Notes on Working Drills for Jissen

This is just an easy list of guide­lines that will help you get the most out of your kobo and jis­sen prac­tice. I fig­ured it would be good to tidy up my series on drilling meth­ods with a con­cise list­ing of what I think are the most impor­tant points, in no par­tic­u­lar order.

You’ll find that they aren’t all applic­a­ble to every prac­tice, but they will all be use­ful at one time or another. Think of this a tip sheet, and refer back to these points peri­od­i­cally as you use kobo for practice.

Trust

Of the high­est impor­tance in prac­tic­ing with a resis­tant oppo­nent is the cre­ation of a safe envi­ron­ment. This allows all part­ners the abil­ity to explore within the bounds of the exer­cise. This is the yaku­soku (promise) part of “yaku­soku sotai.”

If you can’t trust your part­ner to do as promised, you are going to have a hard time relax­ing enough to prac­tice as needed. Cooperative resis­tance would be a good way to describe the proper atti­tude for kobo prac­tice. Just don’t go too easy on each other. Your part­ner trusts you to offer real­is­tic resis­tance so he can improve his skills.

Partnering

Any prac­tice you do with a part­ner is very depen­dent on that part­ner. In order to fully develop your skills, you must prac­tice with a vari­ety of part­ners in terms of phys­i­cal type, spar­ring style, skill level, etc. Failing to do so is set­ting your­self up for failure.

Do Many Short Sets

Don’t do kobo all night. Use it as a tool to work on a spe­cific skill and then move on to more dynamic prac­tices, such as free(er) spar­ring. Too much kobo leads to hyper­sug­gestibil­ity, habit­u­al­iza­tion of pre­dictable move­ment pat­terns, and unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions, among other things. Any kobo prac­tice should be bal­anced and checked against “live” resistance.

In a per­fect world, kobo prac­tice would gen­er­ally be used as a diag­nos­tic tool for dis­cov­er­ing and cor­rect­ing weak­nesses. The instruc­tor would make note of some hitch in each student’s per­for­mance and then design the kobo pro­gres­sions to use for the next prac­tice. If the kobo prac­tice reveals some prob­lem that wasn’t appar­ent ear­lier, a skilled coach can spot this and make adjust­ments to the drill. After a few rep­e­ti­tions each of two or three pro­gres­sively more-challenging drills, the skills would then be prac­ticed in actual jis­sen (or a lim­ited jis­sen game). The coach could then cri­tique the spar­ring to deter­mine the next lesson’s drill progression.

Get Down to Get Up

Just like good dance music, you must bring it down before you turn it up. In order to man­age the anx­i­ety of learn­ing new things and fac­ing greater chal­lenges, it’s impor­tant to step back first. Then baby-step back up to and beyond the cur­rent level, into the next. This is some­times coun­ter­in­tu­itive since we feel like we aren’t mak­ing progress unless we are mov­ing for­ward. However, it’s eas­ier to move for­ward once we have gained a lit­tle bit of momen­tum first. Starting off eas­ier than nec­es­sary gives us the momen­tum to work harder.

Incremental Progression

Incremental pro­gres­sion is the means of back­ing up to move for­ward. Each drill builds off of the pre­vi­ous drill and leads log­i­cally to the next. Every drill has sev­eral vari­ables, and it works best to increase them in sub­tle incre­ments, one at a time.

Examples of drill vari­ables for incre­men­tal increase are:

• Speed of motion
• Power of strikes
• Complexity of move­ments, num­ber of steps
• Drill sophis­ti­ca­tion via rule manipulation
• Time allot­ment or stip­u­la­tion of timing
• Number of partners
• Number of chick­ens on the court

Reality Checking

Kobo is not real (and nei­ther is jis­sen). In order to keep our­selves grounded in actu­al­ity, we need to occa­sion­ally do things that may seem to run counter to the notion of kobo — such as actu­ally hit­ting our partners.

For one exam­ple, if you are the defen­sive part­ner, it is good prac­tice to some­times sim­ply take the hit rather than avoid­ing. Why? Two rea­sons: you need to know what it’s like to get hit, and you need to make sure your part­ner is offer­ing you hon­est resis­tance. If you avoid as expected each time, there is no way to be sure that your part­ner isn’t cheat­ing you and no way to pre­pare for the even­tu­al­ity that you screw up in a live envi­ron­ment. So, my rec­om­men­da­tion is to sim­ply take the hit at least two or three times for each drill.

How do you take so many hits with­out injur­ing your­self? You learn to absorb impact. If you’re going to be fight­ing (and even if you’re not), this is an impor­tant abil­ity to have. Everyone will be faced with impact dur­ing their lives. Impact from bump­ing into things, trip­ping, get­ting punched in the face, etc. Learning to absorb the incom­ing force, rather than brac­ing against it, will help pro­tect you from injury when you get hit in “the real world.” If you’ve built a trust­ing rela­tion­ship with your part­ners, this is the best pos­si­ble time to learn how to do this.

Don’t assume, or your ass is “ume.” Ume is a sour, pick­led plum that Japanese peo­ple love to think for­eign­ers hate (but they’re actu­ally really tasty). Remember to real­ity check your kobo prac­tice, or you’ll end up ingrain­ing assump­tions in with your skills.

Workshop

Kobo is prac­tice, so don’t treat it like some­thing carved in stone. This is not the time to be con­cerned with form or wor­ry­ing about doing it “right.” Workshop and exper­i­ment. Explore with your part­ners the var­i­ous options that are and are not avail­able to you. There is more than one way to eat a baby, and while I tend to pre­fer them in soup, I don’t just throw all my babies in the pot. Sometimes I BBQ them, and some­times I’ll try putting one on a sand­wich. I try to get together with friends often and exchange favorite baby recipes. I do the same with kobo.

Be Creative

Taido is all about cre­ativ­ity. Doing the same old kobo results in the same old jis­sen. My favorite Einstein quote is “insan­ity is doing the same thing and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.” This is how most peo­ple prac­tice kobo. Try some­thing dif­fer­ent. Build your own kobo rou­tines. Adapt old rou­tines. Be cre­ative and get dif­fer­ent results from what you’re used to.

Both Sides, Both Roles

You must make sure you prac­tice on both sides and in both roles. This is self-evident, but I see peo­ple assum­ing that prac­tic­ing one side means they can do the other by magic. I see it all the time, and I see these peo­ple los­ing in jis­sen. Granted, most peo­ple favor hidari kamae in jis­sen (and every­thing else), but that is no excuse for build­ing weak­nesses into your skills when you have the chance to prac­tice both sides. Half-assed prac­tice makes you a total ass in performance.

And Done!

So there you are — my list of kobo tips. Nothing new, noth­ing Earth-shattering. I don’t expect the Nobel Prize in Taido for writ­ing this, but it might be help­ful. Happy birthday.