Why do most martial artists stay average?
Why do the best keep getting better?
What is the secret to mastery in martial arts?
Average vs. Amazing
What is the difference between someone who is average and someone who is amazing?
Are they born that way? Do they work harder? Do they train more often? Do they have better coaching?
Why can someone train at a martial arts school for years with seemingly little to no progress yet someone else can join the school for 3 months and surpass the veteran?
In my observations most martial arts schools are what I refer to as “sink or swim schools,” especially the more sport or combat oriented schools.
Rarely are techniques, tactics, tools, targets, behaviors, responses, rationale, fitness, etc. ever broken down, explained, properly demonstrated at speeds that allow everyone to understand them. Coaches never learned how to coach. Let’s face it, in the world of martial arts tradition has ruled and in tradition the instructor showed a move, expected you to do it and that was that. Tough crap if you can’t pick it up, you just need to be better…
The guys who seemed like naturals might be the people who played more sports in school and thus learned physical moves quicker… they simply have more movement skills… then again it could be because they were just more confident and confidence allows one to apply skills quicker.
There are a number of reasons why one person will seem better naturally than another, but in this article we will explore how to take an average person to amazing.
The Dirty Secret of Many of the Best Martial Arts Gyms
Without heaping direct insult at any individuals it is important to note that many times when you have a school full of top guys, it isn’t necessarily the school or coach that creates them but rather the guys who are more driven seek out that school because of its reputation.
Now I don’t want to say that there are not great coaches out there because there are for sure, and a great coach can take average fighters and make them amazing.
But having been one of those top guys at my school in the past I can tell you that I got that way not because of the great coaching at my school (not that my coach wasn’t good) but because of the effort and time I spent outside of the gym at home, reading, practicing and thinking.
I recall an interview with Bill Superfoot Wallace, retired full contact champion, years ago talking about his experiences at his martial arts school. Bill wanted to be the best so when his instructor would teach a new technique Bill would go home and practice and practice and practice and perfect it so that the next class he was the best.
That is what the best do. The coaching for every student at that school was exactly the same, but the individual athlete/fighter put in extra work to become the best.
How many of Michael Jordan’s high school basketball team moved on to the NBA? Was it the coaching or the player? Was Michael a natural? NO! Ask his high school coach, he was average, but he put in extra training and effort.
Many of my combatives / martial arts students comment on how before my training no one ever explained to them the how, what, why, when, etc. of what they were practicing. Context was never given. They also comment on how they were always only told to go full speed or all-out and that there was never time to actually practice or master what it was that they were learning… thus they never really got good at it.
Sink or swim… the predominant style of teaching in martial arts, sports and many other venues. The naturals will rise and the average will stay average, wither and drop out.
Great Coaching Does Exist
Now having said that, we can observe the opposite effect as well where an amazing coach takes a select group of people and makes them amazing.An example is the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow.
All in all the club produced more top-twenty-ranked women than the entire United States from 2005 – 2007, as well as half of the men’s team that won the 2006 Davis Cup, and it’s all done with one tennis court!
This was one club, with one tennis court who produced more top ranked competitors than the entire United States with all of its coaches, clubs and courts!
The details of why this club and their coach produced so many top-ranked players is outlined in the book The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, a great book and a fascinating read.
The Talent Code:
Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How
The bottom line is that if you have the right coach then anyone who is willing to put forth the effort should be making progress, sure the more dedicated will make faster progress and the less dedicated will make slower progress.
On Naturals
An interesting side-note is a study done on how adults perceived themselves, either as athletes or not. After all possible variables were considered the conclusion of the study came down to birth date…
Kids that were born earlier in the school year would be older and thus bigger than their younger smaller counter parts. Now in sports the older larger kids would dominate and seem to be naturals while the younger smaller kids would seem to not be naturals or even un-athletic by comparison.
So these adult’s self-image was shaped by their experiences as kids which came about simply as a function of birth date, early or late in the school year.
Clearly there are exceptions but the point is clear, naturals are not necessarily always naturals as much as a chain of events that helped to shape their self-image from an early age.
The same thing happens in martial arts, not necessarily with age but with past experiences. A fighter who joins a school already believing in himself and having a self-image of an athlete will seem to be a natural.
Are there people born stronger, faster, with longer or shorter arms and legs, taller, shorter, better eyesight, etc.? Yes of course, but talent is a function of deliberate practice not genes. Genes help but short of picking better parents next time let’s focus on what we can improve which are all of your other attributes besides height and hair color.
Steps to Mastery
Most people jump right into things without paying their due diligence. Martial artists are big offenders of this.
When learning a new technique, tactic, etc. here are the steps to success:
- See a demonstration
- Listen to the explanation (what, why, when, who, basically all of the context)
- Practice in slow motion
- Break apart the pieces of the movement or tactic
- Now put the pieces back together and speed things up
- When you can do the movement or tactic with speed add equipment or a scenario
- Now practice against a compliant partner
- Now practice against a partner who provides a little resistance
- Now apply the movement or tactic in a pre-set scenario with a partner applying more resistance
- Now finally try to apply the movement or tactic in a sparring or pre-set combative scenario at full speed using appropriate safety equipment or measures as appropriate
- If successful there is now a good degree of proficiency… to get better apply the concepts of Deep Practice from the book The Talent Code
Example: learning to parry a jab and counter with your own jab
- See a demo
- Learn the context of when to use the parry-jab counter as opposed to when you might parry and counter with a kick or use an elbow destruction or flinch spear instead of the parry
- Now practice the technique slowly
- Break down the pieces and practice the parry on its own
- Practice the jab on its own
- Practice just the start of the jab… can you do it without telegraphing? Work on it
- Practice the recovery of your jab, so you can be ready to parry or throw a follow-up strike
- Now practice the parry against a partner that throws slow jabs
- Now the partner throws faster jabs and changes up their timing to try and fake you
- Now the partner holds a focus mitt and jabs at you so that you can parry and counter jab… slow it down and get all the pieces right
- Now speed it up and see if the technique, non-telegraphing quality, fluidness, etc. sticks. Make sure the person learning the move does not flinch as they perform it, if they do slow it down to where they don’t flinch
- Now mix in other variables, perhaps they must defend a jab using their new skill of parry-counter jab while simultaneously having to worry about blocking a kick to the leg as well
- Depending on your type of martial art you might have this person spar and see if their parry-counter jab comes out fluidly with confidence
- At this point go back and break apart the technique again and make it even better and keep repeating this process with the combat athlete for the rest of their life, it can only get better
- Clearly this example would need to be modified based on the style of martial arts, whether you are even in a style that can spar. But hopefully you have an idea of the process of developing an individual quality now and if you spend this amount of time on developing all of your techniques, tactics, attributes, etc. then you will be able to take yourself or your student from average to amazing.
The Deep Practice Model
Researchers have discovered that the elite athletes of the world regardless of the sport have accumulated over 100,000 – 300,000 perfect reps over the course of their lives. This is also known as the 10,000 hour rule, the best have put over 10,000 hours of perfect practice in.
Notice that I wrote perfect reps. Anyone training in martial arts for long enough will get that many reps but are they perfect?
Also, can you throw that non-telegraphed jab from any position, at any time, while moving backwards, forwards, while getting up, while squatting down, while parrying a punch, while jamming a kick? This is deep practice. Deep practice literally means developing your technique to an absolutely amazing level and working on every single aspect of it… really owning it.
Much more could be said about deep practice but I’ll save that for an expert on the topic who wrote an amazing book about the science, practice and application of improving technique at anything. In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle goes over the neuroscience behind skill and examines how great athletes in various sports from all over the world developed that level of skill.
I highly recommend you get The Talent Code, it is a fascinating read, I couldn’t put it down.
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.
Conclusion
Great athletes and fighters are not born, they are made. A great coach and a dedicated student can go a long ways, much further than just genetic attributes.
Of course take someone with great genes and apply dedication and the right coach and arguably they have more potential to go further… but most people do not have great coaches or great dedication or great genes for that matter. So just focus on what you can control, finding a great coach, dedicating yourself to being the best you can be and start accumulating your perfect reps.
Until next time,
Brian
