San Do Kuen Martial Arts

Because skill development in any martial art takes many years, it is helpful to understand the progression of training in terms of stages or phases.  These phases do not always occur in a linear progression as they are presented here.  Each stage may be repeated, and the entire cycle may also repeat throughout the student’s active training years.  In some cases, a person could concurrently be in 2 different training phases with different aspects of their skill.

Each stage is very important to understand because students must understand that their goal is not to emulate all their instructors exact movements, but to comprehend their own potential by embracing all challenges in each training phase.

Phase 1:  Learning

In Phase 1, the student’s challenge is to understand a new system of thought, movement, terminology and philosophy with no practical experience and very little refinement.  Students in Phase 1 are working hard just to memorize and piece together the skills presented to them.  New students will often absorb only a small part of every lesson even if they are intent on learning.  The important part of this phase is the student’s ability to get the assistance they need without becoming overly reliant on constant feedback to develop their skills.

Some of the burden is on the instructor, who must make the new student feel “at-home” and relaxed.  The rest is up to the student, who has to accept his own errors as important parts of the training process, not as evidence of inferiority.  New students must develop enough confidence to try hard and make mistakes.  The reluctant student who does not try hard due to self-consciousness or fear of failure will not understand the value of his own work.

Phase 2:  Practice

Although students and instructors of every level must continue to practice hard, the character of that practice changes over time.  The student who has successfully recognized the challenges in Phase 1 must simply stay busy and focused in Phase 2.  Distraction is the primary challenge for students  in this phase.  At this point in training, students are now somewhat aware of the vast expanse of material that exists even in a basic sequence and often have a hard time feeling like they “know what they are supposed to do.”

The other challenge in Phase 2 is the urge to question the life out of the martial arts. 

• Our Western critical thinking model can destroy the simplicity and effectiveness of experiential learning.

Some questions can be quite helpful, but most questions just create more distraction.  If students can discover how to train themselves, rather than expecting their instructor to provide all the answers, then they can move into Phase 3.

Phase 3:  Application

This phase is named Application because students can now apply their ability to learn and practice independently to all new curriculum.  Most students do not train long enough to reach this phase.  In Phase 3, students become more focused and less reliant on outside criticism or feedback.  Students in Phase 3 are also able to practice harder because their bodies are beginning to adapt to the demands of training.

The challenge is this phase is to avoid becoming overly competitive with other students or instructors.  The urge to compete usually arises when students have not set long-term training goals.  When students get too focused on evaluating martial arts on a skill-for-skill basis, they forget to consider the overall context of those skills. If students spend too much energy worrying about who can do what better than they can, or what they can do better than others, they loose touch with the fundamental reasons to continue training.

Phase 4:  Adaptation

Phases 4 & 5 are not easy to reach and are even more difficult to navigate.  Most people will not train long enough to reach these stages but may catch glimpses of them in Phases 2 & 3.  In the Adaptation phase of training the student has now practiced hard enough that some of the technique feels “natural.”  This is a consequence of increased muscle memory, reflex development, and awareness.  The Phase 4 student needs little encouragement or motivation and remains content for longer periods of time without learning any “new” material.

This Phase is called Adaptation because students at this level show several different types of adaptations:

• Physical Adaptations: increased dexterity, flexibility, strength and coordination
• Technical Adaptations: students learn to slightly modify technique according to their body type and skill set
• Mental Adaptations: the student begins to think of technique in terms of its function in context rather than in terms of it individual attributes

The challenge in this phase is the tendency for students to become over-confident and therefore close-minded. The risk in this phase of training is that the student loses focus on learning and becomes distracted by his or her own ability.  Many instructors remain trapped in this phase for their entire career.

Phase 5:  Innovation

Phase 5 is a stage of training in itself, and it also represents the ability to exist and transition through all training phases at will.  A person who reaches Innovation no longer understands their skills in terms of their origin point, stylistic definition or beauty.  An Innovator is hard to understand because he or she does not exist within other set frameworks used to categorize martial arts.  Sometimes this gap in understading occurs because innovation is applied on the conceptual level rather than the physical level.   Just by presenting technique from a different point of view, innovators can change its  effectiveness without changing the movement itself.  Innovators learn easily, find value in things that many others dismiss, and often criticize the things that many others consider valuable.  People in this phase never get bored practicing the basics.

• There is no secret to reaching this stage, it is the culmination of a lifetime of work, sacrifice, hardship, and constant study.

The biggest challenge in this stage is that innovation does not often result in popularity or acceptance.  Frequently, innovators are ostracized and belittled by their piers.  The other difficulty with being innovative is to know when “enough is enough.”  Sometimes the creative process can lead people astray into obscurity, rather than to clarity.