Levels of competence

[AngelaG]

New article Here

Feedback and discussion welcomed!

Angela

[Sionnagh]

[brag]I think I wrote something similar a year or two ago about levels of competence. [/brag]

No, really, it's a good article.

You could summarise it into perhaps:
1. Unconscious incompetence - you suck but don't know it yet.
2. Conscious incompetence - you suck and you know it.
3. Conscious competence - you get it right when you try. Sometimes. But probably still think you suck.
4. Unconscious competence - you get it right without having to concentrate. But when someone asks you how you do something you have to think about it if you are to explain it.
;D

Shu ha ri is perhaps, in my mind at least, a little more complicated. And often it seems people who are at Shu and learn of this decide they are at Ha, because it is more gratifying to the ego. But they may publicly insist they are still at Shu. There are different opinions on Ri, some state that only a few will ever reach Ri while others state that everyone will get there in time. Onlookers may say that a particular person has achieved Ri (an example may be someone like Kinjo Hiroshi) but they themselves deny it. Whether this is from modesty or a recognition in themselves that there are things they do not yet know I cannot answer.

What I do think is that it can apply at an overall level as well as at many different sub-levels. The cycle applies to each individual technique, the ways in which they can fit together, and the whole. So you can be at different stages at the same time for different things, different parts of your learning and development.

I also think that others (specifically your teacher) will (should) recognise when you move from one stage to the next before you do.


Mick

[AngelaG]

Sionnagh said:

[brag]I think I wrote something similar a year or two ago about levels of competence. [/brag]

No, really, it's a good article.

You could summarise it into perhaps:
1. Unconscious incompetence - you suck but don't know it yet.
2. Conscious incompetence - you suck and you know it.
3. Conscious competence - you get it right when you try. Sometimes. But probably still think you suck.
4. Unconscious competence - you get it right without having to concentrate. But when someone asks you how you do something you have to think about it if you are to explain it.
;D

Shu ha ri is perhaps, in my mind at least, a little more complicated. And often it seems people who are at Shu and learn of this decide they are at Ha, because it is more gratifying to the ego. But they may publicly insist they are still at Shu. There are different opinions on Ri, some state that only a few will ever reach Ri while others state that everyone will get there in time. Onlookers may say that a particular person has achieved Ri (an example may be someone like Kinjo Hiroshi) but they themselves deny it. Whether this is from modesty or a recognition in themselves that there are things they do not yet know I cannot answer.

What I do think is that it can apply at an overall level as well as at many different sub-levels. The cycle applies to each individual technique, the ways in which they can fit together, and the whole. So you can be at different stages at the same time for different things, different parts of your learning and development.

I also think that others (specifically your teacher) will (should) recognise when you move from one stage to the next before you do.


Mick

You may have written something two years ago but my article is bigger and better - and has a better lineage and is closer to the real meaning of competence!

From what I have read Ri seems to be a lot more complicated in that anyone can achieve it but perhaps only for a short burst of time. So someone may be doing a kata and it may just suddenly all go right for them - and everyone watching thinks "Wow!" However I think the likelihood is that many people will train and never reach Ri. So many people don't look any further than the end of their noses in their MA training.

With the levels of competence there could be two other levels. A level 5 when someone can do a technique brilliantly, and explain to someone else why and how they do it like that. And a "Coaching" level where someone can explain something to someone else and make them understand it. I think that some people may be fantastic karateka but will still suck at being teachers - the two are completely unconnected.

Angela

[thingy]

Sionnagh said:

The cycle applies to each individual technique,...

Bah! I've been trying to up the level of a kick for years now and I just can't do it. I'll try for months and it'll just destroy the whole kick to the point I can't do it at all, so in a panic I stop trying to up the level, decide maybe my body just isn't ready yet and I spend ages restoring the old kick to it's original state. Then a year or so later I'll repeat the cycle.

I'm not sure if I should keep trying in this failing gung-ho method, or just allow my body to work it out for itself over the next huge amount of years.

I go from Concious Incompetence to Concious even-more-Incompetence.

[AngelaG]

I find that I will be practicing my kata, and suddenly realise that something I have been doing correctly for months has suddenly gone to pot - and this mistake will keep recurring. I find it odd that practice is supposed to drill it into your head, but sometimes suddenly out of nowhere it all goes horribly wrong!

[Sionnagh]

Do you ever do a kata and suddenly wonder about a movement that you've never thought about before?


Mick

[AngelaG]

Sionnagh said:

Do you ever do a kata and suddenly wonder about a movement that you've never thought about before?


Mick

Often I will have gone home from karate and I find the adrenaline is still running - I'll have a hot bath and try and read a book to calm down. I will then go to bed and just as I am about to fall asleep I will suddenly think "Why does that move go like that?" or something similar. And then I can't sleep.

[thingy]

AngelaG said:

I find that I will be practicing my kata, and suddenly realise that something I have been doing correctly for months has suddenly gone to pot - and this mistake will keep recurring. I find it odd that practice is supposed to drill it into your head, but sometimes suddenly out of nowhere it all goes horribly wrong!

Sometimes I think this is actually due to progress. You've figured out something and are attempting to apply it. This forces you to rebuild the technique which makes it go hideously wrong. This can all happen behind the scenes without you being particularly aware of what's going on. That's what I think anyway.

Mainly though, it's a bit of a mystery.

[Aefibird]

AngelaG said:

I find that I will be practicing my kata, and suddenly realise that something I have been doing correctly for months has suddenly gone to pot - and this mistake will keep recurring. I find it odd that practice is supposed to drill it into your head, but sometimes suddenly out of nowhere it all goes horribly wrong!

That happens to me.

It was especially prevalent when I was a brown belt. I went wrong on sooooo many occasions with stuff that I'd previously been fine with.In my karate school, you have brown belt, then brown with 1 white stripe, then brown with 2 white stripes. I used to joke with my instructor when I was brown belt, that with the stripes I was actually working my way back to white belt again (get enough stripes and it'd have looked white). The quality of my MA training sometimes leads me to believe that I should be back at white...

I think that getting stuff wrong that you've got right before is partly because of trying too hard. I think that was part of my goof-ups when I was a brown belt - I was trying hard to improve for black belts, but trying so hard that I got it wrong. The moral of this little story? Relax! Hah, easy to say, not always easy to do.


Thankfully, I've not had an attack of the 'reverse quality' kata for a while... she says....it'll be just my luck that I'll go to training tonight and I'll be hopeless at every kata, even Kihon.

[AngelaG]

Had a bad week kata-wise this week. I've felt there has been something missing, put can't quite put my finger on it.

I had an odd experience on Tuesday. I was taking the class through Heian Yondan... I had spent a lot of time working facing a mirror and it must have temporarily scrambled my brain because I was stood at the front of the class with my back to them so that they could copy me and I started the kata.... in reverse!!!

The green belt looked at me like I had gone mad... I stopped and went bright red... then had to restart, and my brain still really had to think about it!

OOPS!

Angela

[bunkaiseeker]

Don't be embarrased. It happens to everyone. 2 weeks before the last grading, our instructor took the class through Taikyoku Shodan (Kihon Shodan Kata in some schools). Then, he decided to do the ura (mirrored) version. He was leading the class and ended up the wrong way round because he was taking a wrong turn. Said "ups, wrong, let's do it again". Same result. He starts grinning, has us do the kata the right way roung, then, with a wide grin says "ok, lets try it one last time". At last, it works! Almost laughing his pants off he told us "see, it's not so easy!". ;D

[Aefibird]

Yeah, it always makes me feel a little better if an instructor screws up. It can happen to the best of them!

My instructor has recently had a "bad kata run" - in this one lesson, every time we did Kanku Dai he would go into Kanku Sho and vice versa... The next lesson, though, we went through those kata agin and he was back to his usual 'perfect' self! lol

[seeker]

Umm, one thing I didn't see was the level where you start to get really cocky and think that your all that when you really still suck,

Next time you start to do a kata in reverse just turn around and say, "I expect you to know this kata forwards and back."

[AngelaG]

seeker said:

Umm, one thing I didn't see was the level where you start to get really cocky and think that your all that when you really still suck,

I think that level can be explained with the word: "Teenager" ;D


Angela