competition is important to the athletes, their teams and even national pride.
There are many similarities between striving for excellence in the martial arts and elite sport. I am somewhat privy to both worlds through my professional work as researcher in elite sports monitoring. Many good things about traditional practice were affirmed for me, a few things were easy extensions and just the act of naming why certain things are done a certain way was helpful too.
Quite a few new ideas were helpful, though some I’m not quite ready to use in my aikido practice. I hope the following bag of ideas might be as interesting to you as they were to me when they gave me the odd ‘aha’ moment.
The Development of Specialist Skills
Scientists and talent scouts have long understood that specialised skills are developed over a long period of time and through rigorous training and a diversity of experience. Diversity is often gained whilst an athlete is in developmental stage through an exposure to a broad base of different sports prior to specialisation. Specialisation in a skill is then developed in order to gain mastery of a particular sport. Early experiences are among the most powerful contributing factors in long-term mastery of a skill
and can shorten that time significantly. The scientific literature suggests that around 4,000-10,000 hours is generally required to gain expertise.
Doing the math on the minimum time to mastery of ~5,000 hours. If you are training a 2hr classes twice a week for 50 weeks of the year its going to take about 25yrs get there, compares well with the often cited “25 year technique”. Early experiences are powerful, as instructors we must be careful to give our best to new students (even though the revolving door of new students is frustrating) and to provide plenty of diversity. Fortunately the aikido syllabus as something of a modern sogo bujutsu (composite martial art) is already rich and varied and might provide the diversity of experience within a single school.
Learning and tradition
Modern sports used to be highly bound in tradition and coaches were often successful sports stars themselves, tending to teach the way that they were taught. Certainly that was the experience in Australia until the formation of the Australian institute of Sport and the state based institutes that were developed to provide added information of modern research. Out of this some old ways of learning sports have been reinforced and others fundamentally changed.
Martial arts are tradition based and thus markedly similar in that respect. Some would argue that the traditional arts have been through the cauldron of battlefield success as a scientific (darwinian) method of improvement. Others feel that competition (e.g.MMA) have also been able to inform on best practice. Where does aikido sit in this? Preserving the battlefield of success practices or drawing on modern innovations like the systema method and ukemi specialists like Donoan Waite?
Training Practices
In modern sport the relationship between structured training and competition varies somewhat. There are strengthening and conditioning aspects and specific skill based practices. Some skill based practices are un-pressured and some are game based that are designed to broaden the skill base.
Its a widely held maxim that variability in training leads to more robust skill development and hence better performance.
Much of what is done in the dojo is drills that fit the requirements of the above practices. Naturally students ask ‘but this wouldn’t work in the street’ . Just like a footballer doing dodge and weave drills and tackle bag work – its not meant to work. Being able to separate what we do into what is game (the street) based and what isn’t at a cognitive level helps us understand our own practice.
Blocked vs. Random Drills
Blocked drills are the name given to repetitive exercises performed over and over as a core practice of learning a skill while random drills are just that, and have a lot more variability in them. While the evidence in favour of blocked drills for early learning of a skill is overwhelming recent studies have found they may actually hinder progress at higher levels.
The studies have found that single focus, same task drills may engender the athlete with a false perception of expertise through the comfort of drills they have been doing for years and can take short cuts in.
By contrast random, multiple task, multiple focus drills lead athletes to having a poorer perception of their ability but they actually perform better. It is thought that it encourages better focus for higher level athletes as it keeps the cognitive load high.
In my own school we have 20mins of waza performed to a rhythmic count. Its a great way to get in sync and learn the basic moves and increase the repetitions quickly. Its famous for seniors sleep time, losing focus and mentally nodding off in. Its classic blocked learning which leads to quick success but hindering higher level learning. Multiple repetitions of incorrectly performed footwork (in particular Maruyama sensei’s moon shadow lizard legs) that occur in several waza will see 50 repetitions of incorrect movement before paired practice begins. The student will be very lucky to not be going backwards in some aspects. Other schools that focus on kihon (blocked learning) for a long time seem to produce powerful yet wooden aikidoka that struggle to evolve beyond the kihon and just get stuck.
Teaching Skills
“To hear is to forget , to see is to remember and to do is to understand” is I think a Confucian quote that sums up learning methodologies and today is backed up by good science.
Its sage advice and a healthy reminder to beware teachers that talk to much, demonstrate only a few times and leave too little time for practice.
We live in a world of visual, verbal and kinesthetic communicators. Although different people favour different methods to communicate, both the trainer and athlete need to be using the same medium. Good coaches and trainers understand this and adapt to that of the athlete. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can be used to assist in discovery.
In some schools the instructor just demonstrates and doesn’t talk and while its great for the visual learner not so good for the auditory learner. The instructor that grabs everyone’s wrist is great for the kinaesthetic learner.
Demonstrations
Demonstrations for learning a for new movement are a great way to teach and a staple of any sporting context. Demonstrations should highlight cues for athletes and provide positive feedforward for learning. Watching others perform is also a great learning tool.Demonstration by sensei is probably the most prominant method of learning aikido. Our students also get a big kick out of watching sempai and kohai doing tanninzugake/randori/jiyuwaza with more than a few ‘aha’ moments
How To! Damien Farrow an internationally renown skill acquisition specialist from the Australian Institute of Sport. There is a lot of focus here on the different aspects of skill acquisition, whilst some of the focus is on team sports there is still plenty of good food for thought
Feedback
Feedback is a vital part of coaching, traditionally it comes from a coach but today a whole host of feedback strategies are used.
Traditional feedback is vital for learning from an expert, but beyond the traditional methods today a variety of modalities and mechanisms exist. We can define feedback as being about providing sensory information to the athlete, not just errors.
Intrinsic feedback
This is natural feedback or consequences of actions. These include success or failure at a task, internal feelings and other measures of success.
There are multiple types of intrinsic feedback built into our aikido practice, from not whacking ourselves with a bokken in solo practice, to a feeling of effortless technique, to that feeling of being jammed or slowed up during a technique. Teaching students to be aware of and learn to use these methods helps them be their own best teacher.
Extrinsic feedback
This feedback is provided from an external source, usually it includes knowledge of the result and is the traditional coach model in its simplest form. Other forms very popular included video playback to athletes, real time or slow motion. Its interesting that coaches can say something over and over again but sometimes when an athlete sees themselves on video there is understanding for the first timeIn our own dojo we have video feedback most often from grading days but also at other occasions. In all cases where it has been employed the response from students has been fantastic and some real progress of personal obstacles has been greatly helped
Verbal Feedback
Some points on giving verbal feedback; it’s not rocket science but it is much more that “do this, don’t do this”. The following are general advice:
Give only 1-2 points of feedback, any more leads to frustration
Try questioning feedback, this engages the student in active rather than passive learning
Withhold detailed instruction early on. Detailed instruction can lead to over specificity. By withholding instruction implicit learning is favoured (see later). It also allows generalisable skills to develop.
There is a tendancy for some athletes to over focus on the mechanics of a skill. It can be important to redirect this analogy or external effects of movement.
In traditional martial arts its common to have very little feedback from an instructor and to be left to one’s own devices somewhat to discover the path and develop skills. Some modern schools can go completely the other way focusing on service delivery.
Feedback, Biofeedback and guidance
Biofeedback is most well known where people with an awareness of their heartbeat can control it – this is usually accomplished with the aid of a heart rate monitor. It is seen as amazing because we are controlling some autonomic part of our body, the feedback is immediate and yields good results. The principle of biofeedback can be applied to learning a skill as well.
The timing and many other aspects of feedback are vital to the learning of a skill. Immediate feedback can bring instantaneous change but is difficult to do in the middle of a 100m dash. The frequency of feedback can be faded as expertise is acquired. Careful attention must be paid to avoid a dependency on feedback. Bandwidth feedback is to provide feedback on performance in the extremes. Feedback should be a balance between error based (skill improvement) and correctness (motivational). Watching others is a strong tool
How not to! Its funny because its true. I think we have all been a) this poor over corrected and increasingly frustrated student (parodied nicely by fictional character Borat) at one stage b) perhaps also even an over helpful instructor providing a frustrating amount of detail
Cognition and the Mind
Some of the following information comes from skill acquisition specialists, some from sports psychologists. Mind power is a much vaunted term and it tends to be talked about in a less dramatic way in sport than in traditional martial arts such as aikido, however i was reassured to find what we think of as modern best practice already present in our teaching methods.
Error free learning
Error free learning is a term for learning that does not engage the athlete in failure but in continued success, to help build positive pathways in the body. It engenders in the athlete:-
– a feeling of success
– a way to practice the entire motion of a skill
– a way to release mind from lower order mechanics of movement
Most famously the example of Tiger Woods reputedly hitting hundreds of golf balls a night into the dark without seeing where they went helped groove his golf swing.
Feelings of failure and over thinking movement are thought to lead to stilted movement and collapse of skill at high pressure times, like competition. Error free learning can assist is getting robust overall skill in place, of course it still needs fine tuning through explicit instruction
Aikido is a two person kata designed to be completed from start to finish rather than contested to failure. Its a great form of error free learning that helps students help each other to learn initially their part. Technical correction is of course important but the teacher that regularly stops the technique 1/2 way through or the competitive uke that blocks the movement can be detrimental to learning and the error free learning method.
Implicit/ Explicit processes
Mentally there are two main ways to learn a skill: Implicit and Explicit.
Implicit learning happens below the level of consciousness. Through action an underlying concept or simple cue is learnt. Many use the example of riding a bike as an implicit process, beyond some simple mechanics of steering there is little in the way of ‘instruction’ to ride a bike…you just do. Implicit skills have been found to be a lot more robust under stress
Extending Ki, flow and other imagery are powerful implicit learning cues that we see in aikido. Through thousands of technique examples the core of aiki is learnt. In our school these core principles might be talked about but are actually learnt implicitly whilst the brain is learning some technique of other. These implicit skills might be keeping good posture, not fighting, using aiki, cutting the opponents center etc…
Explicit learning are skills taught and learnt through detailed process. It’s an essential way to learn some things and more suited to modifying an already acquired skill base. Explicit skills are found to be less robust under stress.
We all need explicit instruction to improve but if its the only modality it can all fall apart come tanninzugake/ jiyuwaza/ randori. For beginning students particularly too much explicit training rather than letting them get on with it can paralyse and frustrate them. By using implict methods early on the felling of success is improved and they are less likely to be the 50% of new students you never see again in the dojo
Cognitive effort
Cognitive effort is the amount of brain power or thinking required to carry out a skill based activity. To learn a skill requires cognitive control of the whole body and fine motor skills in many muscle groups. This is an enormous cognitive load on the brain and it can respond by reducing the amount it has to do by locking up ‘unused’ joint segments to focus on the new skill. Once a skill is acquired it can be relegated to the autonomic nervous system.The big take home messages are for when working with beginners or learning a new tweak on a technique yourself. Its important to understand that movement is going to be blocky, you are going to have 2 left feet for a while as you brain copes with the cognitive load by shutting down some movement. The other big thing I learnt was when you have expertise, if you focus on the skill like you were learning, you return to that blocky state. Attentional focus is what can get you around this.
Attentional focus
To keep the brain busy athletes are introduced to a ‘dual task’, with a secondary task placed alongside the sporting activity to act as a distractor and prevent cognitive load impeding the execution of a learnt skill. This distractor task might be as simple as repeating a phrase, visualising something or counting.
This one was an exciting find, suddenly a rationale for the oft repeated ‘Extend Ki’, the use of mudra visualisation and ‘imagining youerself as a swordsman holding a weapon and making repeated cuts
Technologies for skill acquisition
Many of these new learning methods need modern technologies to facilitate them; including motion capture systems, cameras, wearable monitors etc. It’s a new world and my professional area of interest is wearable monitoring for feedback post activity, during activity and sometimes in near real time. I have had some limited success in training complete novices using an instrumented sword and biofeedback.
While the world of elite sport offers some clues and validation on training and learning methods there is no escaping the hard work and ‘ bump and grind’ of daily training on the way to mastery.
NOTE:
This article was recently featured on the Aikido Journal, you can read or leave comments here
Visiting Japan brings with it the pleasure of seeing old and new friends again, some indulgence in my favourite hobby of aikido (a kind of energy minimisation problem in a martial context) and the very serious business of sports and sports engineering. Last month was my most recent trip which might be of mild intrest.
A few weeks ago I found myself on a plane and Japan bound again, I think this is the seventh visit, last year was for an international aikido camp I help organise but mostly it’s a mix of business and pleasure, this time I was accompanied by centre protege Dr Jim Lee. This was Jim’s first trip to Japan, and while eating fish (including raw fish) isn’t high on his priorities he assured me that its ‘not a problem’ , well I hope not because the visit is a precursor to his 1 year Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship which is due to begin in December. Anyways we board the Osaka bound Jetstar flight, again somehow its nearly empty (my last trip was during Japan’s Golden week) which means economy is about as comfortable as economy can be. Unfortunately we forgot to book meals and they had run out by the time the cart gets to us, likely story! as we are in the third row of the plane! No blanket either (thats an extra $5 too), fortunately the seat belt is included in the price of a ticket and with no entertainment we at least have our presentations to work on. They have to be good because its a Japan conference so visuals can really help our non existent Japanese!
We touch down in Osaka pretty much on time, and then begins a frenetic navigation of the Osaka public transport system, as we have an applied biomechanics workshop to attend in the early evening. Actually its a class with Okajima sensei to try and get a handle on some of the Daito-Ryu Aikijujitsu waza he presented a few years ago back in Australia. Daito-ryu is the forerunner of Aikido and one of the reasons slightly built geriatric Japanese can fling hot-blooded westerners around with ease. Fortunately I have downloaded the maps, know the exit number of the stations, been there before[1] and have a compass in my phone[2].
Thus we make it in pretty good order to the Kansai headquarters of Aikido Yuishinkai and who should I find intruding on my idea of being the only westerner in a Japanese martial arts dojo but Lisa and Mark of Balina/Byron dojos. I first met Mark in the UK 10yrs ago during a stint in the finance industry, and we continue a fine tradition of bumping into each other as we can around the world. The ensuing class was excellent and sensei was obliging in working through some of the advanced mathematics of stability, centre of mass and optimum toppling moment, colloquially known in the aikido community as aiki-age and aiki-sage.
After practice we adjourn to a local noodle house for some Japanese English conversation that becomes progressively more animated and sensei shares a little of his insights into inyo, a concept that has only recently hit my radar following discussion on aikiweb.com, reading Amdur’s book ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ and a Kareteka / Shintaido practitioner that visited our dojo recently.
Next stop, how to find our hotel a few stops down the line. Along the way we are accosted by all manner of halloween costumed tweens, I think some of them forgot to put all of their costumes on too, I must be getting old. Next morning we head of to Kyoto on the Hankyu line, cheaper and faster that the JR line and less walk at the other end to the hotel too. Our hotel is in the heart of the Gion district, of Geisha fame. Unfortunately our host and long time collaborator Prof. Yuji Ohgi is delayed and so we amuse ourselves for the afternoon. How do we do this? By trying to change some money on a weekend and then heading up through Maruyama park and up the local mountain behind it. When we reach the top and its raining so we share a hut with a Japanese gentleman who speaks great English, but apologises in Spanish…go figure!
Eventually we decide to brave the rain and head down in a slightly different direction, pretty soon we hit some sign posts that have nothing recognisable on them (not that uncommon in Japan for ignorant gaijin) and proceed, using our our aforementioned poor sense of direction. The road gives way to vehicle path gives way to vehicle track to a path, gives way to a goat track that leads us down something pretty steep halfway up a ravine and judging by the cobwebs its not used that much. About now I’m thinking of the stories in the news about tourists that get lost in our local bush around Brisbane, without protective clothing, map, food etc… and with daylight fading we realise that yep thats pretty much us and if we are not careful we’ll end up in a cemetery. Funny that, because thats exactly where we end up just 10minutes later. Wiggling our way further downhill we run into a few Japanese tourists, Jim practices his skills and there is lots of giggling, buts thats Jim and language is not barrier there and we make out way back to our hotel.
Next day we are off to the conference at the Kyoto university. Tantalisingly on the way we discover a Tozando[3] branch office, where the credit card takes a bit of a hit, somehow I resist the temptation of the antique samurai swords, maybe not so surprising with the price coming in anywhere from $AUD50, 000 and up. Despite just a few purchases Haruko-san takes an intrest in my hobby and the transportation needs of the purchases i must cart all over japan and get through customs. With the usual tradition of over wrapping she helps me get what I need to carry them through various subways, buses and shinkansen. Just around the corner we also discover the Kyoto Budokan, wow! its straight out of the matrix training video, no time for practice though, despite an invitation, alas. (here’s a pic of the inside )
I’ve been following the JSME (Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering) joint symposium on Sports Engineering and Human Dynamics for a few years now[4], which recently became a formal society of the JSME. While the conference is in Japanese and for japanese, though there are a sprinkling of a few token westerners, its still very informative with mathematics the universal language and some faily fancy animations in the presentations (thankyou Ohta san). The conference is a great way to see what is happening in Japan research and industry, and is well supported this year with over 300 people attending I think. This makes it as large or larger than the biennial International ISEA conferences and the Asia Pacific Congress on Sports Technology. Also at the conference are a lot of industry exhibits, there is some really cool (and the odd kooky) business ventures on display, many of what have continued to develop from when I saw at the previous years conference.
The conference was a great way to catch up with research colleagues in Japan that I have got to know over the years through collaborator and pal Yuji Ohgi and more from several universities around Japan and a few companies as well, including ARS. I was mistaken for David Rowlands at once point, I guess us westerners all look the same 😉 Most nights we are whisked off for dinner with another of Yuji’s colleagues, into the back streets to feast on something that is famous for something from a particular region, though at times we aren’t sure what it is we are eating, and sometimes we discover its better not to ask.
At conference end we dine at a friends of Yuji’s new restaurant in the heart of Gion, its an exquisite meal of many courses in a traditional style room. There is momentary excitement, beyond the gastronomic adventure of the subtle and sublime tastes of each course, as the infamous fugu (puffer fish is served up). We are assured by our companions that the reputation of the fish is unfounded, and only a few people die from it each year in the whole of Japan and usually by unlicensed chefs serving it up. While Jim eats it with great gusto (fortunately slurping is appreciated in Japan so he isn’t an embarrassment here) whilst I hold back a little. Its a winning strategy I’m thinking, till one of the others guests suggest to me that if it is poisoned there might be no more ambulances left by the time I show symptoms, maybe I need to man up?
Apart from that the dinner conversation is quite dignified *cough* with a colleague sharing a little of his work as a famous sportswear designer. His work builds ‘supportive wear’ for females of all ages shapes and sizes, which piques the interest of most people carrying the XY chromosome at the table as he describes the challenges of the occupation and the importance of very thorough testing. There is some excited talk of collaborative work in the future, though for those of us that are married it looks like a high risk venture.
During our time in Kyoto we manage to fit in some time to visit temples, including the famous Mizu temple, the golden shrine and some stately homes and amazing gardens. On our final day in Kyoto and we stumble upon the ‘philosophers path'[5] near the university after a quick soba lunch near a temple. The philosophers path looks interesting, but there is no time for it, maybe later…isn’t that always the way. Another Koan from Japan…sigh
Later on we journeyed Tokyo way to Keio Universities Shonan Fujisawa campus, where we were invited to give a lecture to the students and have a good look around. Jim was particularly interested in the facilities as this is where he will be based for the coming year looking at prosthetic legs for running athletes and a bit of swimming on the side.
We stay with Yuji and family, which was a lovely time to reconnect with Midori and Miwa as well as to check out their fabulous new house. Well its a new house but actually its a very old house redesigned by the Ohgi’s, originally an a few hundred year old barn shipped all the way from Yamagata. The exposed beams and traditional construction were lovely, as was the setting high on a hill and nestled in a local reserve. Structurally it uses no nails and has a lovely open airy feel to it. For our time there, we had to chop wood for the fire, something thats in Jim’s blood being from Tasmania.
All too soon it was time to say goodbye and jumping on the train to Narita and heading home on the night flight.
First up is the confrontation with my underfed addiction to sugar and fat, which a familiar multinational fast food is eager to satisfy….do i feel conned ?
Again the plane is 1/2 empty, and through the wisdom of computerised seating systems we are all jammed in to the back half of the plane. Newly invigorated with a love of sports, once the plane is at altitude I make the 30 yard dash for the spare seats up front and manage to get a reasonable nights sleep.
[2] I find a compass essential because in the northern hemisphere my sense of direction is the opposite (but not opposite enough that i trust it) and emerging from the rabbit warren of japanese subways and confronted with Neon signs its hard to find something that tells you which way you need to go
[3] Tozando is a somewhat well known martial arts store that does mail orders overseas, it’s kinda the Ralph Lauren of uniforms and equipment. www.shogoin.com is Haruko-san’s shop
[4] recent conferences include Tokyo APCST, Kanazawa, Tsukuba, Akita, Fukuoka (which sadly I missed) and now Kyoto
I’m told language changes over time, the way we use it and the meaning too.
