The one training
partner you can always rely upon is Y-O-U.
Each time you
take a headcount of who’s available to hit it and get it, well, there you are.
We would all
agree that group dynamics are mighty useful for anything from tennis-doubles to
wrestling practice.
But we would
also likely agree that many a tennis champion past, present, and future has a
ready repertoire of solo drills within his or her grasp that allow them to
continually hone their game.
The handball
player has wall-return practice, the range-bereft shooter has dozens upon
dozens of dry-fire drills, the striker has everything from bags to mirrors to,
well, his own shadow.
Solo or not the
player, shooter or combatant that REQUIRES the presence of
others to sharpen the saw is at a deficit in comparison with the individual who
will train with and/or without good fellows to
share time with.
The auto-didact
who sees no training partner as no true loss is fertile with creative ideas and
the self-discipline to carry on.
[To be clear,
training partners are always a plus—provided they are like-minded well-paced
workers. I’m sure we all can think of some past partners who were a deficit to
progress and solo would have been the wiser course of action.]
Today’s sermon
merely tests the idea that “others are a must.”
The true test of
auto-didacticism is how self-instructive one can be.
That is, how
much progress can be made without the firm hand of the tutor to impart the
lineal pearls of wisdom that can only be attained via “The master’s lips to
the student’s eager ear.”
The Tale of The
Lost City
In Homer’s The
Iliad we have the tale of the Trojan War, and, as one would expect,
the city of Troy plays a large part in this heroic epic.
For centuries
scholars considered the city of Troy a confabulation or a metaphorical
representation of many cities.
To the German
merchant/amateur archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, Troy was a reality.
Schliemann
became entranced with the tale of Troy and decided to use his fortune to search
for the city.
Scholars and
contemporary archaeologists scoffed at his wrong-headedness. They considered
Schliemann an untutored dilettante with no formal training let alone the good
sense to correctly read and interpret metaphorical texts. Sinking money into
something as complex as an archaeological dig was the height of folly.
Schliemann was
an untutored auto-didact, not merely in archeology, but also in foreign
languages. Despite having never attended a single foreign language class or
having access to a “self-teaching” Rosetta Stone course he mastered a dozen
languages.
Here’s historian
Will Durant on Schliemann.
“In his travels
as a merchant he had made it a practice to learn the language of each country
he traded with, and to write in that language the current pages of his diary.
By this method he learned English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,
Russian, Swedish, Polish, and Arabic. Now he went to Greece, studied the
language as a living speech, and was soon able to read both ancient and modern
Greek as fluently as German.” Will Durant, The
Life of Greece, pp. 24-25
Here's
Schliemann himself on his auto-didactical method.
“In order to
acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary, I procured a modern Greek translation
of Paul et Virginie, and read it through, comparing every word with
its equivalent in the French original. When I had finished that task I knew at
least one half the Greek words the book contained; and after repeating the
operation I knew them all, or nearly so, without having lost a single minute by
being obliged to use a dictionary…Of my Greek grammar I learned only the
declensions and the verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its
rules; for as I saw that boys, for after being troubled and tormented for eight
years and more in school with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless
none of them write a letter in ancient Greek without making hundreds of
atrocious blunders, I thought the method pursued by the schoolmasters must be
altogether wrong…I learned ancient Greek as I would have learned a living
language.”
So, an
un-tutored maven of languages learned without a tutor and, apparently, improved
upon the current teaching method.
Intriguing.
BTW-He proved
correct and the archeologists wrong with his successful dig.
“OK, Mark,
that’s a good story but that was an intellectual endeavor; isn’t it waaay
harder to learn a physical skill without a qualified one at your shoulder?”
How Not to Drown
In kayaking [sea
and river] there is a counterintuitive skill called the Eskimo Roll.
[The Eskimo Roll
is actually a catch-all term for many 360-degree righting tactics.]
In precis, if
the kayak inverts leaving you with head underwater, using the right chain of
tactics you will pop back to upright saving your life without ever exiting the
craft.
Leave one chain
of the rolling tactic out, hedge a link in the chain, or misunderstand a link
and you are left in the precarious position of being head underwater, upside
down in a pitching sea or roiling river.
For anyone who
has performed an Eskimo Roll or attempted to learn to hit the skill properly,
we can vouch that it is no easy feat.
It is
counter-intuitive, a bit anxiety inducing, and a wee bit dangerous if you don’t
train wisely.
For something as
proprioceptively acute as this skill, surely more physically involved than
learning a dozen languages, a teacher is a wise and necessary investment,
right?
1927
Although Eskimo
Rolling and all of its spinning cousins are a staple of many weekend whitewater
kayaker’s repertoire, prior to 1927 there is no recorded instance of a
non-native performing this complex skill.
Prior to 1927
one must have had the good fortune to be born into a tribe or society where
such skills were valued and necessary for survival.
So, what changed
in 1927?
Austrian, Hans
Pawlata, become entranced by reading of the technique in the writings of polar
explorers. He set himself the goal of learning how to do it.
Did he do so by
seeking out a native teacher?
Nope.
Did he YouTube
it?
In 1927? Nah.
So, how did he
do it?
He simply read
and researched deeply, particularly the works of Knud Rasmussen, Fridof Nansen,
and Fredrik Johansen—which to be clear are not instructional manuals—they are
tales of exploration with only vague details on the tactic observed provided.
From there, our
intrepid Austrian took it to the river and worked, worked, worked until he
cracked the code of what he read on the page.
His method is
remarkably similar to Schliemann’s approach to a “dead” or “lost’ skill making
it into a “living language.”
If such ability
is available to one, it is available to all. We are wise to use Schliemann’s
and Pawlata’s examples as beacons to our own solo work.
We never have to
assume that no or limited access to training partners, state-of-the-art gear,
certified instruction is what is holding us back.
It seems the
best instructors are keen minds, boatloads of self-discipline, contempt for
beaten paths, and pure OD grit and will to follow the passion.
To all in
lockdown, or simply with limited access to training partners, and guiding
hands—rest assured you can still make astonishing strides all by your lonesome.
For unearthed
nuggets of combative history from tactics to drills to “Hit the river and do
it for yourself” see our RAW/Black Box Program.]
Resources for
Livin’ the Warrior Life
The Black Box
Store
https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/
The Indigenous
Ability Blog
https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/
The Rough ‘n’
Tumble Raconteur Podcast
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