This post was originally published as an article in a dedicated KarateForums.com Articles section, which is no longer online. After the section was closed, this article was most to the most appropriate forum in our community. Kaizen is a Japanese word that is simply translated as improvement. However, like many Japanese terms, the word encompasses far more than its literal English translation. It means more than simple improvement and instead suggests continuous, gradual, orderly and never ending improvement, as well as the willingness to pursue incremental improvement a small step at a time. The concept of kaizen in Karate training means that your techniques must be a little bit better than they were yesterday. A ski instructor once provided me with an important example of kaizen. Despite living in New England all of my life, I never attained any skill at skiing. Finally, during a winter vacation, I enrolled in a week long ski program at a local ski resort. We would ski in a group lesson in the morning, then have free skiing time in the afternoon. One evening, after the third day of lessons, I ran into my ski instructor in the pub. He greeted me enthusiastically and asked how my free skiing went that day. I told him that I thought I did great... he asked how many times I fell. I proudly replied, "None!" He shouted as if perplexed, "None?!?!?!?," and shook his head sadly. When he saw the confused look on my face, he continued, "I thought you would try harder than that," then patted me on the shoulder and walked away. He later explained that he wanted his students to push themselves at least a little beyond their abilities and if I had done that, I would have fallen down at least a few times. Since then, whenever a student falls down in my class while we are practicing spinning kicks or flying kicks, I congratulate them for pushing a little beyond and tell them the above story about my ski instructor. I consider that kaizen is a perfect approach to Karate training for two reasons. The first is obvious: each time I enter the dojo I try to make everything I do be just a little bit better than the day before. The additional hidden meaning that I find in the concept of kaizen in training is not to become impatient, push too hard and frustrate myself. Rather, I strive to maintain incremental, but constant improvements. Life is busy and complex... I feel that it is important to have patience with yourself and incorporate your training into a pattern that you can maintain. In the end you will progress further. I used to run one mile a day, every day, on the grounds of the university where I worked. It took less than 15 minutes to change into my running clothes, complete the mile and change back into my regular clothes and didn't leave me overly winded, so I could integrate it into a daily routine. After a while, I increased my run to 3 miles. Unfortunately, this became too much of a challenge ... a burden, actually ... for an everyday approach and, not wanting to step back down to only one mile (which psychologically felt like quitting), I actually ended up skipping more and more days of running, always under the guise of being too busy and promising to get to it tomorrow, sometimes justified, sometimes not. As a more extreme example, I've seen many students and many of my peers over the years, dive head first into karate, training every night, staying after class and doing extra. What typically happens is that these people burn out after a relatively short time and never train in karate again. While it is certainly true that I had my lazy periods and could have devoted more time to training here and there, I'm still at it decades after I started and I am convinced that this is because of maintaining an overall approach of small, but consistent, advances. Kaizen. The same approach is what can help anyone maximize their abilities at daily tasks, including school, studying a musical instrument, painting, etc. It can also help one overcome major but temporary tasks like writing a term paper, a thesis, or remodeling a house, etc.
