I don't know about you, but I don't wear shoes all that often. Having lived in Japan, it's easy to abandon shoes inside the house. Obviously, I don't wear shoes in the dojo. In fact, I never have really liked shoes (it being, admittedly, quite difficult to find shoes to fit my feet properly). Now, after reading Adam Sternbergh's article "You Walk Wrong," I understand better why.
Most beginners come to our dojo--even those with extensive martial arts experience--unable to walk properly. The feet don't connect up through ankles and knees to the hips to allow for a natural stride. Since the best martial arts are all based around using our bipedal body efficiently, this results in a substantial initial roadblock. It simply isn't possible to learn to swing a stick effectively until you have learned to walk.
But why were folks in New Jersey having so many difficulties learning what we all thought we had learned back when we were yearlings? I couldn't recall my fellow students in Japan moving with such awkwardness. I've always attributed their more integrated and centered walking to the fact that many were raised sitting on the floor, which increases joint flexibility and hip strength (it would be interesting to see what the current crop of Japanese koryu students are doing--many young people today are raised in houses with chairs). But I think the prevalence of shoes in our modern Western culture is also part of the puzzle (not that the Japanese would be caught dead barefoot outdoors, but they do spend a lot of time with their shoes off).
So, if you are looking for ways to improve your training and you haven't done any barefoot walking lately, I urge you to try. Pay attention and feel how your foot is connecting with the ground and the motions you go through to keep balanced with one leg striding out in front of the other. You might find yourself wanting to try some of the new shoe types Sternbergh profiles in his article. I know I'll be looking into them!
]]>I'm going to use this blog (more on that in a bit) to share preliminary thoughts, not yet fully fledged ideas, and quick hints that might aid your training or teaching. As you'll have undoubtedly noticed, things move along slowly at Koryu.com, largely because--while ideas come fast and furious--the time to organize and present them to the standards to which I have become accustomed eludes me.
So to start things off, here is a list of things to keep in mind when training in the koryu. I compiled it when Meik & I first started accepting students after our return to the States. On the one hand, I knew students really wouldn't have any frame of reference to work from. And in fact, virtually every one of the experienced martial artists who have joined our dojo has told us, several years after starting, that their training has been nothing like they expected it to be, and that their previous experiences did not prepare them for what they encountered. On the other, koryu is not to be "spoon fed" (one of my big objections to spreading too much information on the Internet--training in the koryu is not supposed to be easy, convenient, or comfortable).
At different levels of your training, each item on the list will have a different meaning. The challenge is to keep all five of these in mind when you are in the dojo, and figure out what they mean for you right now.