1000 Cuts

I’d heard of the idea that some particularly dedicated students would perform 1000 bokken cuts in a row as part of their training in Aikido or other weapons related arts.

The bokken is the wooden version of the sword used for training.

Sensei Tony Sargeant told me that Sensei Coyle, a well known Aikido teacher from Glasgow (now deceased) used to warm up prior to classes with 1000 cuts.

I have never tried this kind of training before personally and wasn’t sure of what it would achieve.

But recently I read something from Saotome Sensei that explained this idea.

He talked about how repetition of a technique was a key part of training. What he explained further was that it would be impossible to perform 1000 bad cuts of the bokken…you would tire out too quickly.

It would only be the most efficient movement that could be repeated so many times without the practitioner giving up early. Through repetition the body would learn over time to make the movement more and more efficient and to perform it with the least effort.

This was an interesting insight to me. It reflects a lot of what I see in Aikido training.

A lot of the techniques are very simple movements but as students we tend to add additional unnecessary movements that do not our effort to perform the technique.

Saotome suggests something interesting. That our teachers can only show us so much and then our body through repetition helps to teach us how to best perform movement.

It can be uncomfortable and awkward at first to learn any new set of movements but over time we become more and more proficient. Learning new movement patterns has been shown to be good for our health and in particular our brain health.