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Old 08-12-2014, 10:10 AM   #8
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: How essential is timing, and how do you develop it?

I have been hesitating to post because I think this is really a "down the rabbit" hole discussion. But I'll give it a shot...

First off, I agree completely with everything Szczepan wrote up above (I will add that weapons work doesn't guarantee that timing *and* there are those without weapons work with the same amazing ability, but that clarification isn't I think really much to argue about anyway).

But I think his discussion highlights something that I think is really critical to understanding timing. And his question about how to train for it cuts right to the core of the problem.

Using one of the examples given in the article, a simple foot sweep is anything but. Yeah, we can comprehend it on an intellectual level, but your comments about timing (weight transferring but not yet connected) raise more questions in my mind really. How do we learn about that exact moment? Is it by watching? Or is it by "feeling". And that's where it gets complicated to me. And that's where I think I start to quibble with the use of the word timing... Because I think that sends *some* people in the wrong direction.

Going back a long time ago when I trained in Judo as a teenager (bell bottoms were in if that helps). I remember watching two very experienced guys training. A senior member came over and sat down next to me. I think he liked talking with me because I was always curious, always asking questions, and he joked that he could tell when I was puzzled because I would turn my head like his dog watching a treat (and fwiw I catch myself doing that even today -- I guess that's my "tell"). Anyway, I was watching then work on leg sweeps. My comment as I remember it was that their timing was great. The reason I remember this is the old guy laughed, slapped me on the back and said timing had nothing to do with it. I argued the point because if the timing isn't right you can't do it, but these guys seemed to always time it just right. He said that they get it right because they can feel when it will work and feel when it won't. And that has nothing to do with timing.

That conversation stuck with me over the years. Yes, the timing has to be perfect. But maybe the timing has nothing to do with "learning the timing" as much as "feeling" the ebb and flow of a technique. In other words, the "time" to sweep the foot is when you "know" they're vulnerable.

So then the question becomes how to learn when someone else is vulnerable. In Judo (and Aikido) you have the advantage generally of being directly engaged as things happen. With sufficient and correct training you can learn how to "feel" the attacker's balance, connection, etc. directly through their connection to you (and you obviously use all your other senses as well -- we always seem to want to separate senses and as a guy who is significantly hard of hearing I think that's probably a mistake -- a discussion for another time however). So how does this happen? What can we do to facilitate this? How do we train our students in the same? By teaching them how to feel the structure of the attacker through whatever connection you have available.

So this will veer off in to a lot of other areas so I'll end it now.

And "No", I don't think this is the only way or the only thing. Just a major part of it.

To me the problem with someone trying to "learn" timing is that they are focused on something that *is* accurate and correct. However, learning how to "hit it" right at the correct moment isn't really so much about timing. Back to the old guy's comment... It's not so much that the timing is correct (it is, of course), it's being able to comprehend *when* that moment has arrived or is about to arrive. When you feel the balance tipping. When you feel the attacker floating. If you can't feel that, yeah, maybe timing is the way to go (by that I mean a focus on the idea that at *this* point in the technique the attacker should be off his center). But that approach seems to be like looking for a way of *approximating* when something is happening rather than training to figure out how to *know* that thing is happening.

That's why I think there are many folk out there who are absolutely fantastic when training with their own students. The timing, rhythms, etc. are all there, known, and in many ways predetermined. And it is a form of collusion, but in a very subtle and insidious sense. I'm vastly more impressed when I see someone pull off a technique cleanly with someone from outside their group.

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