by Nick Lowry
Head to head in a competition-a real “technician” will probably get beat by a real “champion”- and a real champion will probably be able to repeat that amazing feat a few times in a given day–where the real technician excels is in wiping the floor with everyone else continuously and repeatedly all day long — day after day —
The champion burns bright and burns short- if you want to knock down damn near anyone on earth for a few times, become a champion. If you want to take out a hundred guys in a row and keep on clickin– burn slow and and get spooky efficent — get the technical difference.
Technicians train to shobu (life and death); competitors train to shiai (games of victory an defeat)
When your training is geared to the depth and breadth of survival and reality you must acquire a good degree of competency and build skills across the board because of the high degree of uncertainty and chaos in the equation. When your training is geared to winning a game, then that skill set becomes much narrower– you don’t need all the tools anymore because the rules of the game have eliminated much of the uncertainty–shobu requires polished generalization, lots of failsafe redundancy, and broad strategic thinking; while shiai requires specialized conditioning, narrow focus, sharp tactics, and lots of well honed monotony.
From the sho-bu perspective (the real “ultimate” fight) — I like this quote:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
