The Perfect Teacher

I've had a lot of good teachers in the martial arts, and very few bad ones. I've had teachers who call out encouragement to me in class, and I've had teachers who would belt me with a wooden paddle. But the best teacher I ever had never said a word to me: not the first time we met, and not once ever up until today. Yet without a single word this teacher has shown me more and more details about kicking correctly than any other teacher. The name of this perfect teacher is "Everlast." My first heavy bag weighed forty pounds and was hung fairly high from a cross beam at Hong's Taekwon do. Before I could practice striking it, I had to work for a couple weeks just to get my foot high enough on kicks to hit it in the center. My current heavy bag weighs sixty pounds and is hung from a bolted three legged framework that has about a ten foot line from one leg to the other, so there is room for the bag to swing and for me to get out of its way. When you start on a heavy bag, you jam everything: jam toes, jam instep, jam ankle, knee, hip, small of the back. Even when you hit it exactly right, the small of your back and your hip will feel it for several days. So that's my first point about the heavy bag: you have to accomodate to it. It does not accomodate to you. It will not change its nature, but it will change your nature to become the thing that you are trying to become. And this ability is the characteristic of a great teacher. The heavy bag transforms your ability to kick. Where once you had mere snap, you now have focus: the application of power into as tiny a target as possible. After four weeks on a heavy bag, my straight kicks in free practice shoot out so hard that my trouser leg snaps. The heavy bag discovers everything. How I hate this quality, but it is the quality of a good teacher. There's no hiding anything from the heavy bag. The truth is, my round kicks look great in free practice, but they have no power, and I never get my toes back far enough. The first time I round kicked the heavy bag, I found out that I was living a lie. It showed me the truth on impact, and as I hopped around the gym floor holding my throbbing toes, it offered no comment because the truth was there: I have terrible round kicks. The heavy bag has shown me many other secrets that I have hidden from my other teachers: I don't always turn my head fast enough on back kicks. (I have been known to miss the bag completely on kicking drills; and believe me, when you are kicking full force, it really hurts to miss.) I sometimes fail to fold the knee tightly enough before shooting out the foot on side kicks. (*See "jammed insteps," above.*) So I have discovered that the heavy bag cannot be lied to. It discovers every flaw. Yet it does this without effort, simply by being what it is in relationship to what I am. Because it is perfectly a heavy bag, designed to be kicked perfectly, all my imperfections in kicking are exposed. The heavy bag never lies. It shows me my errors, but it also shows me my successes. Any moron

can push a bag, so hitting the bag hard enough to make it swing is no indication of a good kick. A good kick will make the bag "jump," and the telltale rattle of the suspending chains tells you when the strike has been focused and powerful enough to jerk the bag out of its resting plane. I was under the impression that my jump back kicks (also called 360 jump back kicks and 360 aero back kicks) were perfectly useless. After four weeks of straight kick practice on the bag, I added the jump kicks, but I was not enthusiastic. Yet one of my jump back kicks--much to my surprise--rang the chain and jerked the bag up. The bag could have deceived me but did not. It was a good kick, and the bag said so. By imitating the correct technique, I have improved my jump back kick, and the bag tells me every time when I am successful. I could go on and on about this: the more you work with a heavy bag, the more it communicates to you. It humbles you; it outlasts you; it reflects your own strength and focus perfectly. It can swing back and hit you if you get careless. But what I like best about the heavy bag is that it does not care who you are or where you come from; all it cares about is the kick itself. If you have very little talent but have worked very hard at the martial marts all your life, the bag does not care. If you have a lot of talent and don't try hard enough, the bag does not care. It will tell it to you straight about your kicks, and that's what counts. You can be white, black, male, female, young, old, heavy, light. There are no extenuating circumstances in kicking, and if you come to the bag with an attitude, it will strip it from you and pare you down to pure concentration. There is no room in perfection for a sense of self: there can be only the kick. People who can't handle that much honesty quit working on the heavy bag. I had a man tell me once that the heavy bag was no good because nobody stands still in a fight. "Cheez," I thought, "Then just swing the stupid thing; I mean, it's hanging from a chain." But out loud I said, "Well, if you can't consistently hit something that's standing still, what makes you think you'll ever hit a moving target?" I think the result of that was a long discourse on jammed toes and how they delay good training. Yet, jammed toes are truth. Jam your big toe on the bag, and you know something that you did not know before you kicked. And you'll remember it, too. Every time you take a step. That's true education. I started heavy bag training right before I tested for first degree black. Then I increased to very extensive heavy bag training when I was preparing for second black. And now I consider the heavy bag indispensible as I prepare for third black. Yet the bag has been the same in its attitude toward me. I know I told you I started with a forty pound bag and now use a sixty, but really, it's the same bag. It treats me just the same, regardless of my rank and ability. It lets me hit it again and again. It continues to tell me the truth, to show me what I am, to reflect back to me exactly what I am doing. The process of its instruction is painful but never vindictive, humbling but never crushing, patient, consistent, yielding, but utterly inescapable in its revelations to me. There is room among humans to expect consideration, mercy, extenuation because we are

imperfect--all of us. But when we stand before that which is perfect in its design and execution, we stand before that which will reflect back to us our imperfections. If we become angry because it shows us what we are, we are asking it to cease being what it is. And to expect that which is perfect to cease its perfection on account of us is haughty, unreasonable, and cowardly. It is also asking the impossible. All that we can do is leave it or come to it. And if we come to it, we have to come to it willing to be changed, willing to undergo a process of pain and wisdom, willing to see every undiscovered thing in us discovered and corrected. The wisdom of the heavy bag is the wisdom of perfection--a microcosm of a greater truth, a greater Perfection that also was hung up before us and reflected our imperfections in Its Perfection: patient, consistent, yielding, but inescapable in Its revelations to the entire world. Truth, especially Divine Truth, does not have to be shouted from the rooftops. It can be hung up with humility and subjection on the scaffolding outside a city, and yet it remains Truth. All the perfection is still there. We, being imperfect, will reject It, put conditions on it ("If you are the Son of God, come down.") and do everything except see what it is reflecting back to us: our imperfections and our great need to be transformed