Aikido      Judo      Jujitsu     

Home

Class Schedule

Events

Instructors

Photos

Newsletter

Martial Arts Links

Map to Dojo

Contact Us

Voice of the Fox
The Newsletter of the Martial Arts Training Service

Lessons Learned
by Jim Nightengale
Spring 1999

Once upon a time, Corporate America studied martial arts to learn strategy. The Japanese were beating us bloody in the marketplace, and we suspected that they had a secret beyond a great work ethic and low interest rates -- preferably something easy to duplicate. The commercial world's interest in martial arts was not focused on practicing technique. It was more a matter of reading the stuff we thought the Japanese were reading and getting into Zen mysticism to try to figure out why the Japanese worker was actually putting in eight or more hours of solid work every day.

Sad to say, your humble author was part of this. In business school I read The Book of Five Rings by swordsman Miyamoto Musashi and The Art of War by Chinese general Sun Tsu. I labored through books on Zen and developed complex theories relating martial doctrine to business strategy. This was an interesting exercise, but eventually we figured out that the Japanese were winning with solid business basics, customer focus, continuous improvement, and teamwork, not with mysticism or budo secrets.

This is not to say that I haven't picked up some important lessons from the martial arts that I think are useful in other areas of life. Here are a few that I think our arts are especially good at getting through even the hardest head. All of them are things my parents told me long before I ever put on a gi, but I seemed to learn them better in the context of a fighting art.

There is always somebody better

It was 1980. I was hanging out in the combat sports room at the University of Illinois, working with some other karateka. A guy we didn't know walked up and asked if anyone wanted to spar. He was tall and skinny, about six-foot-four and 160 pounds -- not the least bit intimidating. We started sparring, and I was all set to bounce him around the room when something hit me in the side of the head. At first I thought someone had beaned me with a croquette ball, but eventually I deduced that it was his foot. I don't think I hit him legitimately in the first hour we sparred. Dave remains a national class point system fighter, and the best kicker I've ever worked with. Over the years, I have had this lesson reinforced a number of times, and have been on both sides of the underestimation. I like to think that I'm a little less of a bonehead about it these days.

For every ounce of reality in the world there is a pound of talk

If I had dollar for every "master" I've met or talked to over the years, I'd be a rich man. If I had a penny for each master I've heard about from one of his students, I'd be able to buy Bill Gates. Sometimes it seems like everyone in the world is an Olympic coach, Korean national champion, dim mak killer, or tai chi master. It took me a horrendously long time to find my own solution to this problem. The secret, for me at least, is to ignore them. The guy who really has something will show it to you and not act like it's a state secret. If you give him a chance and he can't or won't step up, write him off. He's wasting your time with his death touch, chi kung, or whatever.

The most important thing isn't the belt or the trophies, it's the people you meet

I once had a boss whom I respected tremendously. This individual once said to me, "A year from today you will be the same person you are now except for the books you read and the people you meet." If this is true, the martial arts have had a large part in shaping me by being a great source of friends and acquaintances.

The guy who kicked me around in 1980 became a good friend. We stood up at each other's weddings. There was a cute girl in one of the classes I helped teach, and I eventually married her.
There are plenty of pitfalls in our martial arts practice. After all, we walk near the dark side of human nature in learning how to hurt people. Unfortunately this appeals to exactly the kind of individual who shouldn't be allowed this knowledge. But another group seems to become emotionally stronger and more mature by virtue of this tempering. I have been fortunate enough to have a number of these people as friends.

Home | Schedule | Events | Instructors | Photos | Newsletter | Links | Map