Shoshin no Keiko

 The other day I was sitting down after a workout and…I wont lie and say meditating, I was more sitting and drinking some water and contemplating training.  My training as of late has been kind of lack luster. I am in the middle of a very complex and confusing situation, trying to plan out my training and getting my ass back into shape.  Before COVID I was just bobbing up and own wondering when motivation would hit me. We just joined a fantastic organization and I was pushed a bit to get in shape and restart a lot of things I had been doing in the past to condition the body, but I was mostly just doing Karate four times a week. 

COVID hit and I started doing a lot…I mean a LOT of cardio, dropped a few pounds but as the year went on I kept doing the cardio but the diet became a see food diet….no you read that right. I also started drinking a tiny bit with the wife. We had our “Night caps” and the pounds rushed on. Then the lock down ended and we got back to regular training at the club…and I was in trouble.  I started to work on a training program and then got hit with my Sensei passing away and was yet again side tracked.

I don’t want to make excuses, I suffered from what a lot of people suffered from, emotional burn out! I mean the effects of paying to much attention to others opinions really weighed down on me. I took in what the right was saying and lapped up the lefts rhetoric, I watched CNN and Fox and was burned out totally after a year of being stuck in my basement trying to do the job I had been doing for 18 years in an office.  Office work was hard enough on my body but now my brain was fried.  I read and wrote so much that I was even burning out on Karate and other topics I love.

I mean it, I finished two books and hundreds of articles on Karate and read so many books, watched countless hours of TV and youtube and was hooked on junky foods and my only real outlet was zoom classes once a week with my students, having dropped from twice to once a week.  My conditioning and mental condition were terrible and to add to that you were being torn apart by different groups all trying to convince you the other was wrong. My training became shorter and shorter and my attention span for running and Karate was limited. I used the winter to justify the end to my cardio as well. Even though most of it was done on a treadmill to begin with. I was lost, board and worse…..discouraged from even trying to rekindle my fire.  ‘

Some events would put me into a bit of a training mood mind you. Tournaments came up and I rushed to try and get ready to officiate, so I worked MY STUDENTS really hard, but myself…well not so much. I had seminars with a great instructor from out of town, again I would push myself a bit but say “its for the students” and not really focus on my own training. Hip injuries, back problems all were used as crutches and excuses. Then I found a book by David Goggins that was supposed to motivate me, and while its given me a tone of little things I can use to push myself, it basically made me feel worse with each failed attempt to plan a training program, never mind actually training. My work outs were fairly limited to the odd gym “accidental work out” and Karate. I ended up in a quagmire of lost hope and boredom with the normal training, looking for new things and something to spark my interest.

I had lost track of something my instructor had told me years before….”Shoshin no Keiko” Train…like a beginner. I was sitting their after a lack luster work out lead by a good junior instructor after an online class and I just sat their wanting to know why I could not rekindle the spark I had years before…I had forgotten the true nature of Shoshin no Keiko…

Lots of instructors use this term online, man do they like to use fancy Japanese terms, but they miss the true feeling you need. They talk about stepping back to basics, to training in Junior Kata but it’s the feeling you have that you need to cultivate. Shoshin no Keiko is not about doing super basic techniques in high repetitions or they start doing three step sparring and try to “virtue signal” that they are doing Shoshin training.

Shoshin no Keiko is the insertion of the wonder factor, the ability to train in something and see new things, or experience new feelings while doing something. Its being open to the fact that you DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING EVER, and being okay with the knowledge that you can still experience something new or understand something new and others may have insights you don’t. it’s a missing feeling with higher ranking egos that really makes their training impossible to move into the Shoshin no Keiko arena.  No one knows everything in Karate…period.  Not saying “Do everything” Im saying “Know everything”. 

As instructors we can know a lot, we may not be physically able to do everything. Sensei Dingman once told me that he could feel himself losing a step as he was training and getting older. Now granted to me, I could not see this nor would I have but he said he could coach an athlete to be amazing, but he was never sure how much they KNEW.  It was far more fulfilling for him to see acknowledgement in a Karate students eyes than to see them perform at a tournament.

For me the focus of my training now is trying to get that feeling of awe and “Fresh eyes” on everything so that my feeling of wonder comes back and I begin to love and need to train.