SENSEI, I SHRUNK THE...

 by Phillip Starr

Back in the early 70's, I read an interesting article in one of the martial arts magazines of the day. A writer interviewed one of the students of the legendary founder of aikido, Morihei Uyeshiba. The student (whose name I can't recall after all these years) had actually lived with the famous Master and had become a renowned instructor himself. The journalist asked him several questions and his last one was especially interesting. “What is the secret to your powerful technique?”, he asked.

The teacher replied, “You begin by taking something very large and make it very small.” This apparently dumbfounded the interviewer who, I suspect, had little (if any) firsthand experience in martial arts himself. Not grasping the importance of the old man's response, he simply moved on to the next question. This was, I thought, a terrible shame. The old sensei had just provided the journalist with one of the great secrets of the martial arts but he'd missed it completely!

What he said pertains not only to aikido, but to all other martial arts as well. When we first learn the various movements – the footwork, the punches and kicks – our movements must, of necessity, be rather large. We struggle and sweat trying to master the fundamentals and they eventually become well-polished and strong. Unfortunately, this is where most practitioners stop, thinking that they've achieved a high level of skill...and they have, but there's more to it. Higher levels.

As we become more and more comfortable with the techniques and other movements, we should strive to make them smaller, to condense them, as it were. This can be a rather lengthy process but for those who wish to truly master a martial art, it's essential. The movements must be slowly “shrunk” without losing any of their power. This is why a true master can make a very small movement but emit tremendous force.

If and when novices see a Master perform in this way, they sometimes try to imitate him and this is a mistake. They're wasting their time; before attempting to shrink the movement, one must acquire a high degree of skill with them and understand how and why they work. Then the real trick is learning to condense them without losing any of their energy. In the art of Yiliquan, this theory is known as the “point and circle theory.” A circle, when it is reduced enough, becomes a point...but in martial arts, the point is very potent!