When teaching forms to beginners, I always have to remind them to look at where they want their next technique to go before executing it. It’s always obvious when they aren’t looking before moving, their technique will be off-center and sometimes not even fully executed. I have seen other instructors have to tell their students the same thing. “Look at where you want your technique to go, before doing it”, I have heard this line, or a variation of it, said in many schools by different teachers. What amazes me is every time a student looks at where their technique should go before executing, the technique always looks better. Seeing where they want to move before actually moving helps prevent some errors in the execution of their technique. Focusing on where their technique should go before they actually execute it, helps their forms look better overall.
Just like looking before moving improves our forms, “looking” before we do anything can help us have better outcomes in situations in general. Notice how I have “looking” in quotation marks. The reason for the quotation marks is because when we “look” before doing each technique, we are actually doing more than just “looking”. We visualize where we want our technique to go, we determine if we have enough space for the technique, and we check if the environment can support what we are about to do next. If we determine the environment can’t fully support what we want to do, we adjust (like not extending a kick all the way so we don’t hit the person next to us). We basically judge the environment we are in and determine how to act in it. We are doing more than just “looking” and moving.
Just like how we “look” before doing a technique in a form, we can improve in other areas of our lives if we just “look” first. Just taking the time to pause and think about our next steps before just doing them without “looking” can help us improve many things, help prevent us from making mistakes, and help make things in our life move more fluidly and beautifully like performing a martial arts form. “Looking” at our environment around us and thinking about what to do next before we do it can help us land where we want, like landing a technique in a form. Whether we are thinking about doing something big, like quitting a job or something small, like thinking about what we want to say before saying it, taking the time to check the environment, see how things are around us, and moving accordingly, can give us better outcomes than just doing things hastily.
Of course, we may not have time to “look” before we do everything in life, just like how we may be sparring or grappling and don’t have time to think about every little detail, there are times we have to let our instinct take over a little bit. But how everything is not sparring in martial arts, everything is not sparring in life. We have forms in martial arts that allow us to look before we do our next technique. There are times in life when we can sit back and “look” before we make our next move. Everything isn’t sparring, sometimes we can do forms. We should identify the parts of our life that are forms and try to remember to “look” before making our next move!
