Category: Kendo

It is a common knowledge that growth in any aspect of our lives requires stepping outside of our comfort zone. Also obvious is the fact that it is easier said than done.

The comfort zone, by definition, is the realm of something that we are accustomed to doing. Perhaps, we have even acquired a certain degree of expertise in that area. When I started doing photography seriously, I became used to shooting land- and cityscapes without any people in them. It made sense from the stock photography perspective, and it was not stressful, because taking this king of pictures required no interactions with other people. To take my photography to a higher level required abandoning this comfort zone and becoming comfortable with working with models.

Pushing oneself out of the personal comfort zone is also central in martial arts. I practise kendo, the Way of the Sword, which originated in Japan and still closely connected to Japanese culture, although international influence on it has been increasing. Daily practise, keiko, is the foundation of kendo, but periodic exposure to the stress of completion or dan grading is also crucial for growth. I have to remind myself about this after my recent failed attempt at the yondan (4th dan) grading. Throughout the entire grading day, I kept questioning the wisdom of voluntarily subjecting myself to the stress that comes from the position of being evaluated, the situation that is designed to bring the kendoka outside of their comfort zones. The goal, of course is to be able to control the excitement and to be able to perform under pressure as if it was regular daily practice. As Miayamoto Musashi wrote in his famous “Book of Five Rings”, “In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and to make your everyday stance your combat stance.”

As I said, easier said than done.

Certain goals (well, most goals worth striving for) cannot be achieved by forcing our way towards them in one huge burst of effort. Instead, they require consistent, daily practice over a long period of time. In kendo, for example, as in many disciplines rooted in Zen Buddhism, performing 1 million sword swings (suburi) is said to lead to divine level of understanding of the Way of the Sword. The number 1,000,000 has some special place in Buddhism. For example, reciting a sutra 1,000,000 times would lead to enlightenment (or so they say). The point is, it is not enough to understand the technique mentally; one must truly make it a part of daily life.

From this viewpoint, it becomes clear why many teachers value “stick-to-it-iveness” over talent in their students. It is one thing to grasp the basics quickly due to one’s natural abilities and it is another thing altogether to have dedication to show up for practice on the daily basis. Great changes happen by evolution, not revolution…

Of course, the showing up aspect becomes easier, at least at some basic level, as time goes by, because the practise becomes a habit. In other words, it becomes easier to practice than not to practice. That is why it is important to set yourself up for success initially, to make it impossible to fail during the first weeks that are crucial to habit-forming. For example, do not commit to doing thousands or even hundreds suburi, pushups, fill-the-blank’s, etc.; do just 5 or 10 (surely you can spare 30 seconds out of even the busiest day!), but do it every day, without exceptions, and do it first thing after waking up, so that there is no possibility of postponing it until tomorrow.

Digging a bit deeper, however, things become more complicated. Suppose, the habit of practicing has been formed and we are cranking out the reps on the daily basis. This is where the practice becomes automatic, mechanical, and thus loses its quality. A high-level kendo sensei once pointed out a fact that sounded like a truism: factors that lead to success are (a) quantity of practice and (b) quality of practice.

Still, there is something inherently fascinating about the transforming effects of daily practice. Perhaps, this is why sharing workout logs with the numbers of accumulated pushups, miles, steps, etc. are so popular in the social media, and so are the “365 photos” projects, where photographers take and share a photo every day for one year.

With the photography or blogging projects in particular, the inevitable (but, hopefully temporary) drop in quality is obvious not only to the author, but also to the audience – things are no longer interesting when the novelty wears away. I think that this is the point where it is important to slow down and to bring the quality back into focus, while still showing up for practice every day. This means that the 1,000,000 suburi mark, “where the sword rips trough the space like silk” (or The Force becomes our ally), is not going to be reached in a couple of years, and 365 pictures will likely not make us drastically better photographers. In my case, I will report back in about 20 years whether the one-million’s cut was any different from the first…

In kendo, when we initiate an attack and approach the opponent during seme-ai, we are advised by wise senseis to not only maintain a relaxed grip on the shine, but to relax it even more as we apply pressure (metaphorically, speaking, of course, not really in terms of force per unit area) on the opponent. This is done to preemptively compensate for our natural tendency to tighten up at the beginning of the actual physical attack.

Tightening up is a natural reaction of the human body to physical stress. In fact, by consciously flexing our gip on a dumbbell, for example, we are able to pull off a couple of additional biceps curls beyond what would other wise be our maximum number of reps. This very effective principle, among others, is taught by Pavel Tsatsulin, who use to train special forces operators in various countries. According to him, strength requires tension, while flexibility requires relaxation. Ability to switch from one to another quickly and at will is the key to high physical performance.

I was going to make an analogy between this preemptive relaxation that is used to prepare a martial artist for the moment of tension and a creative process like painting or photography, but the specifics of this would-be analogy seem to be a bit far-fetched now as I think about it. If I always take too many shots during a typical basketball game, which makes the culling process long and tedious, should I preemptively compensate my trying to take photos only when the action comes closer, for example?.. As Richard Feynman said about analogies, it is possible to draw one between any two subjects, and therefore, the analogies are largely meaningless.