Watch and Learn

There is a phenomenon that I have experienced many times, but that I haven't heard talked about much. This is a weird omission, as I used to be a teacher. I wish I knew what it was called, and if anybody knows, it would be super if they would contact me.

It might be a variation on visualization, but I don't know.

Here's how it works.

You have been working away training in an activity for a long time; perhaps Karate. Your progress is steady, but slow.

You go to watch some big tournament. You are fully engaged in the bleachers, exposed to performance by top-level competitors.

You return home, and go back to training, and discover you have improved. Significantly improved. Your movements are crisper, and you are reacting faster. It isn't that you've picked up a couple of technique ideas from the tournament, but that may of may not have also happened. You are just better, in an overall way.

This has happened to me many times over the years.

It has also happened to me in Jiu-Jitsu. Every time I've watched something like one of the televised Metamoris competitions, there has been a tiny, but noticeable improvement in my performance.

Most recently I've experienced this phenomenon again, but to the greatest degree ever.

I 've just come off of a month and a half of vacation. During the first two weeks I trained at the Gracie Academy in Los Angeles for 17 group and 4 private classes, and spread over the rest of the time visited training centers in Arizona half a dozen times.

I have a few injuries, and so barely sparred at all in LA. I maybe went with two or three partners in the entire time. In Arizona I sparred at every session. Altogether, I rolled for maybe 100 minutes, tops. None of it was particularly enlightening. That is less than a third as much rolling as I would have experienced if I'd stayed home.

Last night was my first time back on the good, old, home mat. I rolled with four partners. I was better, seriously better, fundamentally better.

It wasn't that I had a huge number of new techniques from the classes that I had attended, although there was a little bit of that. I was just better at everything.

While in Los Angeles, I watched whenever there was sparring going on that my injuries prevented me from participating in. I got to intently see everything from mediocre, to good, to outstanding sparring.

Somehow, that has rubbed off.

I wish I knew more about the process.