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If You
made a list of the skills necessary to be a good martial artist, you'd probably come up with a pretty
lengthy menu of physical attributes such as good kicking technique, hand technique, breathing, balance, timing, coordination,
etc. All of these things are vital but they are all useless without one skill: COMMITMENT. You CAN NOT develop ANY skill in
anything if you do not have the drive and commitment to do the necessary work. Yes, learning any martial art is work and this
is the greatest obstacle every young student must overcome.
My father was a farmer's son who, as a child, plowed fields with a mule and planted and harvested crops from
sunup to sundown. Today, work to a ten-year-old might be beating Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt Jr. on NASCAR Thunder 2003
for Playstation 2. We're living in an age where we really don't have to work for things. Well, that's the message we give
anyway. Want to lose weight, have lots of energy, improve your memory, be smarter and cope with stress? Take a pill and it
happens like magic. Want to get rich quick? Check out the infomercials at 3am every night and there's plenty of people selling
programs which can make it happen in a month (I think the secret to getting rich quick is selling get-rich-quick programs
to people on infomercials at 3am). Having trouble peeling a potato or cooking a chicken or keeping your car clean? There's
products to do all that for you quickly and easily with no hassle. Hate to exercise? For seventy-two easy payments of just
$29.99 you can have a machine which makes exercising so fun you can't stop doing it and the pounds fly off so fast bystanders
have to wear raincoats. Yes, for whatever task you can imagine, there's an injection-molded plastic gadget out there to make
it easier. In our great, modern, enlightened age, laziness is a multi-million dollar industry.
Reality Rears it's Ugly Head!
The first two weeks of martial arts training is usually the hardest for
the young student. After several classes of
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boring repetition and exhausting exercise it becomes apparent that this suff
is hard work. The third and fourth week determines who has entered the dojo to learn and who has entered wanting to imitate
TV and movie stars. It is here that the students learn that it's very little fun and games and a LOT of discipline. It is
here than many of them drop out, usually after getting in trouble for goofing off, not paying attention and refusing to follow
instructions. I've seen it a hundred times. Mom and Dad bring in Junior who is so pumped about learning karate, he can't stand
it. Junior lines up in his spiffy new uniform and begins exercising with the class. The smile disappears as he begins to sweat
and realized this is work. "Why aren't we laughing and flipping through the air like the Power Rangers?" he wonders to himself.
So Junior begins to slack off, instructor tells him to pick up the pace and try harder, Junior whines to Mom and Dad on the
way home that he doesn't like karate class and wants to quit. Mom and Dad, who aren't big on discipline themselves or simply
not wishing to waste money on something Junior doesn't like, stops bringing him. Now, I want to make it perfectly clear that
I expect this to happen. Every time a new student comes into the class, I expect him or her to leave within the first month.
It doesn't make me mad or disappoint me. I don't get my feelings hurt. I don't call the parents and try to hard sell them
or coax them to bring their children back as some daycare dojos and dojangs will do in order to keep those monthly dues coming
in. I expect Junior to stop showing up for class one day never to be heard from again. But then, there are those rare young
individuals who surprise me. They have an inner drive to become martial artists. There is something within which brings them
to the dojo and compels them to forge mind and spirit into something better. These are the individuals who make me proud regardless
of how skilled they ultimately become. They know something those who drop out will never know: The martial arts is a long
journey each student must negotiate in his or her own way. It is a challenge in which the only failure is quitting.
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