A lot of different personalities come through my martial arts school. With that, I have to do my best to be dynamic so that each student is successful in their training. One student I have is particularly pragmatic, argumentative, and stubborn. There is not an instance in which I correct or advise him that he doesn’t immediately follow up with a question. That question serves to either contradict me or to make things more complicated than they need to be.
“Bend your knees,” I say.
“They aren’t bent?” he replies.
“Bend them more,” I reply.
He then proceeds to dramatically bend them far past anything close of a good stance. Mind you he is a teenager… Immediately I will shut this down as I am not interested in playing any games; I just want him to bend his knees. I see though, this attitude flares up with that student’s frustration. When there is a struggle to execute a technique or he is being pressed during freestyle from another student, he will begin over analyzing his movements, repeating the same mistakes, and essentially try shoving a square peg in a round hole. Yesterday during free grappling, in the midst of his deep frustration, I pulled him aside and told him something along these lines: “I think you are way too concerned with the fact you’re getting stuck. Rather than think about what you are doing in the moment, you are thinking about why the last move didn’t work. You need to get in there and fail. Just do what you know, work hard, and fail. You learn the most in the struggle and you will be better because of it. You aren’t here to win or lose. You are here to train.”
Whether or not it clicked then or will later, it remains a simple truth. If a student is getting their arm barred over and over again by a higher level student, and they are frustrated because they believe, on a technical level, they are countering properly I tell them: “I have good arm bar defense only because I have been arm barred a thousand times. You want to learn to not get choked? You need to get choked.”
There is no new, radical concept here. It is just something we need to be reminded of from time to time. Humans are refined by fire. The greatest people to not wake up great, but instead, are tried through blood, sweat and tears. Success is never a right, but a privilege earned by those unwilling to yield to failures.
“Bend your knees,” I say.
“They aren’t bent?” he replies.
“Bend them more,” I reply.
He then proceeds to dramatically bend them far past anything close of a good stance. Mind you he is a teenager… Immediately I will shut this down as I am not interested in playing any games; I just want him to bend his knees. I see though, this attitude flares up with that student’s frustration. When there is a struggle to execute a technique or he is being pressed during freestyle from another student, he will begin over analyzing his movements, repeating the same mistakes, and essentially try shoving a square peg in a round hole. Yesterday during free grappling, in the midst of his deep frustration, I pulled him aside and told him something along these lines: “I think you are way too concerned with the fact you’re getting stuck. Rather than think about what you are doing in the moment, you are thinking about why the last move didn’t work. You need to get in there and fail. Just do what you know, work hard, and fail. You learn the most in the struggle and you will be better because of it. You aren’t here to win or lose. You are here to train.”
Whether or not it clicked then or will later, it remains a simple truth. If a student is getting their arm barred over and over again by a higher level student, and they are frustrated because they believe, on a technical level, they are countering properly I tell them: “I have good arm bar defense only because I have been arm barred a thousand times. You want to learn to not get choked? You need to get choked.”
There is no new, radical concept here. It is just something we need to be reminded of from time to time. Humans are refined by fire. The greatest people to not wake up great, but instead, are tried through blood, sweat and tears. Success is never a right, but a privilege earned by those unwilling to yield to failures.
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