Are you too busy being good to be great?

Two students walk into a dojo as beginners: John is naturally talented, picks up the concepts quickly, and gets up to blue belt level very quickly. Fred is not talented but despite that, he works hard, and also gets up to blue belt, but at a slower pace. All of a sudden, the less talented student starts to overtake the talented one, who struggles for a while then either gets with the program or gives up.

This is a scenario that I've seen a number of times and it saddens me, and has reminded me of the need to adapt my teaching and treatment for and every individual student. So what happened? Here's my theory: the more talented student quickly sails through the first few grades on athletic ability, innate aptitude to karate, and a good kata memory. Whilst he's doing well, he may even find the enthusiasm to put in extra practice. The less talented student realises his limitations and aspires to grow beyond them, so he works hard at every single lesson, trains often and maybe trains at home too.

By the time the talented student reaches blue belt (for example), he's got as far as his natural talent will take him, and he needs to start adopting some serious karate concepts: hip turns, timing, posture, strength, awareness and more. These can't be learned overnight, and so for the first time in his training, he suddenly hits a brick wall, where he cannot continue his stellar progression through the ranks. He may not be aware of why his progress has suddenly come to a halt, but he acutely feels the frustration. He has a number of choices, but you would think from students' reactions that they only had two: improve or quit. For all martial artists, there are periods of slow growth and frustrating lack of visible progress - we even have names for them as they often arrive during your blue or brown belts - they are called the blue belt blues and the brown belt browns (for an excellent article on the blue belt blues, buy a copy of GKR's club magazine Shimbun Volume 10, number 2 2003).

Going back to the less talented student, he's spent his entire martial arts career developing good training habits. He listens in class, he tries to adopt everything his sensei gives him, he always thinks about what he's doing; not just occasionally when he feels like it. More importantly, he's developed the discipline, patience and maturity to cope with periods of slow development, as well as faster ones.

I'm naturally quite good at kumite - I'm a kicker. However, as I've gone up through the grades, the quality of my opposition has also improved. I realised that I'd better adopt some new dimensions to my kumite, so I've been working on footwork, close in work, hands and the left side of my body. People get me a lot more, and in some regards, my kumite has gone backwards. However, I understand that sometimes in karate, you need to be prepared to take a few steps backwards - perhaps even unlearn some bad habits that you cling to because they're easy - in order to progress.

So, don't be so good at karate that you ignore your need for development. Keep listening, keep training, keep trying, keep changing. You're never so good that you can't get better. Kizen - it's a Japanese word and it means "Constant and never ending improvement". It's what we should all strive for.