A Ramble About Conditioning

I don't know about anyone else, but I liked the Karate Kid remake with Will Smith's kid in it. I grew up with the original Ralph Machio versions, and even liked "The Next Karate Kid" with Mr. Miyagi teaching Hillary Swank. Yes, this shows my age, but hey, it was cool then, and it's cool now.

In the remake, instead of the "wax on... wax off" routine, a Chinese Miyagi, Mr. Han (played so well by Jackie Chan), has "Dre" (the remake's Daniel) simply pick up his jacket, hang it up, take it off, put it on himself, take it off, drop it on the floor, and repeat. Over, and over, and over again. Now, keep in mind, Mr. Han is supposed to be teaching Dre Kung Fu. This is something Dre reminds him of, many, many times. After the thousandth time or so, Dre gets fed up, and demands to know what it is that he's learning from hanging up his jacket a thousand times. After the outburst, where some choice things were said towards Mr. Han, Mr. Han comes over and proceeds to show him what he has learned, retooling the simple movements of bending down, throwing the jacket over the shoulders, throwing it on the peg into defensive movements that block punches and kicks. He did it a thousand times, and without knowing it, his body memorized those movements so that when they were repurposed for something else, his body responded without thinking. Without him knowing it, Mr. Han had conditioned his body to repond in a certain way. All by repeating the same boring movements over and over again.

This is what martial artists must do from the time they start. They take one movement and practice it over and over and over until their bodies do it without having to think about it, a thousand times, two thousand times. It's boring, it's time consuming, it's hard work, and it doesn't seem to have any short term goal or benefit. But's it's crucial that the body master the movement. This is the essence of what the term "Kung Fu" means, mastery of a skill derived from hard work and study.

We have often asked God, why do we constantly go through the same thing over and over again? Recently, we thought we had learned the lesson we needed to, and expected things to move to the next level, but no, things continue as they were. And here we are again. And we ask, why?

When God teaches us and trains us, it isn't like the classes and tests we take in school. There, we absorb information and are expected to spit it back out on a test. Once we can do this reasonably well, we move on to the next level. God trains us more like a martial arts sensei or sifu. He makes us do the same simple thing over and over again, not just until we get it right, but until we can do it without thinking; until it becomes a part of how we live, move, and breathe. He doesn't just teach us, He conditions us.

This is why it seems like we have to learn the same lesson over and over again. It's not that we don't know it. It's that it hasn't been fully incorporated into our very being yet. Where faith and love are concerned, where prayer and the dependence on God is concerned, where letting go of everything else and forgiving are concerned; these aren't lessons that you can just squeak by with a C- in the class. These are foundational movements which must be practiced over and over and over again.

So, as long as we still have to think about it, God will continue to make us pick up our jackets, hang them up, take them off, put them on, take them off, drop them on the floor, and repeat, until we do it without thinking. This is the path of a disciple, and if we leave off to go do something else for a while thinking that we've learned what we needed to, when we come back we're back to doing the same thing we left off at, over and over, and over again.