It can sometimes be very rewarding to teach beginners as they have few expectations and biases and are a mostly empty cup to fill.
Putting your brain into the student mindset
Those of you who have been living in my eyebrows for the last few years will know that my budo interests have been steered towards improving budo coaching through some shallow dives into sports coaching theory. These dives have taken me past the colourful coral gardens of ZPD, scaffolding, the GROW model and other interesting underwater features. These have been very much focussed on the role and workload of the coach/teacher/dojo leader and has treated the receiving side as a pretty much homogenous mass of pink jelly that responds to the occasional blast of sound vibrations or poking with a sharp stick.
This year I have so far spent just over 9 weeks in Japan doing a lot of training in Ishido Sensei's dojo, and a little in other dojos. Something that occurred to me in my latest journeys was a noticeable difference in the responses of students with regard to feedback from various teachers. This hasn't been isolated to Japan; once it came to my interest in Japan I started noticing it in the UK and Europe as well.
Before I jumped into writing this, I did some light academic research looking at various articles on the subject of corrective feedback in coaching. I have extracted a few lines from the articles that I found relevant and interesting to just set the scene. These are not only useful for the student but also a superb set of pointers for coaches as well:
The Organization of Corrective Demonstrations Using Embodied Action in Sports Coaching Feedback
However,
unlike classrooms and medical internship discussions, sports coaching is a bodily
affair; there is no “talking through a subject” to get the job of these settings done.
Errors then are not a matter of what one knows but what one does. Error correction
is a matter of showing the athlete(s) what they did wrong and showing them how to
do it right. Talk is an instructive guide on where to nd the action, but reenactment.
"However, unlike classrooms and medical internship discussions, sports coaching is a bodily affair; there is no “talking through a subject” to get the job of these settings done. Errors then are not a matter of what one knows but what one does. Error correction is a matter of showing the athlete(s) what they did wrong and showing them how to do it right. Talk is an instructive guide on where to find the action, but re-enactment is the central part of this setting’s instructional work."
However,
unlike classrooms and medical internship discussions, sports coaching is a bodily
affair; there is no “talking through a subject” to get the job of these settings done.
Errors then are not a matter of what one knows but what one does. Error correction
is a matter of showing the athlete(s) what they did wrong and showing them how to
do it right. Talk is an instructive guide on where to nd the action, but reenactment
Five Principles of Reinforcement
"Coaches should strive to use only reinforcement – mostly the positive kind – to shape player behaviours."
"Nonetheless, if you say “well done” when the athlete has not performed the skill very well, it’s false praise, and the odds are that the athlete will know it’s false praise. It’s tough being honest sometimes, but if you have built a supportive but challenging climate and you support your players striving to improve, then you’re in a good position to give honest feedback."
_________________________
What I want to focus on is something I have noticed in that, depending on the student, there can be an overly long process from the point of receiving feedback to making any changes, see image below.
I noticed in particular in Japan that the older students tended to skip the disappointment and acceptance stage. They might spend a bit more time improving their comprehension by asking for more detail and confirmation.
In both Japan and Europe though, the younger and often more talented students seemed to need to go through a disappointment stage and a protracted emotional acceptance stage, sometimes asking for evidence or proof to back up the feedback.
I should add that I have always encouraged the people who have asked to learn from me to be sceptical (I'll come back to this sceptical mindset subject a bit later) of everything including anything that I have taught. This disappointment stage though isn't what I mean; it's an emotional reaction based on a range of the following mindsets in the student:
- "I thought I was doing it right and you're telling me that I was wrong."
- "I have devoted so much time to doing it this way and now you're saying that I wasted my time."
- "You could have told me this sooner."
- "You're being inconsistent in your teaching of the subject."
In one example of this, while I was in Ishido Sensei's dojo recently, there were quite a few other visitors there from Europe and China. One visitor, who will remain anonymous but is a very skilful and dedicated iaidoka from Europe, was training a notoriously difficult seated okuden kata. They were doing it with a lot of speed and fluidity as is appropriate for okuden. After a short while, Ishido Sensei came up to them and explained that they had misunderstood the kihon (basic version) and showed them what they should be doing. The visitor worked on this for a while but was having difficulty achieving "satisfaction". Of significance though was the surprise, or even shock, on the face of the student that what they had been training turned out to be incorrect. When they took a break during training I heard them express disappointment in themselves and were clearly confused.
And I get it! This person had been instructed a certain way a few months previously (I think by Ishido Sensei) and they were now being told this was wrong. Had the koryu changed? Had they misunderstood the original instruction?
Trying to resolve the question, had the koryu changed, takes us down a different road that I don't want to explore at the moment in any detail; suffice to say that any instruction will change in time; the teacher's perspective and level changes, the student changes - change is inevitable and we should be always mentally and physically prepared to accept that change. As is the motto of iaido, tsune ni itte, kyu ni awasu (be in the moment, adapt to the situation quickly).
This isn't limited to non-Japanese budoka either. I have witnessed many times even in Ishido Sensei's dojo, Japanese students making sounds of exasperation or disappointment when being told that they were doing something incorrectly, or that there was a "better way". There would then be a period of non-aggressive "arguing" (by this I mean, the student was trying to establish why they were being corrected) and then, after some time, they would then accept the advice and try to implement it.
And this is such a waste of time and energy. In fact even being annoyed at oneself for not doing this correctly in the first place is not only wasteful, it could even be considered to be slightly arrogant and self-centred. I mean, of course we are all doing something wrong at some point, what's the point of having a teacher in a dojo if the point wasn't to have these errors identified and resolved?
As noted in the image above, this kind of reaction only leads to the following:
- Loss of training and teaching time
- Problem identified and potential solution starts to become of secondary importance to proving the student is doing something wrong
- Teacher/coach can lose patience
We now enter a stage of this article that I desperately want to avoid trying to appear to be the "star student" and so I will try to contextualise my position. I have been the main translator for most of the larger iaido and jodo events in Europe for many years, working with Yuki Kanto Sensei and others to ensure that the instructions from visiting Japanese sensei were translated accurately, efficiently and meaningfully. I have been in a rather privileged position of not just being able to understand directly what these sensei have been saying but also to directly ask questions, to seek consultation on problems, and to discuss subtle points on subjects, all without having to bother someone else to carry out the tiresome task of translating. I would say one of the most significant outcomes of this is that I deeply appreciate that these teachers have already wrestled with the problems that students present; they might even be still struggling with these problems now. In any case, the resolution to many issues isn't always an ideal solution, it is simply the best solution for the time and the stage of training. They haven't received divine inspiration from the gods, they are human and they are also pushing themselves to travel along the same paths as the rest of us. When they give advice, unless it is something "trivial" (I mean something that should be consistently agreed like a distinct instruction on ZNKR iaido or jodo), they don't give the advice lightly. They give the best advice they can.
When in the past I have been given advice about iaido from teachers who aren't my own teacher, such as Oshita Sensei, I am extremely grateful that they have given the time and effort to look at me and express their opinions, to calculate a solution on a problem and then explain it to me in a way that might not be a general consensus among all teachers but is the best advice that they can. I have in fact gone out my way to ask Otake Sensei and other Jodo seniors to be extra strict with me to help with me with my ongoing Jodo development.
Conclusion - the right response
And so, what is the right answer? I have come up with the simplest of algorithms for the fast shift to resolution, I have even furnished it with the appropriate Japanese response...
(Image above: SEE HOW MUCH SHORTER THIS IS!!!)
- If I understand the critique and know what to do to resolve it, my simple answer is "Hai. Wakarimashita."
- If I understand the critique but don't know what to do to resolve it, my next simple question is, what should I do to make it right. In Japanese these could be easily asked by "Dou sureba ii deshou ka".
- If I don't understand the critique then I will ask a few more details; naturally this verbal response will depend on the situation but I will be careful to not suggest that I'm not doing the thing they are pointing out, for example:
- "You're dropping the kissaki in furikaburi."
- "No I'm not!"
- "FFS!"
(goes and fetches video camera)
Finally, there have been situations where I simply could not understand what I was doing wrong in comparison to what the teacher was saying I should do. While it's easy to get angry and emotional at this point, in the past I have simply asked what is the physical difference to what I am doing compared to what the teacher wants me to do. It is simply a case of error identification and adjustment. If in doubt, asking them to physically move your limbs, body or weapon into the correct position or through the correct course can help.
Denial will take you nowhere.
To a certain degree of satisfaction, I have found that in this particularly long duration of spending time with Ishido Sensei and really hammering Muso Shinden Ryu koryu iaido, this approach has seen my though quite pleasant and smooth days of training with Sensei being pretty complimentary about my comprehension of the koryu (actually doing it well requires a lifetime of training). I'm not suggesting that I know everything or that Sensei won't have some severe corrections to make of me, simply that he never seemed to get impatient when we were working on a difficult point; in fact he gave me some of the most interesting advice for some of the more difficult kata, almost from a student's perspective.
The sceptical mindset
So, is this moving one away from the recommended (by me) sceptical mindset? More than anything I think it is a question of timing and also being aware that there are important differences between being sceptical, cynical, and arrogant.
Working in reverse, by being arrogant I mean attending training with the expectation that you are doing the right technique. Hopefully you are. One hundred per cent. That would be nice wouldn't it. You're probably not though and it is a good idea to bear in mind that the first role of the "sensei" in budo is for someone to be taking responsibility for yo' ass and is looking out for you. They have your back. They're your wingman for a lot of the time even if they don't strip off and play greased-up beach volleyball with you whenever the sun shines.
Being cynical means that you consider that the teacher/coach/sensei is as prone to making an error in their judgement of your performance in budo as you are. The very translation of sensei (one who has been born/lived/experienced before you) would suggest that they might have gone through the same errors as you have. More than anything though, if they're seeing this from the outside then they may well have a far more objective observation of what you're doing than you are. I'm not talking about unconditional respect or deference, I simply mean that on balance they are more than likely to be making an accurate observation. I mean who wants to waste their time making up errors for someone else???
A healthy degree of scepticism is, I believe, based on doing the right questioning at the right time. Asking yourself is the teacher correct at this moment while they are giving you feedback might lead to negative consequences. The time to go over what has been said and to do an appropriate amount of
mulling is probably after the training especially after you have had the opportunity to hear the teacher out and trying to implement their suggested solution.
That's a pretty short set of conclusions on a fairly broad topic but I hope you find it useful; in short, your passport to happiness and ongoing success might well be in the form of simply saying "Hai!"*
* "Right!", "Got it!", "Thank you!", "I understand" etc are also fully acceptable alternatives.
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