The synopsis at the top of the page says that we here at 10k Hours and Counting have a shared interest in Martial Arts; truth be told, it is much more than that. “Interest” doesn’t begin to cover it. Take me, for example. This year I’ll be 31 and I’ve studied multiple, diverse styles of MA and related skills, formally and informally, continuously since I was 16. That’s not interest, that’s a lifestyle. And yet you might be surprised to learn that I hold no black belt in any of them. Not one. It was never the belt I was after. It was the knowledge.
If you talk to enough MA practitioners you are guaranteed to run across someone who is blindly in love with their style; that person who believes to the core of their very self that their chosen art is the be-all and end-all, the singularly superior style. In fact, if you spent enough time searching, I bet that you could find a practitioner of ANY style who is eager to make the very same claim. I tell you that these people are mistaken. It is not the style that is superior, it is the fighter. A technique may have the potential to be superior, given the right time and place, but it is up to the fighter to know when and where to employ it. Beyond that, every fighter is different -- different in how their bodies are different from each other, different in their strengths and limitation, different in their interests and how that will direct their training, different in their personalities, in their experiences, in their desires. No two fighters are alike, and as such no one style will fit two fighters the same. What might be the perfect style for one person will be a terrible match for someone else.
Which brings me to another point: How do you know what style is best for you? The truest answer may very well be that there isn’t one. I have a sister. She is much younger than me. Aside from that her body type is as different from my own as can be. Where I have size and strength, she is petite and impressively flexible. That which works best for me as a fighter (both in technique and strategy) will be nearly useless to her. In the same vein, her natural abilities in certain areas will outpace mine even after years of dedicated training. A style which fits us both equally simply doesn’t exist. Does that mean it is impossible for me to teach her? No, of course not.
To be able to teach someone you do not need to have the same abilities as them. Look at sports coaches. Is there a single NFL, NHL or MLS coach out there who could even earn a spot on their own starting lineup? I doubt it. Nonetheless, these are the people who make legends out of their players. Now don’t get me wrong, sports training is very different than MA training – or at least it should be. Far too often I see physical conditioning being used as an integral part of MA training. I see instructors having their students run laps, do pushups, sit-ups, sprints, and so on. But is this MA training? No. MA training is in technique, strategy, focus, analysis and, believe it or not, history. You should never accept physical conditioning as a substitute for actual instruction. Conditioning you can do on your own time; classes should be spent on everything you can't do on your own. Don’t worry; we’ll cover all of that in far greater detail in the future.
I wrote at the start of this article about knowledge and I want to revisit that topic again briefly here. The interesting thing about knowledge is that everyone has some. Each and every person you meet has something they can teach you and something they can learn from you; probably multiple things. Be this a mote of wisdom or a single, specific technique, everyone has something of value to share. And that is where we differ most noticeably from most other martial artists. It’s not that we believe that we have knowledge and you do not, or that we have trained in “the greatest system ever!” Rather, we know what we know, and we will teach it to you if you are interested, but more than anything else we want to learn what you have to teach us. Sharing is caring, right? That is the path to a better world. That is the core of our philosophy.
-- Hans
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