As an instructor, I aim to guide, encourage and teach the students but cannot be the sole source of motivation. Each student must be self motivated to force themselves to work during class...I do not babysit and do not micro-manage the training of the students. As a student of Kung Fu, I also had to ensure that I was motivating myself to continue to train and improve no matter how monotonous the training became. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. You have to put in your repetitions to improve.
Some key points in staying on track are:
- Understand why you need to repeat things
- Realize that bored is good because it means you no longer are struggling to remember which is probably the time when your brain will start to learn and fully discover the techniques being practiced
- Set the time aside - your training nights are not available for other activities
- Show up to class - force yourself to go no matter how sore you are from past workouts or how tired you are from things leading up to class...you will feel fine once class starts
- Occupy your mind on improving - focus on implementing changes that the instructor recommend
- Learning - this is exciting as everything is new at this time and you need to fully concentrate to remember the content being taught
- Remembering - this is when you feel that you can execute the technique or form without and hesitation or thinking...unfortunately, it is very tempting to stop practicing at this point and move on to something else
- Owning the technique or form - executed automatically through muscle memory...no thinking so the speed of execution is greatly increase
- Boredom - the student has performed it so many times that it is not exciting anymore...this is where you start to discover different uses for the techniques and become innovative with your form
- Mastering - I am not convinced that you ever completely "master" something but the martial artist has gotten to a level with a form that they can execute at a high level of proficiency even if they are not practicing the form regularly
2 comments:
This advice applies equally to later kung fu careers. Once a student has learned several forms, it is natural to focus on the "more interesting" ones, notably those that the student is in the process of learning or the most senior forms they know. As a result, the foundation forms become boring and tend to be pushed aside at worst or practised halfheartedly at best. Practising your earlier forms in addition to the newer, more exciting forms will ensure a more successful progression through the ranks.
Thanks Steve. This is a very valid observation and something that instructors might not even notice. We focus on teaching the new forms and do not necessarily take time to ask if the students are still working on their previous forms.
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