Tech-Jutsu I’ve been training the same kihon waza at all belt levels for a number of years now (as well as the techniques towards the next grade), and i'm starting to get to a point where I feel confident teaching them correctly. But attaining that level of quality and correctness that i’ve got in my mind is so elusive! Experience in training techniques in a certain way--your way--leads you to a point of developing concrete ideas about how techniques need to be performed such as where to place your feet; weight distribution of your opponent; finding the correct point of imbalance in your opponent, as well as the technical movement in itself, where all those aspects need to be incorporated into each technique, but each of those aspects requires it’s own focus, as it is so easy for the brain to completely bypass one aspect of a technique. And i’m stuck–-i’ve plateuead--and i'm having trouble implementing those aspects in my own weekly training, and the opportunities to train for a few uninterrupted hours, where we can just hammer out technique after technique to try to attain that elusive level of perfection, are few and far between.
It’s so frustrating to get injured; being forced to take it easy for a few months, then getting back into training, only to fail in getting some honest to god decent training sessions in. Then managing to get injured again. It’s like a never ending circus. I now long for the days when I didn’t even know what a tendon injury was! This is certainly a young persons pass-time, and if you can get to a high level before your early fourties when tendons start to fail with worrying regularity, then you will have done yourself a huge favour in your martial arts career.
But getting back to small improvements. I think it gets harder and harder to improve as time goes by, and there is a risk, not only that you stagnate, but that you regress, because you get out of the habit at training at a certain level. Once upon a time, that 'level' of conditioning and muscle memory in those techniques you were going to grade for was not considered as anything but normal everyday training. But over time, complacency does it’s work, and the speed, timing and balance deteriorates despite good intentions. I think it’s important to have a few ideas in your head of what you want to acheive before each training session, and that you have to be acutely aware of those as you’re training, for instance, “today’s going to be about focusing on my speed through the techniques. I’m just going to do them as fast as I can”. Next time it might be “this time i’ll focus of maintaining my own balance in every single movement”, or “I’ve got to make sure I expend as little energy as possible whilst still performing the correct technique, by taking advantage of ukes poor balance”.
But the number one thing that i miss at the moment, is constant, uninterrupted and injury free training, and I believe that is the key for creating those opportunities for small improvments.