Practice . . . Then Practice More
It is said that the master swordsman Nakayama Hakudo would practice drawing his sword some two thousand times a day. At the Hayashizaki temple, in one marathon of endurance training, he was recorded drawing his sword ten thousand times in a single twenty-four-hour period. We can imagine the sheer speed required to do this . . . and also the deliberateness to do so many reps in so little time. But why would he do such a thing at all?
Because, as Octavian’s teacher Arius Didymus said,
“Practice over a long time turns into second nature.”
We don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training. The samurai Musashi was once challenged by a warrior named Miyake Gunbei, a man who thought himself one of the best in the world. On his third attack, frustrated by his lack of success, Gunbei charged at Musashi in an aggressive lunge. Musashi, having prepared for this exact scenario countless times, replied, “That is not what you should do,” then parried the blow with one sword and watched as the man gashed his own cheek against Musashi’s other sword.
How had he known? Practice.
"Cho tan seki ren" was Musashi’s phrase. Training from morning to night.
Oh, you’ve done that? Okay. Do it some more
And after that?
More. More. More.
“A thousand days of training to develop,” Musashi would write, “ten thousand days of training to polish.”
For a samurai, there was no such thing as pretty good. If a pretty good swordsman met a better fighter . . . he would die. It’s like the basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley’s observation: When you are not practicing, refining, working —somewhere, someone else is . . . and when you meet them, they will beat you. Or kill you.
Look, this is not a drill. There is no greatness without practice.
Lots of practice.
Repetitive practice.
Exhausting, bone-crunching, soul-crushing practice. And yet what emerges from this practice is the opposite of those three feelings. Energy. Strength. Confidence. You deserve that. Yes, your body will burn, but that’s the evidence. From that burning comes real heat, heat you can apply to your craft, to your work, to your life.
No matter what you do, practice will make you better.
Only you know what it will look like to train in your art like a samurai, an Olympic athlete, a master in pursuit of excellence. Only you will know what you need to practice from morning until night, what to repeat ten thousand times.
It won’t be easy, but in that burden is also freedom and confidence.
The pleasure of the flow state. The rhythm of second nature. The quiet calmness of knowing that, from the practice, you’ll know exactly what to do when it counts . . . the pride and the dependability of doing it too.
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