IDO MOVEMENT FOR CULTURE

The author believes that in order to be successful in a chosen branch of activity (e.g. in a chosen discipline of athletics) one should be – in a way – a maniac, but not a monomaniac. In practice it means that working in one’s chosen proffession, occupation, branch of sport with great devotion, passion and enthusiasm, one should not ignore or neglect other aspects of life, work, art or sport. In spite of specialising in a given activity, which might be very original and specific, one should be interested in other activities, proffessions or branches of sport. In order to increase the effectiveness of work in a chosen proffession or branch of sport it is advisible and sometimes very useful to become interested in other spheres of activity. Comparing the methods, the essence, exercises, style of leasdership, motivation, etc., of your branch of sport with other sports may increase your knowledge and understanding of your own branch of athletics. The blind copying of the other sport, on the other hand, may bring very bad results – a negative transfer of skill. (e. g. trying to improve boxer’s, footballer’s, fencer’s specific endurance by applying long distance running – monotonous, rythmic movements, no change of situation, no active opponent, slow-twiching muscles, aerobic processes – do not bring the expected results). But equally bad is closing oneself in a shell, seeing only one’s own branch of sport, not noticing some useful and effective methods used in other branches of athletics. Sensible comparisons, attempts to notice and understand other branches of activity may be very useful and may improve the performance and effect of training of our chosen sport. Being interested only in one sport leads very often to such negative phenomena, like: “ivory tower phenomen”, “watertight compartment phenomen”, “defence of dogmas”, “functional fixation” etc. The author gives several examples of very successful benefiting from the other branches of work or sport, then he makes a comparison between fencing and judo. He underlines that fencing, superficially so very different from other combat sports and games yet has many hidden but very important features (importance of speed and accuracy of perception, various kinds of motor responses, the value of preparatory actions, high level of tactics, importance of sense of timing etc.) and assets that could be taken advantage of. Then he describes the Kung fu school of Bruce Lee showing how much of his famous school has been taken directly from fencing. The final conclusion is: while avoiding blind copying of other sports it may be and it is very often extremely useful to get to know other branches of sport, to try new methods, new ideas.