The Martial Artist Mentality – Part 1: Intro and Training

“… you will get uncomfortable, this is a prerequisite to improvement, but don’t let the uncomfortableness stop you …”

One common quality every martial artist has is the desire to push themselves pass their limits to achieve a goal. These goals range from passing a rank test for the next belt to breaking boards or concrete. These goals we set are necessary for us to experience growth as martial artists. They are not easy to achieve and require a lot of effort and time; yet as martial artists we tend to push ourselves anyways to achieve them. There are plenty of martial artists that have stories of growth because of the goals they set. Some stories are as simple as increasing the number of pushups they can do while other stories may be a bit more involved such as learning to break through wooden boards or concrete. Regardless of the story, we can see the determination and will of the martial artist to surpass their limits to get to where they want to be. We see how the martial artist made time to physically train, made time to study technique, made time to understand their body, made time to ensure they will succeed. This mentality of growth, the mentality of knowing regardless of where you are now, you can always improve, is a mentality that martial artists can use in all aspects of their life. We will explore this idea. We will look at how we can take aspects of physical training for martial arts and apply it to our everyday lives. We will look at how we can generalize goal setting in martial arts to goal setting in other areas of life. We will also look into how we can better understand ourselves in other areas of life similarly to how we have to understand our physical bodies as martial artists.

Let’s start with the idea of training. In every martial art, you will find martial artists training and pushing themselves to their limits in hopes that they will surpass those limits. The martial artist who wants to be able to do 20 roundhouse kicks simultaneously without dropping their legs may find they can only do 5 to start. So, they train to get to 20. One day they do 5. The next day they aim for 7.  The day after they may aim for 9.  Then they may take a break for a day or two, and then go for 10 the next time.  They continue this regime until they reach their goal. An important thing to note is that when training to reach their goal of 20, the martial artist will get uncomfortable. They will feel tired and sore, but they will continue to push. They may stop and ask themselves why I am doing this and question whether the training is worth it, and each time they ask themselves this they come to realize that the answer is always yes. Therefore, they continue to train regardless of their uncomfortableness until they get to the level they want.

When training to reach a goal, we must understand the training will not be easy, and we will get uncomfortable. Though as martial artists and as people in general, we tend to understand this very well when it comes to physical exercise. Maybe because we can see our body changing over time, we can see that we are kicking more without getting tired. We can see we are able to do more pushups in one set. However, we can’t easily see progress so clearly in other areas of life, and because we can’t we tend to doubt ourselves more and discourage ourselves. We begin to think we are wasting time or what we are doing is not meant for us.

For example, when studying for a test, we may find ourselves asking why this is so hard, why can’t I do this, why can’t I understand, the same way we may ask ourselves why can’t I do this push up, why does it hurt so much, why am I so weak. Just like when we are doing physical training and we doubt ourselves but keep going, we must do the same when we are training for other things. What we need to be aware of is that feeling uncomfortable when training for anything means we are in the process of getting better. The uncomfortableness we feel is a good sign, it exposes areas in which we need to improve.  

When we feel this uncomfortableness and start questioning ourselves, we just need to take a step back and start doing some analysis. We should ask ourselves what part of the training is the most difficult for us, what part is making us uncomfortable. Whether we are studying for a test, working to get a promotion, or trying to make our kicks better, we should try to identify what is giving us the most struggle and causing the uncomfortableness. Once we have identified what is causing us trouble, we can adjust how we train to continue making progress. Maybe we are trying to get our kick better and decided to spend a lot of time stretching, and after spending days or months focusing on stretching, we still see no improvement.  If we take a step back and do some self-analysis, we may realize that the problem wasn’t our flexibility but the way we were pivoting our foot. We may then adjust our training to focus more on pivoting then flexibility and then we finally start to see the improvement we want. Just as a self-analysis like this can help us in martial arts, we can do the same in other areas of our life. Maybe we thought we weren’t getting that promotion because we weren’t taking on enough responsibility but after some self-analysis, we realized that it had more to do with our communication skills instead. We shouldn’t allow one aspect of our training to determine whether or not we can achieve our goals, we should look at as many things as we can until we have identified and corrected the right issue or issues.

If we can’t identify any issues alone, we shouldn’t be afraid to ask others, who we trust and know, for help. Understand very rarely, as martial artists, do we train without the assistance of others and make real progress (after all it is hard trying to spar or grapple alone), we can always find a martial artist training with others for help to get better. We ask others for advice; we ask them to watch and critique our technique and for ways we can get better. This aspect of training can and should be applied to other areas of our lives as well. When trying to get that promotion, find others who have gotten the promotion before to ask them for advice and assistance. When studying for a class, find a study group that can help you. Don’t try to train on your own the whole time, this will be difficult, and you may find yourself creating a solution to a problem that has already been solved.

Overall, I want you to understand, when training for that promotion, training for that test, training to speak that new language, training to learn that musical instrument, or whatever it may be, you will get uncomfortable, this is a prerequisite to improvement, but don’t let the uncomfortableness stop you, and if you are able try to find others to train with you!