The Thoughtful Sensei-Aikido Musings

166. Not As Easy As You Think - Part 3 - The Mechanics

Go Big or Go Home or so they say.  After all the considerations we made as comented on in Part 1 and 2 (of this mini-series on opening and running a dojo) we finally found a way out of the “Y” and into our own space where we could have a dedicated space to train.  We wouldn’t have to share room with gymnastics equipment, rock walls, pilates classes, kids, wanna’ be Mt. Everest climbers, or overweight house wives and best of all, we could extract ourselves from the politics of the YMCA Board of Directors, patrons, money-men, and program directors all of whom competed for time and priority.  We decided to build a world-class dojo that would hold the 45 students we had gradually built up to over our time at the “Y”.

We were very fortunate in that two of our players decided to not only design and build but also to finance the move.  The mood was upbeat and everyone danced on the mat; until that is, reality set in.  So for anyone who still harbors the desire to open a large professional-level dojo as an owner and a teacher, here is what you’re in for.

Find the location.  It must be freeway accessible and cannot be on some small, two lane street that is difficult to find or that is out of the way just because the location may be cheap.  People will not drive more than roughly 30 to 45 minutes (in easy traffic) to or from class making accessibility and road time a critical component.  The rub here is the balance between time on the road and cost.  Prime locations can run upwards of $12 to $18 psf so the equation reads “better and more visible public access divided by cost per square foot = a lot of money”.  Great locations in a frontage strip center, depending on how many square feet you are considering, can be several thousand a month.  An office warehouse space can be half that (but it won’t look nearly as nice on the outside and your neighbor may not understand how to take out the trash can). 

Size of the facility.  How large can you go and still be affordable?  More importantly, how large a space can you lease (we’re assuming that we’re not buying the property which is its' own can of worms not addressed in this short series) and does it have poles in the middle of the mat/training area.  Generally, the larger the desired mat area the greater the likelihood of having structural support poles in the middle of the room.  Nothing is more inconvenient than throwing your uke into the pole every other technique.  Additionally, poles severely restrict the total training area simply because of the wide berth you must give them when putting students on the mat.  We calculated that every pole in the mat area cuts down the total training area by about 200 sf (using a radius of 8 feet for the circle around each pole, e.g. throwing a 6 foot tall uke towards the pole and having a safety margin) so if your total projected mat space is 2,500 (what we ended up with) then one pole reduces that total mat space down to 2,300.  Two poles turn what should have been 2,500 sf into 2,100 sf, and so on.  Functionally however, the overall loss of “effective” mat space is possibly twice that since the spacing between training pairs must be reconsidered.  So part of your planning must be the construction of the leased space and cost of the mat area vs. loss of mat area due how the building is set up.  We ended up leasing two bays in an office warehouse park that was stran-steel and without poles in the middle.  The location is off the freeway and in the back of the park.  Not being street visible means no walk-in traffic and that advertising takes on a more critical role than would otherwise be the case.  This need for greater advertising has a obvious impact on the P&L.

Interior.  Dressing rooms?  Showers?  Storage rooms?  Rest rooms? Yes to all if you want civilians (folks not yet into and committed to Budo who are just “trying you on for size”) to actually come in and like what they see.  I’ve seen dojo with no dressing rooms where either you come in your car already suited up (“Hey, look at that guy in the car next to us in those funny karate clothes”) or you change in the rest room, ("Pardon me.  Pardon me.  I'm just trying to step over your bag and clothes and get to the urinal.  Oh sorry, I missed.").  Showers are nice but not crucial, so we saved some money there.  Rest rooms, a critical item but some dojo don’t even have that.  Try teaching out of your garage at home and having all the students go into your house to relieve themselves.  Try being in a strip center of some kind and they have to trot down the way to a filthy public bathroom since your space doesn’t have one.

Training area.  Since we were training a throwing art (read: uke falls down a lot) then we had to build the same type sprung floor that my old Sensei had and that we had at the “Y”.  Many people talk about how to construct that type sprung/raised floor including using Styrofoam spacers (not enough give and the mat on top is still too hard), valve springs taken out of car engines (can you find enough springs exactly the same size and draw weight to spring the entire floor and are they too soft to accommodate 250 pound players hitting the floor), car tires (again not enough give and can you find enough that are exactly the same size).  So we took the route that the Kodokan and my old Sensei took which was to build the floor using custom spun specially engineered steel springs with a plywood floor mounted on top of those all covered by foam sheets designed for grappling and MA applications with white canvas  stretched across the top.  It was a really fast training floor easily walked across without sinking into it, but it could take massive ukemi and uke got right back up.  It took us about two weeks to build out working at night.  Cost was not cheap (it was a lot less money 20 years ago but in today’s dollars expect a bill of around $25,000 for a non-mobile floor permanently bolted into the concrete).  The end result was well worth it, but it had the impact of cementing in our commitment due to the financial burden if nothing else.  The other part of the buildout also included dressing rooms, office, and rest rooms that all went in before the mat did.  Construction was quick but not cheap and had to be negotiated.  And, since there was no lighting (and the space we leased was 3,500 sf) we had to bring in an engineer to tell us how many lumens we needed and how to hit that mark with the right kind of lighting (your table lamp at home won’t work well).  Plus, we had to bring in HVAC engineers to determine, and install, the proper amount of btu's to cool and heat what amounted to a large barn.

Opening the doors.  Complicated at best, not much fun at worst.  After doing our own drive-by’s all over town we finally gave up and contracted with a commercial real estate agent who specialized in business leases.  We had to sign an agreement with him.  We ended up at an office warehouse park and had to sign a lease with him (for this expect to pay first and last month in advance).  We had to have signs made for the door and for the street marquee.  We had to open an account with the electric company (that was a surprising $1,000, much higher than turning on the power at your house).  We had to take out property and liability insurance (pay a full year in advance).  We had to pay for advertising in the local neighborhood paper and build a website (hand coding in html back then was real work so unless you’re good with todays’ Word Press, expect to pay upwards of several hundred dollars if not thousands).  We had to send out (behind the “Y”s back) notices to all our current students to notify them of the move in advance to telling the “Y” we were leaving.  We were not surprised to find out that only about half of the student population came with us; an immediate impact on our initially projected cash flow.

After we moved in and began accepting new students, we of course had the issues of paper towels, water fountain and paper cups, toilet paper, medical supplies, light bulbs, air conditioning filters; all the little assorted odds and ends that it takes to run classes.  And cleaning.  Cleaning is a constant need due to effectively running what amounts to over a hundred students a week if not more (people come more than once a week increasing the effective head count) on the mat who drop hair and skin and track dirt onto the mat creating a need to constantly clean, and clean, and clean .......

Sensei used to say that if you can’t clean your own toilets then you shouldn’t run a dojo.  He was right.

So hopefully I’ve discouraged your idea of opening a dojo.  Keep in mind I’ve left out all the personnel and dojo-politics issues and the constant need to be on point.  On the other hand, if I’ve excited you and you still want open up and give it go, and I’ve given you some ideas on what pitfalls to avoid then I’ve accomplished something.  While running a dojo the last 20 years has certainly had its’ ups and downs and challenges to overcome, it has been immensely satisfying. 

They say that a Sensei is only a student who had to open a dojo in order to keep training and that is so very true.  When I left my old Sensei I was pretty much burned out.  Once I started teaching however, I fell in love with the whole “Budo-Thingie” all over again and my universe expanded as my knowledge and experience increased and I could be creative in some of the lessons.  If you can stand the heat in the kitchen, then put on your apron and bake those cookies and cobblers and while you’re at it, pour a little wine and toast all those people who taught you and worked with you over the years to put you in the kitchen where you belong.  As Roosevelt said, “….. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds ….”. 

That description of the effort certainly fits running a mat.

L.F. Wilkinson Kancho

The Aikibudokan

Houston, TX

September 25, 2019

 

165. Not As Easy As It Looks - Part 2 - The Country Dojo

So in this part 2 of how to found and run a dojo let’s take a look at what my old Sensei referred to as a “Country Dojo”.  What is that and, what are the good and bad points about one of those?

After knowing that we had to leave the “Y” (from part 1 of this short series) we looked at alternatives that other people we personally knew had done.  The organization that my Sensei started had member dojo in probably 10 or 15 different states and even a couple of dojo in Canada and they ranged Texas to Florida to Washington DC to Washington State. 

All of them had come to his organization and teachings via word of mouth, referrals, having met at Judo shiai, or attending week-long training clinics.  Many/most did not have the time or financial commitment that he had put into his dojo which had a fully sprung floating floor with professional mats on top covered in white canvas that was about 2,500 sf in size with dressing rooms and showers, so they did what they could the best way that they could in order to stay in Budo and actively train where ever they were.

After moving to Houston from my small hometown I fell in love with springs and good mats, up to that point having experienced only folding gymnastic mats laid on concrete at a community ed center.  Unless you’ve trained on what essentially is no padding at all, you simply have no idea of what that is like; nor can you viscerally understand the joy of discovering training on a professional grade floor like they have at the Kodokan in Tokyo.

So while everyone loved his mat, they couldn’t match his facilities or his commitment of running a professional curriculum.  Long story short, they did what they could but largely fell short for several reasons.

First, holding regular classes on a consistent calendar schedule can be difficult.  If you’re running a small dojo and have no senior ranks you can depend on and you’re sick one night, then class is cancelled and your students are disappointed.  Having a large group of dependable teachers under you can be very difficult to grow if your entire student population is less than a dozen people most of whom are in class on an irregular basis.  Having a much larger group of students in the dojo means that about a third are really regular in class, about a third are kinda’ sorta’ regular, and the bottom third come so infrequently that it might take them ten years to make Ikkyu.  I had one of those once and it took him 9 ½ years to make Ikkyu since we don’t promote strictly by “time in grade” but instead by actually training, knowing the material, and being able to demonstrate that knowledge. 

Having a large student population means that you have a fair-sized group of deshi who stay and train and progress over the years with the most senior and capable rising to the top.  They become an essential part of the dojo such that you, the guy running the dojo, can simply pass classes off to someone for a week or two and just not worry about it because you have some depth in your personnel resources.  Best of all though, is that you don’t really need a lot of these high-level players; only 2 or 3 that you can really trust and depend on but, you must have the foundation (large enough group of students to work with) to grow them first.

Next, it can be difficult to teach advanced material with enough repetition so that deshi can learn it and become truly competent; not just competent mind you, but reaching high-level ability in the art.  A throwing art such as Aikido requires ukemi to understand the quantum mechanics relationship between tori and uke.  Not being able to take enough ukemi for your tori means that they will never feel the throw a sufficient number of times to become really good at it.  Additionally, your ukemi will never properly develop since you can’t take enough falls for them and over time you'll develop a hesitation at being thrown which increases the chances of your being injured if anyone really hits the mark and you can't avoid the breakfall.

Why is this?  The mats in a Country Dojo generally do not have the quality of a permanently installed sprung floor that is bolted into the concrete (or wood, whichever).  The common element of most Country Dojo (unless the Sensei has a budget large enough for a permanent location with a floor installed, such as owning your own building) usually must have an arrangement such that the mats are rolled/folded out for class, and then put away after bow-off so that the next group can come in behind you.

One solution for this can be renting mat time in a gymnastics school which many do but now you’re back to the issue we had at the “Y” which was, keeping the assigned mat time, not having the gymnastics people pre-emp your classes due to a calendar shift or gymnastics competition (which happened to us more than once) or having the kids run across the training area wearing street shoes.  And that’s if their liability insurance will permit them to take-on a martial arts dojo that may or may not use weapons for training.

So with that said, without equipment designed to allow a maximum number of falls with a minimum level of pain and discomfort (did I mention taking bad ukemi on thin folding mats on a concrete floor?) students “top out” and find that they can only take so many falls a class.  Worst of all is that if you are running older students who may not have the physical conditioning of a high school or college-age person, then for them the ukemi become close to impossible to learn, much less become good at simply because it hurts ….. a lot.  How many blown out shoulders can one person tolerate?

Staying at the same location can be very problematic.  One small dojo group that Sensei had was relegated to moving from public school campus to public school campus.  They were renting mat time from the wrestling teams at each school (for the mat availability) and as the school calendars changed or as school dismissed for holidays (meaning no classes allowed during Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Spring Break) and the summer, they would spend a month at one campus before being told to move to another down the street.  Nothing can discourage growth like never being in the same place for very long (no one can find the class, "I could swear it was here just last week!") and it really complicates any advertising since your address is always changing.  Growing class size is critical for the survival of the dojo so this small group of maybe 10 to 15 that I was personally acquainted with and taught clinics for managed to hold on for several years but never grew and finally folded the mats and went home.

Expectations of the students can become an issue.  If someone wants to try out Aikido and can find your small Country Dojo at a rec or community center somewhere then they likely will not mind paying $30 or $40 a month for classes.  However, don’t expect a student to pay $100 a month or up unless you can fulfill their expectations of a better than average training floor, dressing rooms possibly with showers, decorations for atmosphere (we have a lot of calligraphy and art work hung everywhere) and a professional level environment with easy parking. 

When I first started it was in a community center with terrible folding mats on concrete and I was paying $12 (yes, twelve dollars) for 6-weeks’ worth of classes.  That class fee won’t even pay for advertising today so the worse and more temporary your facilities are, the lower the odds are that you can hang on to having a dojo, much less actually grow it into something because you won’t impress potential students like the karate shop down the street does.  You may have a better martial arts product overall but remember that marketing (and closing the sale) can be everything.

So what is an alternative?

One is to teach only weapons classes such as Iaido, Kendo, or Jodo.  By focusing only on weapons work and not teaching an art form that requires breakfalling you can eliminate the need for mats.  Wood floors would be nice but smooth concrete, tile that is not irregular with grout joints, and linoleum will work and all the comments above on floors can be disregarded.

However, all the other comments fully apply here also.  Regular location and training times that don’t change.  Having full backup instructors in case you go out of town on vacation or work or you have the flu is critical.  Having facilities that look acceptable.  Good marketing for student population growth.  Etc.

So while switching to a weapons form cancels the need for flooring, the other issues still exist.  If you can’t get past four or five players including you then reaching high-levels of performance becomes difficult as the size of classes ebb and flow and no one is really there often enough over a course of potentially years to really and deeply learn something.  One or two students drop out and now you not only have to find replacements to make whatever expenses you may have, but the instruction starts over from scratch and all that prior instructional development is lost.  Over time, your higher-level skill sets stagnate because there are few students who can test your ability and if those that you do have fall out, then basically that means that you are topped out, quite possibly permanently.

Ah! you say.  But I can bring in a senior instructor.  Maybe.  The last time we brought in a senior instructor in anything it was into four-figures in cost so for a country dojo with say six to a dozen players tops, you can’t make that nut and now you have to spend personal funds to travel there instead and then try to bring it back, share it, propagate it, and then push it forward.

By now I’m sure that if you were considering opening a small study group (or a Country Dojo) you’re discouraged and questioning your sanity at such a thought.

Don’t be.  Remember what I started off by saying at the first ………………… you do what you can the best way you can.  Just remember to temper your expectations and be realistic in what you think you are looking for.  Also remember that sometimes being a student instead of the Sensei means that you can just train and not worry about the business aspects.

Next installment ………… Go Big or Go Home & The Mechanics.

 

L.F. Wilkinson Kancho

The Aikibudokan

Houston, TX

September 20, 2019

164. Not As Easy As It Looks - Part 1 - The "Y"

Several months ago I received an email from an old student who via economic swings and the phases of the moon landed in a mid-size town where about the only Budo is kids karate classes (he is in his forties or so and definitely fails to qualify for the Pooh Bear Medallion for good grades in kindergarten).

He asked the question of “How do I open my own dojo so that I can get back into teaching and training”.  After I choked on my coffee, I re-read the email and hammered out a response and forgot about it.  I only now found it again while cleaning up the server, so I’d thought I’d share it for anyone who is insane enough to actually want to “step off into it”.

Therefore, for anyone who thinks that they want to open a dojo, or even start a small study group, here is what I learned 20 years ago when we opened for ukemi.  I also based my response to him after 20+ years with my former Sensei who had more than a handful of small “country dojo’s” in his organization.  He defined Country Dojo as a small study group basically with anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen people more or less that met on a semi-regular basis in a garage or community center with an impermanent (read “folding mats”) training surface; whereas a “serious or professional dojo” was one like his, and like the one we eventually opened, with upwards of 30 to 50 students, full dressing rooms, and a Kodokan-style sprung floor.

When I first resigned from my old dojo I had planned on permanently retiring from Aikido and doing only some occasional Judo with an old friend who had national level competitive experience.  I was burned out on teaching and filming and running large groups of players and was only interested in an occasional workout for fun with no attached responsibilities; basically, go when I wanted, if I wanted.  That quickly turned into phone calls and email of “You have to start Aikido classes.  Build it and they will come.”  Even the Judo Sensei I wanted to train under was in on it and emphasized that the YMCA was looking for new programs to add and, the Athletic Director wanted to speak with me about it since he had already spilled the beans. 

Since the Judo group was at a YMCA it was easy, at least at first.  We pulled together resumes, copies of all our promotional certificates, and a curriculum, applied and were hired by the YMCA because they do not take on sub-contractors nor do they rent out space. 

Unless they have changed radically from what I remember they only do programs where the teacher is an actual “Y” employee and fully subject to their personnel policies and insurance coverages.  The positive was that they did all the advertising and liability insurance.  The negative was that they took most of the money, paid you a salary every two weeks, and dictated what the class fees were.  So, a money maker it was not, and we barely made enough to pay for gas.

The only time you got a raise so-to-speak was when the number of students increased.  Of course, like all YMCA’s looking to increase program revenue, every time the number of students increased the Y would increase the class fees resulting, no surprise here, in students dropping out due to the increased cost that they had to pay.  And, if they were also a member of the Y then their Y membership fees plus the cost of the class certainly didn’t help student retention or class growth.

The second downside was that they dictated your teaching schedule and the facilities you used.  We ended up in the children’s gymnastics room on a gymnastics floor with weak springs attached to particle board with floor carpet.  The floor always came apart, so we were forever pulling it up and putting it back down since is wasn’t made for heavy adults but only light weight kids.  Since the room was multi-use, we had gymnastics bars and racks on one side and a climbing wall on the other and we had to continually yell to stop training when 7-year-old kids rans across the mat in the middle of throwing people around.  Ever seen a 50-pound kid impacted by a 200-pound adult?  Yeah, me neither and we seemed always able to avoid it somehow.  How many times did we ask the parents to not let their kids fun across the mat during class?  Too many and of course they always went and complained about those nasty karate people.

The other downside was that initially, they only wanted us to take students who were either already members of the “Y” or who agreed to sign up as “Y” members.  No “non-Y” students were allowed so the “Y” used our Aikido program as a tool (read blunt instrument) to build up their own membership.  This of course didn’t help us much as we were required to continually market YMCA membership and informational pamphlets.  How many times does a new student have to say “no” to you before they get tired of it and leave? 

After some conversation they finally allowed us to bring in “non-Y” students but because they were not YMCA members, they couldn’t use the dressing rooms and had to change in the public bathrooms with all the dirt and filth and constant flow of people in and out.  We lost several good students over that since it was hard to explain a “Y” program that relegated our students to a public bathroom as opposed to a full dressing room.  It was so poorly thought out on their part that even I and the other instructors couldn’t use the dressing rooms because while we were “Y” employees per se, we weren’t “Y” members because of the cost.

After we finally managed to get the Aikido program on an even keel despite all the issues that we had to hurdle, we wanted to expand the program by teaching Seitei Jodo.  We had several existing students and people walking in during class asking about Samurai weapons so we viewed it as both an opportunity and a means to solidify our standing with the “Y” by increasing the cash flow we generated with another program offering.

So we had a demo for Amy “No Last Name” who was the Athletic Director.  She was quite impressed having never seen Jodo before and very promptly said at the end of the demo, “That’s wonderful but sorry Charlie.  Our liability insurance and our program manual prohibit anything that could result in being hit by a weapon (training or otherwise) so we cannot add Jodo to our programs.”  Then she told me about the kendo group who had applied to open a class there and a guy who had wanted to teach iaido (dull swords but still made of metal) and they also were turned down flat.  So, while they could see their way to doing Judo, Aikido and a kid’s karate program, anything beyond that was just verboten.

Then there was the real kicker.  At a “Y” all important decisions are always made by the Board of Directors and, the Board of Directors is generally the patrons with the fattest checkbook and the heftiest donations.  So we’re at the “Y” going on two almost three years and thinking that things have finally smoothed out and that we’re good to go for a while only to be told that the wife of a board member has decided that the “Y” needs a Pilates class room and that the gymnastics room where we are set up looks just perfect.  We now have a time limit to either move to a different room, day, and time or just shut down the entire program.  It didn’t matter that by this time we had over 45 steady players and were a functional profit center for the "Y".  It only mattered that somewhere out there was a possibly overweight housewife with a wealthy husband who wanted Pilates.

So we had to look at alternatives and move fast.

Next installment ……….. So Sensei, what about those country dojos?

L.F. Wilkinson Kancho

The Aikibudokan

Houston, TX

September 19, 2019

 

163. Slump, Not Just Leaning Over In Your Chair

Synchronicity is a funny animal.  Just when you think that you’re the only one out there in the wilderness being chased by the “hungry beasties” you talk to someone or read something or someone makes an off-hand comment to you and you suddenly realize that no, you are not the only chimpanzee fleeing across the savannah looking for a tree to scamper up as you escape the leopard in an attempt to solve today's most pressing problem (being lunch or being depressed).

The most recent topic that I’m seeing lately with many people is that of being in a slump (so it wasn't just and only me being a little morose and looking for a tree to climb up and hide in).  The most common area may be work.  The issue with a slump in your job or profession is that unless you you’re updating and floating your resume on a daily basis you are basically stuck at that job for a while and must deal with whatever it is that is haunting you.  A slump (or depression) over family can be the same, your being fully committed to being there as you can't simply run and hide from personal relationships.

Being in a slump therefore can indeed be that of leaning over in your chair with your head lolling on your chest and drooling as you contemplate your place in the universe; hopefully not on the bottom rung.  In the Budo-verse however, a slump should be considered as developing a depressed attitude commonly exhibited by a decrease in your performance in the dojo. 

It can cause you to lose confidence in your abilities and keep you from your natural level of performance; this, in addition to leaving you with an intense desire to sit at home binge-watching bad martial arts movies (knew I shouldn’t have bought that new internet streaming service package, so much temptation and they're playing a Bruce Lee 12 hour marathon tonight). 

Your skill sets begin to resemble those of a three-toed sloth and working with beginners becomes a mood swing pushing you into looking for a corner to crawl into like an old hound dog as you consume an entire barrel of bad sake followed by a serious contemplation of seppuku and who you can tag to be your second.

In extreme cases, it can cause one to stop training entirely and resign from the dojo because one tiresome, weary, and unsatisfactory keiko snowballs and leads into the next and the next until all the keiko run together into a blur of frustration and boredom.  One day you find yourself considering a new career as either a door-to-door toilet brush salesman or buying a food truck and selling street tacos and flat beer.

Every Sensei I came up under, or Sempai I followed, explained it as everything from, “You’ve been pushing too hard and have temporarily burned out so take a breath”, or “It’s just a difficult kata so keep at it”, or “It’s all in your head.  Just get your zanshin in order and get back on the mat”.

Well, all those ideas may indeed be the case and the offered solutions may actually help you wade through it; although one may argue what portion of any opinion or idea given is the prime reason.  As many things in life are wont to be, there generally is more than one cause or reason behind a slump.

Remember that even Sensei who run dojo and who teach can have the same slump or loss of “fighting spirit” (or Yamato Damashi, spirit of the Japanese) that to a true Budoka becomes nothing more than a temporary decrease in training momentum; a “slump” essentially.  My Sensei used to tell me that being in a slump can be real or not real and that it can have a positive side to it.  That a better way to look at it was to think of the emotions the slump brings forth as more likely being over-trained (as-in training too hard and too fanatically) or hitting a plateau (thinking that we are not advancing at all or as fast as we’d like to) and that all of that should be looked at as nothing more than part of your training and overall advancement; part of the emotional side of learning or dealing with the frustrations of not making personal goals “on schedule” that every high-achiever must face at some point.  Arnold Palmer, the great golf champion described the game of golf (or by extension Aikido) as being “…. deceptively simple and endlessly complicated …. “ and went on to say that “Success in this game depends less on strength of body than strength of mind and character."

So long-term success in the dojo and on the mat becomes an effort to remember that you don’t give up and you study a little harder or a little more consistently or longer and eventually, your brain wraps itself around the principles and momentum rebuilds as your practice becomes successful and advances once again.

Becoming a world class martial artist is the idea of embracing a measure of patience every time you step on the mat.  This means that you must begin to understand your emotions and mood swings as being a natural part of life and of training and your not allowing any swing, no matter how wide or deep it may be, to interfere with your overall forward progress.  Remember that long-term success is just that …. long term.

Hitting a slump and quitting just isn’t the way; nor is a negative response to over-training or plateauing.

My entire life on the mat I have heard innumerable Sempai say that for good or for bad, your personality comes out.  I believe that it’s not just your personality alone, but also your ability to understand your current mood(s) and your ability to mitigate your mood swings.  If things are going well in your career, family issues, love life, health, finances, neighbors, and everything else that makes our existence either fun or frustrating, then your training will naturally go smoothly and remain on course and satisfying.  If any one of those possible causations go awry, then it's downhill from there unless we recognize it (as part of life) and accommodate it as a part of who we are as a human and as a person, and by looking forward to a more positive swing at some point.

Going to class.  Working thru’ thru frustrations and personal disappointment(s) is the way and over time (with a little patience) will make you a world class Budoka.  You may not become Mushashi or Obi-wan but you might get pretty close and when that day comes, you will be shocked at how easy everything has “suddenly” become and you’ll be overjoyed that you did not submit to those emotions all those years ago that whispered in your ear “You can’t do this anymore.  Time to hang it up and go to Happy Hour”.

Remember that once you willingly submit to the negative and walk out of the dojo, it can be incredibly difficult to walk back in; that is the power of the negative and the reason to not allow it to control you.  Think long-term and where you may want to be 20 years from now and don’t allow today to have that negative impact that many fall prey to..

L.F. Wilkinson Kancho

The Aikibudokan

Houston, TX

September 11, 2019