shaolin news & inspiration

This summer, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Senior Master Lisa and Senior Master Steve for a wide-ranging conversation about training in the martial arts. The topics we covered included maintaining motivation, visualization in training, and cross training. I’m excited to share this conversation with our students across a few blog posts. 

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Part 2: Visualization

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In part 1 of this series, M. Lisa talked about visualization as an essential part of training as a high ranked martial artist: “It’s imperative to spend time on your own doing forms and doing things in the air and visualizing what you’re doing.” In this part of the conversation, we explore the concept of visualization further. 

M. Michele: Can you talk a little more about visualization and what role it plays when you’re working on forms and techniques without a training partner?

M. Lisa: When you first start to learn a form, what the brain does is go through the routine of the move: step forward, front-two-knuckle punch to the face, pivot around to the other side, block, front-two-knuckle punch to the face. But over time, students want to go into their own sense of virtual reality with a form, that 3D imagery you’re telling yourself “OK, now there’s a kick coming at me and I need to do a 7 block, and now I’m going to step forward and defend myself with a punch.” So you start to visualize a person in front of you who you’re reacting and responding to. That’s Level 1 of visualization. 

At a more advanced level, you’re not just visualizing the person in front of you doing the move, but truly visualizing what it would feel like if that person were to kick you, for example. You’re no longer imagining that just an avatar is there. Instead, you start imagining what would it feel like if that person, particularly if they’re bigger than you, were to throw a front ball kick and you need to block that thing. The way you move changes drastically because that’s when you really start to get the core engaged. You realize it’s not just doing a downward movement with your arm, which is technically correct, but you begin to think how hard would I have to do that movement to actually be effective against this person? That’s advanced visualization and what we’re striving for at Black Belt ranks.

I really think that doing forms this way - not just to do the moves, but doing forms as if you’re defending yourself, that trains your body in a whole different way. If you do your forms well and are practicing this level of visualization, you should be very tired at the end.

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