Visualization: Keep it real

"Visualizing" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, especially in the world of fighting and training. The concept is often encouraged, but rarely elaborated. Guided meditation drills and role playing in your training can help you focus on the context of what and why you're training. Sometimes, however, we get too caught up in the idea of fighting for our lives in an alley somewhere and we get carried away in training. Out of fear, we compete instead of practice, which can hinder us just as much. It's hard to learn anything new or practice your timing when your stress is too high. A careful balance needs to be established in our training and one of the best ways to find this "sweet spot" is to meditate on the two extremes.

Not Enough
If we don't remind ourselves why we're training and take some time to imagine the scenario that would cause us to fight then the greater purpose is lost. Instead, we risk getting caught up with competitive drills and unrealistic techniques. We forgot how/why we'd be fighting. It's like seeing someone with perfect timing on the pad drills, but have never punched someone or been punched. Warning signs of this include getting distracted with irrelevant details, concern with how you "look" when doing the exercise and overly concerned with labels and names of everything. A punch to the nose and suddenly everything is grouped into two piles:  techniques that will make this stop and everything else. Those are the important details. To fix any issue resulting with under-visualization, train harder. And by "train harder", I really mean "hit harder". Any kind of role playing or reality simulations you can add to your training, periodically, will greatly improve your ability to understand the reality of defending yourself.

Over Visualization
Don't over do it. I see people become too competitive in their training (usually beginners) and they stray from the focus of the exercises. A lot of times this comes from a fear and over compensation. When someone is insecure with an aspect of their training or their overall abilities, they often try to avoid confronting this area by being over aggressive in their drills. This is like pretending you didn't hear the question because you don't know the answer. There's only one way to get better and that's by constantly visiting your weak areas and improving them, not hiding behind your comfort zone. When this happens in training, you're not only removing yourself from the exercise, but also depriving your partner of the chance to improve also. Stay focused. Save the fighting for the street.

Meditate
Keeping your training in context shouldn't be difficult for you. You know why you're training and each drill should be relevant to some kind of fighting context or skill set development. When you see someone stray from the focus, this usually means that they need work in this area, but opted to go to a place that is more comfortable for them. No one is improving anything this way. If you're partnered with someone, frequently take them out of that zone, stop the drill, remind them what the focus of the exercise is and reset. Stop them every time or you're running the risk of getting lost in some competitive battle of egos. Meditate regularly on the two extremes of focus and keep yourself grounded in the middle. You showed up to the dojo to leave a slightly different person. Make sure you get what you're working for.

Jordan Bill
Fight or Die

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