Practice

"We ain't talkin' about a game, we talkin' about practice."

Wednesday was an interesting evening at karate for me, and how appropriate that the fortune cookie I opened that day before class read "There is no instructor better than practice."

With everyone lined up on the four sides of the club I knew once we had all been asked to sit down that there would at least be a portion of whatever was about to occur that featured Pete and I doing something, I also figured that I would get to enjoy the efforts of some of my other classmates.  That was not to be and Pete and I were the headlining act in a display of katas that we have to know for Saturday's test.

It was not so monumental in the moment but what I realized after, expecially after form four (Triumph) when I asked Logan if I had done the whole thing.  During it, my mind was blank and I'm fairly certain that was in my eyes.  I wasn't in the room, thinking about each move and what came next and so on. I did the form without having to think about it.  As it should be at this stage I suppose, I just let my body do what it knew it had to do.

How did my body know what to do?  Practice.  It's not that I have practiced being able to just let that happen directly, but that I have practiced enough hours enough times without distraction, with distraction, while teaching, on my own, in a group and whatever else you can think of that when it was called upon I just did it.

If I have learned anything from the time I have been doing karate (and I have learned a great many things about a whole pile of topics!) it really is that nothing can substitue for real, focused practice.  Of course this applys to so many other venues, learning an instrument, learning to skate, learning how to beat Super Mario Bros on the NES without getting hit at all..  Practice is the key.