Today, on the 4th of May, I simply have no other choice than to write about using the Force.
Spirituality is a loaded word and something that gets thrown around more than me in a wrestling bout. The martial arts community is full of its various interpretations, most peddled by self-proclaimed grandmasters of different Asian-origin arts as profitable merchandise or an excuse for a lack of practicality. The mystical appeal of these arts has attracted many a westerner, but there are others who reject the magic and focus on the real and the practical. And wouldn´t you know it, it was one of the things that originally convinced me to hang up my Karate Gi and venture into the visceral, down-to-earth, no-nonsense European arts of gutting people. All of the tradition and ritual, pointless repetitive exercises and endless recitations got on my nerves. I knew I would learn nothing this way, and the only way to learn fighting was hands-on, practical violence.
This worked out quite well for quite some time. As it turns out, it does help when you stop attacking air and begin attacking people who fight back and have no intention of letting you hit them. Soon you realize some of these people are bigger, stronger, faster, and overall better. You decide you won´t have any of that, so you train to become stronger and faster as well, and you learn more techniques and learn them better, so you can compensate for your lack of physical prowess. The advice many Masters seem to have for us puny little nuisances, is to make friends with the Nach. This seems to be in a direct contradiction to our worship of the Vor as the generally superior position to be in. But when you think of it, it does make sense - not to say that the weaker opponent should never try to take the Vor, but to make use of your hulking adversary´s inertia, he has to be in the process of moving, and he has to start moving before you do. This makes things quite a bit harder - instead of relying on the idea that your attack might get through, you have to learn to observe and react to your opponent´s moves before they even happen. So is that what it is all about - we have to train ourselves to become psychics, to close our eyes and trust in the Force? Afraid so.
There are a few things the Masters, especially the eastern ones, tell us on this topic. The most mainstream is probably the idea that you should not focus your attention on any individual part of the opponent, especially not the weapon which moves a lot too late and too fast, but to look through him so that his whole body is in your focus, and let your peripheral vision inform you about subtle cues in the way his body moves and prepares to attack. This also has the advantage of your eyes always being fixed on some point behind him, not giving away the targets of your attacks, but rather just looking really creepy. But is this all? There must be something more mystical, more profound, an ancient secret that will bestow upon us the power of seeing things before they happen.
As we go about our lives, we are very rarely fully aware of what is going on around us. Rather, our attention seems to cherry pick certain things that we subsequently hold endless inner dialogue - or monologue - about. Who are we really talking to when we talk to ourselves anyway, and who is doing the talking? Those may be some deep questions for another day. The experience itself is universal - walking down the street, seeing things and people, we all instantly make judgements, recall memories, and draw comparisons in result. Just seeing some random dude, your head might go "Oh look, he looks like my former classmate. But it can´t be him, he must be much older now. Damn, I must be much older too, huh? But I bet I make more money now than he does..." and so on. Smelling fresh bread when passing a bakery might sound a bit like "Mmm, bagels... This reminds me of our bakery back home, and how I would get sent there to pick up fresh bread by mom. I should probably call mom. Damn I´m hungry..." the examples are countless, and this process happens more or less every moment of our waking lives. Of the things and people we encounter, our attention picks something, and our mind goes on a rant about it. And while it does, and takes up our brain´s processing capacity, we are rendered more or less blind to everything else.
The only times this endless chatter of the mind tends to slow or even shut down, is in situations that need our undivided attention. Normally, this only happens when we are in danger. If you are walking home alone, and you see a bunch of suspicious guys cross the street, you are more than likely to stop talking to yourself about how annoyingly straight this street is and how it drags on forever and you´d really rather be walking through the park and it´s slightly too hot for your taste in this jacket. Rather, your perception will suddenly sharpen and broaden - you will become aware of how many guys there are, whether one of them might be holding something, which way exactly they are going, where your escape routes are - and hopefully not start talking to yourself about in what awful trouble you are. People often say that when they were in great danger and they had no time to think, time seemed to slow down to a crawl, which gave them the option to act. Their memories of their surroundings at the time also seem to be very vivid and precise. This is because when push comes to shove, your mental focus will shift from internal dialogue to perception.
If this internal dialogue does so much to hinder us in our awareness and our ability to react, then why on Earth do we even do it? Or better, why have our minds evolved to do it? There must be some advantage to it, and indeed there are several. Forming judgements and recalling memories is crucial if we are to make the right decisions about things we encounter. How am I supposed to know what to do in a fight, if I do not make judgements and conclusions about my opponent and his appearance and behavior, or recall the memories of learned techniques? There must be this dialogue going on in my mind - right? "OK, we have a guy here, about 90 kilos probably, looks quite offensive - well, hopefully I can lure him into doing something I can do a good nachreisen against, or if he advances frontally, I could try a quick durchwechseln - I need to be careful not to let him get into ringen, and make sure to catch his weak with my strong, oh look he just switched into a pflug, he´ll probably attempt a thrust from bellow, time for that durchwechseln..." and so on and so forth, the whole time.
Well, this will take you so far, but no further.
Thing is, it is incredibly hard to be fast. And to be faster than someone a lot stronger, in particular. Why am I always giving myself these mental instructions? It is nothing but the mind using its incredible power of language to form a bridge between the current situation and experience. My inner, knowledgeable mind, which has trained for years and read many books, is talking to the beast experiencing its surroundings in order to inform it of the best course of action. But this comes at a price - the perceptive animal and the wise martial artist share the same processor. More thinking results in less awareness. Every moment spent forming judgements, recalling memories, making estimations, actively trying to predict what happens next... Is a moment of not being aware of all the subtle cues, little movements, changing breathing patterns - all the things that could bestow this mystical "precognition" power.
Actually, this whole dialogue is nothing but a compensatory mechanism to substitute for a lack of training. This will be very easy to understand for anyone that regularly drives. Remember driving school, and how you had to talk to yourself about how the gear switching procedure goes in your head, often to the point of not really noticing what was happening on the road? How much you had to tell yourself to check all the mirrors in the right order? Now, years later, you can probably drive while listening to music, talking on the phone, and thinking about the weather forecast all at the same time, and you are likely completely unaware of the gear shifting process the whole way. Why? Because you have mastered that movement, and you don´t need your inner instructor telling you how to do it anymore. You can instead (hopefully) focus on the road, and probably have attention left to spare for some music or an ebook.
Fortunately, gear shifting is always about the same. Which can not really be said for fighting. There are almost endless possible situations - so how do you drill yourself for these movements to the point that they become so automatic you have no need for these instructions? And even if you do, how do you force your inner coach to shut up, and stop telling you things you already know?
I am afraid the answer is the same as the answer to everything else: Practice. But knowing what to practice is half the battle.
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