Page 169 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

like a goat. Add in over fifteen years of Aiki do and Tai Chi Chuan traini ng, and
you’ve got yourself a force to be reckoned with.

The lucky thing for me was that Dan is bui lt somewhat like Che n Ze-
Cheng, he shares Chen’s enormous phy sical talent , and stylistically the y are
both predators. While both are techni cally masterful , they also ha ve the
tendency to take big risks, believing in thei r athl eticism to help the m recover

if put into a bad position. This is what I had to bui ld on. To win in Taiwan, I
would have to use Chen’s greatness against hi m.
In the two years before the 2004 Taiwan tour nam ent, Dan and I ba sically
lived on the mats together. Some ni ght s we were drilling techni que s, bui ldi ng

the power of our throws while the other was just a body, hitting the gr ound a
hundred times before switching roles. In other sessions we were refi ng
footwork, breaking down the precise compo nen ts of go ing with moment um
when someone has an edge and tries to spi n you to the floor or out of the ring.

It’s amazing how you can land on your feet and bal anced if you kno w ho w to
stay calm and principled, embrace the chao s, whi le you are spun with a torque
that sends sweat hitting walls ten feet away. But more often than not Dan and I
were duking it out. Night after night we had brut al sessions , spen di ng ho ur s in

the ring, squaring off, clashing, neu tralizing attacks , expl odi ng onto
weaknesses, h itting the ground, g etting back up, an d co llidi ng ag ain l ike rams.
Dan and I continuously pushed each other to impr ove. We were bo th
working so hard that if one of us stopped learni ng, he woul d get ki lled in the

ring. It was during the last four mont hs of our pr eparation that I came upo n
my fundamental strategy for the tour nam ent—w hat chess pl ayers call
prophylaxis. You see, I believe that Dan, like Chen Ze-Chen g, is a more gi fted
athlete than me. For all my training, he can do thi ngs that bo ggl e my mind. So

when working with Dan I developed a game that was bas ed on sque lchi ng hi s
talents. In Taiwan I would play in the style of Karpo v or Petrosian, the
Grandmasters who triggered my existential crisis at the end o f my che ss career.
In the last months of Taiwan traini ng, instead of trying to blow Dan out of

the ring, I tried to shut him down, crimp hi s gam e, and us e the tini est
overextensions to my advantage. I created an appr oach we called the Ana conda .
I would pressure my opponent, stifl his attacks , slowly inch hi m out of the
ring while cutting off escape paths . If my oppo nen t breathed , I woul d take

space when he exhaled. This was a game that relied on keen presenc e and
sensitivity to my opponent’s intent ion. Every aggr essive move in a martial arts