MIYAMOTO MUSASHI & LIFTING: DON’T FOCUS ON THE DETAILS (OR YOU COULD DIE)

As I’ve confessed many times through my writing, I am a complete and total unabashed nerd.  In addition, those of you familiar with my age and constant references are aware that I grew up in the 90s.  As such, I imagine you’re all just as shocked as I am that this is the first time I’ve decided to bring up Japanese philosophy in the blog, as by all accounts I should be a complete and total Japanophile, steeped in anime, JRPGS, and manga.   And though I admit I do tend to indulge in all those manners of debauchery, I just was never super big into eastern philosophy.  However, irrespective of where you fall in the philosophy spectrum, you have to know and appreciate Miyamoto Musashi, the Ronin that fought and won about 60 duels to the death with a sword in each hand, making up his own style and ending the lineages of many other styles he deemed inferior.  Musashi was so focused on perfecting swordsmanship that he would kill entire schools of certain swordfighting styles so that they would no longer pollute the population with their inferior methods: and you thought I was a fanatic about the signal to noise ratio.  Musashi literally lived by the sword, risking his life on scores of occasions for nearly 50 years, he lived and breathed swordfighting, it was his focus, his life, and his ultimate tome on swordfighting, “The Book Of Five Rings”, Musashi had this to say regarding the fine details of swordsmanship

“If you concentrate on details you will neglect the important factors, and you will become confused.  This will make it impossible to win.”

People will listen to your quotes if you have a sword in each hand

I am reproducing this from the Ashikaga Yoshiharu translation, first published in 2003, so I apologize if your version reads different, but let all of that sink in for you.  Musashi, arguably the greatest swordsman to ever walk the planet, the winner of around 60 duels to the death, who put his very life at risk when he fought, felt like focusing on the details was unimportant.  In fact, doing so was detrimental.  If you focused on details, it is impossible to win.

And what happens when you don’t win?  Typically, that means you lose.  And what does it mean when you lose a fight to the death?  You die.  Focusing on the details was how you die.

Musashi understood this about 400 years ago.  And he understood it without the miracle advances in science, technology, and education we have today.  And yet, somehow, with how smart we’ve all become, we’ve grown so very very stupid, because we all forgot this lesson that he learned.  People WANT to focus on the details so bad.  They want to AGONIZE over every little detail in their training and their diets.  They want to account for every macronutrient, they want to be able to quantify, measure and evaluate every single rep performed and ensure it was an “effective rep”.  They want to make sure they consume their quick carbs in the right window and take out tendo units to calculate their speed and plug it in a spreadsheet to map progress…all for what? Because it’s important?  Motherf**ker what could be more important than NOT DYING?! 

Not all of us get an extra life

Let it continue to sink in!  Musashi wrote a book about how to win in swordfights AND how to win in large scale full on assaults, and his advice was “don’t focus on the details or you will die”, and 400 years later some pubmed glasses pusher is daring to say “Well ACKTHUALLY…”  No, oh my god, shut up, you sound SO stupid right now.  The details are not how you win fights: it’s the foundational guiding principles that matter.  If you read the rest of Musashi’s book (and I highly encourage you do, it’s an easy read, because Musashi was also smart enough to know that it’s important to communicate complicated ideas simply, and it has tons of great little gems in it) he constantly explains that it’s less about fine and precise details of how one holds their pinky and to what precise angle one steps and more about mastering the core concepts, ideas and principles of combat and being able to apply them.  He explains how individual combat is a microcosm of combat between armies, and how the same principles apply universally because they are GOOD principles, and, in turn, you as a lifter/athlete/whatever should be able to ALSO apply them toward whatever pursuit you have.

In fact, Musashi has an entire section dedicated to debunking those schools that DO focus on the details: demonstrating exactly how and why they fail in their pursuit of doing so.  And Musashi wasn’t blowing smoke: he knew their stuff didn’t work because he KILLED THEM when they tried to use it.  Could you imagine a world with such scientific rigor!?  Think about how many self-proclaimed geniuses are online cranking out numerous evaluations on programs they’ve NEVER run, simply because they think they can look at a pirated e-book and measure effectiveness by how many sets and reps a movement is performed at a certain intensity.  These folks aren’t out there winning swordfights: these dudes don’t even own a sword.  How about we take up arms and see who survives before we start saying what does and does not work.

Pretty sure Musashi would have slaughtered everyone in this town for good measure

How about we get things back in perspective, shall we?  You folks that “live training”: do you really?  Is the consequence of you not achieving your goals actual, literal death?  Because that’s what it was for the dude who was one of the best ever at killing other dudes with a sword, and he said that focusing on the details was how you die.  If your passion doesn’t result in death if you fail, you DEFINITELY don’t need to be sweating the details.  Whatever fate your failure has could not possibly be worse than death, so maybe you can quit worrying about getting all the details right and focus more on getting your principles and fundamentals squared away.  What’s the worst that could happen?