Zen in the Martial Arts-Joe Hyam

My friend Dan told me this was the book that changed his life, or something to that effect. So I bought it. It was an easy read, short, concise, to the point and full of deep nuggets of wisdom pertaining to the practice of the martial arts and to life itself. Joe Hyam practiced the martial arts under a number of renown Sifu, the most famous of which was Bruce Lee.

This connection brought back memories of the time in my own past where I was obsessed with the Little Dragon. Even though it has been a few years since I have delved into his writings, much of it came back to life in my mind.

Of course Joe Hyam had more to say that just a sequence of Bruce Lee vignettes.

Foremost amongst them are the ideas of being in the flow and practicing the art with great concentration and vigor but also with singular attention of not trying. He also speaks of the kind of decision making that Daniel Kahnemann explores in his Thinking: Fast and Slow and Michael Lewis' The Undoing Project. I am now thinking on these themes and trying to piece all of the ideas together. For this I felt the book was a great find for me personally.

I was pleasantly surprised by his mention of the concept of flow and trying not to try, these are things that I had just read about in the past few years, yet in his crude but very concise way, Hyam was able to explain these concepts in a tiny book. I was actually quite impressed.

The elegant part of the book is that Hyam was able to put what he had to say in short 2-3 page chapters, he does so with great clarity and follows them up with pertinent quotes. This is a great book to keep with me as a reminder of the lessons.

I was also disheartened to read that Joe Hyam had passed away in 2008, this was an older book.

The very worst team

As I sit at a court watching a bunch of really unskilled younger teams play, I started thinking about the hierarchy of our game.

Coaches often cite the fact that only one team can win their last match of the season or the tournament for each division as a consolation for their players. My contrarian mind then turns to the other end of the spectrum. There must be a team that never won during that season: the team that brings up the rear.

This team hasn’t won a set, let alone a match. They go through an entire season without ever having a glimpse of the promise land. I see them as being not very athletic, not very tall, and are beginners working really hard at doing something that they don’t know how to do very well. Yet I see them persevering, staring at adversity in the face and trying their best at something that they are not very good doing. And yet they persevere.

I see them huddling after every point, arms around each other, eyes locked on each other as I try to teach my players to do and they huddle tightly, almost desperately, like their lives depend on it. It must be very difficult and mentally draining. And yet they persevere.

I think of the quiet rides home from tournaments: kids locking their lips shut, choosing to not respond to well-meaning parents, fighting their own frustrations in their heads. I see them talking to their frustrated team mates in hushed tones and rack their brains for the solution. They manage to survive the post-match entreaties of their coaches, yet another loss, yet another talk about rainbows and unicorns or yet another talk about the doom and gloom of failure. And yet they persevere.

I think about what it must take to keep going practice after practice, doing the same things that never seem to click, doing the drills that seem to make your team worse than better, scrimmaging against the worst teams in your club because your coach is trying to give you a reason to keep fighting. And yet they persevere.

Time after time, I see them shanking passes, get called for unskilled touches on the ball, hit the ball way out or forcefully into the net. I see them lose points in bucketful and yet I also see them smile and laugh and pat each other on their backs, telling each other to work harder, to believe, to do every lesson their dispirited coach tries earnestly to teach them. I marvel at their hope, their faith, and their trust in this person who must have expressed his or her frustration multiple times in fits of exasperation and despair. And yet they persevere.

How do they do it? Why do they do it? What keeps them coming back? What kind of people would do this to themselves.

Being a thought experiment I imagine them fighting the good fight every step of the way, never giving up. Yet I know most people would have written off the season or talk about not playing again next season, such is the nature of our culture. Yet I think there must be someone who is willing to lay it out on the line, to persevere through the darkness. I also imagine that everything that we say about the benefits of having grit and the patience and discipline to persevere will win out over the darkness of realizing the reality, that what we preach as coaches will come true for those on the left end of the normal distribution.

I don’t know the answer. I have no empirical evidence to say definitively that this team comes out of the trials and tribulations of such a season triumphant in their spirit and stronger in their convictions. 

I hope that they do.