Page 122 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

So let’s say I am doing Push Hands with a very ski lled oppo nen t. I’m in the
zone, feeling his weight, his patterns of movement, hi s eyes. He ha s certain

tells. Before a blink, maybe his cheek twitches. Maybe a touch of moistur e
forms around his pupil. Or maybe his eyes close a tiny bit, then reope n, the n
blink. All this is subtle, but I am tapped in. Both of our right legs are forward
and we are moving around the ring. In Push Hands you need to ho ld your

ground to stay in the ring. Sometimes you hav e to root off the rear leg but you
don’t want to spend too much time with your weight shi fted back sinc e tha t
gives you nowhere to go: there’s no t much gi ve in your struct ur e. Ski lled
players have internalized this reality, but thei r training can be us ed aga ins t

them. We are flowing. Then, on his blink, or just before it begins , I pul se int o
a one-two combination, left, right, into his body. My movement s are very
small; I don’t put much force int o them . Very little seems to be ha ppe ni ng.
But my right puts him into his back leg, just barely taking the weight off hi s

front leg. When I release the pressur e from my right hand, in the middl e of hi s
blink, when his presence is slightly altered, his body instinct ively settles ba ck
toward his forward leg. In that ins tant, I trigger int o a thr ow whi ch combi ne s
the fact that he is moving forward, providi ng momentum, and for a

microsecond anchoring his forward leg to the fl or. If I am good, all thi s can
happen before he has finished blinki ng. He go es flying ont o the gr ound and
comes up confused.
Time and again I have used thi s type of strategy in compet ition, and

afterward opponents have come over to me and impl ied that I did somethi ng
mystical. They were standing and then on the ground, and they di dn’t feel or
see anything occur in-between. Of cour se ther e is nothi ng mystical ha ppe ni ng,
just the interplay of some interesting ps ychologi cal, techni cal, and learni ng

principles. I read his intention to blink and then cont rolled his int ent ion by
determining when he would uncons cious ly place hi s weight into hi s forward
leg. If I did this well, my movements—t he one- two combi nat ion—s ho ul d
barely have been visible. They served the lone pur po se of manipul ating weight

distribution. I should point out that the speci fi exampl e of using a bl ink is
just one of many options, an d it can be n eutralized.
When preparing for the 2004 World Cham pi ons hi ps , my main traini ng
partner was my dear friend Daniel Caulfi d. Dan is a phen omena l martial

artist who placed second in the world in his weight division. He’s a fi rce
competitor, deeply perceptive, with a phi losopher ’s soul that gi ves hi s martial