My Love of Karate is Lost

My Love of Karate is Lost. The breakpoint, the loss of love is often the sensation of not finding purpose in martial arts.

Internal Talk

The internal conversation can be damaging. When you think you have lost your love of karate it sounds like a bad relationship in the last stages. “Why are we even doing this? Neither of us is happy.” This internal conversation is a dual killer of discipline, and desire. A relationship worth saving is worth working on.

Doldrums are Normal

Treat your martial arts doldrums in this manner. Talk with others, measure your life, and the training. You may not be in the right place, you may want to explore another art, or you are not getting what you need at your school. Students move from one University to another often. People take new jobs requiring relocation and pro athletes change teams. But before you pour that concrete sidewalk on your way out the door. Don’t. Once you pour that mental concrete it will set and you will walk that path.

Be Reasonable and Be Circumspect.

Perspective can be everything. An example is a conversation I had with a woman whose boss was hard on her. He had fired four other people on her team and she suspected she was next.

The other way to look at this could be, your boss sees something in you and is willing to cultivate it. The proof is the other four have been fired, you remain. See him as a mentor, not an executioner. Simplistic? Sure, many dynamics are at play and this is an abbreviated example. Is it possible you are looking at a similar situation?

It is difficult to solve a dynamic issue with a proclamation, “Doldrums are normal.” You may not be looking at the loss of love of karate with the correct orientation.

Baby Steps, or Chunking

Take small steps. Those small steps need to be forward toward the goal. You can call them baby steps. Baby steps are a fantastic example. A toddler has a goal, to walk like all the other people around them.

I have yet to meet a baby that after plopping down for the umpteenth time says, “That’s it, I’m not going to walk.” Baby steps are small, but the action never stops. Not walking is unacceptable. A real-world example of resilience and chunking. Chucking is breaking a goal down into manageable sections. In small increments a task is completed. Stand, get balance, step. Small and manageable.

When you have lost your love of karate. Know there are ups and downs, be reasonable in your internal conversation. Take baby steps.

Give yourself some time and let the love you once had sprout on your path. Take baby steps toward that wonderful experience you knew before you pour a concrete path.

Once that path hardens it is set and you will walk it. And that hard path leads away from and unlikely toward something.

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession with Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.

December 20, 2020February 13, 2021

Karate Teachers Making You Learn

Karate teachers making you learn. Not really, teachers don’t make you learn. As a student, you are not required to learn. In the United States, the law says you will attend school. The goal is to get a basic education. But that goal is missed by the law. You are required to attend a school, but you are under no obligation to learn.

Coach and Trainer

Trainers don’t make you healthy. Coaches point the way. Trainers have experience. Trainers also understand motivation, inspiration, enthusiasm.

As you think of the trainers and coaches you have experienced, they have these three elements. Superbowl winning coach Pete Carrol and David Goggins U.S. Navy SEAL are examples. The possession of motivation, inspiration, and enthusiasm are internalized.

Doctors don’t make you healthy. Your health is your responsibility, not the Doctor’s duty. Western medicine is generally designed to fix the broken, not prevent.

Your karate instructor is a teacher, a trainer, and not a doctor. You’re at the martial arts school because you want to learn. Push-ups and multiple repetitions of a movement are done to get better than that day before.

Listening and Action

You listen to the ideas in the teaching. Take notes, read books, watch videos on the martial arts, and related ideas. Some of those related ideas can be kinesiology, the study of movement and anatomy, some yoga? A change in diet. The point is you are expanding yourself on your terms.

Teachers don’t make you learn. Trainers don’t make you strong, and Doctors don’t make you healthy. But when you have the fire. The inspiration, when you are receptive when you see the value you will learn. You get better and build for the future all while being in the grove of the moment.

And here is the Pareto Distribution. The rule in its elemental version is, 80% of what happens is because of action by 20%.

You want to be in the 20% That choose to take action on your education, your training, and your health.

Look around your martial arts school. How many people are on the floor, 10? Are you one of two?

And here is the secret. When you become one of those two, the instructor will give you more. The teachers, trainers, they can’t help themselves, they are compelled to give you more.

Karate teachers making you learn?

No one makes you do your karate, but when you choose to live in the 20% your world changes. Teachers take notice, trainers recognize your work, and when Doctors rarely see you, they praise you.

Being the elite 20% is not just a wish, but an imperative.

Here are a few other posts you will find interesting

1 Tip on Being the Greatest Karate School

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KRIS WILDER

December 19, 2020February 13, 2021

Old Style Karate is Just That, Old

Old style karate is just that, old. This is not a condemnation of traditional karate, so before you dismiss what I say take a moment a read on. The silo of classic training tools. Posts driven into the ground to make for movement and balance drills is an example. Or the classic stone lever, called Chishi.

These tools are two examples of found elements. You find what you have around you and make do with that element. You use the item to further your training. It is resourceful and that is attractive.

Romanticizing history in by its nature incomplete, it’s putting select views into silos. Romanticizing karate is a real as a Harlequin Romance novel.

The idea that traditional karate read that as old style karate, is bad. Not in principle but the silos in which aspects of that art exist are insufficient.

If you are looking for a specific, “Stop doing that, this is wrong,” no, I’m not going that direction. I’m asking for dilation of your view of karate training.

An example of how old-style karate needs a view expansion is by using the analogy of flight. The Wight Brother pulled of the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk North Carolina in 1903. Since we have added radial engines to aircraft, then inline engines to reduce drag. Pulse Jet, Ramjet, Turbine engines, and more.

Evolution is Success, Even in Old Style Karate

Ailerons have replaced twisting the wings to turn. If the fixed wing-powered flight was a failed platform it would not evolve, but it did evolve. You can point to the progress of aircraft design. The car, the microwave, vaccines, these all have successful progressions, evolution.

A computer you wear on your wrist observing your bioactivity is incredible. The adage, “What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done,” fits here. You can now measure parts of your workout that only a medical specialist once possessed.

Adaptability and Focus

Watch Sandra Sanchez, world kata champion training routine here.

You will see the adoption of tools and techniques used in ways the masters never dreamed.

And it’s good.

We understand much more about human performance, physiology, and even sleep. Sanchez is a champion and hasn’t thrown out old style karate, she has improved it with modern means.

The Example of Sleep Being Important

Enjoy this segment from the Joe Rogan Podcast. This is Matthew Walker a professor of neuroscience at the University of California. The 8-minute segment will change your view on sleep, or sharpen what you already know.

Again, no specific recommendation other than one. Be a seeker of new or improved methods. New or improved methods of learning, training, and thinking. Don’t forsake the old methods, but do evolve. Just like the aircraft, the wings are still wings, but the performance is worlds apart.

We have learned more about flight in 118 years since the Wright Brothers flight than birds have learned in their entire evolution. That is a sign of adaptability and intelligence. We should do our best to live healthy lives. We should avail ourselves of every opportunity to do so and neither dream romantically nor silo our art.

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.

December 16, 2020February 13, 2021

Custom Built Minds and Bodies

Custom built minds and bodies. Our bodies and minds are plastic or malleable. The body can be adjusted and is adjusting to lift massive weights through repetition practice and diet. Eddie Hall the English strong man was a swimmer in his youth and then he changed his direction. The serial killer Ted Bundy lost weight until he was ready for his goal of a jailbreak using his now slight frame escaped from incarceration.

The World Will Change You

The world will change you. These two examples are showing an active choice of mind and the resulting body. The world will change you. Often you don’t have a choice but you do have a vote. You can customize your body and mind to the world you have chosen.

I said it before on other platforms but you have the Library of Alexandria at your fingertips with the worldwide Web. To an extent, there are few excuses for not seeking necessary change in one’s life, of course, if you choose to change.

School should be a facility for sharping the mental process. To allow for methodologies of thought. School should give you the gift of building your mind in a custom fashion through well-known and tried principles.

The Casual Response

In pointing to the gymnasium or the health club, that same is true, they are custom built. The body and mind are custom built. Are you custom building with a diet of opinions and agendas? Do you simply respond yeah, “OK I guess that’s right.” in a cavalier fashion?

You see you can choose more often than not the place you live and the way you think about it. The mind and body are plastic. Make your choices. Make your choices good.

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KRIS WILDER

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December 14, 2020February 13, 2021

One Massive Step to Learning Karate Fast

One massive step to learning karate fast. In martial arts, we are all about the mind-body connection. I have a saying I use in my dojo, “Control the mind, control the body, control the body control the mind.” as an example of the desire of remaining linked, of being unified as best one can.

We do our best, we become separated of mind and body and then we reunify. It is a process. As karate-ka we are also information, no check that, wisdom seekers. And when we find a golden nugget of wisdom, we should do our best to keep it.

With the martial arts world at our fingertips on the Web. It’s important to have a method of understanding what we are seeing, and taking an important first step to integrating the wisdom into our path.

Best Learning is Done with Handwritten Notes

It a world that appears to be flying through space at the rate of a Six Flags amusement park roller coaster Hand written note take control of the ride. Taking handwritten notes is a major leap in retention and integration.

A Couple of Points

When you handwrite a note, you have to think about it. “Of course,” you say. But there is something else happening here as well. You can’t write the note verbatim; you must condense, change, and place in your thoughts the idea you just saw in your own words.

When you grab your notebook and write, you have to slow down. Slower means more information sticks. “Go slow to learn fast.” Another one of those maxims that carry a lot of water.

I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on T.V. But I am willing to venture a guess on what is happening. When you are using your body to remember something you are getting a higher level of retention. It’s one massive step to learning karate fast. Than mind body connection again.

Every book I have written started with paper and pencil. My work agenda is kept in a notebook. I have file cards that are used to capture ideas and then sorted for later use.

Lawrence Kane and I developed a notebook for martial artists. Here is a 1-minute video explaining the design and use of our notebook:

It is a non-negotiable idea in my mind because I have found the results to get me what I want and what I need. Handwritten notes are superior to other methods.

Here is the Amazon link to Journey

This is my recommendation. Start taking handwritten notes. If you want to use the notebook we have made, go ahead and get it. If you are using another form of a notebook, fantastic. Continue. The goal is to capture important information. To not let the lesson fade like the lights at the dojo after the training.

Try the hand written note method, refine it and experience the positive result. You’re going to be grinning to yourself how well this method works.

Here are a few other links you will find of interest

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KRIS WILDER

December 13, 2020February 13, 2021

1 Tip on Being the Greatest Karate School

1 tip on being the greatest karate school. We live in a cost-driven world. Big box stores dominate retail commerce. Online services are driven to text and email interactions. Finding a phone number for a conversation with a vendor is a 20-minute search. And when you do get a person on the phone, they are often somewhere else on the planet working for a fraction of the cost.

Asked For It

This is what consumers want. We want cheap, fast, and enough service to get the job done. Then we want to complain about the world we have made.

As a rule, I assume when I am dealing with some business, I am responsible for quality control. I don’t like that role. It means I am working for the company for free. I’m doing their job for them. But that appears to be the world we have.

Recently I was speaking with a company that asked for the account number so they could access my status. The voice coming over the phone in a monotone replied “That is not one of our numbers.” My response was, “It says account number and I’m reading it from the email you sent me.” The voice replied, “It’s not one of our numbers.”

A condensed version of what you do not want to happen between you and your students.

Unreasonably Helpful

This is where you, running the greatest karate school become unreasonable. Unreasonably Helpful.

Unreasonably Helpful looks like this. The moment at hand may well be the other person’s responsibility, their fault if you want. But you are going to fix it in spades. It’s the 1 tip on being the greatest karate school.

“Did we pay you for this month?” “I don’t have that information right now, let me check on it and I’ll have an answer for your next class, does that sound good?”

They are relieved of responsibility and you made their world easy. And, we have no idea what kind of hell their week has been. Go ahead and round out the sharp edges of the world for your school members.

Have I not gotten paid for a uniform sent home with a, “You can pay online later.” I sure have, but the value of being unreasonably helpful has paid off in a positive tone and a good experience. Positivity and good experience are spreadable, they are contagious.

In a world of limited, cost-saving customer service, go so far in meeting your student’s and client’s needs as to be unreasonable.

An Example of Unreasonably Helpful

I’ll leave you with a story of being unreasonable. A student came to class without his belt. The Divorced dad was standing behind him apologizing as his son’s belt didn’t find its way to the dad’s house that afternoon. “Just a moment.” Excusing myself for a second I produced a yellow belt.

Seconds later the kid was on the floor happy and kicking. The Dad asked, “How much for the second belt?” “I got you on this one,” extending my fist for a fist bump.

This moment isn’t about the cost of a belt, it is about being unreasonably helpful. Referring back to the earlier experience on the phone about the account number not working. It’s about a policy of extending one’s self.

Setting the experience of your martial arts school separate from the rest of the world. This separation is important. The discipline, the physical and mental challenges, yes, we all get that, we all do that, but it is about the margins it is also about being unreasonably helpful and running the greatest karate school.

Look for it and the 1 Thing Will Appear

The great thing about this policy is when you begin to look for it, it will appear. And you get an opportunity to set your school aside from a world that often doesn’t cooperate with your students.

What a wonderful place for your school to be held in their minds. Special, helpful, easy, and fun.

Here are a few other links you will find interesting.

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KRIS WILDER