Keep it simple
Published: Mon, 04/15/19
Key Principles of getting good at anything. Part 2: Simplify
When I attended Geoff Thompson’s masterclass series of six seminars back in 2012 attendees were set a challenge. We were invited to choose one technique and practice it ten thousand times over the course of the Masterclass. As I recall this exercise required around seven hundred repetitions a day. I chose to practice a left punch and I did manage it. My punch did get better but the important thing was the commitment to practice. Geoff Thompson was inspired by the Bruce Lee quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
The most important thing though is simplicity. It is only really possible to practice what we actually know how to do. If you don’t know how to do something at all then you can’t practice it. If you think you know how to do something but cannot do it correctly, then practice will just reinforce a mistake. So, find one or two really simple things that you can definitely do correctly and practice until you have really mastered them. If you can master one thing you can actually master anything.
Another problem with making your training too complicated is that life gets in the way. I have known people who have built up a Yoga practice which involved getting up at five in the morning and then doing ninety minutes of advanced asanas (postures). Very impressive, except when a change of circumstances, a new job, a health issue or whatever else the problem is and the whole practice goes. When I have asked about their five minute, do it anywhere, yoga practice I just get a blank look. Apparently to a real devotee it is all or nothing. Personally I think that is a bit sad because one change of circumstances and all the benefit of a practice can be lost. With Stav there is the basic stances as the core practice. Then you can add galdre stances, weapon training, unarmed exercises and what ever you have the time and energy for. However, when time is short there is the basic version of the stances to hang on to and the practice
is not lost. If it is not possible to do the stances physically then visualise them in your mind. The important thing is to be able to simplify your training so that there is always a core practice you can do in a few minutes each day.
Over complication is a typical human trait. Complication makes learning and practice difficult and makes it easy for ‘experts’ to judge the rest of us successes or failures. Remember that the 80/20 principle tells us that most of the benefit comes from a very small proportion of the possible activity you can do. The clever part is identifying the genuinely valuable 20 percent and really working with it. If teaching, guide your students towards the most valuable part of the material you could teach them. If struggling to identify the the most valuable activities, then keep testing and experimenting with simple training methods and see what works the best for you. Remember that real sophistication is the balance between efficiency and simplicity. Sophistication is never attained easily but it is well worth striving for.
regards
Graham
PS I am off to Illinois for the 18th and 19th of May. Plane tickets bought, parking at Heathrow reserved and ESTA applied for. Still room for a couple more people if you would like to join us for a weekend of Stav training. Details here http://iceandfire.org.uk/usamay2019.html