stuff and nonsense

With great power comes great responsibility

Hanging on very word

“…admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world, about morality and about human nature. And, very likely, when the child grows up and has children of her own, she will naturally pass the whole lot on to her own children- nonsense as well as sense– using the same infectious gravitas of manner.”

(Dawkins, The God Delusion).

Now, replace child with student \ athlete and respected source with sensei\ coach and apply to your martial art \ sporting context.

Dawkins is talking about a genetic disposition to believe everything someone senior says, to allow children to survive attacks from tigers etc. Run, when I say run.

This unfortunately means that the respected source can slip useless information in to the equation and the student still obeys:

“use your left hand like this to create chi energy”

or “run through these ladders 100 times”and you will be much faster on the soccer pitch.
Then, when the student or athlete starts to teach, they repeat the same nonsense without question. Opens your eyes to what is really happening in a lot of environments.

It also means that we as coaches have a duty to carefully choose our words and tasks with young children, as they are hanging on every one of them.