Remembering techniques: the notebook method

I forget most of what I learn in class, and so will you. The fix that works for me costs five minutes and a notebook, and the trick is knowing what to write down, because the obvious answer, the steps, is the wrong one.

At first I tried to remember techniques the way I would remember directions: first the grip, then the foot, then the turn. By the next class the sequence had three holes in it and I had invented a fourth step that was never taught. The instructors did not look surprised. Apparently everyone's first notebook is full of moves that do not exist.

Write the why, not the steps

The steps live in your coach's head and in next week's repetitions, and trying to transcribe them produces a recipe you cannot cook from anyway. What evaporates by then is smaller and more valuable: the one detail that made the whole thing work.

So after class, same day or it does not happen, I write three lines:

The name. If the technique has one, even a nickname, write it. Things with names can be asked about. Half the value of the glossary is that a named thing stops being fog.

The detail that made it work. Not the sequence. The one correction the coach made on my body: elbow inside, not outside. Weight on his shoulder, not his chest. One line. That detail is the technique; the rest is choreography around it.

What beats you, once you are rolling. When a move is done to you, write what you felt the half-second before it landed. That entry is the start of a defense, months before you can articulate why.

When to read it back

The notebook earns nothing sitting in the bag. I read the last two entries in the car before class, ninety seconds, and the lesson that was dissolving all week comes back usable. The progress post complained that the mat gives you a car with bad instruments; the notebook is the one gauge I get to install myself.

Re-reading also catches the lie. Some entries make no sense ten days later, which means I never understood the thing, I only followed along. That discovery is worth the whole notebook. Now I know what to ask about on Saturday instead of nodding through another round of it.

Paper, phone, whatever answers fastest

People ask paper or app like it is a style decision. The honest answer: whichever one you will actually open while sweaty and slightly humbled on a bench outside the mat room. Mine is paper, because a notebook never shows me a notification, and because drilling honestly taught me that friction kills habits faster than laziness does. Do not research note systems. Researching note systems is how people avoid writing notes.

This site is the method wearing its Sunday clothes, by the way. Every post here started as three bad lines in a notebook that smells faintly of gym. The handwriting got better. The forgetting never did, and it does not need to. The notebook means I get to stop carrying class home in my head, which was never going to hold it anyway. The page holds it. I just have to show up and check.