65 YEARS A STUDENT, AND STILL F*CKING UP.

SPOILER ALERT!!! IT IS PREVENTING THIS THAT IS THE CORE OF EVERY MARTIAL ART THAT I HAVE STUDIED.

It blows my mind a little bit to think that I have been involved in Martial Art training now for 65 years, numerous styles and many good and talented Sifus, Senseis, Instructors and Coaches, and let me never forget the many talented fellow students, whom I learned just as much from.

To be expected, there are some major differences between these styles and differing teachers’ approaches, but there is also common ground, core elements that relate directly to the aim of all Martial Arts.

I was chatting with Saleh last week and I mentioned to him, as I have mentioned to all of you at some time, from “Day 1”, we can all fight, we have always been able to fight, what we are trying to achieve through training is the ability to fight better, better than we did last week, and to be sure better than anyone who wishes us harm.

“Training” is developing an ability that we may or will use somewhere else at some other time, not today, not here and not against my training partner, who is a friend and Brother.

Why would we wish to hurt our training buddies?

In short, training is not, never was, and never will be the same as the thing we are training for.  Training is about learning the thing we are training, and not about doing the thing that the training teaches us.

We need to rejoice in this, embrace the “PLAY” aspect that is training, and not to treat it so seriously, and above all not to keep score on ourselves.

In every style I have studied, and in fact in every Sport that I have trained in, the main aim is to get out of our own way, to quiet the inner voice, and become a “NIKE” meme.

JUST DO IT!

All styles, all sports, no exceptions.

I can only talk for myself here, but I believe that you may harmonise with this thought.

The times I got things wrong in training, it was because I was trying to prove that I could do it my way just as well as my teacher’s way.

This was not a conscious thing, not overtly deliberate, not me wilfully engaging in “dumb fuckery”,  but it did come from me, and when I messed up, which of course I did frequently, I would blame myself for this failure and get embarrassed.

Which would often result in my talking to myself instead of clearing my mind to start again, and messing up the retry.

 In a way, I was possessed of an evil, mischievous spirit, an inner antagonistic 7-year-old that thinks it knows better and overrules my grown-up thinking.

A results and prestige-driven imp that genuinely and, usually innocently, believes it can already do this thing.

The “E” Word.

Just let me show you.

SPOILER ALERT!!! IT IS PREVENTING THIS THAT IS THE CORE OF EVERY MARTIAL ART THAT I HAVE STUDIED.

Quietening the inner child, doing the work for the sake of the work alone, of course, we want to do it well, but firstly, we need to NIKE it, and not think that we need to prove our individuality.

And guess what?

After 65 years, I am still struggling with this, still failing as much as I am succeeding, but I am cool with it these days, because if nothing else, I understand that this is exactly what training is.

Quietly training. Quietly thinking about hurting some MOFO.