Today I Learned...

A conversation I had at a dojo party, with a senior student who was on break and had never trained with me:

him: I can kick above my head.
me: That's cool. I can't anywhere near high.
him: yes, you can.
me: no, I really can't.
him: not if you think like that you can't.

now, what I meant was "if you tried to move my leg that high right now, you would tear several muscles in half and I would be crippled for life." And what he meant was "you might be capable of kicking that high, but you'll never achieve it if you convince yourself your current state is your limit. stretch frequently and with the expectation you will do better every time, and who knows how far you'll go." They're both true statements, but the form of them that came out was not productive.* This is only the most obvious example of a conversation I had a lot at the dojo, in which someone told me to be more flexible while never ever considering that something besides me should change.** It went beyond fighting fire with fire and all the way to attempting to teach an object it was not immovable by being an irresistible force.

I would believe that there's a personality type this works for. But it's not mine.

*Just to be clear: this was his fault. Not mine. His.

**This was not unique to me. I was profoundly uncomfortable with their habit of telling tween girls that if they relaxed and stopped fighting push ups, they would enjoy them.

So I quit martial arts last week, but this has yet up with my brain calendar, which still thinks Saturdays and Wednesdays are SACRED and anything I want to do must be considered in terms of what classes I would miss. My brain is also perpetually confused by the fact that I'm not trimming my nails to the quick every three days.

Semi-related: if you call a school for sick children and tell them you can tutor high school math and science, they will call you back very quickly.

I always got angry watching movies claim that the heroine could win in battle against much larger, stronger opponents because she "used their energy against them." That is bullshit. Training is useful, but given equal amounts of training, the stronger person will win. It turns out I was wrong about this (although I was right that for the movements they were showing, size would be the deciding factor). What I am learning now is the subset of martial arts movements for which 1. if you do them perfectly, relative strength is a complete non-issue, and 2. long limbs are actually a disadvantage. Which is awesome, because I am female and no matter how hard I work out I will not be getting any taller, nor will my muscle mass surpass any but the weakest man. There's a reason not every short person is doing this is that you do have to do the techniques perfectly, and they're pretty difficult.

When I learn these, my training partners of course make it easy on me, mostly by not struggling out of it when they could. It would be impossible to learn if they didn't. I've just reached the point where I'm maybe actually doing some of them properly and in combat-useful time. Except I can't know for sure because executing them properly feels *exactly* like my partner just giving it to me. If you're doing it perfectly, they either literally can't offer opposing force because of the position of their joints, or don't want to because it would seriously injure them. A properly executed take down feels like nothing. I was reliably dropping a 6'+ 220 pound man without any effort, and he assures me there is nothing he could have done to get out of it*, but it doesn't feel like I accomplished anything because it doesn't feel like I did anything.

Also, there's a subset of techniques that can only be done against people with longer limbs than you, to which I say SUCK IT TALL PEOPLE.

*On the right side. On the left, it took me a while to set up.

My tiny ninja's are exclusively female and fall in the 11-14 age range, but recently I worked with a different class that was mostly male, ranged from 6-13, and probably had a lower average SES. This has led me to the realization that martial arts is good at teaching kids two very different things: how to find their voice/stand up for themselves/assert that they deserve space/have self confidence/leadership/etc, and respect for authority/how listen to orders/temporarily subsume their individuality to a larger cause/how to respect when others take up your time/sit down and shut up/followship/etc. You have to admit, that's a pretty neat set of life skills for one activity to teach, especially when you consider that we're also teaching them left from right.

Individual results may vary, and I'm working from a small sample size, but I'd say I do a lot more voice finding in my middle school girls' class, and a lot more respect mah authoritay in the elementary + middle school co-ed class. I find the voice finding way more rewarding, but I think everyone enjoys coaxing a kid to kick harder over yelling at a kid to stop kicking other children in the head after class. You don't have to be all mean, and success is more tangible.

But it still makes me nervous. To explain why, I need to take a major digression to A Song of Ice and Fire, of which I have just finished book two (A Clash of Kings). One of the main characters is Arya Stark. I started disliking her fairly quickly early on because we're so clearly supposed to love her. Arya is awesome and eats bugs and plays with swords, unlike her helpless sister Sansa who only cares about romantic stories and dancing and marriage. Sansa is clearly a stupid girl and we hate her.

But I think Arya's sheer awesomeness may be blinding people to the fact that she, for example, has people who annoy her killed. Or casually kills a guard who was on her side in the war, but would have stopped her from stealing some horses. If one of the not-awesome male characters killed someone on their own side, we'd find them monstrous, but it's Arya, so it's cool.

The thing is, given the choice, I'd much rather be Arya or have her as my daughter, than be or birth Sansa, who is an idiot.* But as a teacher, I seem to prefer teaching the Sansas to fight to teaching the Aryas to seriously, stop stabbing people, or at least do so more strategically. Which is, in some ways, reinforcing the value of being Sansa. Having spent some time complaining that my high school resented me because they had a saving people thing and I didn't need to be saved, this feels hypocritical. I worry that I enjoy teaching my girls violence because they're so cute when they do it, and that by teaching them a skill that requires cuteness to be socially acceptable, I'm inadvertently reinforcing the cuteness>

Digression the third: One of my mom's better parenting moments was when she told me (age five or six) that you don't get strong, assertive women from cute, compliant girls, and my parents were going for the strong assertive woman. I forget what the context was, my first guess is I mouthed off to a teacher, and I think but don't remember for sure that the lesson was "seriously, don't do that one thing you just did, but keep the spirit that led to it, and if you screw up again, no biggie." Seven or eight years later she added some subtlety to this, noting that the costs for being too assertive are immediate and obvious, but the costs for not being assertive enough are dispersed and delayed. So better to start off too assertive, because you'll correct faster and suffer less in the long term, even if right now it feels like you're being punished.

So I want to create an environment where my students can not only become strong and assertive, but one where it's safe to overshoot, while at the same time remembering that assertiveness and aggression are not the same thing. Without letting them hurt their fellow students, physically or emotionally. And still be fun to teach. While coping with the fact that they still don't know left from right.


*This is false. Were I an actual noblewoman I would undoubtedly prefer my daughter be like Sasnsa, because the culture will crush Arya and she would bring shame upon our family. But as a modern woman, go Arya!