Wednesday, May 27, 2015

On Romanticizing the Art - Master

I've wanted to write a post like this almost for as long as I have been writing my blog.  Romanticizing the art is in my mind a huge topic and I'll post from time to time on different aspects as they come into focus.  My audience for this foray into romanticization is going to be narrow but I've learned some hard lessons from romanticizing the art and my hope in writing this post is to better understand those mistakes and pitfalls and to hopefully prevent others from making the same mistakes I made.

Let's take a look at the word romanticize - and be clear on its meaning.  To romanticize something is, according to Google to: "deal with or describe in an idealized or unrealistic fashion; make (something) seem better or more appealing than it really is."  Nothing in Taekwon-Do is more romanticized as the title and rank Master, save potentially by the title Grand Master. 

The problem with "Master" is that it is a word full of connotation and in Taekwon-Do is both a rank and a title - so in a way it has double the amount of connotation as it normally does.  It is rank, in that the title comes at a specific dan ranking.  This is problematic.  First, not every individual who gets to a dan rank is the same.  Of course the same can be said about 1st dan, but the title of "black belt", I would argue has a compartmentalized connotation that is unique to the martial arts.  Its main origin and meaning stems from the martial arts, so it is insulated from external connotation. "Master" carries a connotation from the non martial arts world and more importantly, means many things that the founders probably did not intend.  Let's not forget that Sabeom-nim is correctly translated as "honored instructor" which contains nothing regarding a proficiency level.  Gwanjang-nim or school owner / highest rank (note, not grand master) is also lacking in a proficiency level on the language of origin side.  Yet here many of us are, getting hung up over what amounts to be a mistranslated title.  To come full circle, Master is simply a title - since it is given arbitrarily with a rank, but this is where the connotations come in.  Some see Master as being fully proficient in a thing.  Some go so far as to see a true "Master" as being someone who can make no mistake in the art.  In some cases, people genuinely believe that even if they have achieved the rank of master they should shy away from it.  They exude a humility that is saintly.  That's ok with me, even if I don't agree, I ultimately believe that you can never be too humble.  Others though take the rank of Master and wield it like a weapon, oppressing students and committing any number of wrongs in the name of being top dog.  This is unacceptable and is clearly a romanticization of the term Master. 

My personal experiences with the romanticization of Master saw me lose one of the most influential martial artists in my life to the romanticized notion of Master.  Here was a man I would come to learn didn't want to test for 4th because he felt that no one would put the effort in that he would to attain the rank of master, but yet they'd be promoted to the same rank as him.  He was exceptional, and maybe was accurate about his abilities and potential training regiments, or maybe was an ego maniac; regardless he was operating from a romanticized concept of Master, and one that was sadly, not at all accurate.  He left, a martyr to his own imagined cause.  I have no doubt that he wasn't the only black belt ever to fall victim to their own sense of rank and title. 

Years and years later when I would find myself late in my time as 3rd dan with the green light to test, I found myself with all kinds of doubt - in my eyes I was no where near as good at TKD as this person who shunned testing and walked away entirely. How could I possibly be worthy of potentially having the title when he didn't test?  It wasn't easy; I tormented myself and held myself to a standard which was so high -- too high, but thankfully in the end, I came to my senses.  I realized many things were wrong with my outlook on the art, and over time, my thought process changed and I could embrace the challenge of my 4th dan test (in front of our patriarch) and the title it held.  Later I realized that it was the deeper self awareness that was the true accomplishment of the entire ordeal.  In thinking about this post, I spoke to another friend and master who had a similar tale of self awareness as his indicator that it was time.  There is nothing unworldly about a 4th dan and above, in my organization or any org for that matter, with exception for those absolute top members that date back to Korea and the art's inception.  I feel pretty confident in saying that my peers and the instructors that came before me would say that the title of master simply means that we put in a lot of hours, and a lot of dedication to both the physical and mental aspects of the art.  It means that the art resonated with us, and we found a way to keep coming back, to keep practicing and to keep refining and to keep thinking.  Finally we give back, we share our love of the art and our knowledge of it. 

This isn't a post to diminish the significance of any rank (be it 4th for my group, or 7th or 8th for others), but rather is an attempt to view the title without romanticization.  There is nothing wrong with accepting the title of master and it should be a huge source of pride if you have made it in the art for that long.  Just don't make it out to be something bigger than it is, some impossible position which grants incredible powers -- because it isn't that.  In the end you're always still a student of the art, no matter how good you are and no matter how long you have practiced it and that equalizes us all.  


Tuesday, May 5, 2015

States of Learning and Forms

I'd like to talk for a minute about what I call the three states of form execution.  I am hoping that this will drum up some good discussion on what is actually going on in our minds when we do forms.  It is my sincere hope that if you find this insightful, that it will help you understand how to really get better at forms.  The original draft of this article featured my own names for each phase.  I need to thank my wife who suggested that there probably is academic naming for these phases and that I seek them out.  I'd also like to thank Deb Waterman; a fantastic psychologist in West Chester Pennsylvania for cluing me in to the right keywords to get my research started.    

In this post I want to share my ideas on what exactly goes on in the mind of a forms practitioner.  There is a consistency within the mental process when a martial arts practitioner starts to learn a form, learns a form, and "masters" a form.  I am going to use two of the most popular learning theories to describe the process that we learn and execute our form. 

Essentially what I see is a blending of the Fitts/Posner (1967) paradigm of learning with The Learning Hierarchy (Haring et al 1978).  Fitts and Posner wrote a book describing how the human mind learns physical skills.  They break the learning down into three parts, cognitive, associative and autonomous phases.  They argue that in the cognitive phase, performing the skill is slow, and inconsistent.  In the associative phase, some of the skill is automatic, but some of it still requires heavy manual cognition.  Finally the autonomous phase has the performer doing the skill automatically, with no cognitive thought necessary.  They further state that as you move through the phases your accuracy and skill at executing the skill increases.  The learning hierarchy is an academic theory that seems to take the Fitts and Posner theory and breaks it down further.  The key distinction is a fourth level granting a more granular look between the associative and autonomous phases in Fitts and Posner.  The Learning Hierarchy's adaption stage takes the cognitive stage of Fitts and Posner and adds that it is here, after the skill has been automatic, that the user can then adapt the skill to do other things. 

This blending of a physical and academic theory makes sense to me, because although the forms and the martial arts themselves are physical art, the forms specifically act as a kind of a building block of the art, in much the way letters act as the building blocks of language.  Because of this, there are aspects that the more motor learning oriented Fitts and Posner paradigm overlook that are actually covered in the more academic Learning Hierarchy.  I was not able to find Fitt's and Posner's actual writings, but there were tons of websites dedicated to the paradigm so I am stating up front that I have only read other people's summaries of the actual piece - for the most part though, those summaries are consistent.  I will include the sources of my research at the end of this post.

The first phase is the cognitive / acquisition phase.  Everyone, no matter how good they are at forms and no matter how aware they are of the phases of the forms, goes through the cognitive phase when they are learning a new form.  During this phase, you are working on the gross motor skills of the form and trying to memorize it in a listing.  By that, I mean that you are just trying to get through from start position to end position and you are concerned with little else.  Your mind is simply focused on getting from point A to point B.  During this time, students will perform all kinds of "tells" that prove they are in this state.  They will look at their feet, or look up as if a picture of the next move is on the ceiling.  Another tell of the cognitive stage is frequent freezes - because the course of the form - the sequence of the movements have not been solidified in the mind.  I find that a student spends an amount of time in the cognitive phase based on how comfortable and experienced they are with forms in general.  I have seen learning phases last about an hour, and I've seen them last a few months.  This phase typically ends for everyone at some point though and leads to the next phase.

The second phase of form execution is the associative / fluency stage (though, I believe that in regards to the Learning Hierarchy fluency and generalization occur too near to each other to be notably different).  I believe associative is where most people are with their known forms at any given time (given they have left the cognitive stage).  In associative mode, the focus changes from "what are the moves" to "what is going on" in the form.  Kiaps, stances, techniques, become more pronounced and better executed and accurate, and head and eye movement come into play during the associative mode.  It is during the associative mode that most people will suddenly ask "what is this move supposed to be doing" even though they have been doing that move for some time!  Although some people will ask these sorts of questions during the cognitive phase, my experience is that these questions come later more often than not.  It makes sense, once we get past the anxiety of forgetting the moves we free up the space in our minds to focus on what exactly it is we are doing.  A good tell of the associative mode is what I consider the "lost form" phenomena.  Lost form is akin to driving somewhere and realizing that you don't remember the actual "going".  You remember getting in your car, and you remember aspects of your trip (the guy who cut you off and the slow dump truck you got stuck behind for a few lights) but ultimately there are entire portions of your trip that you have no memory of "seeing".  When I used to compete, this was how I performed my forms in competition.  If I was lucky, I'd remember executing the first move - but I really never remembered anything after that.  Instructors also know that a student is in associative mode when they give a correction on something very specific (like a low rank chambering wrong) and on the very next instance the student continues to make a mistake.  There is a misconception, I believe that corrections are hard after so many passes of a form because the form has become "ingrained".  I believe this is just the associative phase doing its job.  Nothing is really ingrained - if it were, people wouldn't ever forget their forms after a hiatus.  Associative stage is like auto pilot and we're used to putting our mental feet up, and letting it do the flying. 

Associative mode is both a blessing and a curse.  It's a blessing, because it is where most of us are, at any given time with a form we "know".  We're able to execute based on our actual ability in associative mode, so if you are good at forms, you are going to be good when you are in the associative phase.  The very nature of associative mode though makes it a hard phase to improve in.  

There are two primary pitfalls that occur in associative mode and those are distraction and complacency.  Since associative mode allows us to do our form with a freedom from heavy thought and gives our mind room to think - it can be filled with things you are not supposed to think about during your TKD training.  Paying the bills, homework, "what game I'm going to play on my game system when I get home" - these are all possible distractions that can invade your associative mode.

Complacency itself comes in two forms.  First, you have the totally empty mind.  This isn't necessarily bad, but is more of a loss of the "heartbeat" of the form - and often times is place where a person suddenly converts one form into another.  As we are operating in auto pilot in this phase, it makes sense that if our mind is totally clear we have the potential to go from one form's transition to another form's because complacency has made us unaware of where we are.  The classic example of this is the end of Dan-gun being executed at the end of To-San.  For a high yellow, To-San isn't as practiced as Dan-Gun is and in associative mode with complacency, it is easy to slip from one similar transition to another.

The second complacency is a lot worse though and is sadly the place that forms go to die.  Associative mode with complacency is sometimes the end all of forms for a practitioner.  In their mind they have the form "down" and only need to perform the form for maintenance of memorization.  This is form death, as there is never any improvement in the form, and rarely is there any actual progress to the next phase, which is where adaptation of the skills from the form create the basis for fluency in the art. 

The associative phase isn't inherently bad - quite the contrary, it's the normal place for forms.  It's just that within the normal, there is risk of bad habits.  Where I disagree with both of my researched learning methods is that you progress, naturally, to the final stage of actual learning.  In my experience as a martial arts instructor most people do not progress past the associative level naturally - as both methods seem to suggest.  It is my opinion that you have to actively push back against the "auto pilot" feeling that comes in the associative mode to actually break through to the third phase.  “Am I deep enough in my stance”, “do I have timing and power” and questions like this will help you unlock access to the third level of forms execution which is what Fitts and Posner call the Autonomous stage and what the Learning Hierarchy calls the adaption stage. 

The autonomous stage is to go one step further beyond the associative.  In my experience the autonomy stage is simply the associative stage with a heightened sense of self awareness.  In autonomy you move through a form like you are in auto pilot from a listing stand point.  Although you are not thinking about "what" in regards to the moves - you are thinking very strongly about the "how" of every move and contrary to the position of Fitts and Posner - these thoughts actually power you into doing a good form, instead of distracting you.  I don't believe being in auto pilot is ever someone's maximum potential, because I believe there is too much that requires complete, manual control when it comes to a martial art form.   

I made a mistake on my 5th dan test on my first form (the first thing I had to do for my test).  I was exhausted as my son had picked the night before my test to start teething.  I inadvertently let myself fall into associative mode and I made a simple mistake.  Instead of turning 180 degree to execute the 2nd move of Choi-Yong I stepped forward.  I did every technique of the form correct, but because of this mistake I ended facing the wrong direction.  I was furious with myself and I instantly realized that I did not remember actually executing any of the movements of Choi-Yong seconds earlier.  My next form was Ul-Ji, a form that until that moment I didn't like very much.  As I was furious and aware of that fury, I knew I was opening myself up to a complete meltdown as fury is no way to handle a stressful test.  I formed a plan, to let all the fury out on the first move of Ul-ji, because there is a natural kiap point there.  I was also aware that I would not make another mistake by lapsing into auto pilot.  I ended up doing what I felt was the best Ul-Ji of my career to that point.  I've also never looked at Ul-Ji with the same lack of confidence after my performance on my test.  To this day, I remember executing every move of that form.  I remember throwing what felt like an absolutely amazing side kick early on, and I remember over spinning on my jump back kick.  All of it - is clear in my head. 

My findings on Fitts's and Posner's autonomy were not clear on whether actual adaptation of the skill take place in the autonomy section.  Some of the summaries I read suggested that Fitts and Posner include adaptation of a skill in their third step but some were less clear.  The Learning Hierarchy does account for this phenomena in their "adaption" stage.  It makes sense then to me that people who learn to push against the associative phase and access the autonomous stage make vast improvements in their form execution quickly.  They begin to see the applications of the moves, because they aren't just moving through a sequence of martial arts techniques but are blocking attacks and striking opponents in their minds.  Unlike the person who feels they know their form in the associative phase, the self awareness of the adaptation stage is where the real mastery is.  In my opinion the autonomy stage is not always sustainable, but when you get there, you know it, and it tends to be memorable. As one martial artist once described it to me "the adaption stage is like a higher state of mind".  That is really how the adaption stage feels.     

This is the progression that I go through when I learn a form.  A lot of my practice time is spent at autonomous level, but I drop down to associative mode more than I'd like.  I think it is important for us to understand where we are in our own personal learning when it comes to each form.  I think in doing so we can unlock a higher (autonomy / adaptation stage) of performance and that - is the precise way to get a true understanding of the form and the art in general. 


Sources:
http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/learning-process-when-acquiring-motor-skills-similar-for-all-individuals

http://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/general-academic/instructional-hierarchy-linking-stages-learning-effective-in

http://www.topvelocity.net/3-stages-of-learning/

http://psydog.com/the-learning-hierarchy/