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rachelmanija Feb. 21st, 2004 06:06 pm)
rachelmanija Feb. 21st, 2004 06:06 pm)It was excellent. He ran us through a lot of very focused exercises to teach us various techniques of closing distance, stripping our movements down to the essentials, and seeing what the opponent is doing and reacting appropriately to it. (The last sounds obvious, but is actually extremely difficult.) It was fun, too.
J-- said that for two years, he was entering tournaments two or three times a month (!) and that he started studying the people who consistently won to see what things they were doing in common with each other that the people who didn't win weren't doing. He mentioned a number of things, but he said the primary one was that they didn't waste motion. They didn't block a fist all the way over so it missed their faces by six inches, they blocked it with a small motion so it missed by half an inch.
Obviously, this is scary. It seems dangerous. But a lot of things in sparring that seem safer, like blocking blows to way away from you instead of to just barely miss, or to always retreat from an attack rather than to go forward, are not only going to make you lose but are actually less safe. Because they will slow you down enough that the other person will get in on you and possibly clock you. Okay, not in your own dojo where you're looking out for each other, but if you were really fighting losing would be dangerous.
I think that J--'s strategy of analyzing the methods of successful people is a very good one no matter what you're trying to learn. I learned how to write primarily by analyzing the techniques in my favorite books. I looked at what some writers did really well, and how they put the words and sentences and chapters together to do it, and thus learned how to do what they were doing-- not to imitate them, but to borrow their toolkits.
Kipling was correct that there are nine-and-sixty ways of writing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right. So my way isn't the only one, and people who write in a very instinctual way would probably find my strategy mechanical and useless. But it continues to work for me, and at some later point I may write about it in more detail and explain why, say, James Herriot can teach you how to structure a short story, how to end with a punchline, and how that can be profound and wonderful rather than cheap. Or how Caryl Churchill taught me how to give a tiny event, like the breaking of an ordinary egg, the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Like J-- was saying, you won't learn unless you really pay attention.
J-- said that for two years, he was entering tournaments two or three times a month (!) and that he started studying the people who consistently won to see what things they were doing in common with each other that the people who didn't win weren't doing. He mentioned a number of things, but he said the primary one was that they didn't waste motion. They didn't block a fist all the way over so it missed their faces by six inches, they blocked it with a small motion so it missed by half an inch.
Obviously, this is scary. It seems dangerous. But a lot of things in sparring that seem safer, like blocking blows to way away from you instead of to just barely miss, or to always retreat from an attack rather than to go forward, are not only going to make you lose but are actually less safe. Because they will slow you down enough that the other person will get in on you and possibly clock you. Okay, not in your own dojo where you're looking out for each other, but if you were really fighting losing would be dangerous.
I think that J--'s strategy of analyzing the methods of successful people is a very good one no matter what you're trying to learn. I learned how to write primarily by analyzing the techniques in my favorite books. I looked at what some writers did really well, and how they put the words and sentences and chapters together to do it, and thus learned how to do what they were doing-- not to imitate them, but to borrow their toolkits.
Kipling was correct that there are nine-and-sixty ways of writing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right. So my way isn't the only one, and people who write in a very instinctual way would probably find my strategy mechanical and useless. But it continues to work for me, and at some later point I may write about it in more detail and explain why, say, James Herriot can teach you how to structure a short story, how to end with a punchline, and how that can be profound and wonderful rather than cheap. Or how Caryl Churchill taught me how to give a tiny event, like the breaking of an ordinary egg, the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Like J-- was saying, you won't learn unless you really pay attention.
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But to Tia the chasing is quite serious. Though after a year she's managed to go from seeing him as Deadly Intruder Trying To Kill Her to Really Annoying Intruder Who Won't Leave Her Alone. Which is something of an improvement.
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Personally, I've tried to learn Cat Style by watching my own darling kitties try to kill each other, but I'm not sure I've gotten more out of it than the boys in Mark Salzman's hysterically funny memoir LOST IN PLACE, in which they try to learn Praying Mantis Style by introducing one to their tomcat. (The cat swallows it in one gulp.)
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<waves to Rachel>
---L.
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Only the fact that I posted it in utterly the wrong place, of course, with no context whatsoever.
If you really want me to I can delete it. :-)
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My "male intimidation" quotient will rise astronomically. Maybe it will weed out the weird ones. >_
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If you could decode it, I might have to kill you. The Kitty Fu Code isn't completely clear on the matter.