CHA blog moving home

Our new Chang's Hapkido Academy UK website went live today.

Among other things, it has a blog section. So this blog is moving to http://www.changshapkido.net/blog/

I'll keep writing my usual one/month, and look forward to your comments.

You should easily be able to access the area - though there have been some teething problems. Let me know if you have any issues.

Best
Tammy Parlour

Believing it to be so.

The Guardian newspaper recently reported on a study done by Charles Lee at the University of Virginia. He took 41 undergraduates who had previous golf experience and enthusiasm for the sport, and randomly split them into two groups. The first was the control; the second group were told that the putter they had been given had once been used by the professional golfer Ben Curtis. All of the participants were then shown a putting matt and asked to do two things: estimate the size of the golf hole on the matt and then use that putter to take 10 putts.

What happened? Well, those who believed they were using the professional golfer's putter consistently perceived the golf hole to be larger than those in the other group. Furthermore, the belief seemed to improve their performance; in other words they sank more putts.

The researchers suggested that this might have happened because the belief they were using the professional golfers putter may have encouraged them to use positive mental imagery associated with his past successes. Maybe also there was some sort of placebo effect – a lucky club!

Now we can poke fun at this and say, “Silly people, it was just a normal club, you can’t get special powers from an inanimate object”. Or, we could ask the question….if this is how our brains work, can I tap into that somehow and improve my own performances?

I wonder what might happen if we believed that we were wearing Grandmaster Chang’s uniform. Can we somehow embody that feeling and therefore tap into the potential psychological boost?

Reference:
Lee, C., et al. (2011). Putting Like a Pro: The Role of Positive Contagion in Golf Performance and Perception. PLoS ONE, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026016

Guardian Newspaper Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2011/oct/24/psychology-neuroscience?CMP=twt_gu

Do You Have Competitions?

When meeting someone new, and after answering the ‘What do you do?’ question, nine times out of ten the person will follow that with an enquiry as to whether I compete. My answer is always, “No”. And then I usually give the response, “Hapkido is an art of self-defence” or “we compete against ourselves not others”. But what does that actually mean?

Two ways in which an instructor/coach or leader can manage the environment that they create is through
1. An ego climate
2. A task oriented climate.

An ego climate is all about competition and being the best. Students are compared to others. Success & outcomes (at any cost) are highly emphasized. This sort of environment creates anxiety within the participants as there is a constant need to be better than others and to be told they are the best. Unfortunately there is only ever one winner -which naturally makes everyone else a loser. People begin to doubt their ability; and those with lower levels tend to drop out. No one can be successful all the time, so naturally people start feeling like failures. Motivation is all extrinsic; there is a high need for that external reward.

In contrast, a task climate is primarily about personal growth. Students seek to improve their personal best and focus on technique and goals. People tend to give more time and effort to training; they try harder and feel lower anxiety. Amongst participants there is open communication and mutual respect. Confidence increases as does enjoyment. Motivation tends to be intrinsic; the reward is internal.

Even in competitive environments, good coaches want to develop task centred learning. If you think about the backdrop of low funding, the competitive nature of sport and the time required to achieve excellence, athletes must have high levels of intrinsic motivation in order to have any chance of success or longevity.

If we want to really learn something, we have to allow ourselves to be rubbish and to take enjoyment out of putting time in and seeing slow progress. If we worry about how good we are compared to others, it’ll only be a matter of time until we drop out.

That’s why black belt isn’t a destination … it’s a sign post along the way. And that’s also why, “no, we don’t have competitions”.

Hapkido training as we age.

How old do you feel? I often find that the way people answer this question has a direct correlation to how active they are. The greater the activity level, the greater the difference between reality and fact.

If we look closely at sport, we can find many examples of athletes, supposedly past their prime, still performing at elite levels; Dara Torres and Martina Navratilova immediately come to mind.

Many people stop sport when they leave school/university. The 70year old weighlifter doesn't owe his success to being a worldclass athlete, but rather he is an individual who kept training when others quit.

We can't deny that certain physiological changes do happen as we age: decline in lean body mass, muscle power, skin elasticity and heart rate to name a few. But studies show that the decline is much less than we tend to accept. Simply put, 'if you don't use it - you lose it'.

As we age the rate of regeneration slows so we may not be able to train with the same intensity and at the same frequency of a younger athlete. But by continuing to take part in activities like Hapkido training, we ensure we work on our muscular strength and mobility as well as maintaining all-round fitness. In this way, we will always be younger, in the physiological sense, to our real age.

And before we classify an 'old' athlete as being 'over 40'... I'm told that Jean Borotran and Kitty Godfrey still played tennis into their 90's.

Ki Meditation Book Published

A couple of weeks ago I published a book on Ki Meditation. For more information please follow this link: http://www.changshapkido.net/hapkido1_017.htm

Power and Vulnerability

Many are afraid of being vulnerable. But is vulnerability really a bad thing and something to be fearful of?

When we punch, for example, we actually put ourselves into a deeply vulnerable and off balanced position; but this same body weight shift that causes vulnerability also enables us to get the most power into the technique.

In our personal lives, without vulnerability we never step out of our comfort zone…we never grow…we never connect to others. When we make ourselves vulnerable we actually open ourselves up to life.

Can we be fully alive or powerful in both our Hapkido and our personal lives without a degree of vulnerability?

I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on the relationship between power and vulnerability.

Continued Learning

I’ve just finished my first year (of three) of an MSc in Strength & Conditioning. The year ended with a 10-day on-site period of assessment and intense study.

It’s been a challenging year and an even more challenging 10 days. I feel exhausted. I felt at times like I was being put through a ringer both intellectually and emotionally, pushed to my limit. Coming out the other side, there is a massive feeling of accomplishment. I’ve learned loads, not only the course content but actually more importantly stuff about myself: what causes me stress, how do I respond, and what might I be capable of doing.

As an instructor I think it is incredibly important to be pushing myself to keep learning. It could be very easy to become complacent, to think that I knew it all, to think, ‘I am the instructor so they should listen to me’. I believe that as soon as that sort of thinking creeps in we stop our learning and we stagnate. Surely if I expect my students to grow, then I must keep growing as well, putting myself into situations that create anxiety and/or challenge me, and learning how to cope and hopefully to excel.

Can we be effective teachers, if we are not always learning and growing ourselves?