Developing Your Capoeira Game

Estagiario Aranha, of Maculelê Tallahassee, came to Decatur and Emory three weeks ago to give a few workshops, play with students in the roda, and just relax for a few days. One of his workshops was scheduled to be an hour long, but it spiraled into a three-hour workshop at the end of which my students played the best I've ever seen them in a roda on the square.

During the workshop, Aranha made an interesting point about training capoeira and capoeira development. While I cannot repeat exactly how he shared this philosophy via a blog, I'll do my best.

In short, when you want to develop your capoeira, you need to practice the right technique all of the time, in every sequence, and in every roda. That is, you can't develop your ginga by simply practicing good ginga for 15 minutes everyday. In fact, this really applies to learning just about anything—languages come to mind.

For example, if you decided today that you were going to silly walk from today on, instead of walking normally with one foot at a time, using your arms to counter balance, you'd have a tough time. If you focus on your new, silly walk, you can do it relatively easily. However, when something takes your mental focus away from how you walk, you'l revert right back to the old way. After all, you've practiced walking nearly your entire life to walk how you do now. That is exactly why it's difficult to improve technique in movements we've already practice so much.

So when you want to improve your ginga, your meia lua de compasso, or your negativa, or really any movement in capoeira, you need to practice the good—or new—version always. Maybe we can extend one of Mestre Bimba's rules. Instead of "ginga sempre", lets say, "ginga bem sempre".

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