Finding new techniques after all these years

Saturday was really nice for me. I was working with Brent Siemens in Judo, who's playing on injured reserve and must monitor his play to avoid being hurt more. I was working with Courtney Dodd in Aikido, who I've admired as a practitioner for many years.

With Brent, we had a normal escape in grappling that landed us in a position similar to kata-gatame, except when he slid around my head it was an instant choke. Instant. I had not seen, nor felt, this particular choke and was immediately intrigued. We spent close to 10 minutes looking at how we arrived at that place, dissecting our movements and making improvements.

With Courtney, we were working on some of the failure conditions of #1 release. My subconscious connected a couple of dots between techniques, and I found a great sumi-otoshi that I didn't know existed.

These "OH BOY!" moments are one of the great things about training. I've been training at Windsong for almost 16 years. To find new ways to do things after this much time is wonderful, and it's one of the things that keeps me coming back week after week.

Here are a few tips (this is by no means a comprehensive list) that might help you have these moments too:

Don't exist in a win-lose mode. If you must exist within the idea of winning and losing, the losing road is the key to success.[/*:m:1uq7xxyl]
Don't try to stop techniques. Go with the flow. It's far better to experience things in the controlled safety of the dojo than in the scary world of reality. It's "getting got" that teaches us.[/*:m:1uq7xxyl]
Failure is the great teacher. Success, while it's nice and helps our ego, isn't the key to learning. Failure allows us to learn why things did not work, and gives us the chance to fix them and improve our technique.[/*:m:1uq7xxyl]
Go slow. You want to be able to replicate your position, should you want to try re-creating the technique. I find this nearly impossible to do at speed.[/*:m:1uq7xxyl]