I recently wrote the following short piece for our newsletter. I would be appreciative of any critique or reaction. Thanks. I am currently reading a book on combat handgunnery by Massad Ayoob in which the author makes an important distinction between “practicing” and “training.” I can go to the range and fire off 100 rounds, or go to the dojo and throw 500 punches and run through all my kata. And that is certainly practice. Training, on the other hand, involves careful attentiveness to technique, challenging oneself to improve, struggling to be better today than I was yesterday. It is easy to fall into the habit of practice—which, admittedly, is better than not practicing. But training is something that defies becoming a habit. Training requires constant mindfulness, rather than rote repetition of what we have done before. It only results from a commitment to self-improvement. Happy training!
Osu, Interesting view, I'll have to think about it to comment further When visiting a dojo in Connecticut last December, a sign on the side of the road read: Serious athletes do not work out, they train! I thought that to me it made a lot of sense Osu!
I prefer to divide between "school work" and "home work". School work involve: - partner drills (develop), - sparring/wrestling (test), home work involve: - solo drills (polish), - equipment training (enhance).
Nice topic. I wrote post describing the difference between practice and training: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103192 Where it appears Massad Ayoob and I have a difference of opinion is that Massad Ayoob seems to downplay the importance of practice or even believe that practice is not a good thing. On the other hand, I believe that practice is necessary for ingraining fundamentals into intuitive movements. IMHO.
RW, Thanks for the link. I didn't realize the topic had already been treated. I think Ayoob and you are using the words differently. I suspect you could agree with each other. If I understand him correctly, he differentiates practice from training on the basis of the underlying mental attentiveness. For Ayoob, practice can mean going through the motions while your mind is somewhere else. Training entails the same activity, but with the brain oriented toward mindfulness, critical thinking, creativity, and never-ending self-improvement. Maybe another way to think of it is whether one is "going through the motions" or cultivating oneself through the particular discipline. Best,
This IMHO is wasting time, the rest of this statement is how one should practice every time. IMO the difference between "practice" & "training" is how specific your focus is, what I mean is when I'm "training" I'm focused on a specific technique, or body mechanic, or I could be trying to increase strength in a certain area, or stamina. When I'm "practicing" I'm developing memorization, muscle memory, balance, focus and I will cover a broad range of skills. We should also include learning new material in a practice session while a training is improving existing material. While there are differences in both aspects many of the methods are similar, perhaps the biggest difference may be the intensity of the session.
ayoob probably defines 'practice' as the label majority of the people ascribe their activity, mindless and repetitive. assuming of course, the major part of OP's first post was in accordance with ayoob's work. will the OP share ayoob's direct quote where he defined practice and training?
I was wondering who "OP" was, then figured out it must be me. You kids and your internet jargon. :dunno: Anyway, here's the quote: "How do you best practice? This way: Stop practicing! This doesn't mean that you don't shoot or drill in your movement patterns or perform repetitions of tactical skills. It means that if before you practiced, now you train! Practice can easily turn into just hosing bullets downrange. Often, you wind up reinforcing bad habits instead of enforcing good ones. Training, on the other hand, is purpose-oriented. Where practice can easily degenerate into 'just going through the motion,' training sharpens and fine-tunes every motion. If practice was going to be a couple of hundred rounds downrange, training might be as little as 50 rounds, but all fired with purpose." (47)
Not too bad a way of thinking. It comes down to semantics. To me, practice is "drill in your movement patterns or perform repetitions of tactical skills" or basically working on fundamentals. We pretty much agree on what training is. Training to me is more in the understanding and practical application of principles. One should always try to be mindful of purpose when training, but where does something like the concept of Mushin fall into the idea of practice or training? Maybe one should not be so caught up in semantics and possibly overthink things. I remember teaching a way to look to the sides by simply lowering the chin. In this manner, rather than scanning the whole room with the eyes by turning the head from right to left and left to right, the student can simply drop the chin to the side and immediate engage the opponent to the side. Since when you scan the room your brain has more data to process, this is slower. When you look right to the side quickly, there is less data to process and one can engage the enemy quicker off of peripheal vision. Now I had students doing this and what ended up was a totally unnatural exageration of the movement. It was tense and had TOO much purpose to be practical. I had to rethink the way they were learning the movements. I had to take their mind off of the purpose and have them just drill the fundamental with "no mind". Instead of drilling the movement with a partner or in isolation, I had the students walk a gauntlet between potential attackers. At random from left or right side they would grabbed. The movement was done without thought and the enemy was engaged immediately. After that, when they made the movement, they did not think of the movement, they only thought of quickly engaging the enemy and protecting themselves. Of course, the movement had to be taught to them as many would not have known to make the movement correctly in the first place without first being shown what to do. P.S. Perhaps the use of visualization is really what is being talked about when separating "going through the motions" opposed to "having purpose"?
Mushin?! Now you're getting into an area I really enjoy exploring. As I'm sure you know, mushin is not about turning off your mind, but existing in your environment without attaching to thoughts, perceptions, etc. From your example (which is a good one), it seems that students were placing their conscious attention on the act of moving their heads, rather than simply observing what was at their sides. Your "gauntlet" idea seems like a way of dealing with that. To simply sit in mushin is hard enough, let alone to move through kata, bunkai, or kumite. And so we need to practice (train?) that, whether it be in zazen, or mindful practice of our particular art. Recognizing mental attachment when it takes place (or what Takuan calls "the mind stopping," "affliction") is the first step. Correcting that mistake comes next. And that is a rigorous mental activity. There's no shortcut other than "practice," or "training" the mind. So, I do see visualization as one component in the difference between what Ayoob calls "practice" and "training." But it is only one aspect of the mental training that can go on while we undertake our respective disciplines. Happy training! :hat:
