Episode 437 - The Mindset of the Advanced Martial Artist
In this episode, Jeremy talks about the last part of the mindset series, The Mindset of the Advanced Martial Artist.
The Mindset of the Advanced Martial Artist - Episode 437
Is the black belt the end of the road for the advanced martial artists? The end-goal for the years of training? The advanced martial artists are those who train longer than the intermediate martial artists and most of the time they have blue, brown, or black belts. How do we understand them when we're training with them? In this episode, Jeremy talks about the guys who are training for the longest time and the mindset of the advanced martial artist. Listen to learn more!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey, what's up, everybody? Jeremy from whistlekick back. This is Part 3, I guess, of our The Mindset of the Martial Artist series. In part 1, we talked about the mindset of the beginner martial artist, part 2 the mindset of the intermediate martial artist and today, now, we’re going to talk about the mindset of the advanced martial artist and for these purposes, we’re going to define advanced as could be a black belt or equivalent. Might also be like a red or a brown belt. We’re probably talking about people who have been training for, I'm going to say, 4, 5 years or more. Obviously, the mindset of someone who's been training for 5 years is dramatically different from someone who’s been training for, say, 20 years but it's not necessarily as different as the difference between someone who has been training for 3 weeks and someone who's been training for 5 years.What do we know about the person who's been training for this long? Clearly, martial arts is something significant to them. It means something to them. They’ve made sacrifices for their training, for their education. They’ve achieved some ranks, standing within their school. They have some competence, some skill. They're probably doing some instruction to others. Maybe they teach classes by themselves, maybe they're an assistant instructor but if nothing else, they're probably expected to help out a little bit or, as you can see I'm driving and using Waze that tells me things, and why do we care?In part 1, the reason we cared was we want to make sure these people, those beginner martial artists, come in and have a good experience so they’ll stick around. In part 2, we talked about understanding them because it can be a really challenging time in between the beginner and the advanced stages. The advanced stages are similar to the intermediate stage in that the challenge is that the novelty isn’t there. we’re not learning different, new things all the time. That’s not what's keeping advanced martial artists motivated and attentive and, in fact, the advanced martial artist can have the frustration of the intermediate martial artist by not learning new things rapidly or frequently but the overwhelming feeling of the beginner martial artist because what they're expected to know already is pretty dramatic. There's a significant amount of material that most advanced martial artists have been exposed to and are expected to retain some competency of.A significant number of forms and techniques, it's expected when they're sparring and doing self-defense or anything like that, that they know a lot of different moves. They have a lot of different options for what they're doing in any kind of freeform stuff and it's expected that they set a good example. The expectations are usually pretty substantial. There's a lot that they have to do and know and be and that can be overwhelming. More so, the smaller the school, the more that is usually asked of them, the blurrier the lines. I've seen some small schools where this sort of advanced definition starts to slide lower and lower. People who fit our definition of the intermediate martial artist consider it advanced because the bodies are needed. I'm not saying that they're promoted excessively but that they are asked to teach right off the bat, not because that’s the culture of the school but because there aren’t other options so when you think of that overwhelming feeling , there are a lot of martial artists who will push through and, quite often, they push through because they're looking for a single goal and that goal, as we’ve talked about in martial arts radio quite a few times, is frequently earning their black belt. You talk to anyone who’s owned a martial arts school for a long time, they will tell you that one of the most frequent points in training that people will drop out is when someone has earned a black belt because that’s the goal that you generally put forward in the martial arts. The black belt is the standard. It's what we achieve. It's the, more or less, the end of the road. Now, of course, we know that that’s not true. Anyone that has been training a really long time, ten years or more, knows that there's so much more to learn but that’s how a lot of people see it and honestly, it's our fault because that’s what we put forward quite often. It's what we’ve given the media, popular culture.What do we need to do to help support the advanced martial artist? First off, we need to remember that they are still students. We’re all students so if you're an instructor and you have advanced martial artists in your school, you have to make sure you're doing more than just asking them to teach. Their time training cannot be only teaching. Yes, teaching is important. Teaching others helps us understand content. It helps us understand what we’re teaching and our relationship to our material, there are substantial benefit teaching the material to others, I am not arguing that, but it's something that takes of you. if you teach, you know that it can be draining. Now, if the people coming to train are only teaching, they're going to start to associate some negative feelings with their training. They might not even be conscious of it. I know people who love teaching, who are asked to teach all the time and they still feel tired, they're still exhausted from it. Maybe not all the time but, like everything else, we need some balance so what else can we balance with that?There's nothing wrong with you throwing your advanced students a private lesson once in a while or making sure that you get some one on one time with them even if it's just a couple of minutes. Having them stay a few minutes late, taking them to dinner. In short, making sure that you know you value them or they know you value them. Making sure that they understand that they are an important part of the community. This is whether or not they're teaching because even if that advanced martial artist isn’t teaching, they are an example. They're someone others are looking to. Is that person happy? Do they appear to be progressing? If not, other people are less likely to stick around.I've seen martial arts schools where an advanced student, especially someone who's been there a while, quite often the senior student, the person who is, let’s say the most senior ranked that is paying to be there, when they leave, others take it as a sign that hey, the ship’s going down, I should get out of here because people don’t want to make the wrong decision. They don’t want to be part of the school that, for whatever reason, isn’t going right. they might not even know why they're doing. It could just be the last straw so we have to make sure that we’re training these advanced martial artists with some care and some compassion.What's going in their head even if they're not teaching? Let’s take the teaching component out. What's going on in their head besides the overwhelming feeling? They may love what they do but they want to learn more stuff. they want to learn new stuff. maybe there isn’t new stuff, maybe there isn’t stuff that is appropriate for them to learn yet. How do you help them find, just like with the intermediate martial artist, how do you help them find the novelty within the things they already know? There's some stuff there. How do you help them develop their own personality within the martial arts? That’s something that happens, usually, in later beginner stages, maybe intermediate stages but starting to develop their own identity and making sure that you're fostering their identity, that other people in the dojo or the gym, the school are fostering that identity? Treating those people with respect and valuing the individuality there. Even with schools where they're staying rigid, where there's a right and wrong way to do things and in freeform material, there is still opportunity for individualization.Now, the mindset of the advanced martial artist is probably the one that’s going to vary the most because you do have people that really, really enjoy “mastering” the material. They enjoy knowing exactly what's there and having most of it behind them but that’s not all of them and even the ones who enjoy having the stuff behind them, are going to go through points in time where they're bored. This is where I start to talk about things like taking breaks, stuff like that. it's okay to take a break, there's a whole episode on that, probably a couple years ago, at this point, but the advanced martial artist is someone special.It's uncommon to reach these ranks. It's uncommon to dedicate yourself to something like this for this long and have these sacrifices and because it's uncommon, we can say something about them and I'm sure the major thing we can say based on the hundreds of people that I've talked to on martial arts radio, there was something lacking from their lives. Something that they found within their martial arts, within their training and filled the gap, plugged the hole and so, knowing that there's that hole, that gap, gives them the opportunity to address it but they may not know or have the courage to do so.If you're in a position to know what that is, you have the opportunity to help them. Maybe what they need is, let’s say, it's a family thing. Let’s say there's an issue going on at home. Understanding and treating them compassionately within the opportunity that you have to make sure that they feel okay, that’s good. That’s important. It's something you should do, something you can do. It's something you can do regardless of your standing in the school. You can be a brand new white belt and say hey, that person’s been here for 7 years, there's something about martial arts that is really important to them. The more you get to know them, the more likely you are able to pick up on this. What is it that’s missing that martial arts contributes?Now, this is not to say that martial arts is only for [00:12:40] people. That is not what I mean. What I mean is we all have struggles, we all have challenges and martial arts can be appropriate for a wide variety of those and to understand help people grow is important and it's something that we should all strive to do, not just as martial artists or friends of martial artists, but as human beings part of the world. Part of the reason this episode, this part 3, came out after the first two, is I needed some time to think about it. if you’ve watched them on YouTube, you know I'm wearing a different shirt. It's been a couple days. It's been over 48 hours since I recorded those first two episodes because I needed to roll this around in my head a little bit and I’ll be honest, I'm not sure that I nailed it. Why? Because this is the phase that I'm in.I'm an advanced martial artist. I've been training a long time and sometimes, I can’t see the forest for the trees. There's some trees, you can probably see them if you're watching but I know that I love martial arts and I know other people who’ve been training 5, 10, however many years, love martial arts and I just want them to continue to love martial arts so your challenge and this applies for everyone regardless of your rank, regardless of the rank, the experience of the people that you're working with and talking to, one of your responsibilities as a fellow martial artists is to support other martial arts and other martial artists, to be kind, to be compassionate, to have empathy for what they're facing, to recognize that your experience is both unique to you but also similar to others and to recognize that the only way any of us get better at martial arts is with the support and the help of others. Nobody learns martial arts in a vacuum and martial arts are not passed on to others in a vacuum, requires interaction, requires humanity and I hope that you'll take that opportunity.If you head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, you can see all the episodes. We’ve got most of them are available on YouTube but, of course, you're only going to get the audio except for the occasional video episodes that we do. At whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, you're going to get transcripts, you can get photos and videos and links to the episodes, guest episodes. If you go to whistlekick.com and you use the code PODCAST15, you get 15% off everything we make from our uniforms, our training equipment to apparel, sweatshirts, hats, tees, lots of stuff. If you want to follow us on social media, we’re on YouTube but we’re also on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram with the username @whistlekick and my personal email address is jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day!