A little knowledge...

....is a dangerous thing, so the saying goes and this is true when we begin to learn something new.

Consider tennis: the rules are not particularly complicated and there are only a half dozen or so different strokes to use. But if a person had a few tennis lessons and 'learned' the different strokes and the rules in say eight lessons, no-one would expect them to be able to play even a half decent game of tennis.

But I had to catch myself from making the opposite assumption after my first few lessons of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). Having had a few lessons doesn't mean that I am now capable of defending myself. I have 'learned' a few techniques, but I suspect that it will take a long time before they feel natural and I can apply them in a real defensive situation. What has really happened is that I have been exposed to a few techniques that I have yet to master, and which I have yet to learn to apply in conjunction with other techniques I am learning and to apply against someone who is resisting them and strenuously attempting to apply the same techniques to me.

One of the huge advantages of BJJ is that you know the techniques work since you experience them both from the perspective of practising them and from the perspective f having them applied to you. This is quite different from some of the striking arts, such as karate, where you never know whether a punch or a kick would really be effective in an actual self-defence situation since you don't ever have the experience of being on the receiving end of an effective punch or kick. But the danger with BJJ is the danger of thinking that because you know the technique and know it works then it will work for you in a self-defence situation. This is where over-confidence could become dangerous: even knowing how to apply an effective technique, you still need to have a realistic view of your ability to apply it in a real situation.

In Self-insight: roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself, David Dunning mentions the case of driver education in schools and how to the extent that it is linked to accident rates, the tendency is more towards increasing accident rates than reducing them because of over-confidence:

...after Quebec mandated formal driver education, the accident rate among 16- and 17-year-olds went up, not down - causing the mandate to be repealed...One key contributor to this paradox may be that training young drivers in emergency maneuvres gives them a false sense of security. On the day of their training, they, indeed, may know how to control a skid, but their skill atrophies over the time where they might have to use that skill in the future. However, left with the impression that they can handle most, if not all emergency situations, they take chances tey should not take.

Confidence may rise faster than competence, partly because we tend to become more comfortable with something as we become more familiar with it, yet familiarity may have little relationship with actual skill.

I'm not totally opposed to over-confidence: sometimes we can only improve by attempting things that in reality are beyond our current level of competence.

However, where our confidence outstrips our competence in the real world, rather than in a learning situation, it may indeed be a dangerous thing.

What will you remember when the class is over?

Memory is a fragile and deceptive thing. We go to a class, we 'learn' something new and exciting, but when we go to try it a few days or a week later, we find our recall is fuzzy and we can't do it.

After my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class, I realised that I could barely remember how to do some of the things that had been covered. In the course of an hour we had gone through a takedown, a choke and a sweep with a change of guard, but although some details stood out, most of the details were fuzzy. Admittedly, this was my first class, so a lot of what we were doing was unfamiliar so I didn't have the base knowledge to connect what I was learning to. But I knew that if I wanted to learn this martial art then I would need to take additional steps to lock in what I was learning.

So the first thing I did was search on Amazon for instructional materials suitable to my level. I looked at what books and DVDs were available, what they contained, had a look at previews to see if the level of detail would meet my needs, and looked at the reviews to see how helpful other people had found them. I ended up ordering two books from Amazon to help me.

One was a beginners book (Saulo Ribeiro's Jiu Jitsu University) which took a very structured approach to covering not just the how of the technique but also when it was and wasn't applicable, what counters there were to it and what to do about those counters. In other words, this book embedded the description of the technique into a context of use and I thought that this would make the techniques I was learning easier to remember. Since BJJ is in some ways a physical analogue to chess, in that it involves moves and counter moves, this book was equivalent to a chess discussion of tactics like forks, discovered check etc.

The second was a book more centred on the strategy of the martial art (Renzo Gracie & John Danaher's Mastering Jiu Jitsu ). In the same way as a chess game has an opening, a middle game and an end game, this book focused on the overall strategy of a fight, the objectives of each stage and on the need to plan a few moves ahead.

Strategy and tactics. Two things which provide a context and a structure for individual techniques and which I hope will help me more easily remember what I am learning and to revise it between classes.

The other thing which I realised was that I needed to be totally focused in class in order to learn as much as possible, and to write down the names of the techniques immediately after class so I could revise them later.

However from past experience, at least in the short term, I've found that in any class that teaches three things, if I try to focus on learning all three then the chances are I won't properly remember any of them. Whereas if I focus on learning and remembering one thing and on just getting the gist of the other two, there is a good chance that I will retain at least that one thing. I don't know whether this is a personal limitation or something that applies to most people, but I've found that it is generally true of dance classes I have done and discussing it with other dancers leads me to believe that other people find this to be the case as well.

So if you want to progress in a class that involves any kind of physical techniques, I would suggest the following:

• Pay close attention during the class
• Seek to master one thing and to get the gist of the rest, at least for the time being
• Make a note of everything that was taught in that class immediately after the class
• Find one or more good references so that you can revise between classes
• Try to build a structure and a context into which you can fit what you are learning

If you do these things you will find that you retain more and make more rapid progress in your chosen area of learning.

Fear of the Unknown

Learning is going from something being unknown to it being known to you. It may be a fact, a theory, a concept, a way of doing things that was previously unknown to you becoming known. Or it may be something that you previously weren't able to do that after learning you know how to do.

But sometimes learning can be blocked by fear of the unknown. It can be fear of how you will appear to others if you attempt a particular activity. Or it can be fear that you don't have what it takes to master whatever it is you wish to learn. But whether it is fear of social ridicule or fear of your own limitations, it can still block you from attempting the activity.

Last week, I decided that I wanted to learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). I had seen clips of it on Youtube and it seemed amazingly effective against a wide range of other martial arts. But I was a little bit scared since doing a martial art like BJJ was something outside of my experience and I didn't know how I would cope with it, either physically or in terms of acquiring the skills.

So I checked it out on the Web and found a local club where I could just go and watch a class, and where the first actual class was free.

Last Monday, I went and watched a beginners class and this experience increased my familiarity with what learning BJJ would require and my confidence that I could do it. I saw that there was a wide range of skill levels in the class and that the more experienced students helped those who were less experienced begin to master the techniques being taught. So on Wednesday, I did a free class.

Actually doing the class, I found that it was a little bit more physically demanding than it at first appeared, but I was able to successfully able to do a takedown, a sweep and a choke, with a bit of guidance from my practice partner. I was uncoordinated, forgot technical points that made the techniques effective and generally wasn't very good. But this didn't matter: it was my first class so why would I expect to be instantly good when people spend years training in this martial art?

So now that I've had the physical experience of doing a class, I'm confident that if I make the commitment I can master this new skill. What was previously unknown to me was now known: what learning BJJ would take, that this was within my physical and mental capabilities and that I would be supported in my learning by others around me.

When we try something new we sometimes get the idea that everyone is looking at us, something that psychologists refer to as the Spotlight Effect. But the reality is that everyone else is too concerned about how they are doing to worry about you. And in most classes, they want you to keep coming and so they are supportive of your struggling initial efforts.

Woody Allen once said that 90% of success is turning up. And when it comes to learning a new skill in a situation where other people can see you fail, just by turning up you have made a key step towards mastering a fear that would otherwise undermine your learning. Sure you might struggle initially: if it was easy then everybody would be able to do it. But as someone else once said "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and in learning unless you are willing to fall on your face once in a while and in public, you may never take that first step towards what you want to achieve.

You can look at it as a three stage process:

1. See how it's done
2. Try it out
3. Commit to learning it.

Through the first two stages you reduce the unknown to the familiar and this gives you the information you need to decide whether the 3rd stage is worth it to you. But when you make that decision at least it is made on the basis of knowledge not fear. Knowledge casts out fear and things are rarely as difficult as you fear they will be.

So if there's something you've been putting off learning because of fear of the unknown, dip your toe in the water and try it.

It could put you on the road to something you may find ultimately very fulfilling.

Going backwards to go forwards

Suppose you are on a journey and you take what you think is a shortcut. You are making great time, or so you think, until you run into a dead-end. So you have to backtrack to the main road and proceed on from there.

A lot of our skill learning is like that. We find what we think is a good way to do something but then later realise that it has become a barrier to further progress. So then we have to go back and re-build our foundations from scratch.

For example, when you first learn to use a computer, you may adopt the hunt-and-peck method of typing, and over time you can become quite fast using this method (and possibly avoid a repetitive strain injury.) But if you want to become faster then you will need to learn to touch type which initially may slow you down considerably. And it will feel much less natural until you have practised it enough to internalise it.

You will notice the same thing if you want to improve your handwriting. You have to slow down to deliberately practise writing more neatly and at first it will seem laborious and time-consuming. But as you persist it will start to feel more natural.

And this will be true of all situations in which you have an entrenched way of doing things. The longer you have been doing something in a particular way the more natural it will feel and the more unnatural and uncomfortable it will feel to do things in a different way even if that way will ultimately be better. The problem is that you are trading something that you have mastered for something you have yet to master with all of the effort and uncertainty and inital erosion of performance that that entails.

Top performers in sports and performance arts of different kinds are aware of this and when they experience slumps go back and rebuild their skills from the ground up, since over time they may ave developed faults in their performance that can only be removed by correctly practising the basics over and over until the fault is eliminated. This can apply to skills as diverse as golfing to latin dance.

Where performance is less than adequate then it means that there is either something you are doing or something you are failing to do that needs to be corrected. And whatever that is, it is the natural way that you perform at the moment. Only by interrupting your natural performance and changing it to something better can you approve.

And this applies not only to physical skills but to intellectual skills as well. The natural way that you write a paper for a course may well be to just write whatever comes into your head until you hit the word requirement. But improving this may mean acquiring new skills such as developing an outline including your major points, write the paper and then edit it. This at first may feel like too much work but once you get into the groove of doing things in the new way, you may be surprised at how much more effective this is and pleased at a greater sense of competence.

Sometimes what you need to do to improve may not be obvious. So in the absence of a coach, you may have to experiment with different approaches and learn from the outcomes of those approaches to refine your skills. And while you are doing this your performance will suffer.

The reality is that you cannot get better without first getting worse, and that sometimes the only way to go forwards is to first go backwards.