Kangeiko

By

Going straight at a thing is a very important part of the training of the ‘Ways’. One aspect of this is to practise under unfavourable conditions deliberately.

Suppose you’re a poet – one day in the middle of winter you should get up at half past three, throw open the windows and, without any heating, write some poetry. If you are an archer, do the same thing. If you are a painter do the same, although your hand is blue with cold.

Cold training in judo used to be at about quarter to five in the midwinter, and it went on for a month. Well, it is very cold but it teaches you one thing. If you are very cold your body will only be sixty per-cent efficient, but you can make it sixty per-cent efficient. It is very, very cold. The windows are thrown open, it’s five in the morning and your body is very cold – frozen.

You have to practise judo, but there are many things you can’t do. You keep missing the timing and you stub your toes.

But if you can keep your awareness and calm and know that your body is only sixty per-cent efficient but you use that sixty per-cent to the full, that’s a great advantage in life later on.

People who haven’t been through that training are not efficient at all. They have no ability when the conditions are not right. They say, ‘Oh, what can you do in cold like this?’ They collapse completely.

But if you have done that training you can do something. And the same applies when you are ill or injured.

Similar Posts

  • Run-up

    By

    To deliver the cricket ball, the bowler has to make a long run-up. He runs towards the wicket, and then bowls the ball. With this method, he can make it fly much faster than anyone can do from a standing position. Similarly, the golfer needs a backswing for his drive, and a boxer needs some…

  • Efficiency of the heart

    By

    Dr. Kano, the founding father of judo, put forward what he called the ‘principle of highest efficiency’ as one of the central pillars of his system. He used to give illustrations in the physical field which are familiar to all students of judo; for instance, unnecessary force should not be used in making a throw,…

  • Tigers and rabbits

    By

    In our western sports, and in a good many other things too, the tigers won’t play with the rabbits. But in budo, however much of a tiger a man is – he’s in the club team, perhaps in the county team, perhaps in the national team, and practises like mad – he always gives twenty…

  • Irrelevancies

    By

    When I was training in Japan, I knew a senior judo man who was expert in groundwork newaza, and especially armlocks. He was a small thin man, with very supple and wiry legs, and he could always somehow thread one through the gaps and wind it round the other man’s arm. Then he would put…

  • Special duties

    By

    Foreign tourists often say how safe they feel in the cities of Japan. The police seem to be everywhere; you walk or drive for five minutes, and you are sure to see a policeman, in his blue uniform and white belt. That he has a gun is noticed by British tourists but not by others;…