You got to have faith

For some the martial arts can be all-consuming; a constant in their life that they pursue without varying degrees of intensity over the course of a lifetime. It may be the closest that some people get to a religion, and like religion there is the expectation of reward for their dedication.

Exponents need to have some confidence in the martial art they are pursuing otherwise they would chose another system or find something else to occupy their time. Students are told to train hard and in time they will master their chosen art; they aspire to be just like their teacher. We have a social need to attach ourselves to something we see as having importance or kudos, so we like to think our instructor and our school is the best. Go down the road to the next martial arts school and their student’s have the same belief.

What I find interesting is the mind-set of the student who is still dedicated to their art after a decade or more but has not advanced to the stage where they can use their art as they believe they should be able to. They begin to question the promise that dedication would see its own rewards. They begin to wonder not only “am I good enough” but “will I ever be good enough”.

Whenever you see people in this situation, the question they always seem to ask is “how do you make it work”? In response my thoughts are ‘have they ever seen evidence that it does work’. Usually they then proceed to tell of the wondrous skills of their instructors, and that in their mind demonstrates that the potential of the art really exists but they have been unable to attain it.

Decades ago, my experience was that much of the art I was learning did not translate to battle. I remember my instructor going to a competition and seeing a guy from Asia who had a very simple strategy of a straight kick followed up by a straight punch and he took out most of the competitors, but he had obviously trained that combination so that it worked for him nine times out of ten.

The lesson was that you can get something to work if you really focus on it and make it a constant. The fancier the technique the less likely it will work in battle, especially when you are up against multiple opponents. Resistance tends to wreck the intended implementation of techniques. This however is not what people want to hear, as all those cool moves that their art has to offer is half the fun of pursuing it. The disease of the martial arts is the attraction to shapes found in techniques. It attracts a lot of people to the arts and it cons even more.

I find it interesting and annoying at the same time that my instructor essentially abandoned the art he had been taught and created something different without realising it. In the process he totally rebuilt his coordination so that everything flowed from his footwork which drove his accelerated mass. His interest in multiple attackers shaped his new art to the point where if it didn't work against a high functioning group of attackers, then it was discarded.

Unfortunately he thought he had just modified the art that he had learned, so he taught us part of his original art and part of his new art. Some enterprising young soul will hopefully reproduce his art one day, and at last there might be some decent you-tube videos on multiple attackers. Like I said, you got to have faith.