Skip to main content

Never Stop Training

 

The "Secret" of Success

A student once asked Jigoro Kano, “What is the secret of Judo?”

Kano replied, “Never stop training.”



Kano’s quote is so pithy and simple—as wisdom truly should be—that we may not realize the depth of attainment behind the words.  We also tend to outright dismiss quotes such as this as something so obvious that we already know it.  At least, we think we know it.  But do we?  When I first read it, for instance, my initial reaction was to tell myself inwardly, “well, of course you can’t stop training.”


I began martial arts training when I was 9 years old.  So by the time I was 15, I (like most teenagers) was pretty sure that I was a world-renowned expert on, well, just about everything.  (But, especially, martial arts!)  And if I had read the quote back then—and I may have, but I don’t remember it—I would have taken it to mean “train every single day” or to “train as often as you possibly can.”


Never stop training, from Kano’s perspective, wasn’t about training as often or as long as possible.  It’s not the attempt to cram as many workouts as you can into a day, a week, a month, or a year of training.


The founder of Judo is not giving us a “commandment” to train all day long.


The commandment is to train all life long!


As a teenager, I can also remember how much I really thought that I knew about martial arts.  Now that I’ve trained for 40 years in various martial arts, I realize not just how little I knew then, but how little I know right now.  This is what happens, however, when you approach budo (or any martial art) with the attitude that training is a lifelong pursuit.  You come to realize that it’s not so much about being the hardest puncher in the dojo, or the highest kicker in the dojang, because those are strictly physical goals.  And if you pursue martial arts from a purely “physical” perspective, you are going to be disappointed as you age, even as you continually work on technique and improving your skills, and find that you are no longer as fast or as strong as when you were younger.  If this is your attitude, you will probably quit by the time you are 40 or so, and realize that you will never again be as fast, as flexible, or as strong as you once were.  But when you approach budo with the understanding that martial arts are more than just a physical practice, you know that you can improve because your mind and your spirit can be honed until the very end of your life.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

High Volume, High Frequency Training Challenges

Two Training Challenges for Busting Through Plateaus and Forcing New Gains      For a program to be successful, it must regulate the variables of volume, intensity, and frequency.  Generally—and this is not an absolute; there are exceptions—two of the variables should be high (or one high and the other moderate) and the other variable must be low.  The reason I believe many “bro splits” are popular is because they are easy to program.  Many gym-goers these days, for instance, like to train one-bodypart-per-week and train with a lot of sets, a lot of intensity, but with very low frequency.  Although this approach most certainly can work for a lot of lifters, I don’t think it’s the most optimal way to train.      If you’ve read any of the material that I’ve written on this blog and in articles elsewhere, you will know that I’m a fan of high-frequency training.  And I typically recommend a lot of high-frequency, high-intensity programs (intensity here refers to percentage of one-rep maxi

Classic Bodybuilding: Don Howorth's Massive Delt Training

Don Howorth's Formula for Wide, Massive Shoulders Vintage picture of Don Howorth in competition shape. I can't remember the first time I laid eyes on Howorth's massive physique with those absolutely friggin' awesomely shaped "cannonball" shoulders of his, but it was probably sometime in the late '80s and early '90s, when I read about him in either IronMan Magazine  or MuscleMag International .  IronMan  had regular "Mass from the Past" articles written by Gene Mozee that had a couple of articles about Howorth's training*, and he was also mentioned fairly regularly in Vince Gironda's column for MuscleMag  not to mention in some of the articles of Greg Zulak for the same publication. There is no doubt that genetics played a big role in just how fantastic Howorth's delts looked, but to claim Howorth's results were just because of genetics or anabolic steroids - as I've read claimed on some internet forums - is a l

The Budo That Can’t Be Seen

  I haven't written any "budo philosophy" pieces of late because, well, they don't get near as many views as my essays on old-school strength training, powerlifting, and bodybuilding.  But I enjoy writing them, and, to be quite honest, I think they're some of the better essays here on my blog.  The idea for this one had been churning away in my mind for a few weeks, so I thought it was time to put pen to paper and see what comes of it.  I hope you find it, at the very least, to be an interesting take on an "obscure" subject: The Budo That Can’t Be Seen “Do the budo that can’t be seen,” ~Morihei Ueshiba “It is bad for those who are learning Zen to become like those who are studying Zen but do not sit.  After all, you must have the discipline to sit everyday.” ~Omori Sogen      The first quote comes from the founder of Aikido, also known as O-Sensei, and it’s the primary thing I want to discuss in this essay: how one does the budo that can’t be seen, and