Miyagi becomes Daniel's teacher and, slowly, a surrogate father figure. He begins Daniel's training by having him perform laborious chores such as waxing cars, sanding a wooden floor, refinishing a fence, and painting Miyagi's house. Each chore is accompanied with a specific movement, such as clockwise/counter-clockwise hand motions.
Daniel fails to see any connection to his training from these hard chores and eventually feels frustrated, believing he has learned nothing of karate. When he expresses his frustration, Miyagi reveals that Daniel has been learning defensive blocks through muscle memory learned by performing the chores.
Mr. Miagi's shows him all the specific task he had been doing and how they transferred into karate. At the end of the transfer of learning phase of his training Daniel is amazed at what he had "learned" when he thought he was just doing everyday tasks.
An odd form of training passed off by an unorthodox master on a skeptical student. Sometimes comes disguised as a set of chores, but just as often is a general exercise that promotes a valuable physical or mental attribute in a strange way. Always dismissed as a waste of time early on, and appreciated later. Often this also serves as a lesson to the skeptical student to trust the master and do all the crazy things the master asks without questioning, by demonstrating that the master really knows what he's doing and is in fact effectively teaching the student.
It can be considered also a life lesson, and you can read more about it in this nice blog post over on a China travel site. It's like your childhood. When you're young you always complain with your parents for being so severe, but only when you're an adult you fully understand that your parents acted like that because they wanted you to become an educated person.
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