Mind the Gap!

When you board the metro or underground in London, you will see a sign on the ground in front of where the car doors will open, that says, “Mind the Gap.”

It’s a warning that the space between the concrete pad and the metro car is large enough to cause you to stumble if you aren’t careful.

That warning has stayed with me ever since I first saw it, in that the gap can be equated to the distance (or ma-ai ) between two opponents in a fight. If you aren’t careful about the distance when you are fighting, your attacks will fall short and your defenses will be breached.

Such karate luminaries as Jim Carpenter of the Bushidokan who taught in in Lawrence, Kansas, made it a rule for fighting: Always take a step back. This keeps you out of reach and able to gauge the opponent's movements and intentions.

And you can even extrapolate the basic rule for physical distances to include mental distances, or focus. A gap in your focus or attention during a fight can be fatal.

I have always taught that distance and timing are the marks of a superior fighter. In order to achieve mastery of the concept of distance, you must train repetitively, thousands of times, and against as many different opponents as possible, in order for your skills to be effective against any opponent. There is no short-cut to mastery, it must be pursued diligently and with discipline.

Long ago, in the sword arts, when the students had become competent in the basic skills, their teachers would arrange a special “Tiger training” of 5,000 cuts, or “Lion training” of 10,000 cuts. The cutting would have to take place over a specific time period, such as a Saturday or Sunday, and failure was not an option. Imagine the strength, endurance and will-power required to make it through that training. 10,000 cuts in twenty hours for instance, is 500 cuts per hour. That is a rate of between 8 and 9 cuts per minute. Not too hard for that first hour perhaps, but what about at hour 10? Hour 15?

And under the watchful eye of the master, any cut that wasn’t up to standard wouldn’t be counted, adding to the number of tries necessary to reach the goal.

Of course, it wasn’t just technique being trained, it was also to forge the Indomitable will necessary to becoming a first-class swordsman, and the intensity of purpose to never give up and never give in.

A bit of “Mind the Gap” would probably do us all a lot of good.