How To Be A Better Martial Arts Student

I'm going to start by saying that I am going to skip over the baselines to a degree. Every Dojo and Dojang has its own set of baseline rules.  It should be obvious that following those rules is going to be the first step in becoming good at the arts.  The basic rules of the training location should always be followed, as a sign of respect and pride, things like not walking on the mats or talking in the gym should be a given.

Protocol - Look the Part, Play the Part

The martial arts are not a quick fix to any problem.  You are going to be training, hopefully for a very long time and following the protocol of your school is very important.  Things like having the proper responses to instructors, kiaping when appropriate, bowing when appropriate and last but not least, having a clean and proper uniform are all common standards in schools.  Sadly, my experience is that instructors have to either remind students too often, or have to prompt them every time for things the students should be doing on their own.  

This is all about engagement with the arts and it starts with a clean uniform.  You may have seen the viral post on social media about the career military soldier and his story about making his bed every day.  He goes on to say that everyone needs to accomplish something every day, and even if you have a total bad day, you'll at least be able to say you made the bed.  Your uniform is that for your training.  If your uniform is clean, patched, and not wrinkled - no matter how bad of a class you have, you can at least say you looked good doing it. 

It comes down to pride, something you should have an excess of.  Although not as uncommon as it once was, you are a martial artist.   You are learning to control your body and mind in ways some people can only dream of, that's an accomplishment that should garner pride.  To paraphrase one of my favorite writers: pride is the invisible steel rod that keeps our neck stiff when the world would see you hang your head.  If you are proud of what you do, show it, by never forgetting your protocol.

There are two very positive benefits from always having proper protocol, one for you, and one for the class.

Personally, minding your protocol will help you build mental discipline.  When you refuse to lose focus because of tiredness and remember your protocol, you are building mental discipline. Mental discipline is a big part of your martial arts training and its importance cannot be stressed enough.  Mental discipline or toughness is what will carry you through adversity.  It's how the martial arts help you handle failure, which will catch up with everyone once in a while.

The benefit that taking personal responsibility for your own protocol provides to the rest of class is energy.  By having proper protocol you can remind, or in some cases jar proper protocol out of your classmates.  You don't have to scream and foam at the mouth,  just having consistently good protocol in a lull can really energize the class. This makes it not only more fun for your classmates, but also for your instructor.  

Teachers should also be calling out good protocol! Acknowledging a student with good protocol in a class that is sagging can be all it takes to bring up the energy of the class and set the proverbial ship straight.

Finally, high ranking black belts and masters - the whole class is watching you and taking their lead from you, so, you especially need to be on top of these things. When you slack off, the class learns that it is ok to slack off - this is not ok.

Attitude is Everything and You Are in Control of it!

Everyone has an off day, and everyone has days where they don't want to be training.  It is important to remember that if you took the time to come to class, you should get something out of it.  Approaching everything with negative energy is only going to bring the class down and make the whole environment more toxic.

Once again, the more engaged you are the more you will get from the class.  We used to do organized brief meditation at the beginning of our classes.  This exercise is the perfect place to abandon the stresses and chaos of your day.  The stresses of your day are completely irrelevant to your training, and as such has no place in your school.  Meditation (either organized by the instructor, or taken on your own while you wait for class to start) can help you achieve the best attitude for training and learning.  At the end of class, I'd invite you to meditate again, and see if you have found any insight into the day and your life.  This is one of the hidden benefits of martial arts training.  It allows us, in my opinion to step away from our everyday self, which often will lead to a better over all day. Though my TKD school isn't the most spiritual of training halls, it doesn't mean that the opportunity for it to be is absent. 

Class Participation

As your belt level changes the novelty of class will wear off.  Many martial arts boil down to a large amount of repetition of a relatively small number of skills.  It is not unreasonable for people to fall into a rut of "just going through the motions". 

Try to be an active participant in every class.  I frequently tell my students to "accomplish something small every night".  Eliminate one small defect or mistake you are making per class.  There is always something that needs to be worked on and can be improved.  You don't have to revolutionize your training every night, but if you focus on small corrections each class you will soon find that you have improved dramatically.  Furthermore, think about what you are being taught!  This is an art, the things you learn need to be adapted to fit you the student.  This doesn't mean that you can perform however you want, but it also doesn't mean that you can just go through the motions and move on to the next lesson.  You need to digest what is shown to you, and find what you can learn from any given lesson.  Some lessons will be just filed away as information you'll need if you ever decide to teach the art.  For instance,  I may not be able to do jump spin kicks the way I could in my youth, but I still have to teach those skills, so they are still important.  Other lessons will relate directly to your personal martial arts tool set but rarely does it just improve you "out of the box".  Incorporation of a new concept or skill requires work, it doesn't just happen because the instructor showed you something.    

Another aspect of good class participation is questions.  It's unfathomable to me that my students will always understand everything I am saying during class.  The fact is that sometimes something won't resonate with a student.  Further avoiding the "going through the motions" rut is questioning your instructor.  You need to do this within the norms of your school of course, but no instructor worth their salt should be frustrated by proper questions from their students.  Answers may need to be deferred until after class in some cases, but should always be welcome.  Again, this is an art, it is not math, where everything is a constant to everything else.  

Hold Yourself Properly Accountable

I am not about to write a paragraph or two about taking your training too lightly.  The above paragraphs go a little in that direction, but I find that more people are too hard on themselves rather than not taking training serious enough.  

I see too many students worried about what the person next to them looks like rather than worrying about what they are doing.  Students need to know that every time they execute any technique they are not under the microscope!  Still this concept escapes people.  I saw on social media a student say that they don't like their instructor to watch them when they are preparing for a test.  If you are afraid to make mistakes during class, how could you possibly handle the pressure of a test?  These are unrealistic expectations.

Though your school norms may differ, my opinion is that classrooms are for practice.  Every class is not a test, or even worse a real life self defense experience.  I don't believe most people can effectively learn under that sort of pressure, and just because some can and thus will be very good, doesn't mean that it is an effective way to train.  So my message to my students is - don't put more pressure on yourself during class than is required.  Show up, work hard within reason, learn, smile, have fun and get something out of class.  You will make mistakes, it's expected, but don't shake your head when it happens, and especially don't disparage yourself under your breath or worse out loud.  One of the desired traits in any black belt is resilience.  If you can't pick yourself up after your instructor looks at you and dishes corrections, why are you even training?

The bottom line is that you should strive to make improvement without taking it to the level where you never allow yourself to make a mistake.  The only place I'd allow for that level of pressure is a test, a tournament or an actual self defense encounter, and even then, 2 of the 3 I might argue with as what is "on the line" in a test and tournament is still not as important as what is on the line in a real defense encounter.

Final Thoughts

I wrote this article thinking back so many years and wishing someone had told me how to be better at class.  So many times in my career I was worried about how to have better stances or better kicks, and there was never any shortage of answers to those questions.  As I look back on that time, I can't help but think that maybe if someone told me how to be a better student in general, all that kicking and stance stuff might have just come naturally.  Some of the things in this piece are my own opinions and may not apply to your school's culture.  I do hope though that you found some broad quality in the advice I am offering.