Wax on, wax off
Image by Lisa Van Dorp from Pixabay
When I was a kid, I watched the movie Karate Kid where young Daniel wants to learn Karate and gets old Karate master mr Miyagi to train him. Miyagi lets Daniel clean and polish his cars using the “wax on, wax off” motion. He also lets him clean a terrace and pain a fence, always using special motions with his hands when appying the wax, paint or cleaning water. All in all, Daniel spends lots and lots of time with these activities until he finally snaps and goes furious – “When are you going to teach me Karate?!” It turns out, that is precisely what he has done. The special movements Daniel used in the activities are important Karate moves, and by doing restoration and renovation work, they have just killed two birds with one stone. A lot of works has been done, and Daniel now has the correct movements in his muscle memory.
This scene in the movie is really good. It shows how important consistency is. To learn and integrate bodily motion effortless, you need many many repetitions. Just repeat the movements over and over, until they finally stick. When asked, one might be inclined to answer that your mind resides inside the head and the brain. But I don’t agree with that. Your mind, your soul and “you” resides in your whole body. If you touch a hot plate on a stove, your hand will remove itself without consulting with your brain first. That is also a form of muscle memory. And that is the level you must attain if you are to succeed with certain tasks that require extreme precision and dexterity. A tennis player cannot observe his opponent hit the ball, observe its trajectory, and transmit a command to the arm and hand to move the racket to the appropriate place. That is actually physically impossible, because the flight time of the ball is shorter than the time required for the brain to observe, analyze and react. Tennis is about observing the opponent before they strike the ball and predict where it is going to end up and let the body and muscle memory do the work instead. That is much faster!
The same principle goes for other kinds of “practical” knowledge, like riding a motorcycle, dancing or playing Meshuggah – Bleed on the drums. The last example is what I have been doing for 15 minutes every single day since July 2019. I started out as a beginner drummer, chose one of the most difficult songs in the world, and then I simply “wax on, wax off” until I can play the song. Every day I am 15 minutes closer to playing the song. And this past week, something critical has snapped into place. I have been struggling with the song and its ultra-complex patterns, trying to memorize them so I can start to focus on actually playing the song and relax. It is obvious to me that I have reached some kind of plateau, the next step in the staircase. Because now I can literally feel that my hands and especially my feet are starting to act on their own. I don’t need to send a command from my brain and tell them what to do any more! They know, because I have now played the song so many times in slow motion, that the consistent practice integrated the song in my body. I have been playing it it slow motion until last week. Now I am playing it at about 90 % of the original speed. I went almost straight from slow motion to almost original speed. That is a truly fascinating feeling.
Another factor is balance. When you have an imbalance in one of the wheels on your car, you will feel the steering wheel vibrating. A miniscule unbalance can have drastic effects. But when the wheel is completely in balance, all vibrations goes away. Playing the drums is very similar. If you play 100% tight, you will consume a lot less energy compared to when the hands and feet are out of sync. When the limbs are out of sync, you need to activate even more muscles to compensate for the improper body movement, and this makes you tired much faster. Personally, I think it feels like you use 10X less energy when you are 100% tight, compared when you are 99% tight. The unbalance vibrations won’t go away until the wheels is completely balanced.