Ernest Cadorin
Kaizen
2020/08/15Making It Work for You
Many years ago, I attended a management workshop that covered a variety of business-related topics. One of those topics was kaizen, and the instructor introduced it by asking the class if anyone could explain what kaizen was. At the time, I had never heard of kaizen in the context of business, but I was familiar with it and its application in martial arts. No one volunteered an answer, so I raised my hand and said, “Kaizen means incremental improvement.”
A puzzled look came over the instructor's face as he replied, “No, that’s not it,” and then asked again if anyone else knew what it meant. When nobody else answered, the instructor said, “Kaizen means doing something over and over again, and every time you do it, you do it a little better than the last time.”
At this point, several of my classmates turned to me and said, “Didn’t you essentially just say that?” – after which we all had a good chuckle, including the somewhat-embarrassed instructor!
Indeed, kaizen means making small improvements during each iteration of a repetitive task. In karate, this usually involves high-repetition drills* that focus on basic techniques. During a typical kaizen training session, it’s not uncommon to do punches, blocks, and kicks in sets of sixty or more. Of course, if you just put your mind on autopilot, you won’t get very much out of it beyond a bit of exercise. If, however, you bring your awareness to the subtleties of the technique, you will notice something in each iteration that could have been done better, and you will strive to do it better in the next one.
Kaizen Tips
Make each repetition distinct. With this type of training, there is often a tendency to let one technique blur into the next as you sway back and forth to the rhythm of the drill. The training will be more effective, however, if you take a moment to reset in between each iteration, making yourself perfectly still as you wait for the next count. Don’t think of the drill as one set of a hundred kicks. Think of it as a hundred sets of one kick.
Set your mind to neutral in between each repetition. Make sure that you are reacting to the count rather than just following a rhythm. This stimulus-response conditioning is an important part of our training, since in a real self-defence situation, we will likely be responding to someone else’s actions.
Start each repetition from exactly the same stance. If you are practicing front kicks from a sparring stance, for example, make sure you settle back into a proper sparring stance after every kick. I sometimes see students do their first kick from a sparring stance, and then the next nine from something else because they were careless with their resets. If this isn’t corrected, they’ll become proficient at launching kicks from a bogus stance!
Find interesting subtleties when drilling basics so that you never get bored. Even the most elementary movements require balance, timing, and coordination (ask any Boston Dynamics robotics engineer!). Be sensitive to your body’s performance. Eliminate any telegraphing that is happening when you begin the technique, and get rid of any unnecessary movements that are creeping in as you execute the technique.
* A note about high-repetition drills: Keeping your form in check is always important, but with high-repetition training, it’s absolutely essential. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect. Practice ingrains habits, and it is up to us to make sure we are ingraining the correct habits. Perfect practice makes perfect!