The Magic of Slow

Slow Galapagos Tortoise — Tortoises Understand the Magic of Slow

As martial artists, we spend a lot of time pursuing increased speed, strength, and highlighting ideal technique selection. These pursuits are time well spent, certainly. The other end of the spectrum, that of the slow and contemplative, is often left solely as the domain of the novice. This is truly a shame, for there’s magic in the slow.

The Magic of Slow Movement

I have been fortunate in my martial arts career. Blessed with wonderful instructors, even from the beginning, I’ve been able to continually progress and respond to the deficiencies in my skills. My very first skill taught me the benefits of training slowly and continued to reinforce that benefit as I aged and progressed in rank. Even as a black belt it was not uncommon for us to tackle certain techniques, forms, or even partner work with an eye towards slower motion.

Over the next 20 years, I continued to heed those lessons, training slowly when warranted, and even sharing some of the benefits of slow training with fellow students. During the brief stint, I operated my own karate dojo, I built the curriculum around training slowly. As you can tell, I am not only a fan but an advocate. I think everyone should spend some time training slowly.

Human beings are creatures of habit. We do the things that we are used to because they’re comfortable. In the context of martial arts – especially self-defense or other high-intensity situations, we default to those techniques and habits that are most familiar. Pressure testing has become the concept and training du jour, and I won’t argue the importance. In fact, I’m a fan. If you watch people training at that level, though, there’s a major problem.

If you’ve instructed any sort of high-pressure drills you’ve likely watched students make the same mistakes over and over. You advise you instruct, maybe you even yell – but to no avail. The students continue to make the same mistakes in these situations. It’s frustrating as an instructor, but it’s human nature as a student. In fact, they really can’t do anything else because it’s how we’re wired.

Said another way, stressful situations will always yield the most comfortable and familiar actions, even if they’re not the wisest.

This is where a number of martial arts authors would discuss the effects of various hormones on the body and how we act under stress. That’s not what I’m doing, because that’s not the purpose of what I’m writing. The purpose is rather to show how slowing things down can change these outcomes.

Let’s take the example of footwork during sparring. No matter the school or system, I’ve witnessed the majority of students, at all ranks and ages, engaged in very linear free-form partner work. In most schools, this is sparring, and in most sparring, the people engaged attack straight on and retreat or defend straight back. Why? Because a) it’s what they’ve always done and b) it feels safe. It’s natural, isn’t it? To get as far away from the attack as possible? Maybe, from the outside, we can observe that the straight-line response isn’t ideal, but that’s far easier when your face isn’t the one being punched…

When the speed of this free-form work is decreased, though, things change. In fact, it changes dramatically once the participants understand what’s going on. They step to the side, they circle, they combine techniques and block/counter at the same time. Said another way, when things slow down, even relatively new students start moving in the ways that we’ve advised them to.

We Need to Give Them Space to Figure Things Out Themselves

Given enough time to work through these things slowly, we start to see their ability to increase the speed. If you imagine speed as a spectrum, you can slowly push them from slow to fast. If you give them small enough increments, their technique will remain as you increase speed. Just keep them from going so fast that they lose their ability to move well.

Growing up, I took slow movement for granted because I assumed all schools did it. Now, as I travel around and teach, these are the drills I find myself going to most often. By properly explaining slow movement and helping those I work with to see their own movement, at the moment, they can make real-time corrections and guide their own improvement. Slowly, and done slowly, they can take everything their instructors give them and start to incorporate it. While this may feel like delaying the actual application of technique, it actually speeds it up.

I don’t expect everyone reading this to suddenly change the way they train or teach, but I hope you’ll all consider replacing some of your high-intensity drills with slow ones. Lots of good can come from it, and I’ve personally witnessed untold lightbulb moments, as students realize what their instructors have been telling them for years. We crawl before walking, and walk before running. As martial artists, we often rush the running part and sometimes take it back to walking. I’m suggesting we go further back, and give our students the confidence that crawling brings.