Train Slow to Learn Fast

I am constantly being asked the question,  “Why is it important to train slow?”  People want to know if  this really teaches us to defend ourselves? They also ask “Why not go fast and really simulate a real fight?” These are good questions and I want to address them here. So take a few minutes and follow me as I make an analogy to learning to drive a race car.

Lets say you want to be a NASCAR racer but you never drove a car before. You may want to drive fast and furious but first you have to take lessons. You now have to learn the to do the simple things like adjust your seat; put your seat-belt on; adjust your mirrors; start the car. To get on the road you step on the brake and put on your blinker. You shift into drive and you look over your shoulder and start to ease off the brake and out onto the empty road. You step off the brake and step slowly onto the gas peddle. NOW! when you are out on the road, do you step down on the gas peddle and go as fast as the car can move or do you get to know the car and feel the road underneath your tires?

As you slowly get use to the car and the road you can gradually speed up the car. But first your mind will be all over the place – watch out for other cars – watch out for people or kids – watch out for small animals. Your mind will be jumping around – break – gas – steering, a little to the right, now a little to the left to get the car to straighten out. You are looking for red lights, yellow lights etc… Stop signs pop out at you. Over time all these little things that you strain your brain to memorize to do become normal to the point where it is automatic and you can spend time on strategy of driving and less time worrying about every thing else how the car works or operates.

When you go to a school for car or motorcycle racing that they first sit you down and it will be mostly class room time and lecture before you ever get a chance to drive out onto the track or sit in one the cars. When you are ready to drive out onto the track, they will have you walk it on foot so they can talk and explain to you where it would be the best time to start downshifting and clutching into the turn and when and where to step on the gas coming out of the turn. They would show you where you would have the best chance of passing another car and where would be the worst places to pass another car. Once this is over they would have you go back  into the class room and discuss what you just saw and felt. By now because you went (SLOW) and first (WALKED) around the track, you got a chance to see every bump and dip on that track.

The next step is they put you into a car and they drive around the track in slow motion talking to you all the while you are driving. They give you commands and a set of instructions when to down shift and when you should break and when to step on the gas when to speed up and when not to speed up. You go around this track hundreds of times slowly until you can learn their safety methods and proper racing techniques so you wont become a danger to yourself and other drivers. (follow the rules of racing).

Now once this accomplished they bring other cars out onto track with you and your instructor communicates to these other cars by way of two way radio. They set up fake scenarios like you are actually racing but only done in very slow motion. They talk you through each maneuver you do until it becomes ingrained into your being and you can actually see and understand what they mean. Once they feel this has occurred you are allowed to have a mock (fake) race and they practice giving you instructions through a radio in your helmet while you are racing to see how you follow their directions under stress and how well you listen to them.

Jujutsu is a lot like racing a car. The rules in Jujutsu would are the concepts and principles of why things work and when they would work. We must understand that we are dealing with the human anatomy here and we don’t want to (Crash and Burn!) hurt our training partners or our selves. Always safety first should be in the forefront of your minds eye.

Most of the techniques are extremely dangerous and are designed for crippling and killing, you just cant do them fast with out learning how each technique really works first.  Each student must learn to go very slowly (to walk the race track) and learn all the proper methods and techniques , so that the brain and body can learn to move in the proper way. As you start to feel comfortable with the flow of the series of movements and with the  timing and angles then you can speed it up a little bit providing your workout partner knows how to go along with techniques you are applying to him/her.

Just by going slow it can really help you to be able to see more options. You will see  openings,  gaps and weakness in your opponents defense. If you should happen to get into a real bad situation with another person who has the same kind or set of special skills that you now posses, you will have a better chance to counter their attacks and go around their defense and win (stay alive).

When you first learn jujutsu you are learning things that go against the joints which if you go too fast can really over extend the joint or even worse break the joint and really hurt your workout partner.

There are three speeds I teach to all students:

• slow speed for learning,
• medium speed for practice,
• fast speed for fighting

If you train fast all the time you are actually slowing down your ability to learn and that is counterproductive. Also by going fast, you are promoting fear in yourself and in your training partners. By going fast you lose the ability of understanding what you are doing. By rushing through your techniques you can’t see the cool counter techniques that you can see when going slow. By going fast you concentrate to much on the end of the technique and miss the important things, like the beginning and the middle of what you are practicing.

Health wise by training fast is not to good for longevity. It raises your blood pressure and it hurts your joints. Also it taxes your nervous system. Yes you will be fast but over long periods of time with age creeping up on you, joints will start to wear out, your nerves will cause you to shake. Your Ki or Chi or Prana will go in different directions. From a healing point of view  I have learned to go very slow and take your time and this will produce better and safer results.

Going slow teaches us which way to go under pressure. By training fast we lose our sensitivity. I love what Bruce Lee, the founder of Jeet Kune Do, said in his movie “Enter the Dragon” talking to a young student he points his finger up and says,

“It’s like a finger pointing to the moon”

He then goes on to slap the student who was staring at his finger and says,

“Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory”

That pretty much says it all right there, but I feel it actually went right over every ones head. You see every one seems to concentrate on the finger (speed – lots of techniques) and they are missing the rest of the big picture, – All That Heavenly Glory. A real shame.

The Tai Chi people have it right. They know the importance of slow training.. So does the special operation groups in the military or law enforcement. They train really slow. When I first got an opportunity to watch and train the military, one of the instructors came over to me and said we train very slowly here so that we may learn more. I smiled and nodded in agreement with him and after I was finished training them they liked my methods of hand to hand. Not one person got injured and every one learned really effective techniques and had fun.

So remember, go slow, pay attention and do not miss all the heavenly glory. Train Slowly, train safely, train well.

Related posts:

1. Meeting of the Ketsugo Tribe April 2011
2. The Meaning of the Black Belt
3. Training for Sensitivity

Tagged as: joints, jujutsu, learning, locks, self defense, speed, training