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| Theory |
To anyone who hasn't had exposure to martial practices, winning a fight seems like a fairly straightforward affair. Strike your opponent in a place that incapacitates them, and it's over. In practice this is not a reality for most people. This begs the age old question: How can I win when my opponent is stronger, faster, or bigger than I? History shows there is always someone stronger, faster or bigger; from such ponderings rose the martial arts, which proved (and continue to prove) surprisingly effective against the untrained and suddenly the concern was not with winning a fight but winning a match. A "match" in the sense of two equals that are putting everything they have into the effort of besting another in a controlled environment. This is the mature product of rational human aggression, everyone has the skills so let us see who has a better mastery.So how do you win when you are outclassed? Train harder? Everyone is human and on some level we all have the same capacity to train ourselves to perfection. If it were up to that, genetics would decide who would win. Every kendo fencer knows the same techniques, so presumably speed would equate to victory. Yet some 80 year old fencers can easily dispatch men a quarter their age, ten men, twenty men, and then laugh and ask for more comers. Experience? The winner of the last All Japan Kendo Tournament is in his early 30s, and he beat a man in his late 40s to claim the title, a man who had previously won the title 6 times in total.
No, the answer is literally in your head. The first thing a new student learns is to relax -- thinking about what you intend to do will only cause you to broadcast your intention and the attempt will fail. Develop your reflexes and then trust them. This will take you a long way, but you are truly a (burgeoning) great martial artist when you realize this is the foot of the mountain, not the peak. To be good, you must train hard; to be great you must train smart.
In the first year of my kendo training, I spent a few months at a different dojo when my sensei was called to Japan unexpectedly. This dojo was sending a team to the national competition that year, so they trained quite hard all summer, and I was on the receiving end of a lot of punishment due to my inexperience, but I persevered. One of the advanced students and I got to talking after he had defeated me soundly for the tenth time in as many practices. Here I relate what he said:
"Kendo is like a lake. When you first see it, you walk around it and think: 'This is a good sized lake. I wonder what's in it? I bet it's fun to swim in.' So you dive in, and it is fun to swim in, but your realize that there are currents in the lake that make it much harder to swim in than it looked to be. Soon you get used to the currents, and you can once again enjoy yourself without effort. Then, you see something shiny in the lake bed through the water near the shore. You dive down in the water to see what it is, and instantly an undertow takes you far from shore. You are unfamiliar with the currents here, and you are intimidated by how far away you are from where you started, but then you realize that the knowledge you gleaned before can be used to understand your new locale. You fear that treading water will tire you out, but the practice you've gotten near the shore has made you a better swimmer, so you soon overcome your anxiety. You easily swim back to where you were swept from, and you once again dive down to see the source of the glint. It is the most incredible looking underwater plant you have ever seen, it looks almost alien with it's complexity yet you can't take your eyes off it. Soon your lungs ache and you are forced to surface for more air, but you immediately dive down again to look because you are fascinated.You repeat this over and over, each time with the ability to stay down a little longer, each time having to rest at the surface for a shorter period. Little by little you memorize the contours of the plant, how it moves in the water and soon it is is familiar to you, yet it is still something you feel proud to know about.
Then your lungs are so used to the strain you set about looking for other new shiny things, and you find them and then you find others and then you notice you are back out in the middle of the lake again, this time at the bottom. It takes an eternity to get back to the surface but you do. Encouraged by all the new things that you have found and all those that await you, you smile. Your lungs hurt, but you go back to the bottom. Something you can't make out through the muck appears at the limit of your vision and you swim towards it. Suddenly the lakebed disappears down into total darkness and you realize the something you saw was moving. You swim down hoping to see more, and you realize you are out of air. You surface, gasping for air but desperate to go back down and see it all. Time and time again you are forced to swim upwards as you keep running out of breath, each time getting a little deeper, but never deep enough to satisfy your curiousity. You catch glimpses of things moving in the deepest part of the lake but you are never fast enough to catch them. Finally, you surface after nearly blacking out and realize that you will never see it all, but you know it is there.
You climb out of the lake and find you are now strong enough to endure freezing wind on your bare skin, fast enough to catch a squirrel and calm enough to balance an egg on one end at the solstice. Then you look over your shoulder and smile, and make a note to visit this lake often."
I'd say that sums it up pretty well. You can always develop your body to overcome adversity, the real power is your spirit. Kendo is not easy, but to persevere in kendo is to open yourself to wondrous things.