I’ve started a website to put out information on martial arts training. It isn’t about the mechanical approach to training, which dominates the scene to the extent that many of us suppose that’s the only kind of training there is. This is all fine as far as it goes but it’s rudimentary. What is missing is a method to dedicate your life towards, or more importantly one that enriches your life through practice of it.
An effective system of self defence recognises that the individual causes the skill to be effective through their action and motivation, not vice versa. Neither should it rob you of other things such as health and motivation. It should always nourish and enrich you. Otherwise you will be finished and merely identifying with what you were in the past. People train hard, but they don’t train properly and end up injuring themselves or burning out because they have no love for what they are doing. They are simply chasing a result rather than engaging in meaningful activity.
As far as I’m concerned, emphasis on self motivation and learning tend to have an invigorating effect on performance and interest, and it is this quality which should be cultivated. This is a pre requisite to developing abilities, in the same way as energy is a pre requisite of producing electricity. So what I am saying is that you should focus on energy production and with high motivation your body acts as a conductor to perform the moves. Otherwise it is eventually just worn out with all the meaningless routines, which although demanding often result is mediocrity. They create spiritless action.
If we are doing something natural to us, learning more or less takes care of itself as a gradual process of trial and error, guided of course by fundamental truths. But instead we tend to follow a system of some sort which is so limited and ineffectual. And even though progress stagnates, people still follow these systems. Don’t get me wrong, systems provide and outline of what to practice, a curriculum, but you wouldn’t learn the curriculum of biology so that you had to do no discovering or experiements yourself. And that is exactly what Many aspiring Martial Artistists do.
Nobody was as stupid and ignorantas me in this regard. And I was incapable of finding meaningful practice within such a set up. Yes I won some matches along the way, lost some too, but it was all meaningless to me as an end in itself. But I don’t wish to focus on myself personally, except to say that if any of the ideas here can help you along the way, it is because they contain truth. If you disagree with me personally, then please feel free to disregard the posts, but I ask only that you continue in the search for truth.
I just told you that in my early years of practice I was highly ignorant. But that’s just the way it is, you have to pass through certain trials and tribulations which test ones capabilities in order to get at the truth, history verifies this. But I carried on anyway. Why? Because I was so dissatisfied that I looked only at progress. What helped me was that I believed that through sheer will power I might make progress. So I don’t bother asking if I’m any good or not, it doesn’t matter, in fact I regard myself as highly susceptible to weakness and therefore in need of remaining eternally vigilant. Who knows what would have happened to me if I had given myself over to some false way of thinking just to be self satisfied. I’ve not reached perfection, but I’m progressing daily and it’s something.
I’ve seen many promising students give up training due to injury, lack of progress, or the popular belief that after a certain age it’s natural to deteriorate, at a time when they were showing promise. The typical pattern involves stagnation, often due to overemphasis on mechanical routines. The solution is to engage in more of the same at greater intensity. The results are Usually highly detrimental. None of this is inevitable, but is often made so due to total ignorance on the subject. Once again, my way of training caused me a lot of illness and injury, and so nobody is more aware of the dangers than me.
I always believed there was something missing from the Martial arts systems out there that I have observed and practiced. And now I can see it. My only advice it to keep on practicing according to certain laws of success which should be enshrined. Keep practcing, keep understanding more and more, behave properly towards others rather than thinking you are better than everyone, breath well, and live healthily. You will then see if what I am saying is a simplistic lie. The results will be slow, but cumulative.
The best quality is in persevering, because everything in life tries to convince us that we’re stupid, wrong, ignorant, even friends and especially certain authorities. The books, media, absolutely everything you can think of tries to convince us that we’re foolish and should give up. I have certainly had my share of filth and rubbish thrown at me, and my overriding goal is to neutralise it with the will and intense focus on truth. And how are you going to overcome this enemy? By following certain truths and principles which lead to success and defeating these invisible enemies. There may be no other enemies than these, go and conquer them, with tenacity!
If any of this sounds familiar, hopefully what I’m talking about will make some sense.
