About a Girl

When a lazy slob takes a good steady job

And he smells from Vitalis and Barbasol

Call it dumb, call it clever

Ah, but you can get odds forever

That the guy's only doing it for some doll

- Frank Loesser, "Guys and Dolls", from the musical of the same name

It's a strange feeling loving someone the first moment you see her.

There are books and songs full of love at first sight, something I've always considered silly. I've always thought that real love, like the love I have for my wife, is something that is built over time.

To be sure, there were a few girls who made my knees weak in high school, but I wasn't ready to spend every waking moment with them, alter the course of my life for them, even die for them.

At first sight, I was entirely ready to do all those things for my daughter. It was enough to make all of those swelling music moments in romantic movies seem a little less ridiculous.

In that instant, I wanted to be for her what I had never been for myself: I wanted to be strong, brave, organized, decisive, and resolute. My daughter, as Jack Nicholson famously said of Helen Hunt, made me want to be a better man.

The process of becoming a better man (as vague and amorphous a goal as there ever was), for me, will prominently feature the dojo. I don't, as some romantics do, believe my martial arts regimen amounts to spiritual or moral training--I've touched on that before--but I do think, as I wrote last month, that what we learn from training can be a key ingredient of the model man.

My daughter deserves someone with the courage to bow and come back for more after being thrown across the room. She deserves someone with the strength to return that throw in kind. She deserves someone with the grace to accept the pain of a wrist lock with a smile. She deserves someone with the resolve to make a twentieth attempt at a technique after messing up the first nineteen.

Perhaps in the dojo I can find that man, or at least a little piece of him. It's something I've always wanted, but never so badly as I do now.

Might Isn't Right, But Strong Isn't Wrong

I'm going to start this post with two things every aikidoist already knows:

1. The proper execution of an aikido technique generally does not require a great deal of strength on the part of the performer of the technique (nage).
2. An aikido technique executed properly can overcome the resistance of a stronger opponent (uke).

These two things lead many aikido instructors to conclude, I think correctly, that a good aikidoist need not be exceptionally strong or muscular. But there are others who go further, asserting that strength training is somehow detrimental to aikido, reducing our flexibility and keeping us from grasping the essence of aikido's physics by allowing us to rely on our strength. This kind of thinking has always seemed a little counter-intuitive to me.

I was inspired to address this subject by a recent Martial Arts Planet thread started by an aikidoist who was considering adding other martial arts and activities to his athletic regimen. He worried that the building up of strength necessary for these other activities would make him "stiff" and make him "force [his] aikido to work". This reminded me of a time at my former club when one of my training partners, an avid weightlifter, was encouraged by an instructor to stop lifting for the sake of his aikido (I should note that this particular instructor did not speak for the entire club--some of the other instructors lift weights themselves).

I'm no expert on physical fitness or aikido, so readers should take what I think with a grain of salt, but this post would be incomplete if I didn't briefly address my own feelings on the subject before moving on. It is my blog, after all. 

I wrote once before that when I visit a club, I like to see at least a few students who I'm pretty sure could beat me up. Strength is definitely an ingredient in that recipe. What's more, I think a practitioner of any art or craft has a responsibility to take care of his tools. An aikidoist's primary tool is his body, so I think he ought to be making some effort to keep himself physically fit. Strength, of course, is an important element of physical fitness.

I can certainly understand the fear of reliance on strength in our technique, but it seems to me that this can be avoided by testing our skills against opponents stronger than ourselves (this is difficult, of course, for the strongest person in the dojo, but that problem would exist anyway--if everyone lifts or if no one does, there will always be a strongest person).

Now onto people who know what they're talking about. During the formative years of the internet, dancer and martial artist Bradford Appleton painstakingly researched and then wrote what was to be a comprehensive online guide to stretching and flexibility. The document is now an internet staple which can be found all over; I found it here on the website for MIT's taekwondo club.

Appleton's stance on the matter of strength versus flexibility is quite clear:

Strength training and flexibility training should go hand in hand. It is a common misconception that there must always be a trade-off between flexibility and strength. Obviously, if you neglect flexibility training altogether in order to train for strength then you are certainly sacrificing flexibility (and vice versa). However, performing exercises for both strength and flexibility need not sacrifice either one. As a matter of fact, flexibility training and strength training can actually enhance one another.

It would appear, then, that strength training, undertaken sensibly and responsibly, is no danger to our flexibility. But what about our fear that added strength will undermine our technique?

In answer to that concern, I direct you to aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba:

O Sensei had some real guns, even in his later years. This is not a picture, I think, of a man who considers strength an irrelevancy, let alone an obstacle to his training.

Based on all the above, I humbly submit that aikidoists who wish to build up their strength should do so with a clear conscience. It is certainly true that aikido is ultimately a search for something greater than strength, but it appears, at least, that strength training will do our skills no harm, and it's certainly good for us.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do some push-ups.

Facebook Announcement

Just a quick note: The Young Grasshopper is now on Facebook.

You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/yghmartialarts. Be sure to "Like" me.

Thanks for reading!

Gentleman

"The Most Interesting Man in the World"

I have just finished reading Brad Miner's The Compleat Gentleman.

The book calls itself "The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry", and attempts to assemble a general model of the perfect chivalrous man. The Compleat Gentleman, says Miner, is sophisticated and brave, personifying the virtues of the Warrior, the Lover, and the Monk, and is rich in sprezzatura, that is, gentlemanly grace and restraint.

On the whole, I found the book to be extensively flawed. For all Miner's lip-service to an apolitical ideal, his idea of chivalry is inextricably bound up with his strongly conservative political views. Miner is adamant that a gentleman's honor is worth fighting and dying for, but he never bothers to explain what honor means to him. Worst of all, while the book makes clear that the modern gentleman "has a newer and more realistic view of women" than his historical predecessors, Miner never once considers the possibility that a woman might fulfill his ideals as well as a man.

All that said, the book did give me a few things to think about.

Miner is a student of Goju Ryu karate, and what he writes about karate in his book leads me to believe that he is, like me, a relative newcomer who didn't begin his martial arts journey until adulthood. Nonetheless, the martial arts are important to his model of the perfect gentleman:

Life is a martial art. It is anyway if you do it right. As the Stoics of ancient Rome used to say: Vivere militare! How can our modern knight protect the innocent and punish the guilty unless, along with his courage and honor, he has prowess?

Let's put aside for now the question of whose duty it really is to "punish the guilty", and also the question of whether or not Miner's karate or my aikido amount to real prowess. What interests me most is Miner's idea that prowess is a key ingredient of the true gentleman.

Does a gentleman need martial training? And if he does, does our martial training, therefore, bring us closer to being gentlemen?

Many of us like to think so. We like stories of the Celtic warrior-poet, the samurai philosopher, the rapier-wielding Renaissance man, and (if we are taekwondo players) the ancient Korean hwarang youth, each a sophisticated man educated in the various arts of peace but trained and ready for combat.

I'm a musician--a damn good one if I do say so myself--so I like to think I have the "poet" half of the warrior-poet equation down pretty well already. With some more martial arts training, could I join the ranks of history's great gentlemen?

I am reminded of the popular series of Dos Equis beer commercials featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World". The character would perhaps not satisfy all of Miner's gentlemanly criteria (not enough of a monk, I think), but he does in many ways embody the popular ideal of the gentleman, that is, a man who is sophisticated and cool without being weak. He rescues trapped animals, he woos women, and he plays at politics, but he is equally at home arm-wrestling or wielding a shinai in a kendo match. The commercials' narrator says of him, "He could disarm you with his looks... or his hands, either way," and, "He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas."

Be honest: what guy doesn't want to be that guy?

Much as I often criticize romanticism in the martial arts, I must confess this image appeals to me a great deal. I didn't start my martial arts training with the single-minded goal of becoming a great martial arts master; I wanted to add one more piece to myself, a piece that would make me a more complete human being, a more "interesting" man.

I have written before on how I feel my training has prepared me to face life's challenges with a little more grace. And, stylized as my aikido may be, I suspect I am a little readier for a physical confrontation than I was before, too. Both of these, Miner and the Most Interesting Man in the World seem to agree, are key ingredients of the gentleman. Is it such a bad thing, then, to pursue this romantic ideal in the dojo? I am starting to think not.

Of course, we must pursue this ideal outside the dojo, too. Miner's Compleat Gentleman and the Most Interesting Man in the World are not just fighters. They are jacks-of-all-trades, well-traveled and broadly educated.

I keep saying that I want to make a deeper study of Buddhism, that I want to learn to speak Spanish, that I want to improve my cooking, and that I want to be more diligent in the gym. If I am to be the perfect gentleman, I'm going to need all these things, and I'm going to need to fit them in around working, being a husband, and raising a daughter. It's not for no reason that Don Quixote calls it "the impossible dream".

But even if it is impossible (and, skeptic that I am, I'm pretty sure it is), I think it might be a worthwhile pursuit. And I think my time in the dojo can help.

Ki to the Highway

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.
- Confucius, Analects

A few days ago, someone on Facebook's Aikido group had the gall to make a post saying that ki power does not exist. The responses that followed this assertion were condescending and not particularly friendly. I'll post the first three here: 

• "Then why are you here?" (3 Likes)
• "If you do not believe in the existence of ki power, you have not understood the real power of aikido... all techniques depend on ki power: without that, there is only physical strength." (5 Likes)
• "ki is everywhere, a vital force; the spirit of aikido; if you don't trust in this, you're lost" (1 Like)

I decided not to come to this guy's defense because I think he was being unnecessarily confrontational. But my opinion on this matter is a very strong one: there is no such thing as ki, and we in the martial arts should stop using the word ki (and its Chinese counterpart, chi) altogether.

There, I said it. Everyone take a breath.

Now I'll move on.

There are a lot of problems with the concept of ki, the foremost being that no two people can agree on what ki actually is. In my few short years in aikido, I've heard more definitions of ki than I could possibly count, ranging from things as mundane as "momentum" and "intention" to such wild ideas as "spiritual energy" and "the power of the universe". There are, in short, as many definitions of ki as there are people talking about it.

Some people embrace this amorphousness, deciding that ki is like God or the Dao: something that defies definition and can only be experienced for oneself. The problem with this is that ki, unlike God or the Dao, is supposed to be something we can cultivate and manipulate to produce measurable effects in the physical world (I suppose there are a few, like Pat Robertson, who believe they can do the same with God, but let's not get into that here).  The moment we start dealing with clearly-defined physical realities, we give up the luxury of  being able to chalk things up to mysterious, inexplicable forces. If something works in a concrete, measurable way, we ought to be able to explain it in a concrete, measurable way.

And by the way, we can explain it in a concrete, measurable way.

I have worked with some amazing people during my time in aikido and they have shown me some amazing things. But I've never seen any of them, including even the great Hiroshi Ikeda, do something that couldn't be explained by physics. No doubt, things like the "unbendable arm" must have looked supernatural to people who lacked a modern understanding of biomechanics, but we know better now. The second Facebook comment above notwithstanding, we no longer need ki to explain how good technique can overcome sheer physical strength. Royce Gracie proved that many times over in the early days of the UFC.

So, nobody can agree on what ki is and there is nothing in the martial arts that requires ki as an explanation. That ought to be evidence enough that ki is nonsense. But there is something much worse than nonsense.

Those of you who read my April post "We're the Problem" will remember a video of Jim Green, a karate instructor who is in the business of teaching children to take falls when he throws his ki at them. No doubt some see this as harmless silliness and consider confronting it with the truth more trouble than it's worth. But consider the case of Yanagi Ryuken.

Ryuken's name has become synonymous in the martial arts community with the worst martial arts delusions. His story was introduced to me by neuroscientist and secularist writer Sam Harris, whose recent interest in self-defense and Brazilian jiu-jitsu has resulted in some very interesting writing on the martial arts. Harris, as one might expect, is keenly interested in the debunking of unscientific martial arts myths. He presentes Ryuken as an example of what happens when masters and their methods go untested and unquestioned.

Ryuken is a master of no-touch throws; rather than striking or grabbing his opponents, he repels them with his ki. Here's a video of him in action with some of his students.

And here's a video of what happened when he challenged a martial artist from another school.

The website where I found this video said that Ryuken ended up with several broken teeth and cuts all over his mouth and nose. Delusion, in the case of the martial arts, isn't just funny; it's sometimes very dangerous.

None of what I've written so far addresses the more pragmatic users of the word ki: the ones who believe (correctly, I think) that what used to be called ki is in fact a combination of breathing, biomechanics, and visualization, and who assert (incorrectly, I think) that there's nothing wrong with continuing to use the word so long as we understand that there's nothing mystical or supernatural about it. I used to be in this crowd myself, but I think this stance was a bit hypocritical of me.

I am a real jerk about words. When we start deciding that words can mean whatever we want them to mean, words begin to lose their meaning altogether. We already have words for breathing, biomechanics, and visualization. Adding ki to that mix only obfuscates things.

For instance, when an instructor tells me to extend my ki outward as I throw, what he means is that if I think outward rather than downward my muscles will follow suit and my throw will go where it is supposed to go. He is telling me to visualize. I got similar advice from my singing coach in college, and he didn't need any mysterious foreign words for it. The best aikido instructors I've ever had just skip the ki middleman and say, "Think out, not down." It gets the same results and makes a lot more sense to most of us.

So to recap:

• There is no agreed-upon definition of ki.
• None of the martial arts phenomena attributed to ki need more explaining than can be provided by simple physics.
• Belief in ki leads some people into ridiculous and dangerous delusions.
• Use of the word ki complicates and obfuscates things that could be better explained with simple English (or German, or Portuguese, or Hindi, or whatever).

In closing, I must, as always,  remind people that I'm no authority on anything. I am not even three years into my martial arts journey, and have no business telling a sandan how to run her class. She can use whatever words she wants. But I, for the reasons above, will never use the word ki in reference to any part of my martial arts training, and will have a little difficulty taking those people seriously who do.

The Still Small Voice

I have a little, nagging voice inside my head. Its name is Aikido. I don't always hear it; it's picky about where and when to speak up. It's never very loud, either. But there's no denying it's there, and the more I train the more often I hear it.

Usually the first time I hear Aikido during the day is in the shower. The alarm has roused me from bed, I've fed the cat, and I stumble, cold and groggy, into the bathtub. As the hot water starts to come down, I lean lazily to one side, unhappy to be standing up and eager to squeeze as much of me as I can into the warm spray.

Then it starts. Straighten up, says Aikido quietly. Distribute your weight evenly between your feet.

I comply. I spread my feet to shoulders' width. My hips level and my shoulders relax. A pain in my knee and calf that I hadn't even noticed before starts to subside. I feel a little more stable, a little stronger, and a little more ready to face 17 hours of being awake.

After my shower, I dress, make breakfast, and pack lunch. As I'm heading out of the apartment building toward my car, I sometimes hear Aikido again. You're turning out your right foot when you walk, says Aikido. Fix it.

Again, I submit. I straighten out my right foot. Walking is suddenly easier on my left leg and my right knee is at a much more comfortable angle. I hadn't noticed before that moment how much effort I had been wasting on an inefficient gait, but Aikido had noticed. 

One morning last month at work, a particularly difficult autistic middle school student had to be restrained for an unusually long time. They usually call me for this kind of duty with this particular student; he and I have something of a rapport and the staff member assigned to him is too small to hold him for long when he gets determined.

And he does get determined. This student, when upset, can go to a place beyond reason and beyond verbal communication. When that happens, there is nothing to be said, and the only thing to do is hold on and try to prevent him from hurting himself or anyone else. This time, he swung, he kicked, he bit, and when all those failed him, he tried to hit his head on the hard floor just to spite us.

I'm trained in safe (or at least as safe as possible) ways to restrain violent kids. I had this student in an approved hold, but he's big enough that I was still struggling to keep him still. I was holding as tightly as I could, and that kept him from hitting or kicking me, but it didn't keep his thrashing from threatening to pull me off-balance.

Into this chaos came the voice of Aikido. You're muscling, Aikido said. Relax. Drop your shoulders. Think down into the floor. Hold him with your center of gravity, not your arms. Now breathe.

Sweating and with a screaming adolescent in my arms, I followed each command dutifully. As my shoulders rolled back and my grip relaxed, the student found less to struggle against. As my weight sank, I felt my legs and core take over much of the work I'd been doing with my tired arms. I inhaled deeply through my nose and exhaled slowly through my mouth. I even allowed myself the luxury of closing my eyes for a moment. Suddenly, everything had become easier.

There is a lot of talk in aikido circles about how what we learn in aikido can be applied "off the mat". Much of this is hippie stuff about loving all living things and becoming one with the universe. Assuming these goals are even possible, I think the best place to pursue them is in a church and not a dojo. I've never met an aikido instructor with credentials as any kind of spiritual adviser.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who believe aikido is realistic combat training, and that they're going to take their aikido out to "the street" and use their shihonages on 300-pound thugs with guns and knives. Personally, if I really wanted to learn to fight, I'd find something other than stylized techniques derived from feudal-era Japanese fencing. I have trained with only one aikido instructor who has what I would call real combat experience (he's a former Army Ranger), and he had no such illusions about aikido.

In between both these extremes, I think, there are benefits of aikido that are very, very real. Good, hard aikido training will make us stronger, fitter, and more flexible. It will teach us perseverance and patience. And the physics of aikido are the physics of life: the biomechanical lessons we learn out on the mat can be applied to many tasks that require our strength and balance.

Perhaps these benefits are not exclusive to aikido. Perhaps we can find them in all martial arts, including some whose techniques are better suited to real combat. To be honest, I don't know enough to be sure.

But I do know that there is a little voice in my head telling me some very useful things, and that this voice was born in the dojo.

Old Flame

We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness but neither one knew how
We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to time
Reliving in our eloquence, another 'auld lang syne' 
The beer was empty and our tongues were tired 

And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out and I watched her drive away
Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned in to rain...

 - Dan Fogelberg, "Same Auld Lang Syne"  

Have you ever hung out with an ex? Bad memories, some people say, make this a difficult undertaking.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, though, the good memories are much worse. The hardest thing about being around someone you used to be in a relationship with isn't remembering why you broke up; it's remembering why you were together and knowing that you'll never have that again.

The summer after my first year of college, I went out for an afternoon with my old high school girlfriend (the Ohio Renaissance Festival--yes, I'm that guy and we were that couple). We were still friends and we were still into a lot of the same things, and it was nice to have someone back home I could hang out with. It was just a little bit awkward, though, catching glimpses of something that used to be and would never be again.

It's not that I was lonely, or that I pined for the old days. In fact, I was in a wonderful new relationship in college with the woman who would eventually become my wife. I would never have traded that for a chance to go back to high school. But that didn't stop the moment from being a little strange and bittersweet.

I found myself having similar feelings last week as I attended the rank testing at my old club. It was my first time there in almost three months. I would have been testing that night myself had I not been sidelined by an injury early in February. As it is, I'm now at a new club for many different reasons, the most pressing of which is impending changes to my schedule. I'm not dissatisfied with the new club, and I still have reservations about the old one, but that didn't stop the dojo from feeling like home.

To kneel beside my friends again, to take a few rolls on the familiar softness of that mat again, and to hear the kind voice of my former head instructor again were all wonderful--and a little bit sad. For all that I've complained on this blog, this club is family. It got me started in the martial arts, it introduced me to a lot of friends, and it taught me many lessons that will stay with me for a long time.

During the tests themselves, I had the luxury of losing myself in the aikido (the one exception was the test I would have taken, featuring the friend who would have been my testing partner--that one stung a little). I watched, silently analyzing my friends' technique, or walking through the techniques myself in my mind. I caught myself breathing in rhythm with the kokyu nages and moving my hands along with ikkyos.


After the testing was over, we all went out for drinks. Everyone wanted updates on the status of my pregnant wife, my job, and my music (respectively: well, going to hell, and should be picking up soon). I hadn't been gone long enough yet to keep me from fitting right in. We talked about aikido, about beer, about movies, about anything and everything.

The head instructor made sure to tell me they'll always have a place for me if I want to visit. I'm sure I will. Perhaps some morning classes over the summer after the school year is over. And I'd like them all to meet my daughter after she's born. I'm looking forward to it, but the thought of visiting the place that's been like home for the last couple years is a strange one.

I left the bar a little earlier than I would have liked. I had to work in the morning, and my wife was waiting for me at home. It had been a good night. By the end of the evening, I was in full club-member mode, and my goodbye was the brief goodbye of someone who would be back for the Thursday night class.

But, of course, I wouldn't be.