Steel Tiger
Senior Master
The other night I was watching television and saw an add with two basketball teams, one in black one in white, passing balls around. It asks you to count the number of passes of the team in white. At the end it asked if you saw the moonwalking bear. (It was 13 passes by the way).
But it made me think about focus, concentration, and vision as it relates to MAs. You see, the point is that when we concentrate hard we narrow our focus. Think about all the things we have been told about where we should be looking when facing an opponent - the eyes, the shoulders, the upper centre torso - all supposedly so that we can see all the moves our opponent will make.
To my mind, the problem is this - if we who are teaching are not clear about these statements we will have students who watch a specific part of their opponents too carefully and actually miss the point. Focused vision is not awareness. Remember what Bruce said about all that celestial beauty.
Concentration and focus are wonderful things. In the Mahabharata, during an archery contest, the pivotal character, Arjuna, has aimed his arrow at a far target in the shape of a bird. His teacher asks him to describe the bird and he says he cannot. When asked why he said he could only see the eye. This is the reverse of what I am talking about, but it exemplifies the potential pitfall.
We as martial artists want to be able to react to what our opponent does or tries to do, but we need our focus to be good but not pinpoint. To go to an extreme in anything, including this, is to deny yourself options.
Does anyone find this idea hard to get across? Do you find students taking knocks because while they can see their opponent they can't see what he is doing?
But it made me think about focus, concentration, and vision as it relates to MAs. You see, the point is that when we concentrate hard we narrow our focus. Think about all the things we have been told about where we should be looking when facing an opponent - the eyes, the shoulders, the upper centre torso - all supposedly so that we can see all the moves our opponent will make.
To my mind, the problem is this - if we who are teaching are not clear about these statements we will have students who watch a specific part of their opponents too carefully and actually miss the point. Focused vision is not awareness. Remember what Bruce said about all that celestial beauty.
Concentration and focus are wonderful things. In the Mahabharata, during an archery contest, the pivotal character, Arjuna, has aimed his arrow at a far target in the shape of a bird. His teacher asks him to describe the bird and he says he cannot. When asked why he said he could only see the eye. This is the reverse of what I am talking about, but it exemplifies the potential pitfall.
We as martial artists want to be able to react to what our opponent does or tries to do, but we need our focus to be good but not pinpoint. To go to an extreme in anything, including this, is to deny yourself options.
Does anyone find this idea hard to get across? Do you find students taking knocks because while they can see their opponent they can't see what he is doing?
