When I was a kid, I remember coming across a strange drawing that depicted the general parts (and proportions) of our brain that controlled the various parts of our body.  Most of us have seen it in biology class in school.  Sometimes this type of diagram is labeled a “homunculus”, though that can also refer to a small humanoid.  Anyways, it always stuck in my head because of how distorted the parts of the body appeared to be (big face, tongue, and hand, followed by tiny everything else (like the trunk, hip and leg regions).  Doesn’t it seem ironic that the largest and strongest muscles in the body are controlled by such small parts of the brain, while our facial muscles, mouth and tongue, along with our hands are controlled by huge portions of our brain matter?

Upon further reflection however, it should make perfect sense to the karate student.  We spend a huge amount of our training time, struggling to control and coordinate the large and powerful muscles: the legs and feet which make up our lower half, along with the hips (which connect upper and lower parts of the body), back muscles, shoulder muscles, abdominal “bricks” (for those who still have em, haha), etc.  In class, I often call these our “powerful but dumb muscles from which all power flows”.  I also say that it would be a great challenge to teach our leg and butt muscles to play the piano and type on the laptop or text on one’s iphone; something our hands do with incredible ease and speed.  No wonder so much of our brainpower is devoted to the head and hands.  You probably don’t realize just how much increased control you have achieved over your power muscles during your years of karate training until you see someone trying it for the first time.  From a physical perspective, you will have gained flexibility, balance, power and speed thanks to hundreds of hours of sweaty repetitive drills.  The real progress, however, is invisible – it has occurred in your brain.  In addition, this diagram only shows one of the two hemispheres of the brain.  When one trains, he/she is also increasing simultaneous coordination between the two hemispheres in a way that most other exercises do not.

So the next time you think you are struggling by doing “mindless” exercise, think of the homunculus and try to imagine just how you are actually improving your mind….Of course, your senseis are spending a lot of their time improving their mouth-brain regions, haha.