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 I have always felt there are three kinds of ‘martial artists
1.Those who practice it
2.Those who use it to feed their neurosis
3.Those who live it through positive action
Those who practice it do so out of curiosity. Maybe they are looking for a way to drop some weight, get in shape or even manage their stress. It’s more like a hobby to them, they come to lesson and then they don’t. They are often hard to motivate and to get them to see the bigger picture of what martial arts can truly offer them. Some of them do cross over to the bigger picture of martial arts in time if exposed to a martial arts life approach, but more often than not go on to dabble in other sports or extramural activities.
There is no problem with this really, not everyone is cut out to do martial arts, not everyone will feel the amazing life changing benefits its practice has to offer and not everyone will be good at it. The only thing to point out to the dabbler kind of martial artists and something I feel I need to tell them is that NO it’s not cool to wear your Tap Out T-shirt even though you don’t actually train MMA anymore and NO it does not make you look tougher!
The second groupings of martial artists are those who use the fight game to feed their neurosis. Some of these people are totally consumed and addicted to anything and everything self-protection oriented (Others are driven by the addiction to compete). Neither one of these pursuits are necessarily bad if approached with a healthy mindset, but often these kinds of people in the second grouping of martial artists see little balance in what they do. It’s what I also call the ‘5-blades mentality’. The idea that you should always be ready, because you never know when you will be attacked, even at home in the shower. The hyper-self-preservation mindset here is that if you are not carrying at least 5-blades with you at anyone time, then you are simply not prepared enough to defend yourself.
While I am making fun to some extent of this mind-set, it may be clouded by my own personal view that people in this grouping spend an inordinate amount of time on this self-preservation band wagon of martial arts, prolifically writing articles about the subject, plastering their websites with the latest crime statistics and using fear based advertising rhetoric to get more people to join their gyms yet often,
- They get in their cars and don’t buckle up
- They smoke and drink alcohol excessively
- Many are addicted to some kind of drug or pain killer
- They take anti-depressants
- They don’t watch what they eat
- And probably most evident, they don’t watch what they put in their heads….
It often seems that those seeking self-preservation training often have a skewed focus on threat assessment, when what is the most threat to their lives is in their immediate circle of life (Driving at 200km an hour without a seat belt is a good example). Yet they take little or no notice off this.
The third group of people are my favorite. Maybe because I now count myself as one of them (Although this has not always been the case). In the end who would not want their martial arts experience to be a positive one? Who would not want to find the positive lessons they learn on the mat or in the ring and then transfer it to their lives?
I know this is something I am very interested in these days. But is everyone else who practices the martial arts interested in this too?
I am not always sure.
There still seems to be many that nod their head when you talk about the positive benefits of martial arts, but then in the very next sentence want to know what is the best way to knock someone out.
As in all my articles I write these days I need to make it very clear to my readers. I do firmly believe that it is important for you to know how to defend yourself. It is the reality of the world we live in these days that the need to defend your self may be warranted. Yet you also need to find the balance between seeking a healthy perspective on self-defense or plummeting into the abyss of paranoia that every single person, even your mother-in-law is out to kill you.
Secondly while I personally am not a fan of competing myself, done it and got the T-shirt so to speak- I recognize now that for some people they need to do it in order to overcome emotional and psychological obstacles that possibly only that arena can provide. Again it is about striking a healthy balance and if you are getting in the ring and find yourself talking like one of those guys from the WWE you can probably be rest-assured that it’s no longer healthy.
With all that said, martial arts is a fantastic vehicle for self-discovery. Especially for men. If you are looking to either develop your martial arts life practice further or if you want to bring a martial arts life approach to your training then you need a very different attitude than groups 1 and 2. If this is the attitude you are entering your martial art practice with or if this is promoted in your studio consistently then you are already in the 3rd grouping of martial artists.
Play- Instead Of- Fighting for control (Dominance).
Cooperation-Instead Of- Competitiveness.
Social Support- Instead Of- Individualistic/It is all about me gain.
Independent Effort- Instead Of- Focusing on external factors (Whom you can beat, what belt you wear or will get, title etc).
Encouraging competence- Instead of- stress, fear and low self-esteem.
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