So there I was, watching someone be taught a new Aikido movement. I have learnt it myself, about 15 times now, so I forget what I learnt before and took careful notice to learn even more. My attention was drawn, not to the movement, but to how the person I was watching learnt it.

All movements can be broken down into component parts. Step 1, step 2, step 3 etc. Depending on how new you are to the skill, the smaller the steps are. The more skill you have, the larger the steps become. So what used to be bending your arm at the elbow, opening hand, pushing hand forward, adjusting distance, closing fingers, opening fingers, dropping hand is now one automatic movement of shaking someone’s hand.

So this fellow was having particular difficulty with the movement. He would perform steps 1 through 5, but get step 2 wrong. He would not notice his mistake until step 5. Repeating the movement, he would then still error on step two, but make changes to step 4 only to be more confused at step 5.

When you want to change the course of a river, you don’t start at the top, you start where it meets the ocean, dig the channel you want, then at the last moment break the old banks and redirect the river. You offer the river an easier path, rather than fighting it as you dig franticly in front of the oncoming wave.

I’ve experienced this many many times; Being confounded by a problem that I myself created by screwing up a step long before. This is one of the reasons I like to learn and teach things backwards. Starting with the end, and working back. So if I am teaching you to count to 10, I teach you 10. Then 9, 10. Then 8, 9, 10. Then 7, 8, 9, 10. Etc. Each time I teach a new topic (number), it flows into what you already know. So the more we learn, the better you get at everything you’ve learned before.

Yeah, it’s a little different than most of us would have been taught. It takes a little more planning and thought. And a fair amount of trust as you know where the end is, but no where to ‘hang’ that knowledge (which is another direct benefit). So if you teach others, offer advice, or just talk about a subject, how would you restructure your behaviour to teach it backwards?

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