Dabbler, achiever, or master - which will you be?

Broadly speaking, in any voluntary field of endeavour, people fall into one of three categories: dabblers, achievers, and masters. I'm making some big generalisations here , but in karate, the distinctions are especially obvious.

These people like to give something new a try. They are stimulation junkies. Many want to look cool, or acquire a skill, but they are unprepared to pay any sort of price to achieve it. They walk into class and train like mad for a few months, and they probably make rapid progress. But then they realise that achieving real competence means at least a few more years of the same, and they quickly lose interest - usually long before they reach green belt.

I've seen hundreds of dabblers during my years as a sensei and it saddens me. These are the same people who have a ten minute attention span watching TV, and whose favourite phrase is "I'm boooored!". They set themselves up for a life devoid of achievement, or satisfaction. Often in their late teens, they're the ones that move on to excessive drinking and drug taking, then in adult life they settle down to unfit, tedious lives of medicrity. They live for their weekends and holidays, and much of their pleasures are vicariously taken through the lives of others, probably watching Big Brother, or other trash TV. Their daily lives are probably not that satisfying because it's impossible to find enough cost-free stimulation to satisfy their lust for excitement. Let's be honest; dabblers are losers, with a capital L.

Some dabblers may have a little more stamina because during the early grades, all students make obvious and rapid progress in a superficial way - they learn lots of new techniques and kata and skills, and things are very exciting. Then around blue belt, they have to do the same kata for two grades. It's about this time that many people hit a seemingly flat spot in their progress, (often known as the bue belt blues), and some lose interest.

Although many people become disillusioned at this point, and quit karate - only to go off and become mediocre at something else, some put their heads down and push on through out of stubborn determination. They don't have a plan for moving forwards, or improving their skills, they are merely satisfied to keep on doing what they've always done - working hard, training once or twice a week, and trusting that it will all work out. And it does work out. Persistence is a key attribute in becoming a black belt. They travel a similar path as masters, but they enjoy it far less. They stress about their lack of progress and they keep on training probably either because they know it's good for them, or because they are focussed on achieving their black belt.

Masters walk the same road as achievers, but they understand that mastery comes at a price. It's not enough to simply walk the path that you've always walked. You need to set goals, you need a plan for improvement, you need to enjoy the journey, rather than concentrating solely on the destination. Masters understand that sometimes to win the war, you have to lose some battles.

For instance, a master may realise that he needs to improve his blocking in order to be a better fighter. So for a while he concentrates on that. As a result, his attacking actually gets worse, and he gets beaten more at kumite. But he understands that that is an inevitable consequence of changing his focus. Eventually, his blocking reaches the same standard as his punching, and he is now equally competent in attack and defence. He has not merely returned to where he was before, he has exceeded it because he is a more rounded fighter.

Karate improves your personality
The good news is, there are ways that you can move up from being a dabbler to being an achiever, and from being an achiever to being a master.

Dabblers have conditioned themselves to require constant reward and pleasure. If they are children, then the parents have probably done the conditioning by never insisting that they complete an unsavoury task, and by allowing the children to walk away from anything as soon as it becomes the least bit challenging. They probablly watch a lot of TV, or spend a long time hanging out with their mates, both of which are activities that provide no challenge, but no risk of failure.

Schools that have banned competitive sports need a kick in the pants. They educate children that competition and challenge - two of the fundamental aspects of all life, are to be avoided. They mollycoddle the weak, and teach them that it's okay to come last. Well it's not. Last place doesn't get the job, the medal, or the girl, and if you always back way from challenge you'll only ever get what's left.

I'm not saying you always have to win, but by making the effort, you become a far, far better person, and that's what I love about karate.

If you're an adult dabbler, you probably look at all sorts of things that you'd love to do: learn to swim, play an instrument, be good at karate, learn to draw, get fit, quit smoking: and you think how great it would be to do them. Then you give it a try and you quickly discover that these things are time consuming and they're going to take a lot of practice, so you quit. You probably rationalise to yourself that you didn't really want to do it, or you might not die from lung cancer, or you'll learn to play later, then you periodically return to your activity only to find it as challenging then as you did the first time, and so the cycle continues...

The trick in moving from being a dabbler to an achiever is reward. Like many big tasks, if you set your goals too high, they act as a de-motivator because the goals seem too far away, and too hard to reach. You joined karate because you want to get fit or defend yourself or win medals, but you can tell that that will take a long time to achieve, so you get disheartened.

Instead, you need to break your goals down into smaller goals. My goal is to become at least a GKR third dan. That's a long way away. For now, I'm concentrating on attaining my first dan. I'm also determined to win a solo kata medal, and to understand the bunkai better.

For most dabblers, you can say to yourself, I want to get a grade that is a few belts away, maybe an orange or blue belt. Another good one is to say, "I want to train harder than the person next to me" or "I want to be faster", or "I want to learn the combination better". When I started, I was at the left end of the line, and one of my goals was to work my way up the line. I knew that people quit training, and I wanted to last longer than them. Now I'm second in a line of 70 people, and I would never want the first place guy to quit, so I've achieved that goal, but I have others.

Other great short-term goals are to learn your next kata before you need it. To be able to beat certain people in the dojo at kumite, to help out in class, or to be the last person standing when you do stamina work in class.

There are a million little challenges that you can set for yourself and achieving some of them will give you the excitement and stimulation that you need to take you towards becoming an achiever. The great news is, once you've started to aim for your goals, after a while, it becomes second nature, and instead of being a loser who walks away at the first sign of difficulty, you become an achiever, who thrives on challenge.

Achievers have usually set goals - most commonly, attaining a black belt, and they are determined - often to the point of bloody-mindedness and self-destructiveness - to get there. The only trouble is, they often haven't given much thought about how to get there, beyond doing what they're told, training regularly, and working hard.

For achievers to get the most out of their karate, they need to identify their weakness, then address them. It's as simple as that. If you don't know what's wrong, it takes a long time to fix it!

In a large class of students, you simply can't depend on your instructor to diagnose all of your challenges and prescribe the correct course of treatment. In fact, in the average class, most senseis are doing what I call "macro-teaching". They're aware of the big picture, teaching kata and general skills to ten or more students, but if you asked them precisely what each student's three greatest weaknesses were and how to fix them, they probably couldn't tell you. Next month, I'll be doing a big feature on identifying your weakness and offering possible solutions.

Masters - Just because you're in the masters group doesn't mean you're a master. You see the bigger picture. You've set short, medium and long term goals. You've diagnosed your weaknesses and are taking steps to fix them, but there are at least two more things that you should be thinking about...

The first is research. Remember, the second stage of martial development (the ha phase - read this tip). In the ha phase, you have started to acquire competence, and now you should be starting to question what you learn in order to understand it and decide upon its value.

You may see a bigger picture, but no-one ever sees the whole thing. When you research the history or meaning of our kata or our style, or karate in general, or you study the nature of conflict or self defence, it expands your mind, and adds great value to the things that you practice. This in turn, helps to inform the areas in which you choose to focus in future.

Last, but by no means least, as you find your ability, knowledge and understanding exploding, and your mind is full of excitement at all the possibilities, it can be very easy to become too esoteric and abstract in your training. The art of GKR - the very essence of all we do, is about attempting to attain mastery of the basics. You'll never achieve perfection, but the effort is the key. For each hour you spend practicing kumite skills, or kata bunkai, spend an hour practicing your stances, punching, blocking, and kicking.

Article expanded from a sensei class given by Sensei Jason Smith