The Best Teacher.

Pain.

At Budo Journeyman, there was an article discussing pain and it's place in martial arts training. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

 

No matter how much I gritted my teeth and tried to dig into my resolve, I could not take another mawashigeri into my thigh. On about the fifth one, I started to fold. The deadening, deep muscle pulsing was just not going away. It was a throbbing pain that seemed to radiate well beyond the contact area, I could even feel it in my groin.

And this was a DRILL…

The backstory.

 Richard Barrett was the instructor of the UK branch of the Jundokan. He had trained under the late Miyazato Eiichi in Okinawa and his approach to Goju Ryu karate was very traditional, including lots of conditioning. For a while I made the fairly regular trip to his Dojo in Essex and really gained from the perspective he presented (this was around 1989).

No matter how much I gritted my teeth and tried to dig into my resolve, I could not take another mawashigeri into my thigh. On about the fifth one, I started to fold. The deadening, deep muscle pulsing was just not going away. It was a throbbing pain that seemed to radiate well beyond the contact area, I could even feel it in my groin.

And this was a DRILL…

The backstory.

 Richard Barrett was the instructor of the UK branch of the Jundokan. He had trained under the late Miyazato Eiichi in Okinawa and his approach to Goju Ryu karate was very traditional, including lots of conditioning. For a while I made the fairly regular trip to his Dojo in Essex and really gained from the perspective he presented (this was around 1989).

 

Add to that the issue of pain tolerance. Take for example the beekeeper. Research says that in response to bee stings, they feel exactly the same level of pain as everyone else, but their immune response mounts a much more powerful and precise counteraction. It is the familiarity of the pain of the initial sting that helps them to minimise their shock and reaction.

Shock.

 Old time UK karate guy, Bob Rhodes, was recently interviewed and at one point was asked his opinions about toleration and response to pain. His view was that in fighting people often have trouble separating pain from shock. 2 I think he is right, and I am convinced that shock comes in many flavours.

In response to a hard punch to the face, the brain and body go through so many micro-calculations all at high speed; some of them are autonomic (you have zero control over them) but others overlap each other in a nano-second.3

If this happens in a contest situation where (clearly) things have got overheated, evidenced by the uncontrolled strike, at the back of your mind you are aware that there are parameters and guard rails. However, if it is a real-life situation, an attack by a stranger in the street and taking a punch to the face, the shock level doubles considerably. (In my pre-karate days, as a teenager, this happened to me).

If those kinds of attacks are part of your life and you are brought up surrounded by physical violence, levels of endurance and certain kinds of toleration might well develop. In my early life, fights were commonplace, from schooldays onwards. Mostly you learned how to read the situation and avoid them, but sometimes you couldn’t.

I would imagine, if you took a poll to find out how many younger contemporary martial artists had ever experienced a violent attack, those who had would be in a tiny minority, particularly in this modern age4. Ironically, that would also include instructors who are teaching people self-defence! But. Of course they are not going to confess to this fact; their students just ‘assume’.