Seeing how the pros do it

Imagine if the only ice hockey game you ever watched was played by the mini mites, those kids around 6 years old who can barely stand on their skates and any goals scored come by sheer luck. The kids are trying to play, they just don’t have the coordination and muscles to do it and the games turn into these comically slow follies on ice. Now imagine, after only ever seeing mini mites, you watch the Flyers vs. the Islanders. It doesn’t even look like the same sport. 

I had an experience like that in last night’s Haganah class. There’s a large Haganah conference in a few weeks and Mr. Stuart was preparing three of the advanced students for it. Last night’s preparation consisted of this: the entire class formed a large circle, each student held a gun or a knife. In the middle of the circle stood one of the advanced students. One by one, a student from the circle would approach the advanced student and present them with a scenario, it could be an overhand knife attack, a knife held to the throat, a gun held to the ear, a gun held to the back …. The advanced student had no idea what was coming, but they had to react immediately. This was watching the pros do it. Their moves were fast, clean and accurate. They were able to improvise when a certain hold didn’t work and they were able to do it with a lot of people watching them.

Watching this drill starkly illustrated how huge the divide is between the students who are good at it and the students like me who are playing in the mini mite league. Most of the students in Haganah play in the mini mite league. We have an understanding of what to do and we can go through the motions of it, but we have no speed and if one part of our defense fails the entire defense disintegrates. Occasionally we get lucky and perform everything right, but all it takes is the instructor to come over and watch and that tiny bit of stress will make us do everything incorrectly.

Years of practice lie ahead for me before i can do what the guys in the middle of the circle did last night.