Aikido as an Elite Sport

To help improve his golf swing Tiger Woods reputedly used to hit hundreds of  golf balls a night into the dark without seeing where they went . This is called 'error free learning' and is just one of the many 

techniques used by elite athletes to help improve their performance. Today sports teams and institutes routinely employ specialist coaches for specific activities and increasingly a skill acquisition specialist is often part of the team. How to learn a new skill and how that skill performs under the stress of competition is important to the athletes, their teams and even national pride.

There are many similarities between striving for excellence in the martial arts and elite sport. I am somewhat privy to both worlds through my professional work as researcher in elite sports monitoring. Many good things about traditional practice were affirmed for me, a few things were easy extensions and just the act of naming why certain things are done a certain way was helpful too. 

Quite a few new ideas were helpful, though some I'm not quite ready to use in my aikido practice. I hope the following bag of ideas might be as interesting to you as they were to me when they gave me  the odd 'aha' moment. 

The Development of Specialist Skills

Scientists and talent scouts have long understood that specialised skills are developed over a long period of time and through rigorous training and a diversity of experience. Diversity is often gained whilst an athlete is in developmental stage through an exposure to a broad base of different sports prior to specialisation. Specialisation in a skill is then developed in order to gain mastery of a particular sport. Early experiences are among the most powerful contributing factors in long-term mastery of a skill

 and can shorten that time significantly. The scientific literature suggests that around 4,000-10,000 hours is generally required to gain expertise.

Doing the math on the minimum time to mastery of ~5,000 hours. If you are training a 2hr classes twice a week for 50 weeks of the year  its going to take about 25yrs get there, compares well with the often cited "25 year technique". 

Early experiences are powerful, as instructors we must be careful to give our best to new students (even though the revolving door of new students is frustrating) and to provide plenty of diversity.  Fortunately the aikido syllabus as something of a modern sogo bujutsu (composite martial art) is already rich and varied  and might provide the diversity of experience within a single school.

Learning and tradition

Modern sports used to be highly bound in tradition and coaches were often successful sports stars themselves, tending to teach the way that they were taught.   Certainly that was the experience in Australia until the formation of the Australian institute of Sport and the state based institutes that were developed to provide added information of modern research. Out of this some old ways of learning sports have been reinforced and others fundamentally changed.

Martial arts are tradition based and thus markedly similar in that respect. Some would argue that the traditional arts have been through the cauldron of battlefield success as a scientific (darwinian) method of improvement. Others feel that competition (e.g.MMA) have also been able to inform on best practice. Where does aikido sit in this? Preserving the battlefield of success practices or drawing on modern innovations like the systema method and ukemi specialists like Donoan Waite?

Training Practices

In modern sport the relationship between structured training and competition varies somewhat. There are strengthening and conditioning aspects and specific skill based practices. Some skill based 

practices are un-pressured and some are game based that are designed to broaden the skill base.Its a widely held maxim that variability in training leads to more robust skill development and hence better performance.

Much of what is done in the dojo is drills that fit the requirements of the above practices. Naturally students ask 'but this wouldn't work in the street' . Just like a footballer doing dodge and weave drills and tackle bag work - its not meant to work. Being able to separate what we do into what is game (the street) based and what isn't at a cognitive level helps us understand our own practice. 

Blocked vs. Random Drills

Blocked drills are the name given to repetitive exercises performed over and over as a core practice of learning a skill while random drills are just that, and have a lot more variability in them. While the evidence in favour of blocked drills for early learning of a skill is overwhelming recent studies have found they may actually hinder progress at higher levels.

The studies have found that single focus, same task drills may engender the athlete with a false perception of expertise through the comfort of drills they have been doing for years and can take short cuts in.

 By contrast random, multiple task, multiple focus drills lead athletes to having a poorer perception of their ability but they actually perform better. It is thought that it encourages better focus for higher level athletes as it keeps the cognitive load high.

In my own school we have 20mins of waza performed to a rhythmic count. Its a great way to get in sync and learn the basic moves and increase the repetitions quickly.  Its famous for seniors sleep time, losing focus and mentally nodding off in. Its classic blocked learning which leads to quick success but hindering higher level learning. Multiple repetitions of incorrectly performed footwork (in particular Maruyama sensei's moon shadow lizard legs) that occur in several waza will see 50 repetitions of incorrect movement before paired practice begins. The student will be very lucky to not be going backwards in some aspects. Other schools that focus on kihon (blocked learning) for a long time seem to produce powerful yet wooden aikidoka that struggle to evolve beyond the kihon and just get stuck.

Teaching Skills

"To hear is to forget , to see is to remember and to do is to understand" is I think a Confucian quote that sums up learning methodologies and today is backed up by good science.

Its sage advice and a healthy reminder to beware teachers that talk to much,  demonstrate only a few times and leave too little time for practice.

We live in a world of visual, verbal and kinesthetic communicators. Although different people favour different methods to communicate, both the trainer and athlete need to be using the same medium. Good coaches and trainers understand this and adapt to that of the athlete. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can be used to assist in discovery.

In some schools the instructor just demonstrates and doesn't talk and while its great for the visual learner not so  good for the auditory learner. The instructor that grabs everyone's wrist is great for the kinaesthetic learner.

Demonstrations

Demonstrations for learning a for new movement are a great way to teach and a staple of any sporting context.  Demonstrations should highlight cues for athletes and provide positive feedforward for learning. Watching others perform is also a great learning tool.

Demonstration by sensei is probably the most prominant method of learning aikido.  Our students also get a big kick out of watching sempai and kohai doing tanninzugake/randori/jiyuwaza with more than a few 'aha' moments