Re-thinking Break it All to Bits.
Two posts ago I was suggesting a schema for deconstructing your fighting in order to enable a systematic way of analysing and thus being able to improve your technique and abilities.
Following this post and in discussing it with my teacher I am thinking that this approach is not that useful or constructive. While the five by five schema may appeal to our analytic tenancies and is good to muse over while not on the training ground, it is simply too complex to be beneficial.
While at a certain level the martial arts can be an intellectual exercise it is firstly and primarily a physical one. The way we learn the martial arts is by slow and deliberate training and repetition. Understanding comes, but only after many hours spent at the pell and in practice. The need for analysing everything is simply unnecessary and overly complex.
I think it is important to be clear about what the student needs to work on. But only one thing at a time. All the other things, and there are always other things, will come in time, but only after there is progress in the first thing.
Understanding in the mind will come, but only after the physical lessons have been undertaken.
Cornelius Von Becke 