San Do Kuen Martial Arts

Skills must be put in perspective based on all relevant factors, not just time-in-training, belt level or class hours.  Martial arts skill should not be defined purely by physical and technical ability.  There are other subtle, yet important, mental factors that determine a student’s ability to acquire, develop and enhance his or her skills: quality of attention, depth of commitment, character of questioning, and awareness of self.

Quality of Attention

So many students (black belts included) lack the mental discipline required to pay close attention to their instructor’s demonstrations and explanations.  Often when students are supposed to be paying attention their minds stray onto other subjects or concerns.  Students sometimes also simply “check out” when their instructor is demonstrating a technique because they “already know it.”

Americans do not value mental discipline because it takes too much work.  We also can’t pay attention or focus on training for long enough to understand the benefits we are missing out on.  The fast pace of communication and commerce has made us a very impatient culture.  Americans like to find ways to get the things they want as quickly and as easily as possible.  Because martial arts skill cannot be acquired quickly or easily, most American students do not stick with their training and they tend to get bored doing the same moves over and over again.

A truly skilled martial artist will bring full focus to every practice session and learning opportunity, hoping to find one tiny piece that may be new and important.

Depth of Commitment

Most students level of commitment goes only as far as they can easily maintain their training.  In life, many stressful problems or events can distract us from our training goals – financial difficulties, personal problems, work conflicts, moving, etc.  Most people will use these events or issues as reasons for quitting.  Students will also use events or interactions at their schools or with their instructors as reasons to stop training or change schools.  In both these cases, the student believes that if they stop training that they will feel less stress or be happier in a new venture.  In the long term – training is training and stress is stress, whether they are related or not, people will usually choose the easy way out when things become difficult.

A skilled person understands and accepts that there are times when maintaining martial arts practice will be quite difficult.  He or she will use their skills to help them remain balanced an enhance their commitment.

Character of Questioning

Asking questions can be very helpful in an academic setting, but in the martial arts is often the proof or the cause of a student’s distraction.  Questioning without a purpose seems to occur because student’s simply don’t have a long enough attention span to follow multiple instructions or they can’t give up mental control of the learning situation.

• What If?

Questions that begin with the phrase  “what if” are interesting because they are proof of the student’s lack of attention span.  When people ask “what if” questions it immediately takes the learning process out of the focal point on on to something (usually) completely un-related.  This type of questions serves a reverse mental road map which shows the instructor exactly where the student stopped listening and created a new lesson for themselves in their own mind.  A skilled person does not ask “what if” questions because they are not thinking ahead of the lesson, they are actually participating in it.

• Why Would I?

The other type of useless questioning happens when students question things they have never practiced.  These kinds of questions always occur when students are asked to do something new and “out of the ordinary.”  Frequently, their immediate mental response is “why would I do that when I already know how to do this?”  This is a classic contradiction in the learning process.  People enroll in classes to learn, and the minute they are asked to try something new, they build a mental wall around themselves so the knowledge cannot penetrate their definition of correct and incorrect.  In reality, their ideas of correct and incorrect are not important, but they cannot accept this.  In America we are very opinionated about everything, even when we don’t know what we are talking about.

A skilled person knows that, in may cases, techniques that are appropriate for training or that teach certain concept are “impractical,” because they are designed for development not real-time effectiveness.  A skilled person also realizes that to learn we sometimes have to put our own ideas aside to understand another point of view.

Awareness of Self

Unfortunately, we all make evaluations of others based on superficial characteristics, looks, awards, degrees, financial success, etc.  These evaluations are usually misguided and inaccurate.  In the martial arts world, these kinds of assumptions can affect a student’s ability to train effectively.  Inexperienced students (and black belts) rely upon outside evaluations to form ideas about themselves and their level of skill (such as trophies or belts).  People who are successful in certain kinds of competition often take it for granted that they can excel in any other aspect of martial arts.

People that hold high ranks often make assumptions about themselves as well, and believe their skills are beyond development.  On the other side of the coin are the students who assume that, because their teacher is a 6th degree black belt, their curriculum represents the only “right” way to develop superior skills.  For many people the desire to be liked or rewarded for their skills becomes more important that developing skill.  As a result, their concept of self is largely formed by the opinions of others.  Their training then becomes a means to develop and multiply those external opinions and rewards, instead of being a journey of self-exploration.

Skilled martial artists understand themselves better than anyone else and they question all assumptions about themselves (including their own) to reach a higher level of skill.