Cook Ding's Kitchen 12th Anniversary

Today marks the 12th anniversary of Cook Ding's Kitchen. We've had over 900K hits on over 1700 posts and there are plenty more lined up.

In case you are wondering who is this Cook Ding, he is a character in one of Zhuang Zi's (Chuang Tzu) stories in The Inner Chapters, a Daoist classic. It is one of the "skill stories" and it has always resonated with me. It goes like this:

Cook Ding

Prince Huei's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every clink of the chopper, was in perfect rhythm — like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, like the harmonious chords of Ching Shou.

"Well done!" cried the Prince. "Yours is skill indeed!"

"Sire," replied the cook laying down his chopper, "I have always devoted myself to Tao, which is higher than mere skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me whole bullocks. After three years' practice, I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. My mind works along without the control of the senses. Falling back upon eternal principles, I glide through such great joints or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not even touch the convolutions of muscle and tendon, still less attempt to cut through large bones.

"A good cook changes his chopper once a year — because he cuts. An ordinary cook, one a month — because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. Indeed there is plenty of room for the blade to move about. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years as though fresh from the whetstone.

"Nevertheless, when I come upon a knotty part which is difficult to tackle, I am all caution. Fixing my eye on it, I stay my hand, and gently apply my blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper and stand up, and look around, and pause with an air of triumph. Then wiping my chopper, I put it carefully away."

"Bravo!" cried the Prince. "From the words of this cook I have learned how to take care of my life."

ZhuangZi (Lin YuTang)

I've been focusing on Taijiquan the last few years; that and distance running. I'd like to bring to your attention some Taijiquan books. A lot of Taijiquan books. Below are links to the "Books" page at Weakness with a Twist, which has a broader reading list for those interested in Chinese Martial Arts; as well as a post at Qialance, which lists all the books by or about Cheng Man Ching (Zheng Manquing). Please take a look! I am sure that you'll find something of interest.

Book Reviews at Weakness with a Twist

Cheng Man Ching books at Qialance

Building Discipline

Having discipline is the core of practice. Below is an excerpt from a post at Building Leaders blog. The full post may be read here.

I’ve found too many people end up saying, “Well, I’m just not a disciplined person.” And they give up on a goal. May I suggest that they (and we) need to understand discipline better in order to experience it more consistently? Let me explain.

Raw discipline is challenging to build but satisfying once it’s built. In fact, once you become a disciplined person in one area, you’ll find the “bridge” can be built in a number of areas in your life.

But beware. It’s easy to confuse other traits with it.

Discipline Is Easiest to Develop in the Areas of:

1. Our Strengths

As a kid, I watched Pete Rose play baseball. They called him “Charlie Hustle.” He was very disciplined on the baseball field. He played in 17 all-star games at five positions in the major leagues, and he is the all-time MLB leader in hits (4,256), games played (3,562) and at-bats (14,053). Yet, Pete Rose is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Why? His discipline was categorical. He was disciplined in baseball, but not in life. His gambling problem remained an addiction years after he left the game. It is easy to appear disciplined in an area of strength, but beware of assuming you’ve become a disciplined person. The key is to transfer the habits you’ve created in that category to others in which you have little talent or strength.

2. Our Concerns

When I’m operating in a subject I’m deeply concerned about, I find it easier to cultivate discipline. For instance, I have a keen interest in developing young leaders. I don’t necessarily claim I am the best ever at it, but my concern for this need is so great, I’ve developed lots of expertise on it. I have studied, I have practiced, I have observed, I have surveyed and I have written on the topic now for more than the proverbial “10,000 hours” that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, Outliers. It’s been a central issue for me for over thirty years. When I reflect on the issue, I see that my discipline emerged out of concern more than anything else. It didn’t feel like work or like discipline. I felt compelled to pursue it.

3. Our Standards

This one is subtle but very real. People with certain temperaments have very high standards of excellence. Some of them are so high, they drive others crazy. These high standards are good, but can masquerade as raw discipline. For example, I know people who have such high expectations for perfection or performance, it drives them to . . . well, perform well. (Ever met a neat freak?) Yet, many are undisciplined in other critical areas they don’t find appealing. Why? It’s their standard of excellence that drove them to perform well; but without a standard they can’t seem to kindle any discipline or ambition to get going. At times the standard works against them. They feel if they can’t be “excellent” at something—then why bother to even get started?

4. Our Interests

It is easy for me to confuse the ambition I feel for an area of interest, with discipline. In other words, sometimes it’s our passion at work, not our discipline. For instance, my son has been challenged to cultivate discipline or ambition in certain areas of his new career as a young professional. But give him an assignment in screen writing or story telling or even creating environments to convey a message—and you’ll be amazed at how disciplined he is. It almost seems like second nature. The moment my wife and I gave him permission to turn one of the rooms in our house into a media room, he was on it in a flash, creating an inviting atmosphere. His girlfriend calls it “The Curtain Principle,” because he even hung curtains within an hour.

Six Tips to Building Raw Discipline

1. Beware of categorical discipline. Don’t confuse any of the areas mentioned above with discipline.
2. Read extensively on a subject before setting a goal. Build a concern before a discipline.
3. Start with a discipline in a strength area, and begin those habits in other areas.
4. Watch out for perfectionism. Learn to live with being in a process of growth.
5. Cultivate new habits by placing them next to established ones in your schedule.
6. Begin small; celebrate progress. Putting wins under your belt builds momentum.

As you begin this year, be wise as you set goals and build personal disciplines. It’s been said: “Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all. Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”

The 48 Laws of Power, #21: Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker

One of my favorite books on strategy is The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers.  Where The Art of War, by Sun Tzu is written as an overview of the whole topic of strategy, seeking to provide an overall understanding of the subject; and The 36 Strategies tries to impart the knack of strategic thinking through 36 maxims related to well known Chinese folk stories, Mr. Greene focuses on how we influence and manipulate one another, ie "power".

Mr. Greene draws from both Eastern and Western history and literature as his source material. Sun Tzu and Machiavelli as cited as much as wonderful stories of famous con men. Among my favorites is about a scrap metal dealer thinking he bought the Eiffel Tower.

Each of the 48 Laws carries many examples, along with counter examples where it is appropriate that they be noted, and even reversals.

It is a very thorough study of the subject and the hardback version is beautifully produced.

One of the things I admire about Greene is that he not only studied strategy, he applied what he learned to his own situation and prospered.

Today we have #21: Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker, Seem Dumber Than Your Mark.

No one likes feeling stupider than the next persons. The trick, is to make your victims feel smart – and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.

Happy Father's Day

Martial Arts and the Delusion of Self Defense

Martial arts training gives many benefits. You tend to be more fit and stronger. Your reflexes and eye hand coordination is improved, as is your balance. You may learn that you will not disappear in a puff of smoke when struck, or that your opponent will either.

Still, for self defense, most of us would be better off putting our energies into other activities, like improving our financial situation so we could live in a better neighborhood in a safer city.

Below is an excerpt from a post at Kitsutoshi which addresses martial arts training and self defense for women in particular. The full post may be read here.

“I want to be able to protect myself.”  From the hundreds of fellow martial artists I’ve talked with about why they train, this phrase sticks out at the top of the list. Over the years, I’ve become less and less convinced that martial arts actually does relate to “self protection” goals.  There are ways in which almost everyone who does martial arts may be “safer.”  (Exercise is healthy, improving balance and learning to fall safely will protect against common accidents…).   Some people, like law-enforcement officers or people who live or work in really bad neighborhoods, may have specific risks that martial arts can help them address. For the rest of us…it’s a great hobby.  It’s nice to feel like a badass.  It’s good for bonding with people.  Discipline, strength, confidence…it’s a hobby (or lifestyle, or obsession) worth pursuing. I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Many martial artists train for those reasons, for sport, or just because it’s fun.  Wonderful reasons.

But the “self-protection” delusion is a problem.  I would like to see that delusion sliced open and its guts strewn in the dirt: in martial artists, in school marketing, and in the general population.  I would like to see women’s self-defense training that addresses the real risks taught more widely, and see things that are not women’s self-defense marketed accurately “women-only martial arts class” rather than “women’s self-defense” for instance.

It’s a big problem. Specifically, it’s a huge problem for women, whose risk profile is entirely different from men’s.  Women are led to believe and trust that by studying martial arts they will be safer from the risks they face, and that is at best a very small partial truth and at worst outright wrong.

When men come to martial arts to learn how to fight off an attacker, it’s an active shooter, a violent mugger, a carjacker, or a drunk in a bar.  Risks that (other than the aforementioned LE officers and people in sketchy neighborhoods) they are beyond unlikely to face. For most people those are some of the least likely actual risks in their lives.  Giving up fried food, taking a defensive-driving class, and updating an eyeglass prescription would eliminate more risk from most people’s lives than decades of martial arts training.

So the harm to men from martial arts training is that they get a great hobby with a lot of benefits, for reasons that are mistaken.  That’s even sometimes acknowledged among us, that we have to be crazy to do this stuff when it’s almost certain never to be needed.

When women, however, come with the purpose of learning self-protection, it’s sexual assault and abuse that they’re worried about.  “I want to learn to protect myself” means “I want to feel safe from rape.”   That’s where the delusion becomes a problem.  A big problem.

Martial arts training is a hammer, which makes every “protection” problem a nail.   Everyone has heard “the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman is acquainted with.”   But when women sign up for a martial arts program, what they’re getting is stranger-attack skills.  In the real world, women’s acquaintances are not hiding in the bushes or in deserted parking lots to leap out and subdue their friends.   Spending just a little time thinking about the on-the-mat skills taught in almost every martial arts school anywhere, and comparing with the scenarios encountered routinely by 1:4 women in their teens and twenties shows the obvious.  That isn’t training for the risks those women will encounter.

Assault by friends, boyfriends, husbands, co-workers, teachers, bosses, and relatives, the monumental majority of assaults inflicted on women, start with emotional manipulation.  Controlling behavior.  Envelope-pushing behavior. Boundary erosion.  Manipulation.  Creation of ambiguity.  Drugging of drinks. Encouraging of more alcohol or drug use than a woman intends.  Undermining confidence and self-worth.  A vast array of behaviors that can make an assault into a loathsome morass, a situation where punching and kicking are worthless. Different skills are needed.

Kayla Harrison is an example of exactly that.  She was already a gifted Judoka when she was assaulted.  If anyone could defend herself with martial arts, probably even as a small child, it would have been Kayla Harrison.  If martial arts skills are supposed to apply to acquaintance rape, and she couldn’t apply them, then people with no athletic skill walking in to a random school a couple of days a week surely can’t.  But that wasn’t the problem.  Kayla’s skills were not the problem.  Many women martial artists are raped every year in spite of their belts, training, and ability to put a foot directly through a man’s abdomen.   Martial arts skills are the wrong tool for that situation.  Totally and completely wrong.

Knowing what skills are needed starts with risk analysis.  Risk analysis is something woefully deficient in most martial arts training. Most martial arts instructors enjoy various combinations of: punching, kicking, grappling, throws, chokes, locks…they enjoy sparring, rolling, using various weapons, they enjoy winning.  This is what those folks are great at, they love it, and they teach it. Looking beyond that takes a lot of effort.  The easier thing for people who have a subject they love is to believe that it can solve all problems.  The hammer.

When it comes to studying, martial arts instructors might enjoy looking at old scrolls, or watching video of other martial artists, reading books about martial arts. When they research “modern attacks” they watch video of inmate interviews describing stranger attacks and how victims are chosen.  They watch security video of knifings and shootings.  Unless they’re the guy who wrote “The Gift of Fear,” (Gavin DeBecker…good stuff…read that) they rarely study the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” or study women’s risk profiles from other sources.

Studying martial arts the usual ways means reinforcing teaching martial arts the usual ways, and the delusion that martial arts can protect from “attacks.”  Regardless of the reality.   Delusion is like that.

But some martial artists are women.  And women are a great target demographic.  And sometimes, the need for “something else” breaks through the comfortable idea that if you are just good enough at punching and kicking, then all situations can be handled.

Enter “Ladies’ Self-Defense.”  Almost every martial arts school sometimes offers a women’s self-defense class.   Sometimes it’s even taught by women students or instructors.  And that’s where things get complicated.  Those classes are almost always intended just to bring in new students.  They serve a good purpose: an easy on-ramp to martial arts training.   We know that women often find it hard to walk in the door to martial arts, and such a ramp is a big help.

But it also reinforces the delusion.

Advertised as “women’s self-defense,” the classes generally just teach a women-only version of whatever the school usually teaches.  Maybe a pink-washed version.  Maybe with “make this a slap instead of a punch,” or a hair-pull tossed in.  But really, it’s just the same stuff.  No different in addressing real risk for women than for men.  Nothing “women’s” about the self-defense except that no men are in the class.

Sometimes there are classes in real women’s self-defense though.  That does exist.  Almost exclusively taught by women, and mostly not teaching any physical techniques at all.  Once in a while it even comes from a martial arts school.  Women who train sometimes go out of their way to learn women’s risks, to learn and develop curricula to address those risks.  Books and classes are out there.  But from the perspective of a woman with no background, there’s no distinction between a pink-washed regular martial arts class and a serious women’s self-defense program.

Women coming in off the streets with no expertise, and just a vague idea  “I want to be safer” encounter confident martial artists who think that their hammer can address any nail (pun fully intended).  Those women can spend years and thousands of dollars learning skills that don’t address their real risks. They may love their art, they may become Kayla Harrison, they may never regret walking in the door of their school…but they’re not learning what they came to learn.

The troublesome part of this is that many women who train in a martial art know all of this.  We have been saying this for a long time.   We care about women’s risks and the very alarming occurrences of those risks. (Comparing men who are unlikely to ever be attacked in any way with women who have a 25% chance of violent attack in their lifetime is stark).  We study, we read, we learn in other contexts.  In my case, I learned about women’s self-defense through a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum when I was 13, and again in my twenties when I became certified to teach that curriculum.  I learned more in training to become a Crisis Response Advocate for sexual assault and domestic abuse survivors.  I learned by reading real research and talking with real survivors (many of whom are fellow martial artists).  I know many other women martial artists and instructors who have sought out that information and those skills.  We learn that specialty, and we sound like broken records talking about the need to teach real women’s self-defense.

But schools still mostly don’t teach those skills.  The delusion of “martial arts makes you safer” persists.  One reason is that it is vaguely true that martial arts makes you safer.  The “learning-to-fall-safely,” the “longer-life-through-exercise.”  The reduction of already-infinitesimal risk of stranger attacks that apply to men and women.  Those things are real.  Not that important, not that useful, but real.

Also, it’s easy for the (mostly male) senior people who run schools and styles to pass off their female students’ concerns with an occasional seminar.  That feels like enough for a concern that doesn’t seem real to them.  They have no personal stake.  They’ve never guarded their drink like Fort Knox.  They’ve never known a dozen friends who have been pressured into sex by people they trusted and thought “that could have been me.” Never faced losing a job or a home if they didn’t sleep with someone.  Risks for other people are easy to pass off.

Martial arts Instructors feel like warrior protectors, who think that if they are with a woman she is safe.  Which is the diametric opposite of the real risk analysis which says that a woman is safer walking alone than with a male acquaintance (don’t take that as advice).  Those men can believe in their punching-and-kicking hammer, wholeheartedly, as a panacea, point at the “women’s self-defense” class (that isn’t women’s self-defense) and be annoyed by the insistent nattering of the women students or junior Instructors who say otherwise.  Badgered to think uncomfortable thoughts when they could stay on solid comfortable ground instead.

There are other reasons. Economic reasons.  It doesn’t pay for most martial arts schools to let students think too hard about real risk analysis.  Some places teach an art that is beautiful and has nothing to do with self-defense, and the school doesn’t pretend it does.  I’m guessing that a Zen Archery teacher presented with a prospective student who said “I want to learn to protect myself” would point the prospect in another direction.  But in schools purporting to teach modern defense…either the instructors don’t know what the real risks are, or they just don’t want to think too hard about it.  They want to cling to the idea that “martial arts makes you safer” and take the money. They probably even believe it and are just bad at math.

Hooked: To BJJ from Tai Chi Chuan

Today we have a guest post form Graham Barlow, who practice both Tai Chi Chuan  and BJJ in Bath, England. He is the author of Tai Chi Chuan Notebook. 

For myself, I think that Tai Chi Chuan and both Judo and BJJ are a great combination. I bet that both Graham's TCC and BJJ have improved on account of practicing both.

Hooked: My journey to BJJ from Tai Chi Chuan, in my forties

What it’s like to transition to BJJ when you’ve been doing Chinese Martial Arts for years.

By Graham Barlow

Seduced by the appeal of the Taoist philosophy I’d read about in a book by Benjamin Hoff called The Tao of Pooh, and buoyed by the vague notion that I’d like to be able to do something martial arts related, yet vaguely spiritual, whilst looking cool on a beach as the sun set, I sought out Tai Chi Chuan.

This was 1993 and I was in my early twenties, living in London and looking for my place in the world. I was a laid back, long-haired student into bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I had a penchant for Chinese philosophy (or at least the 1960’s California-influenced version of Chinese philosophy that we all know and love) and I wanted to be like David Carradine’s wandering monk from the ‘Kung Fu’ TV series I loved so much growing up, so Tai Chi Chuan sounded like the perfect fit.

Luckily the first Tai Chi class I went to turned out to be a genuine martial arts class, albeit an informal one which didn’t require silk pyjamas, bowing or shouting out strange oriental sounds. It was exactly what I was looking for: they actually used Tai Chi for fighting.  One of my first Tai Chi Chuan teachers hit me in the chest with a palm strike that knocked me back several feet, as if I’d been hit by a tidal wave coming up from the ground. It was freaky. It didn’t feel like normal strength. It was something else, and I was hooked.

I was told the power of the hit was wrapped up in something called “chi” and I spent the next 15 or so years trying hard to untangle that particular knot. In every class I went to there was some sort of epiphany, and it felt like I had got a bit closer to unpicking the answer, yet in a few days it had slipped through my fingers again, and I was back to trying to figure it out again from a new perspective.  (In fact, I still chip away at the fascinating puzzle that is Tai Chi Chuan today - I haven’t given up). But by the time I was 39 years old, I felt like martial arts had moved on and I wasn’t keeping up. I needed something... different.

I still enjoyed Tai Chi (and the other related Chinese arts I’d picked up along the way). They had made me healthy, but with my 40th birthday approaching and having a full time job, two kids and teaching Tai Chi more than I was training it, I wasn’t feeling particularly fit, and I was definitely on the wrong side of “tubby”.

I had also become frustrated with the Sisyphean task of teaching Tai Chi Chuan to people as a martial art when most of them didn’t really want to do it as a martial art, and the ones that said they did, didn’t really want to put up with all the physical discomfort that actually entails.

It was hard to find training partners in Tai Chi who had exactly the same goals as me. If I was going to switch to an art that challenged me physically I felt like the clock was ticking.

Looking around for what else was on offer I felt drawn to Brazilian Jiujitsu. I’d always been better at locking and throwing than punching and during the times I’d put on gloves and body armour to spar I’d always felt instinctively drawn to the idea of clinching tight to your opponent, so they couldn’t punch you in the head. I decided to try BJJ mostly because of simple opportunity - there was a local class in my city -  but what kept me coming back was something deeper, as I’ll discuss.

Youthful folly

 In my youth I’d outright rejected the idea of learning any martial art that came from Japan in favour of arts from China. As a headstrong young man I seemed to have a penchant for making these sort of ridiculous prejudiced decisions based on poor evidence, a snobbish attitude and a ridiculous ego - all things I’ve learned to keep in better check as I’ve got older.

 Having swallowed the marketing schtick of Chinese Martial Arts (and its implied superiority) hook, line and sinker, I naturally assumed all Japanese arts to be inferior versions of the original Chinese martial arts. I hated the idea of having anything to do with Karate particularly, which was derided universally by every Kung Fu practitioner I’d ever met, and whose adepts formed the main contingent of the white pyjama-wearing cannon fodder of every Bruce Lee film you’ll ever see.

My Tai Chi teacher had been a black belt in a traditional Japanese style of Jiujitsu before he started Tai Chi though, and always held the art in high regard, but to me the Japanese arts seemed somehow basic and rigid, whilst the Chinese arts were fluid, sophisticated and more effective. (At this point I refer the reader to my previous point about my penchant for making stupid snap judgements).

However, murky Japanese origins or not, it was hard to deny the effectiveness of the Brazilian brand of Jiujitsu, as evidenced by pretty much every MMA fight I saw on TV. MMA was a sport that was only just beginning to creep in to mainstream TV channels in the UK. Not really being part of the MMA scene myself, I’d completely missed the impact of the early UFC events, back in 1993, where style was pitted against style and Brazilian Jiujitsu wiped the floor with everybody.

When I watched MMA fights it seemed that any time the action went to the ground it was clear when one of the fighters had a significant advantage over the other, and that advantage turned out to be a background in BJJ. Besides, if it was Brazilian then I wasn’t learning something Japanese, right?

 Fortunately there was an official Gracie Barra Brazilian Jiujitsu academy in my town, so I popped along for a free first class, met the black belt instructor, who seemed like one of the most confident and relaxed people you’ll ever meet, got tapped out a million times by a blue belt who didn’t even seem to be trying that hard, and the rest, as they say, is history. You can think of it as some sort of midlife martial arts crisis if you like, (since it probably was), but I was instantly hooked on the art and jumped in with both feet. Today I’m a brown belt and I still get the same rush of excitement every time I step on the mats.

Informal formality

I turned 40 while I was a white belt and I got that milestone blue belt about a year later. Unlike some other martial arts, belts still mean something in BJJ, but at the same time the promotion criteria is utterly informal. Basically, if your black belt instructor thinks you’re ready for a blue belt, and feels the time is right to promote you to that level, then you’re a blue belt under that Professor and you have official rank.

Some academies have grading tests to pass, some don’t. Some require a minimum time training or competing, other don’t. Some factor in things like your character, and others don’t. If you haven’t received your belt legitimately (no matter what colour it is) then people in the BJJ community in the UK will find you and call you out. It’s a big deal. Frauds are very quickly dealt with. This way the standards are maintained.

Getting your blue belt is the major goal for anybody starting BJJ. As a rough guide, it takes about 2 years on average. There’s still a long, long way to go, but having a blue belt is a sign that you’ve got the basics down, you’ve become proficient enough in the art, you know what you’re doing and you’re ready to learn some more of the complicated techniques. Over the years I’ve seen so many people start BJJ and drop out before they get their blue belt - either life gets in the way, they find it just too hard, or they realise just how much work it’s going to entail and they give up. It’s definitely not easy.

It’s hard starting BJJ for anybody, but particularly so later in life. Your body needs to go through an adjustment period for the first 6 months. You go from being soft and squishy to toughening up, but that comes at a price; mainly aches and pains. Recovery time is important, especially if you’re over 35.

I remember being so stiff the day after training that I had to modify my Tai Chi practice because I couldn’t drop low in certain postures without my hips really hurting. No more super low ‘Snake creeps down’ for me! Over time my body adjusted, but it was definitely a painful process. Even your skin needs to toughen up because friction with the mats and gi leads to various ‘mat burn’ symptoms. Your grip strength is constantly trained, so your fingers ache. Stray knees and elbows are inevitable, so you get bruises and little cuts on your face and body.

Warm ups for BJJ involve things like press ups and sit ups, which Tai Chi isn’t particularly known for. You also need to get cardiovascularly fit, which is a bit of a challenge when you’re in your forties and especially because BJJ involved a different type of strength to anything else I’d ever done.

To this day I still see beginners in BJJ who would be considered “fit and healthy”, (maybe they regularly go running or workout frequently in the gym), having to sit out of rolling in BJJ after a couple of minutes because they’re gasping for breath so hard that they can’t continue. Being trapped underneath somebody and using all your strength to escape, and it not working, is absolutely exhausting. And as a beginner that’s what you’re faced with when you roll with a higher belt. BJJ conditioning is different. And so is the sparring, which is where BJJ really differs compared to other styles of Jiujitsu.

 Big in Japan

 In Japan, where tradition demands that they preserve their indigenous martial arts almost as time capsules, the art is passed on using devices like solo kata and partnered techniques, which are taught in a ritualised kind of way. (I’m generalising here - don’t get angry with me if your art is one of the exceptions).

One of the innovations that set Judo aside from traditional Jiujitsu was the adoption of a free sparring element using only techniques that were safe to train with 100% resistance, provided a ‘tap’ indicating submission was respected. BJJ comes from that particular line, but transplanted deep in the heart of the Amazon, without the need to respect Japanese tradition, it evolved even further. It focussed only on those techniques that worked in combat, in whatever environment and condition the practitioner finds him or herself in.

Jiujitsu was brought to Brazil by Mitsuyo Maeda, a student of Kano Jigoro (the founder of Judo). There are different theories about why he was sent to Brazil, one of which is that he was sent there to help prepare the ground for continued Japanese emigration. We don’t really know.

Either way, the heat, disease and conditions in the Amazon over 100 years ago must have been like hell on earth. He ended up making a living as a prize fighter and by teaching Jiujitsu. His Jiujitsu was therefore already predisposed towards “what works”. Here he met a Scottish immigrant family called the Gracies and Maeda decided to pass his art on to Carlos Gracie. The Gracies had even less respect for tradition and set about modifying the art further to create what we now know as Brazilian Jiujitsu based only on the idea of “what works”.

My first lesson

Coming from a Taijiquan background, people often ask me - “can you use your Tai Chi in BJJ?”, or, “does your Tai Chi help your BJJ?”.

 Let me answer that by describing my first BJJ lesson: After a short-ish warm up, that left me gasping for breath, we learned a technique from a position called “closed guard” where you are on your back, legs wrapped around your opponent’s waist. The technique we learned involved pulling the lapel of the gi out from their belt, passing it from one hand to another as you bring it up over their head, then securing a chokehold around their neck using it in conjunction with a particular set of grips. It was quite complicated. (It was only later I realised I should have started in the fundamentals class.)

The second half of the class (a full 30 minutes) was dedicated to rolling, which is sparring starting from sitting position or on the knees. These days we do it in 6 minute rounds with a 30 second break between them, but back then you did 30 minutes solid with however you were paired up with.  I was paired up with a blue belt who was about my size. In BJJ each roll is preceded by a strange fist bump and slap. (Hey, at least it beats bowing). After that it’s up to you how you fight, so long as there’s no punching, kicking or “playground stuff”, like bending fingers back or biting. Not really sure what to do I quickly jumped on top of him, knocking him over, pinned him to the ground and locked up his arm using a technique I’d seem Fedor finish Kevin Randleman with on YouTube - I later learned that this was called a Kimura. He tapped quickly, gave me a nod of approval and said “well done!”. This is going pretty well I thought, feeling confident my previous Tai Chi training had proved worthwhile.

We fist bumped again and went for round 2. He then proceeded to act out a BJJ clinic on me. He was tapping me out using every sort of conceivable lock or choke hold I could think of at a rate of one tap every 2 minutes. And worse, he wasn’t even trying. I quickly realised he’d let me tap him the first time just to see what I could do. This went on for the full 30 minutes. It wasn’t a matter of being out-muscled - it was clear that he possessed a knowledge that I didn’t. I wanted to lie down, curl up and die after about 10 minutes, but something in me refused to give up and I lasted until the end of the class. The black belt running the class was keeping an eye on me, and expressed some concern about the curious wheezing noises my breathing was making and asked if I’d like to sit out, but my pride wouldn’t let me. I kept going until the end. It took me about 2 days to recover fully. My next class was the same, but this time the blue belt I fought was a smaller female, who repeatedly jumped on my back and tapped me out with chokes until time as up.

 That was it, I was hooked.

 There was a type of knowledge here I could learn, and it worked in a fight, and it didn’t matter if the other person was stronger than you. There were no forms, deadly techniques or imagining ‘what if’ scenarios. You were hit by reality from the first fist bump.

Did my Tai Chi help me? No, not at all on that first day, but it has helped me in a multitude of little ways since then that are hard to explain. I think the biggest thing was that I’d spent a lot of time learning how to learn.

Learning Tai Chi is a constant process of having your mistakes pointed out to you, trying to correct them, then moving on to the next thing. The key to getting good at BJJ is similar - you don’t want to focus on winning, since you end up muscling things instead of being technical and correct. But just like in Tai Chi, it’s learning from your mistakes that matters.

 The techniques in BJJ are taught in a very precise and technical way - this arm goes here, your weight should be here, and you push there. But in BJJ I also found the freedom that Bruce Lee wrote about in his Tao of Jeet Kune Do, of being able to express yourself completely in your martial art.

Learning BJJ is almost a process of self-invention. You put out feelers and find the techniques that work best for you, and then build your game around them based on the live feedback of what works and what doesn’t in rolling. Different body types suit different techniques and strategies - long legged people quickly gravitate towards being guard players and catching triangle submissions and armbars off their back. Shorter people have more success with butterfly guard and hunting for submissions on top.

Interestingly, my Tai Chi teacher had encouraged a similar methodology in his teaching. He’d borrow animal styles from XingYi and Shaolin arts and use them as a kind of ‘coat hanger’ for hanging different techniques off in sparring. Different animal styles suited different body types, so I was already familiar with this idea.

These things are really only on the surface level of Tai Chi, of course. It’s only much later in BJJ that you can start to realistically create the head space necessary to try some of the more “Tai Chi’ ways of moving the body under pressure. But here you find that BJJ has it’s own set of ‘internals’ that are different to Tai Chi. It’s the sort of things that the legendary Rickson Gracie calls “invisible jiujitsu”. In each of the key positions there are little things you can do with your posture, weight distribution or grip that completely change the position. These are things you can’t really see, but you can feel them. One little change and suddenly your opponent is unable to exert any pressure on you at all, or you suddenly feel twice as heavy to them as you really are. It’s fascinating.

 Ironically, in BJJ I found an art that actually delivered on a lot of the promise of ‘soft’ martial arts like Tai Chi Chuan. Size and strength do matter in BJJ, but only when both people are equally matched in knowledge. A person with knowledge of BJJ against somebody who doesn’t have it usually results in what we saw in the UFC in 1993.

I got my blue belt relatively quickly, but I’d say that had more to do with having a good attitude to learning martial arts, and nothing specifically related to Tai Chi. I still practice Tai Chi and as well as being a great way of loosening up your stiff muscles the day after training it’s perfect for keeping injuries to a minimum. People tell me I move “different” to what they’re expecting in BJJ, but I don’t really know if that’s to do with Tai Chi training or just the individual expression that is encouraged in BJJ. I think that really there’s no time to think when you’re sparring, so whatever way you’re used to moving (i.e. whatever way you train the most) tends to come out.

I have asked myself many times since that first class why I’ve continued with BJJ. The answer is twofold, and was personified perfectly in my experiences in that first class: I love it, and I’m not a quitter.

With thanks to my Professor Salvatore Pace and my friends and family at Gracie Barra Bath - www.graciebarrabath.com

Taijiquan and Perseverence

Below is an excerpt from a post at Tai Chi Chuan and Philosophy originally written by Dr. Zee, a long time student of Ma Lueh Liang. The full article may be read here.

Perseverance has the meaning of stamina. The five-point motto of Ma Yueliang finishes with perseverance. It says that while practising Taijiquan one has to have a long the four points of stillness, lightness, slowness and conscientiousness also perseverance. Only then Taijiquan can develop its effects.

Taijiquan is not a panacea, which works right away. Taijiquan follows the "laws of the nature", does search for "being conscious" and the endowed inborn root of the movements. The basic ability of the conscious movement is inborn, but "being close to each other by our inner nature, we separate from each other by our habits". Because of this one loses the inborn. So in physical exercises one does not develop one's original capabilities to the full extent, as it would have been possible, or worse, one develops unfavourable variances. When practising Taijiquan one goes through subjective efforts, but it is a process that changes the objective world and where one looks for the lost endowed inborn.

This process is long-term and life long. Though the Taijiquan movements should become part of daily life, at best a kind of key idea, which you are looking for in all movements, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down. However, if you "diligently work one day, but there are ten days of rest" you are not following the five-point motto of Ma Yueliang. This also means that you do not prevent diseases or strengthen the body. The goal of Taijiquan, the long life and the eternal spring, will be a question.

It is unusual for young people to begin to learn Taijiquan. They often find not much joy in this kind of movement or even think they are boring. So at the start one should make an individual plan for each one. It is essential to fix the time frame and the amount of stuff to learn. This must be done consciously. But one must also decide with the whole heart to improve. It's like in calligraphy:

"Only after a hundred days of practice with the characters it shows effect."

When you practised Taijiquan three months, you can see the first effects. One can e.g. feel fine, the appetite is good, the limbs are healthy, and after a long time, chronic diseases can improve or the outbreak of them can be prevented. If one gets the taste for it, it increases the confidence and the resolution to practice Taijiquan.

The conditions of individual students are not the same. This must also have an influence to the character and the level of training. The old teachers demanded that one should do the form a ten thousand times in about three years. This shows that if you do the form just once a day, it is only enough to keep it. For today's people, it is certainly very difficult to do the form ten times a day. It would be best to do the form twice a day, because the first time is just to warm up. This is important, because you can't reach stillness by just pushing a button. Only at the second time you can achieve "The heart/mind (xin) leads qi. The qi moves the body.", because now the mind got still. Body and spirit are in harmony, what even increases the result.

As in the phrase: "Relax and stillness as the reaction", you will feel very comfortable now. Even if you want to stop, you can't do it and you feel like a third time. On the other hand, if you are to much distracted by the daily live and it is just hard to concentrate and you have to force yourself to do Taijiquan you should stop the training for a while or take a rest after the first irregularities.

Oldest Kendoka

Probably the oldest Kendoka of the 112th Enbu Taikai: Ota (Age: 102) and Takasaki (Age: 93). Ota-Sensei is one the very very few ones (only one?) who holds the title of Hanshi despite being 'only' 7th Dan. The requirement for Hanshi nowadays is minimum 8th Dan.

Wing Chun Wooden Dummy Techniques

Below is a vintage video of the Fat Sao (Buddha Hand) Wing Chun lineage. Enjoy!