Implicit OyataTe Training

After reading Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales  I began thinking about Implicit OyatTe Training vs Explicit OyatTe Training.  This started with the introduction to this topic on Pages 62-63 in the book.  As we all know, I’m no scientist, nor were either of my college experiences at all rated to this field of study.  So my starting disclaimer is; I’m still learning and researching this topic.  So feel free to tell me I’m wrong if you are the expert in this field and help direct me to the proper edumication of myself.

Implicit memory is a type of memory in which previous experiences aid in the performance of a task without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.  In daily life, people rely on implicit memory every day in the form of procedural memory, the type of memory that allows people to remember how to tie their shoes or ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about these activities. Research into implicit memory indicates that it operates through a different mental process from explicit memory.

Explicit memory is the conscious, intentional recollection of previous experiences and information. People use explicit memory throughout the day, such as remembering the time of an appointment or recollecting an event from years ago.

Explicit memory involves conscious recollection, compared with implicit memory which is an unconscious, unintentional form of memory. Remembering a specific driving lesson is an example of explicit memory, while improved driving skill as a result of the lesson is an example of implicit memory.

IMPLICIT MEMORY	EXPLICIT MEMORY
Driving a Car	Figuring out the Speed Limit
Tie Shoes	Ordering Shoes Online
Fear Responses
Eye Blink	Picking out Eye Drops at Store
Protect Groin / Face	Attempting a specific newly learned technique
Getting Dressed	Picking an Outfit for a Specific Occassion

Kata

When studying a traditional martial art you train with kata and memorize the motions through a continual, laborious process of repetition.  This repetition builds the habits, and reliable associations of the sequences.  The paths your body takes become natural and preclude alternate paths.  Through continuous repetition, always doing these exact motions, the correct choices become obvious and you no longer have to THINK about them.

Through these repetitions, and explitcit memory of the kata movements becomes an implicit memory, second nature.  When one learns a kata motion, all they have to remember is how the move starts and the rest falls into place.  You’ve repeated the kata so often the habit requires no thinking.

Language Learning

When you first start learning a spoken language you learn a single word.  That word is strange and you have to consciously think about the use of it and the meaning of it.  EXPLICIT.  After a while, you don’t have to sit and think about the word any more, the second you hear it you understand it. 

This example is better realized by an adult that is struggling for an understanding of a foreign language.  For the most part, English is now IMPLICIT.  We know most common words, and until we start reading a scientific paper about something new we don’t have to stop and think about the meaning of the words.  Maybe we have to think about the context of the topic, but the individual words in normal life roll off our tongue or past our ears without any conscious thought about them.  If I say “Hi!” you don’t stop and think to yourself that he is using a shortened version of Hello which is an English greeting commonly used among people in the United States.  You just say “Hi” back.  Going even deeper into that, we all learned to spell pretty early on.  When I hear the Hello said to me, I don’t spell it inside my head, my brain recognizes it as a greeting. 

Other examples are tying your shoes.

Driving a Car

When I first learned to drive a car my father taught me using a 4-speed Volkswagen Rabbit.  When I first got in it I had to learn to put the key in the ignition, turn it clockwise until I felt and heard the car engine start, which in an of itself is a learned sound.  That sound of it running rather than ‘cranking over’ later would mean that it was time to let go of the key.  16 years of experience hearing that sound led to that.  I then would check my mirrors, the road, etc and learn to push in the clutch, put it in gear, slowly lift the clutch and press the gas.  Signal to turn left by pressing the signal level down, signal to turn right by lifting the signal level up.   I can go on and on about what I had to learn and concentrate hard on to ensure I didn’t wreck or otherwise damage myself and my dad’s vehicle.  It was EXPLICIT.  I had to think about what I was doing. 

One by one, these tasks changed from thinking about them to just doing them.  Today what do I do after 27 years of doing this is completely unconscious.  It is fully IMPLICIT.   I’m sure most people can remember when they were really tired, getting home and not recalling doing many or any of those tasks.  Your body did it naturally.  Have you ever been heading somewhere and were too busy talking to someone that your body took you to work because you started in that direction and got distracted.  Your body knew you were already on that path, even though your mind was supposed to override and take you to some other destination.  Before you know it, your talking to your passenger and realize you have missed a few turns because you body went on auto-pilot.  It reverted to Implicit memory because your brain was not providing Explicit instructions.  This is how many intoxicated parties wind up at home but don’t recall the actions that brought them there.

The alphabet is an example that Taika uses all the time in regards to kata.  You have to get these kata motions to be IMPLICIT just like the 26 letters in the English language that you don’t even think about when reading this or speaking.  They have to run on auto-pilot.  Your actions have to flow naturally without thought or explicit actions.  React!  Getting these motions to flow by only practicing a single technique with a partner once every six months or so just doesn’t work.  Kata pushes the explicit memory action of a strange motion, after repetition, into implicit unthinking reaction.  You react, your body ends up in a position and it knows the road from there.  You don’t have to say, turn right, slow for the stop sign.  You just do what comes natural.  It doesn’t need to be a full kata, it can be open hand rehearsal of a single technique.

The act of driving the car becomes so natural and implicit, that if it is a standard route your only explicit actions might be speed variables that fluctuate with traffic and speed limit signs.  Drunks loose the explicit and often drive way under the speed limit.

The other day someone asked me to repeat the Six Basic Principles of Tuite and I felt a little embarrassed that even though I had been working on tuite for a few minutes with them, and enacting all six of the six principles, that I stuttered when asked to repeat them.  I had to sit and think about the conscious thought of listing them and explaining them.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this was actually a good thing.  When Tony and I sat down to develop the six principles that we teach, it was to aid our students in the basic fundamentals of tuite.  The good part was that I was unconsciously doing all six of them any time I performed Tuite, they had moved to IMPLICIT.  When asked to bring them back into EXPLICIT and explain them is when I stuttered.  Unconsciously I had them and performed them. 

Kata is repetition and what helps you force things into the realm of IMPLICIT memory.  Another thing that can help this is somewhat harder to attain.  It is experience.  At some point in life, we all have experienced touching something hot.  Probably the first time you ever touched something hot, you hesitated prior to pulling your hand away.  Your body had not experienced a burn before and didn’t know to pull away.  The hesitation was probably slight but allowed you to get burned slightly worse than you would have if you hadn’t ingrained this memory into you.  Now, if you touch something you merely THINK is hot you jerk your hand away.  When you first learn to walk, you learn that falling is a consequence and you learn to not make certain mistakes that will make you fall.  These get engrained in your mind and you don’t think, “I must lift my toes as I walk or I will trip over them.”  Much in the same way, some fighting can become implicit as you respond in real life.  Even your buddy in the arts, grabbing your forearm to see what your reaction is, some impromptu tuite training.  This kind of training can increase the implicit reaction.

Partner training is usually slower than kata training.  You are refining the motions with physical touch, feedback, so you are adding a sense.  The open air training should have moved the actions to IMPLICIT but what we find is that when they pair up, student’s don’t rely on their senses and fall back to EXPLICIT.  It is no longer natural, quick and flowing.  Why?  Lack of Practice?

Protecting Your Groin or Face

Well the first one is probably more of a male Implicit trait than female, but the face is common to both.  As a child you learned quickly to protect these areas.  That is why in a real fight, these are not what I would call the best targets to go for to disable a target.  They do, however, solicit an implicit response that makes the target expose other areas.  This is a perfect example of Implicit memory.  If I walk up to any male short of a blind man, and quickly motion to his groin he will involuntarily cover that area.  It isn’t that he THINKS about “Hey, that hand is heading to my groin and if it continues at that velocity it will strike my groin thus causing pain.”  For survival, there is no time for all that thought.  His pelvis naturally retreats and his hands naturally cover.  The same reason the eyes blink when something comes at it.  Experience has told the body that a closed eyelid is less likely to allow the eye to receive damage when something comes careening towards it.  You do think, you blink.

Implicit Training Thoughts

Looking at some of this research and the textbook I purchased I'm rethinking some of the training. There is something that I'll just call BAD Implicit response. That is the "We Play the way we Train" response, kind of like the cops that died because they picked up their brass and put it in their pockets because that was drilled into their head so much during training that it navigated to an implicit response in an actual shooting. There are tons of examples in the book I'm reading right now on how implicit response led to a subject’s demise.

At any rate, thinking about this I think that something bugs me about the way we commonly train. Typically we pick a number like 10 and the Uke pushes or punches 10 times. The Tori does the exact same technique over and over again. We don't practice for the screw up as much or the, I guessed wrong state. I was thinking of testing a new training method in class on nights when we have 4 or more victims....er...students.

• Uke picks a number between 1-10.
• Technique is discussed and instructor picks a PUSH for example.
• Tori pushes with designated hand and Uke responds with the correct technique we are working on.
• When Uke gets to the number they picked, for example push 5, they do something different. (Punch, kick, knee, slap, use opposite hand)
• I think this would help reinforce the importance of the screw it, go with plan B mentality.
  
  Just an opening thought atm.

 

Priming (psychology), a process in which the processing of a target stimulus is aided or altered by the presentation of a previously presented stimulus.

Priming in teaching an OyatTe technique I’m thinking would involve helping the student remember things subtly with little hints prior to actually working on the technique.  In other words, do a similar or same technique early in class and they search or react to it at this now time.  Not sure that will make sense outside of my mind.

Perhaps priming would be using the word PUMP in a sentence prior to them working on a tuite technique where you know they have issues with the PUMP portion of that technique.  Instead of reminding them that they need to PUMP from the bottom of the wrist during the tuite, you slip the word PUMP into the conversation in an unrelated topic.  “How much did you pay for gas at the pump?”  A casual priming word puts the PUMP in their mind and it helps them do it without THINKING.

This is the beginning of my research into this topic and am looking for other peoples thoughts on the topic.  Feel free to wade on in.

Thanks

The Subtle Art of Practice

Updated 06-16-2016

Let’s face it; time rarely works in our favor when it comes to training.  Most of us have real jobs, family and everything else which gets in the way of our training.  I’ve never considered RyuTe® as a hobby and most people that know me know it is more of an obsession.  Regrettably though, it doesn’t pay my bills.  I have a job which often goes into the 50+ hour ball park, and all the stress that goes with it.  I have a mother and a girlfriend and all the attention and chores that they know I neglect when I am training.  I have a band (that is my hobby) that attempts to play once a week and yet requires a little more practice of new material from time to time.  All of this gets in the way.  And in a world full of stress and distractions, sometimes you feel the urge drawing you towards the couch and “Vegetable Mode” rather than the dojo.

Sometimes I wonder if the great karateka got the way they did because they didn’t have the distractions.  Most, once they got established, made their art their full time jobs.  I know they probably didn’t pay their bills in the early years by this trade, but once they got their ‘following’, the art was their job.  So they had plenty of time to train.  And the great karateka I speak of, didn’t have iphones, internet, television, radio and all the fun distractions we probably would freak without today.

So am I just making excuses for myself?  No.  That really isn’t the purpose of this blog.  I get questions from students upon occasion, as to how to get better quicker.  It seems we’d all like that magic pill to make us great, that’s the American way.  Or we want that Sci-Fi movie contraption to transfer all the data out of Taika’s head and into our own.  Wouldn’t that be great?   But the cold hard fact is, none of that will happen, so we must train.

Several things I’ve learned over the years about training is to squeeze it in every where you can.  Now there will be some chuckles throughout this, presuming of course that anyone reads it.  But what I’m about to write I think gives me a little more edge than if I don’t do it.  I practice RyuTe® all day long.  A typical work day begins with me begrudgingly waking, and leaving the bedroom.  As I walk out of the bedroom, I do a parry and forearm strike to the door threshold and another after I walk down the hall to the restroom.  On that one, since there is a door knob involved, I do the same thing with a grab of the door knob like I’m grabbing the wrist.  Just before jumping in the shower I do Exercise 2, one of the Naihanchi, or some other drill to wake me up.  I do another parry/strike combination as I slide the shower door open and step in, turn and parry/strike combo close the door.  I actually have a skin condition called Psoriasis and have to use a medicated shampoo that sits on what little hair I have for five minutes.  Well, it doesn’t take five minutes for me to scrub all my bits with soap so I’ll do some punches and other various strikes.  After the shower it’s parry/strike out, all the other little things you do in the morning (hair, deodorant, brush teeth, etc).  All these I do with my ‘off hand’.  Not to make my hand ‘stronger’, but to give my off hand more familiarity if you will with things.  My first instructor told me to eat with my off hand when I first started and I still do this today.  It will never make both hands the same strength, but it gives me a more balanced body because I constantly train both sides.  Then it’s parry/grab/strike out the door, parry/grab/strike into the walk in closet and parry/grab/strike to close the door.  Now it’s time to get dressed.  It’s all these little things stacking up that give me a little more RyuTe® into my day.  You know how when you are standing in ‘natural stance’ and you go to do a crane stance, you don’t leave your support leg straight.  You move your heel more under your spine to line things up and then lift the other leg.  Or you can move the spine over the heel but I digress.  Well, that is how I put socks and shoes on.  I don’t sit down and do it, I do four crane stances.  2 socks, 2 shoes.  Eventually I’m dressed and have done numerous RyuTe® things, just in the first 20 minutes of my day……every day.  They become second nature, natural, and implicit.  I actually have my ‘shodan’ class ring which I only permit myself to wear IF I do some RyuTe® first.  If I don’t do it, I don’t get my reward.

You can see that if you do that every day for 20 years (length of this career so far) then you don’t even think of those things any more.  But this continues throughout my day.  Getting in the car I do my same parry/strike and instead of lifting my right leg to put it in the car and sit, I do the Naihanchi style kick to the car door.  Throughout the day, at work I use the parry/strike deal on doors and nobody ever notices.  I do one particular technique which I believe is probably my fastest and probably my ‘go to’ technique should the need arise in my job.  If I know nobody is around I’ll add the Naihanchi straight kick to the door if the door is opening out or a hook if the door is opening in.  These are all my most natural techniques because I do them all the time.  Nobody notices.  Sitting at my desk I’m practicing bouncing my heel in and out like Taika has taught us to do in the past few years when changing stances.  

This goes on all day long.  You have to make time for your art because the world is a busy place.  These ‘little steps’ may not seem much, and they certainly won’t elevate me to Taika’s level in and of themselves, but they most certainly help move certain acts from explicit to implicit memory, meaning, you no longer have to think about them.  Your body just does them.

Update: Some recent posts I've seen have caused me to add more examples.  One major thing that I've spent a lot of time working on while at work is Sliding Tanbo drills.  I have sitting on my desk at work, a pair of tanbo.  I do a lot of conference calls and reviewing of videos at work.  Idle hands are not something I have.  If I'm in a conference call, watching a video or any other work task that has even one hand free, I'm working on sliding tanbo or something else.  Usually standing, doing the full kata or other kata.  Even open hand kata in my office.  My staff know how important the art is and I believe they respect me for it.  It has passed the 'Lee is Weird' stage to just that is the normal state of Lee.  Outside of my office I'm a tad more subtle, but I will still do as much of Spider Web I as I can fit between floors when on a solo elevator ride.  I have done this for decades now.  

I can remember when I worked in a Drug Interdiction unit and we would spend anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple hours waiting on a late train.  All the other bored detectives would just sit there.  I would cross the tracks to a support pillar and hide behind it and work Spider Web I, my then favorite drill.  

Each morning I do hundreds of the last Seisan intro drill that Taika taught us just before he passed.  Just walking down halls.  And nobody wants to know what I do while seated on everyone's favorite Ivory Throne during my daily rituals.  

If you can't find the time, fit the time.

Pet Peeves Regarding the Uneducated

I have avoided blogging for quite some time but at this point believe it may be somewhat therapeutic.  It is at least cheaper than a shrink and you get to vent relentlessly via the rant and perhaps edumicate someone or even yourself.  Who knows, perhaps someone will give you some feedback and change your opinion.  In the pursuit of my training endeavors, I am more scientist than 'a believer'.  I do not typically take everything I'm told at face value, I try to analyze it, research, and understand things.  As an instructor, I really go all out to over analyze things so that I can present it to my students so that they can understand it.  If I can't explain it, I quest to do so.

The following two Pet Peeves are in relation to Tuite.

Pet Peeve 1: You'll never catch a hand.
This topic comes up constantly, and I feel that the reason is, people learning these techniques learn them in initially unrealistic positions.  An instructor can't show a tuite technique, at least not to someone that hasn't learned the basics, and then throw them into a full tilt balls to the wall realistic situation expecting them to catch the hand.  Usually that first time you used a screwdriver, a hammer, or wrench was not upside down under the dash of a car.  You have to learn the tuite techniques slow.  Both for safety, and just to 'get it'.  We initially teach these techniques, slow, face to face and we all know what is going on.  So people that attend a seminar or are in the early stages of learning, or even see a video on the internet think it is impossible to catch a pushing hand at full speed.  In this described position, yes.  Face to Face, doing these for decades, I would imagine that I would have a hard time catching them 'as trained' initially by the students.  But that isn't reality, nor is it meant to be a reality situation.  It is meant to show the practitioner the angle of attack and familiarize them with the other basic rules of Tuite.  For a student to understand these things, it is easiest to teach them in the exact same manner every single time. 

Let's say for example that we are honing the skills of a new practitioner of tuite, using the Six Basic Principles of Tuite that we teach in our school.  There are lots of 'other' variables out there not listed in the six.  The Principle of X describes the angle of attack that actually puts the pressure on the Ulnar nerve and causes the chain reaction that buckles the knees, raises them on their toes, keeps them pinned, etc.  Well, if we train initially in this face to face position, slow, then when something doesn't work for the practitioner, it is much easier for them to see what they did wrong based on the limited number of variables and the six rules they are trying to understand.  The optimal 'training' position allows this. 

So I believe that people who have not trained long enough with Tuite, which is the American way of course, see Tuite practiced in this basic way which looks like it would be impossible to perform.  I would dare say that if I stood 2 feet in front of Taika that I could push him in the chest before he could get his palm to mine.  I would regret it I'm sure, as he would catch me on the rebound, but these training positions are not normally used for things outside of training.  They are used primarily to learn the basic principles, primarily the angle of attack.

That being said, I can tell you right now that you can catch a push and I have done so, as it was coming forward.  I have done this on numerous occasions from pushes to slaps.  There are tricks Taika has taught and that we've learned over the years to be in the right place when they push, and it is even easier to catch a palm when it is retracting after the push.  Tony and I have been working on Tuite for a long time in the dojo but we have experience in Law Enforcement, Retail Security, and as Bouncers between us.  We know you CAN catch a hand or an arm and most of our altercations have ended in this manner.  With us in real life scenarios using Tuite. 

Grabs are even easier.  When a person grabs you they mean to keep what they have just grabbed for at least a few seconds.  This makes our task all that much easier.

Anyone stating that tuite is an unrealistic art that can't be utilized in real life scenarios just doesn't have enough experience or understanding with it.

Pet Peeve 2: It won't work on someone stronger or bigger than you.
Bio-mechanical rules apply.
General Physics apply.

You can not take these proven scientific facts and just throw them out the window.  Well you can I guess, in your mind, or else I wouldn't have this on my peeve list. If you can move a boulder with a level, you can do an arm bar or wrist lock on someone bigger.  It doesn't matter the size.  I have demonstrated on a lot of very large non-believers in the past.  I'm 5'6.5555" and shrinking.  I've weighed anywhere from 125-145 during my RyuTe® career and most of the real life fights I've had were with big old boys well over the 200 range.  Big muscle bound cops tend to migrate to the Defensive Tactics positions throughout the Americas, and I have trained with numerous Arnold Schwarzenegger types.   These skeptical beings usually start off with, "Try that on me" or "Wrist locks don't work on me."  They end up later distancing themselves from me when it comes to 'pair up time' at the academy or other training events because 'that little guy can hurt.'  I have never had a tuite fail that was executed correctly.  I had the largest cop we had at our patrol division when I first started think it was bull and grabbed my forearm so tight my hand started to turn white from the lack of blood.  This was a huge muscle bound, barbell pumping guy that towered over me.  He was there that day with one purpose; to prove to the entire roll call that my "Karate" was bull.  I simply rolled my elbow over the ulnar side of the wrist at the correct angle and his knees buckled, bouncing him into a table and onto the floor.  The entire roll call watched in awe as the tiny new guy bounced the behemoth to the ground.  They were shocked, but not as much as the guy that I tuited.  He came up to me a few weeks later and said his wrist still hurt and was glad it wasn't his gun hand.  Simple fact about tuite is the more they resist, the more it hurts them.  Well, hurt depends on the person.  The more it DAMAGES them.  If all of their tendons and muscles are tight, the more damage it is going to do.

I did have tuite fail to buckle a guys knees once only to find out that he was a double amputee and had no knees.  He did scream bloody murder and gave up from the pain but it didn't buckle his knees, or at least I didn't know which land fill to look in to see if they were buckled.  Quite realistic prosthetics.  It doesn't matter if you are the biggest, baddest man in the world, if the pressure is correctly applied at that angle your body will sacrifice itself.  It doesn't matter if you feel the pain, your body knows what to do, just like when the doctor taps your knee with the hammer.  It is uncontrollable.  Again, these claims are made by people who don't have the experience with tuite to realize that it does work.

Tuite Doesn't Fail - Practitioners Fail

This concludes today's rant and I do feel much better.