I've probably written on this subject before, but a common occurrence in class nowadays is what I like to call, "Mindless" Practice. That's easy to define. You practice a technique or exercise without purpose. You can do 100's of it, but the results are the same.



There are many indicators that a technique is being expressed incorrectly. Whether it's not fixing a correction to kata, a bad cut during tameshigiri, or getting cut in the same locations during gekken, if the same mistake keeps happening, that means there are no thoughts for the technique to change.



Easy example to start with. I'll see students make a cut during tameshigiri, and the results are the same each time. If that's the case, what is being changed to make a different result? Are you swining further, aiming better, changing blade angle? That part of practice is difficult, because they might have the thought of what they want to do differently in their head, but they can't express it through their physical action. They can't use that to fight against their "natural" technique.



What I mean by natural technique is that of a technique that's been practiced so many times, that it's ingrained and is expressed by instinct. This is where the mental part of training gets overlooked. You have to force yourself to do what comes naturally. Sometimes, a person outside of your head will tell you a correction. However as many times as you've heard the correction, you should know it by now. You should be able to analyze what problem you have and say it to yourself in your head without them telling you. You heard it enough from me enough haha.



Now, say you did make a change to your technique to make a better result for that moment. However, when you step away from the exercise you were doing, and I see you practicing your technique again, it goes right back to old natural technique. If that's the case, what you've accomplished beforehand is gone. You have to mentally transfer the ideas that you've learned outside of the "exercise", and apply it and practice and do it over and over until that becomes your new "natural" technique. Eventually, a new mistake will be shown, so the cycle repeats itself, and eventually you can build on this. This is building the foundation that you will use as your progress later on.



However being too mentally strong in practice can work against you. You can figure things out quickly and adjust it when necessary on the fly. However people will fix a problem quickly but don't do the "mindless" practice part to enforce that change to make it become a natural technique. Each time they go up, they'll make the initial mistake, fix their mistake and correct it, but when they don't ingrain that correction, they'll have to adjust on the fly every time they go back up.



Recently, we had a great cutting session. The results of the cuts were not all the best, but what made me quite happy about that session was the fact that there were new mistakes to be corrected, so I got something new to say. Like I always say, the worst mistakes are the ones that are made again.







