Arts Instruction Martial Blog

Marshall Buchholz asked:


Finances? Injuries? Too stressed for time?

Exercise motivation is often lost for a variety of reasons. But while there may be many excuses for giving up a workout program, there is often a greater, underlying reason why a student gives up–especially in Martial Arts practice.

It is simply that motivation got misplaced.

And a good instructor can help a student get beyond the experience of losing exercise motivation. How? I’ve learned over my three decades in the Martial Arts that loss of exercise motivation in training almost always comes down to something I call

“Expectation of Competency Level.”

An odd choice of words, I’ll admit. But if your serious about training in the Martial Arts, read on. I think you’ll be as fascinated by this concept as I was when I discovered it!

Understanding Three Essential Components Of Martial Arts Training

There are three essential components to any kind of Martial Arts Training:

1. The Competency Level Of The Student

2. The Student’s Own Expectations

3. Creative Variation

All Martial Arts students have basically the same goal: To get good at what they are learning, and to be able to use their new skills in either a real self-defense situation or a tournament.

And all good Martial Arts instructors have those same goals for their students. But sometimes the goal of the instructor doesn’t mesh with the expectations of the student. You see, the instructor is particularly concerned with the competency level of the student. That is, teaching the student to perform specific skills at a certain skill level.

Most Martial Arts students enter their training with the expectation that they will learn some sort of techniques and strategies…but…once they have learned those techniques and strategies at the level of Conscious Competence, they want to move on to the next technique.

The expectation of the student is, “If I’ve memorized and learned how to do the technique, I should be able to test and move on to the next belt level.”

Conscious Competence Vs. Unconscious Competence

But students who have achieved Conscious Competence with a technique or skill should never be allowed to advance to the next level. And if they have a good instructor, they won’t. All good, qualified Martial Arts teachers know that skills acquired at the level of Conscious Competence won’t carry over into either real self-defense situations or tournament competition. Those require skills at the level of Unconscious Competence.

Unconscious Competence is a skill level beyond having just learned and memorized a technique. It is experienced when you have achieved a detailed memory and understanding of how to perform the technique such that it becomes a reflex.

The problem is, to get from Conscious Competence to Unconscious Competence requires about twice the amount of training time, and many students simply don’t have the patience to practice a technique for that long beyond the level of Conscious Competence. They’ve learned it; they understand how it works. Now they want to move on and learn something new. If they don’t, the class becomes boring. They slack off, start to lose exercise motivation, attend fewer training sessions, never rising beyond Conscious Competence, and, when the boredom gets to be too much, their motivation is gone. They quit.

For them, Martial Arts was fun for a little while, but, they usually say, “It just wasn’t my thing.”

And the same loss of exercise motivation will happen to you…to me…to any student under the same circumstances, no matter what you’re learning, and no matter who’s teaching you.

Creative Variation: The Key To Staying Motivated

So, what can you do to avoid losing Martial Arts, or for that matter, any type of exercise motivation?

First, acquire an understanding from your teacher of how much time you can expect between belt tests. And second, understand that only the first half of that time will be spent learning a new, fun, and interesting skill. The second half of that time will be spent honing that skill from the level of Conscious Competence to Unconscious Competence.

But that second half of the training does not have to be boring!

A Message For Teachers: You Can Keep Your Students From Losing Motivation. Here’s How…

Teachers, you can easily keep students interested in the classes by laying out the time and competency expectations in advance, and by using the second half of that time to add more variety to the learning.

Adding variety means more than just incorporating games into the training sessions, or tossing in techniques from the latest Martial Arts fads. Rather, it means offering a Creative Variation of the same techniques they are already doing.

For example, at the beginner level of the Wu Ying Tao system, during the first month of training, the student learns a set of nine basic punches, three basic kicks, and blocking defenses for each.

By one month into the training, the student has usually achieved Conscious Competence of the skill involved in standing in a correct fighting stance, stepping into range, and executing the attacks and the defensive moves.

But now, the student is going to have to spend another full month of training in order for these skills to become ingrained. Instead of coming away from each class feeling excited over having learned something new, he might start coming away feeling like Martial Arts training involves a brief introduction to interesting concepts, followed by long series boring repetitions. That is, once the concept is no longer new, it simply becomes a drill to be done over and over, and quite frankly, yes, that does get pretty boring!

Keeping the “eye on the prize” can help, of course, by reminding the student that in only one more month, he or she will have the skill level to take and pass the test.

But there’s another way. A better way.

With Creative Variation, you would, perhaps, change the method of practicing the punches from punching with the rear hand to using the front hand.

Yes, I know, this is a simple variation, but it’s not so simple to a student at the beginner level, either for doing the attacks or the defenses. It opens up a whole new phase of learning what is essentially the same skill, and at the same time, brings variety into the learning process and actually enhances the student’s exercise motivation.

After one month of basic punching, followed by a second month of doing the same thing, but with a Creative Variation, the student’s skills will have arrived at the level of Unconscious Competency.

Students stay motivated. And you enjoy the experience of teaching.

Martial Arts training should always be a fun and interesting experience. While exercise motivation can be a challenge, you can avoid “burn out” by using Creative Variation to work your students’ way from simply being able to perform a skill at Conscious Competence to having the deeper understanding and reflexive proficiency of performing at the level of Unconscious Competence.

All it takes is a little time, a little understanding, and remembering to make your training experience fun!

Here’s another interesting martial arts article: Which martial arts pressure points are the most effective for dominating your opponent?



Suzanne