Page 93 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

of my growth would involve maki ng my existing repertoire more po tent . It
was time to take my new feeling and put it to action.

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When skilled martial artists face off, it is very di fferent from choreogr aphe d

Hollywood fight scenes. High-level practitioner s rarely overextend, and the y
know how to read incoming attacks. Large fancy movements like cine matic
spinning back-kicks usually don’t work. They are too telegr aphed and take too
long to reach the target. A boxing jab is much more effective becaus e it covers

little distance, i t’s quick, an d it’s fundam entally sound.
A critical challenge for all practical martial artists is to make the ir di verse
techniques take on the efficiency of the jab. When I watched William Che n
spar, he was incredibly understated and exuded sho cking po wer. Whi le some

are content to call such abilities chi and stand in awe, I wanted to under stand
what was going on. The next phas e of my martial gr owth woul d inv olve
turning the large into the small. My under standi ng of thi s pr ocess, in the spi rit
of my numbers to leave numbers method of chess study, is to touch the essence (for

example, highly refined and deeply internal ized body mechan ics or feeling) of a
technique, and then to incrementally condense the external manifestation of
the technique while keeping true to its essence. Over time expa ns ivene ss
decreases while potency increases. I call thi s metho d “M aking S maller Circles.”

Let’s combine Pirsig’s Brick with my concept of Making Smaller Circles and
see how they work. Let’s say that I am cul tivating a certain martial techni que
—for a simple example, a classic straight punch . I stand with my left leg
forward, my hands up by my head to pr otect my face. The jab is a sho rt punc h

coming from the left, forward hand. The straight is the power punc h coming
from the ground, generating through my left foot, and moving thr ough my left
leg, torso, diagonally across and up to the right side of my back, thr ough the
shoulder, tricep, and finally delivered by the second and thi rd knuc kl es of my

right hand. First, I practice the motion over and over in slow motion. We ha ve
to be able to do something slowly before we can have any hope of do ing it
correctly with speed. I release my left hip, wind up, and spr ing the right ha nd
into motion as my left foot and hip joint spi n my waist and uppe r bo dy int o

action.