Why Do the Martial Arts take So Long to Learn?
The thug jumps out of the darkenss and smashes a whole darned trash can on your head! Do you ask him to take that trash can off you and help you up because, doggone it, you’re only on your ninth Karate lesson and haven’t reached the what do you do when a trash can flattens you part? Or do you ask him to administer first aid because, here it comes, you didn’t sign a long enough contract at your local dojo?
There is a point to all this silliness, why do the martial arts take so long to learn? You can teach a guy to fly a jet, get in a dogfight and get shot down, spend time in a concentration camp, get released and run for political office, and become a senator, and retire, in the time it takes to learn some systems of the martial arts. I heard of one system that it takes seventeen years to get to Black Belt in!
Of course, there is the answer that you’re learning more than just self defense. You’re learning a life style, you’re investing in your old age, you’re solving the martial mysteries of the ages. But that garbage can is still flying at your head and you’ve already taken ten whole lessons so what are you gonna do?
Garbage in, garbage out, is the old saying. And it is true that if something is hard to put into your head, then it may not be so easy to get out. Maybe it is time to look for an art that is as fast to learn as running, or boxing, or some other easily understood sport.
It is true that the Martial Arts are not a sport, they are an art, but they can still be learned easily and quickly. They just have to be taught not by one mystical technique after another, but rather by understanding concepts behind them. Those endles techniques that you memorize, to be truthful, are random data, and, often as not, they don’t really relate to one another.
That is a problem, to be sure, even if you learn a thousand techniques, you might not have enough data to be able to make sense out of the whole thing until you reach one thousand and one. And, let’s face it, a hundred years is to long to become competent. And then go to heaven.
The solution, as I started to say earlier, is that the martial arts must be taught by concept. Instead of having a fellow memorize hundreds of techniques and katas, have him learn the concept which is directly beneath all those katas and techniques. Have him learn the concept, and, suddenly, you’re going to find that he can figure out those thousand techniques without any need for endless memorization.
Give him an acorn and water him, that’s my motto, and watch the oak sprout. Most martial artists, unfortunately, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, are lost in the limbs of the trees. That is the real way to teach, however, give the guy a concept, have him solve some problems with those concepts, and, faster than a rabbit on performance enhancing drugs, you’ve got yourself an instant martial artist.
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