19/06/2020
Foundation, foundation, foundation!
From the Dog Up Sport Team:
"Remember the classic “Karate Kid” movie (1984)? There’s this scene where young karate adept named Daniel complains to his master, Mr. Miyagi, that instead of teaching him karate, the old man is using him as a servant with monotonous, tedious and boring chores like sanding the floor or painting the house and fence. “For four days I’ve been busting my ass and didn’t learn a goddamn thing. I’m going home!” – says the boy angrily. Having heard that, Mr. Miyagi orders him to wait and show him the moves he had to do when he was doing his chores: circular hand motion of sanding the floor, straight vertical hand moves of painting the fence and side to side motion of painting the house. Mr. Miyagi reminds Danial of proper technique and then suddenly attacks him with a series of punches and kicks. To Daniel’s surprise, it turns out that thanks to just 3 simple moves he was able to defend himself against the attack.
Of course no martial arts training looks like that, and 4 days of using a brush and a buffer won’t teach anyone how to defend against an aggressor, but when understood metaphorically, this scene conveys a real wisdom, and it’s about foundations in training. They may seem boring, tedious or sometimes even inadequate (“this is karate training? I’m being your goddamn slave!”); they can make you feel like you’re not progressing. But master them right, and at some point, before you even know it, these tiny, inconspicuous element will start to come together. On the other hand, if you neglect foundations, something will go wrong sooner or later, and every good trainer knows that.
There are many Daniels in IPO world too. People who measure their progress with the amount of flashy movies uploaded on You Tube; who want to do those complex, spectacular, tangible exercises as fast as possible. Let’s be honest: teaching heeling position awareness (single steps, turns, feints) or creating tools for proper grip on the dumbbell are not too spectacular. How many videos of such training are there compared to those of long stretches with front paws prancing or big, stretched jumps over the hurdle? However, if something goes wrong later on in higher drive (eg. forging or chewy grip), and the proper foundation is not there, we have nothing to turn to to fix that. Either we find some makeshift solution, or have to start from scratch.
Eventually, then, it turns out that that the whole training process is much faster if your foundation training is right. So, whenever your trainer asks you to bust your ass on some floor sanding (be it basic protection work on a back tie, meticulous toy playing with hardly any formal obedience exercises involved, or laying down one-lane serpentines with a piece of food in each footprint), it’s not because he wants you to spend more hours with him and pay more money for his training. Foundation work will always pay off at some moment in time."
Karate Kid Training Montage in HD - If you like the video leave a comment :) Rocky Training Montages: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX3ixE1X_Tgb-YMR...
