After Rob and I were introduced to the Rokushiki, we obviously were pretty motivated to begin our education in the style. Once we started with the absolute basics though I immediately realised how far I still had to go in order to actually employ said style.
Why? Well, the Rokushiki is not, contrary to what I initially thought, a style that teaches you a set form of moves which you then combine in order to overwhelm or evade your opponent, like kung fu does for example.
Instead, it teaches you absolute, and when I say absolute I mean absolute, mastery over every single part of your body. That can go even as far as controlling the otherwise unconscious action of your heart beating in your chest.
After I found this out I was, unsurprisingly, dumbstruck. Can you imagine controlling your own heartbeat or the rate at which you ingest food? This style has no doubt potential that I can not yet see a limit of. And the best thing? I'm fucking learning this shit!
Obviously, I was still pretty far away from actually doing any of that stuff. We each chose one discipline in which we would start our training, because there actually were two different ways to approach the way you train the Rokushiki.
The first way could be described as the 'head through the wall' method. You would, just like in the second method obviously, begin your training with excessive muscle strengthening and stretching, leading to a point where you would begin to learn the simplest of the Rokushiki, the Tekkai, or Iron body if you will.
From there you would continue onwards to learn the Shigan, as you already strengthened your body enough to begin learning said technique, and only then would you switch over to the swifter and more flexible styles, like Soru, Geppo, Kami-e.
I excluded the Rangyakku because it is not inclusive to either path of training, but rather a mix of the two.
Anyway. The other approach would be to begin by learning the Kami-e instead of the Tekkai. Despite what many may believe though, the smooth and evasive movement of the Kami-e is everything but easy and, just like the Tekkai, requires enormous amounts of control and density in your muscles. How else would you literally flow around a slash of a sword like a piece of paper? You would need exceedingly good control of your own body in order to not get hit. And how would you get that? Exactly! Muscles and flexibility.
So, in the end it does not really matter which way you choose, as you would learn all the different techniques anyway. As I understand it, the reason why this choice was provided to us, was simply for personal preferences.
That said, I was actually unsure which path to take. On one hand I really wanted to learn both Soru and Geppo in order to maximize my survival chances, simply because, as far as I know, only the ocean and sea stone is a danger for me at the moment. And yet, whenever I mulled over the things that could possibly hurt and endanger me, something at the back of my mind was nagging me constantly, which means there was something else out there that could hurt me and I would need to find out what that something was. Sooner rather than later, if possible.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Soru and Geppo. My desire to learn those two as fast as possible would obviously require from me to choose the second path when approaching my training in the Rokushiki. And yet, I could not help but eye the Tekkai route.
It was obvious that I had an affinity for the Tekkai, simply because of my strong build and the passive influence of my devilfruit, hence my conundrum, as I knew from experience that it was better to start with something easier and then work my way upwards with time.
It was maddening, and anybody who has ever had to make a hard decision between two things can agree on this with me. Still, in the end I calmed myself down and reminded myself that I would learn all the movement techniques anyway with time, so it really didn't matter that much.
Thus, I went with my gut-feeling and picked the Tekkai path. Rob for that matter had picked the Kami-e route, something I had surmised already as his build was more on the thinner side compared to myself. I had yet to see a kid my age with the same density of muscles I had, even though I knew there were some out there, let alone bigger and stronger than myself. *cough*giants*cough*.
Once we had made our choice we both were shown different methods on how we could continuously build up our muscles while we also received weights for literally every important part on our bodies, required to wear them nonstop for the rest of the journey to the hidden island where the Cipher Pol agents were being trained. And we did so, without complain, and yet we both knew immediately when making eye-contact: the journey would be hell…