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.