The Ox

Yesterday in class Sifu Greg quoted something that his teacher, Sifu Gary Lam told him:

"An ox works hard all day, but at the end of the day it's still an ox."

What Sifu Greg explained was that gongfu is not only about working hard to develop the skill, it is about knowing what you need to work hard on. That is to say, knowing what you are training for and how to train for that. Otherwise, like that ox, you can be working hard all day and still not be progressing in your training. This of course seems like common sense, but especially with martial arts, oftentimes the student (like me) has no clear idea about why they are training and what exactly they are training for. Again, the goal, the strategy, needs to be clearly defined. Or defined enough perhaps so that you know the general direction you want to go. My Sensei has of course said the same thing, albeit without the animal analogy. It seems to me that anyone who has ever worked hard and achieved a certain skill level in their life tends to understand this. I'm just gettin' started here...

Elbow SMASH!

- Hiji Até